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

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

#101

Post by Iceland_jack » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #77

growlist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! I had 'unconcious bias' training at work, one of the learning outcomes of which was to understand the 'scientific basis' for unconcious bias. After reviewing the material and finding myself somewhat dubious of its claims, I - as a good scientist working in a technical role in a technical company - went off to research for myself. Turns out the supposed scientific basis is deeply flawed. And yet, this trainin…

Let me ask you something: Is unconscious bias training the worst example of bullshit you have experienced in your professional life or the thing that has aggravated you the most? Does that tell you anything about your unconscious biases? The point of the training is for companies to absolve themselves of culpability. If you act like a jerk after unconscious bias training you are on your own and the company hopes that…

> Does that tell you anything about your unconscious biases?

There is so much to unpack about you here

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

#102

Post by wwarner » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:14 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…

No. Horoscopes are not real, while various biases are. Please stay out of the teaching profession!

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

#103

Post by yhoiseth » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

fredrik-j wrote: post #52

As a swede this is a bit embarrassing to me. I have a few friends who's bought into this completely, and of course bought the book. All without even a hint of critical thinking. It is hard to tell your friends they've been conned. I can understand it to some extent. Here's someone, who claims he is a behavioral expert and scientist, and who offers a seemingly plausible simple method to understand yourself and other p…

> Unfortunately the books are still sold. I've considered printing stickers that warns about the nonsense and sneak it on to copies in book stores.

Great idea! We should do that for Why We Sleep, too: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

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

#104

Post by xamuel » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

fredrik-j wrote: post #52

As a swede this is a bit embarrassing to me. I have a few friends who's bought into this completely, and of course bought the book. All without even a hint of critical thinking. It is hard to tell your friends they've been conned. I can understand it to some extent. Here's someone, who claims he is a behavioral expert and scientist, and who offers a seemingly plausible simple method to understand yourself and other p…

If something as blatant as these colors was legitimately an inherent part of human psychology, how would it be that they were only discovered in the past decades? Wouldn't philosophers have noticed it thousands and thousands of years ago?

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

#105

Post by SiempreViernes » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

classicsnoot wrote: post #78

bjourne wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you mean. About 25 years ago in Sweden the leading party the Social Democrats instituted a policy championed by feminists that meant that every other elected position should be occupied by a woman. Research has shown that that policy has led to more qualified candidates across the political spectrum. There is also evidence from Sweden that attitudes towards rape and sexual assault has changed due t…

>Research has shown...more qualified candidates... First, can you link a source? Second, what does "more qualified" mean in the context of politicians? They are selected by popularity in the majority; capabilities are downstream from likeability. This, one could argue that "more qualified" could be construed as "excellent hair" or "large breasts." This is not to say that the job of political official does not have co…

The actual term used is "kompetent", and they talk about the general competency of the individual, and assume this correlates with their suitability as politicians. They then show that their measure of competency correlates positively with municipalities having better economy and better perceived service by the citizens. They also get more votes and things like that. The measure is basically if the person makes more than average within their peer group.

Report is here: https://www.sns.se/aktuellt/sns-analys-nr-41-konskvotering-k...

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

#106

Post by javajosh » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

fredrik-j wrote: post #52

As a swede this is a bit embarrassing to me. I have a few friends who's bought into this completely, and of course bought the book. All without even a hint of critical thinking. It is hard to tell your friends they've been conned. I can understand it to some extent. Here's someone, who claims he is a behavioral expert and scientist, and who offers a seemingly plausible simple method to understand yourself and other p…

One way to think of this is as an experiment itself. That is, do your friends have an increase in happiness and life enjoyment having read the book? If so, it may be worth tolerating if only for the placebo effect.

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

#107

Post by projektfu » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

krick wrote: post #53

fullshark wrote: post #12

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.

Exactly. That's why questionable MBTI/socionics are useful to people and Big-5 is not. And either of them are not real, actual 6-σ science anyway.

Very little in biology reaches a high level of confidence, let alone in psychology.

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

#108

Post by ianleeclark » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

freepor wrote: post #81

growlist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! I had 'unconcious bias' training at work, one of the learning outcomes of which was to understand the 'scientific basis' for unconcious bias. After reviewing the material and finding myself somewhat dubious of its claims, I - as a good scientist working in a technical role in a technical company - went off to research for myself. Turns out the supposed scientific basis is deeply flawed. And yet, this trainin…

You have to forgive the diversity training industry a little as they are being hired to convince people of a fact that is known to be wrong. If you look at the most successful tech companies in history, they are all built by teams that are >90% white and Asian men, and as they grow hire more white and Asian women. Yet we’re supposed to believe that we can do even better through different methods, and become even more…

> Yet we’re supposed to believe that we can do even better through different methods, and become even more successful than Apple and Amazon etc.

This is a prime example of why diversity training is needed. People are deeply biased in regards to seeing something successful and then thinking that is the formula to success. It's textbook survivorship bias. Furthermore, it completely misses the material basis for why these companies would have such hiring patterns: there were higher rates of asian and white college-educated men in CS, but, as hiring pools change, so do hiring patterns.

There isn't some innate ability to found software companies in white or asian men.

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

#109

Post by csours » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

fredrik-j wrote: post #52

As a swede this is a bit embarrassing to me. I have a few friends who's bought into this completely, and of course bought the book. All without even a hint of critical thinking. It is hard to tell your friends they've been conned. I can understand it to some extent. Here's someone, who claims he is a behavioral expert and scientist, and who offers a seemingly plausible simple method to understand yourself and other p…

Well, some/many Japanese believe that blood type determines a lot about your personality, and Americans believe in Myers-Briggs types, and I'm sure there are local equivalents everywhere else too, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

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

#110

Post by C1sc0cat » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #92

bjourne wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you mean. About 25 years ago in Sweden the leading party the Social Democrats instituted a policy championed by feminists that meant that every other elected position should be occupied by a woman. Research has shown that that policy has led to more qualified candidates across the political spectrum. There is also evidence from Sweden that attitudes towards rape and sexual assault has changed due t…

An internal policy for the list of candidates on their ballot , stating that every other candidate must be a woman. This is not the same as the list of who eventually gets elected of course, as the probability of getting elected decreases the further down the list you go. Also the policy appears to apply per ballot, and since there are something like 30 regions with (possibly) independent ballots, there is still some…

Party list are one of the reasons that PR is not the silver bullet for democracy