Hmm, I didn't read the article. Seems a little tacky considering the first word in the title is "swedes"
Huh? It's about a book written by a Swede that was published in Swedish that gained popularity in Sweden.
How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
191–200 of 340 posts
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#192I skimmed the entire article and am still confused about how this guy managed to persuade the media and “large parts of the Swedish population” that he’s a behavioral scientist. I mean, especially for laypeople, the first question you should ask when someone claims to be an expert in a certain science is “does s/he have a Ph.D.?”. This guy did not disclose his academic background, which no Ph.D. holder would ever hid…
The PhD is a fraternity. I think the only thing a PhD makes you an expert in is "PhD-ing". Don't get me wrong. I think having a PhD is a signal that you are very intelligent, I respect, work with and love people with PhDs (I disrespect the system). But if you believe this: > Meanwhile, the percentage of frauds among self-proclaimed non-Ph.D. experts is likely close to 100% then I would say the percentage of frauds am…
Outside a small percentage of fraudsters, having a Ph.D. in a subject is hard proof that one has devoted thousands of hours into said subject and has treaded a more or less established path, with at least a modicum of quality assurance from field experts. That doesn't automatically make someone an expert (depending on the definition of course), but it does indicate one can have a serious conversation on said subject with said individual. It also depends on the institution of course: I would place high confidence on someone with a Ph.D. from Princeton Physics, and less on someone with a Ph.D. from a no-name school/department.
With alternative scientists (I've seen many even when I was only a Ph.D. candidate -- some like to email an entire department at a time) there's simply no quality assurance whatsoever. You may review their work, but 99% of the time it's nonsense, so you probably don't want to waste time on the next one. And that's when you're qualified to review their work; when you're not, it only makes sense to assume it's nonsense, unless their work is endorsed by multiple field experts (without conflict of interest, which can be a murky issue in certain fields).
So, you're welcome to propose better noise filters, but I maintain that having a Ph.D. or not is the first question to ask when anyone is trying to sell you a scientific theory you're not qualified to evaluate.
Obligatory mention of The Crackpot Index. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#193Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It has always struck me as odd when somebody insists Myers-Briggs has been "debunked". It asks a lot of questions about what amount to boundaries of your comfort zone. Of course as we age that zone changes, ideally, but sadly not always, by expanding. Naming various borders of your comfort zone is useful if you want to push them back. If M-B has a failing, it is that its advocates never seem to suggest that being dea…
I suppose the issue with centrality is that not only can it indicate that you are both good at being an extrovert and good at being an introvert (when appropriate), but it can also indicate that you are bad at being extroverted and bad at being introverted when arguably called for by context.
I think what MBTI lacks is an appreciation of context - sometimes it's good to be Thinking, sometimes it is good to be Feeling. What individuals need to learn is 1. when each is appropriate and 2. if they're bad at doing one or the other, getting better at it.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#195How 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.
MBTI does not end with same result over multiple attempts. And some of the variants that are available online produce quite odd results.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#196I got this book as a Christmas present from my mom. Then I ran into the same argument about pseudoscience that we have each year...
It was a little distressing to me to realize believing in pseudoscience (for anyone not a scientist, doctor, engineer etc) has very little negative affect, and lots of people seem to be much happier begin in a deluded state than rigorously searching for truth.
I don’t think that’s true though it sure seems like it.
Pseudoscience is very seldom harmless. There is often someone making money off of someone else in the background, and in other cases it’s just plain health risks (for example Chiropractors killing a young girl by injecting her with turmeric or a naprapath taking a cancer patients money for snake oil for something that could be spent on proper healthcare).
I can’t think of a single harmless pseudoscience.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#197I have a problem with the article author's implication that someone without credentials (read: university degree) isn't a scientist, or at least is a lesser scientist. A scientist is someone who employs the scientific method. That's it. Thomas Erikson does not seem to qualify from what I can tell (he's just winging it), but he absolutely does not need to have a doctorate (or even a bachelors) in order to be a "behavi…
To be a scientist is not enough to use the scientific method in isolation. Because modern science is much bigger than anyone can understand as an individual, it is an imperative requirement that you also articulate your findings to the scientific community as a way to prove/disprove your personal conclusions. In other words, the requirement for proper use of the scientific method in a modern society can only been acc…
Using the scientific method in isolation is enough to be a scientist. If I:
1. form a falsifiable hypothesis based on observation 2. come up with (reproducible) experiments in an attempt to confirm and (more importantly) falsify my hypothesis 3. accurately measure and analyze my experimental results 4. modify or throw out hypotheses where necessary 5. rinse repeat
I am a scientist. If I then make prescriptive statements / claims to people based on this science, it is of course imperative that I share my scientific methodology with whoever I am making these claims to. But I can do science on a desert island all alone.
but your chances are minimal of even being able to start the discussion,
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#198Earlier 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…
If my job required me to go to a unconscious bias training I would treat it the same is if they forced me to go to church. I am sure companies would like it if everyone would treat each other as kin and share the religious experience, and the actually hours itself would unlikely be the worst experience compared to some of the worst days at the office, but I would still resign if they did it. Call it irrationality. I would simply no longer feel that there were any mutual trust and thus I would not feel safe in continuing working there.
I wonder how many companies can survive long term if employees don't trust their employer and the employer don't trust its employees.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#199When I started my current work (Swedish software company) a few years ago, all new employees performed the “DISC” analysis (bought from a consultant firm). It was a fairly long questionnaire with situational questions and it was advised not to think too much about each question before answering. Stupid as it sounds.
Anyway, we got our profiles and at the follow up session we went through the colors and everything else about the model. Some of my colleagues were skeptical, some more enthusiastic (“this explains so much”). I was somewhere in the middle. For sure I recognize some of the behaviors with my profile, on the other side I questioned the validity mainly due to the way the foundation to the profile what conducted (the questionnaire). I also read the book but got the feeling that it was more of entertainment than the session and profiling we did (in the book it’s a lot of “real life” examples etc).
In work life we mostly used the “tool” to describe persons outside our organization. “The customers’ project manager in this project is very red”, would be something a sales rep could say at a hand of. They probably mean “He’s kind of a jerk but they pay so deal with it”. Although it was a pretty long time since I heard anyone use it. I also think that the article describes why the model is not sufficient even for describing people loosely.
Lastly I think that the article headline is kind of over exaggerating. I mean, yes many read the book and might have use it to talk about themselves and/or other people. Some organizations went to far and tax money was wasted. But mostly it was consumed as most other books and people got entertained. I haven’t encountered anyone who preached the message and method, more like a conversation starter. The people who swallow the message fully is probably already converted to the next personality model fraud. Or too busy reading other truths on Facebook.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure but it's worth exploring why these are popular beyond simply writing it off as "people are dummies."
People have been exploring why astrology etc. are popular for as long as they have existed. We don’t have to redo it all from scratch and have the whole argument from first principles every time some some new popular pseudoscience comes along. We can just declare it bunk and move on.
IDK i don't see this stuff as all that different from doing like a k-means clustering or factor analysis on a data set, it's just an attempt to do it on human personality, which we know has variance and correlations. We don't freak out at market segmentation analysis that involves labels like "early adopters" and "laggards" which are imperfect but informative.
I think people just find the entire idea of labeling humans in this way offensive, and latch onto some of the claims that it's "science" as an avenue of attack.
Edit: And I think it's slightly better than just categorizing people based on their birthday like you do in Astrology, as you are using at least responses to a personality test in most instances.