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

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

#111

Post by tgv »

hannasanarion wrote: post #90
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…

"bias training doesn't eliminate bias" isn't the same thing as "bias doesn't exist".

There's no evidence, and certainly not a plausible model, that supports/explains how reaction times reflect attitudes, and how changes in attitude change reaction times.

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

martindbp wrote: post #34
dkdklk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What economic advantages?

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by vehementi »

dgellow wrote: post #32
_def wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

Thanks for sharing the English article. I decided to share the french version because it has way more details (it's a huge phenomenon here), but that's for sure more interesting if people can actually read the content :)

NLP is or was also super popular in the "pick up artists" community

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

#116

Post by FranOntanaya »

lemagedurage wrote: post #33

How come dividing personality into introverted and extroverted (1 dimension) is generally accepted, but dividing personality into more dimensions (disc has 2, mbti has 4, big five has 5, etc), people tend to feel uneasy (e. g. "I am more than just this")? All traps aside (confirmation bias, overdoing it), I do believe these categorizations do make sense as a way to learn about behavior, especially for the general pub…

I look at MBTI as a hash function. Rather than having someone ask a few dozen questions about myself and me answering them and them putting them together, it's simpler to hash those answers into a 4 letter string. People with some big differences do get the same hash value, but the loss of accuracy seems an acceptable trade-off in casual situations.

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

#117

Post by fastball »

csours wrote: post #109
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.

I always thought of Myers-Briggs as being about identifying the things you are less comfortable with and learning to address them. It's about identification of tendencies, not blaming a Gremlin.

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

#118

Post by C1sc0cat »

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…

Colours WTF!

The Belbin team Roles does have some value I feel as that's derived from real results - but you should not use it prescriptivly

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

#119

Post by linuxftw »

SkyBelow wrote: post #41
vertex-four wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the people suggesting the better ways are usually... promoting rather unpalatable ideas. Often either that there is no discrimination in the workplace ever and so we should stop talking about it, or that discrimination in the workplace is in fact normal and healthy. I'd love to see a way of creating healthy, non-discriminatory workplaces, especially in industries that are usually pretty terrible.

>or that discrimination in the workplace is in fact normal and healthy One thing that bothers me is that discrimination is seen as a four letter word, when it is something we do all the time and celebrate. Only specific forms are considered bad and we need to be more explicit on what and why. For example, racial discrimination is bad. Discrimination based on what degree one holds is not. Or, given that not everyone h…

Enforcing culture is highly discriminatory. You have to talk, dress, and act a certain way within cultural boundaries, otherwise you're discriminated against.

Imagine you're in a job interview. You describe the position to a candidate, and the candidate says "Wow, that sounds cool."

You describe the position to a different candidate. That person says "Shxt, that's tight dog."

Does one sound more professional to you? Why? Are you going to make any inferences about that persons capability to be a good employee based on how they speak? Of course you are. Is that right? Probably not.

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

#120

Post by Zenst »

Issue is and always will be that people are quick to cide with anything that promotes their narrative/World view as it is easier to be right than it is to be wrong and change your narrative/World view for many people.

But in the realms of books, science does seem to be more accountable than religious books and yet both have their effects and sway upon people. Just that one is more open to being questioned and the other is not.

Sad truth is, if you wrap bad science under another banner, you can get away with it more easily and less open to being questioned in a way that is accepted in debate.

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