How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots” • Hacker News Board

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#11

Post by mrkwse » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

I applied to Volvo when looking for graduate schemes in my final year of university and recall having to complete a personality test there. I'm not sure whether or not that particular test corresponded to the referenced 'method', however it was a series of very arbitrary statements that one had to either agree or disagree with.

None of them seemed particularly useful for determining my aptitude as a software engineer or professionalism more generally. I can still recall this statement, verbatim, which I believe I stated I agreed with:

"I greatly enjoy the saucy and slapstick humour of some television shows"

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#12

Post by fullshark » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

These types of things may not be science, but they are so popular and will always be popular because they are useful heuristics to make sense of the chaos of dealing with humans.

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#13

Post by dkdklk » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

achow wrote: post #2

Couldn't help but check that it is rated 4.6/5 (113 reviews) in Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavior-Effectivel... Excerpt from one of the top review.. The book really helps you to understand why 'blues' ask 100 questions, want to problem solve all the time, always ask for more information, and can be cold and distant instead of being emotional creatures. Yellows on the other hand are always day…

> Looks like it is not only Sweden but other places as well.

As an American it’s a little reassuring to know that despite some economic advantages, the Swedes are also just a bunch of easily impressionable idiots.

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#14

Post by pintxo » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

tenpies wrote: post #8

Is it not the same for the current wave of anti-bias/discrimination/racism training? There is zero evidence that it has any effect. What few brave researchers have risked their careers exploring the effectiveness of the training have found that it does basically nothing. None of that stops companies from paying millions for it and good luck to the employee or executive that even dares suggest that perhaps there's bet…

Well, it's a good way for management to show they did ... something.

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#15

Post by wayoutthere » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #9

> · Red: dominant, driven, solution focussed. > · Blue: analytic, careful, meticulous > · Green: patient, considerate, nice > · Yellow: extroverted, creative, verbal Damn. I spent so much of my time and energy pushing back exactly on this bullshit when I was young. That's part of the curriculum of mandatory courses I had to take during an apprenticeship in Switzerland. Expensive and mandatory courses paid by students…

I think a big part of it is that corporate HR types are trying to turn people into interchangeable cogs in the machine. But this ignores the richness of our experience -- even if the color model were both static and true, I'm willing to guess that the expression of those characteristics would vary widely from person to person.

Better to just get to know people individually and talk to them about their desires, capabilities and needs. But I guess that takes too much time in the corporate world, so we classify people by color (and I suspect it also sells a lot of books).

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#16

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #6

>"talk of colours from the infamous Myers-Briggs test, administered by less-respectable management consultants" // I think in the UK Myers-Briggs was fronted by "respectable" management consultants and was mainstream. Or perhaps no management consultants are respectable because they primarily seem to front the current fashionable pseudo-science?

[deleted]

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#17

Post by mongol » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

That seems like an exaggregation. Certainly there must be larger "scientific bluffs"? Examples of articles in peer reviewed journals, relying on manipulated data or something.

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#18

Post by surfsvammel » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

I got this book as a Christmas present from my mom. Then I ran into the same argument about pseudoscience that we have each year...

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#19

Post by itronitron » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

They could have saved people a lot of time by just marking down the dominant color of each person's aura instead of making them complete a questionnaire.

Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”

#20

Post by jessermeyer » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

I am more analytic than most of my friends. If you want to label that as "Blue" or "7" or "J", "Conscientiousness" or "Engineer", that's one way to represent the general classification. And it's useful, especially when used as some kind of mirror for reflection. Whether it's useful in sum across a population to answer specific questions like "Will this specific group of people work well together" is highly suspect. The categories just are not resolute enough, and people are more like clouds than clocks. Categories, while a necessary first step to understanding, ultimately become a trap if that's all you understand people as.