Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years. Regardless of what you think of him, as someone who has worked in Corporate America for over a decade, there really isn't anything quite like Dilbert to describe the sort of white collar insanity I've had to learn to take in stride. My first workplace as a junior developer was straight out of Dilbert and Office Space. I have a gigantic collection of digitized Dilbert strips that best describe office situations I've run into in real life – many of them including the pointy haired boss.
He's expressed a lot of what I would consider... stupid opinions these days, but I would be sad to learn he's no longer with us.
He has had some questionable views all throughout his life. In his book "The Dilbert Future", which was from 1997, the last 2 chapters are some wacky stuff about manifesting - i.e if you write something down 100 times a day every day it will come true and other stuff like that.
And while that may seem a far cry from the alt-right stuff he eschews, its really not - inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking.
Of course, you are not going to write down that you will win the lottery and then win.
But most people are their own worst enemy and self limiting to some extent. Focusing on what you want in life, and affirming it to yourself over and over, is effectively a way to brain wash yourself to change your own self limiting behavior and it’s not surprising that this is often successful.
A lot of time has past since I read Scott Adams view on manifesting. I got a decent way through before I realised it wasn't satire. It did seem clear to me that he was advocating a form of manifesting that went beyond either of those principles. That benefits came from manifesting in ways that no-other influence from yourself would be possible. That's essentially declaring it to be magic. Psychology I can believe, if you want me to believe in magic you're going to need a bit more.
From the point of view of an ADHD person, it doesn't surprise me at all that someone who had the ability to do a dumb task like manifesting would also have the ability to do meaningful things that that I find nearly impossible.