Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 340 posts

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

#221

Post by DonaldFisk »

achow wrote: post #138
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…

Really bizarre that I now only see 26 ratings in the Amazon page, as opposed to 113 that I saw earlier. https://www.amazon.com/Surrounded-Idiots-Behaviour-Understan... Anyone know what is happening? Is that the sudden burst of traffic from HN triggered some kind of Amazon's fake review analysis and they took down bunch of reviews?

For me, I get 117 ratings on amazon.co.uk and 26 ratings on amazon.com

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

#222

Post by 45ure »

Nursie wrote: post #172
45ure wrote: post #121

It is hard to figure out from this verbose article, whether it is just professional jealousy or a genuine need to debunk the theory of assigning colours to personality types, as described in the book titled Surrounded by idiots . The crux of the argument is that a professional psychologist, who is also a member Swedish Skeptics Society, is refuting the author's claim of being a 'behavioural scientist', yet he admits…

He also points out that the theory has no evidence behind it, that it appears to be based on an older theory, also completely unevidenced, and that that older theory draws on discredited Jungian archetypes. To read this purely as an attack on someone's credentials out of jealousy is to have missed the meat of the criticism.

I stated quite clearly, that it is hard to work out the intention of the article. The professional psychologist in question seems to be spending an awful amount of energy dispelling a theory that has been already discredited. There is an unhealthy fixation on the circulation and sales of the book, throughout the article. It is now a futile exercise to convince the readership if it is drivel and providing the book with even more publicity. They will come to a realization of their own accord and banish the book to the kooky category.

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

#223

Post by oefrha »

flingo wrote: post #213
oefrha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, this reminds me of zodiac signs, which every single non-scientist female friend of mine seems to take very seriously (not sure about male friends since this topic seems to never come up). No wonder it sells.

Have you tried to be a scientist yourself and getting some numbers to test your hypothesis?

I am a scientist myself but unfortunately I have neither the time nor interest to test every little hypothesis of mine, especially outside my field of expertise.

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

#224

Post by bitwize »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #3

This seems strikingly similar to the "shape" nonsense being sold to managers as an explanation of explain team dynamics [1]. [1] https://www.delcor.com/resources/blog/project-management-per...

I think I know what inspired the shape model: https://youtu.be/FC0_WI9--wA

I think I found the inspiration for the DISC/color model too: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Simon_El...

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

#225

Post by bitwize »

rapnie wrote: post #76
umeshunni wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of fact I have done a very similar color-coded personality test at a corporate event. https://www.insights.com/us/products/insights-discovery/ After the test, we were even given blocks to keep at our desks so that people who interact with us knew whether we were 'blue' or 'yellow' and adapt their reactions accordingly. I guess I should have just said I was an Aquarius or Capricorn or some such and it woul…

I also did this Insights Discovery with a bunch of colleagues. Two weeks beforehand we had to do an online multiple choice questionaire with about 20 questions. Based on this everyone received an elaborate report with their personality analyses. Strong points, weak points, etc. Very detailed. But I've got to say that everyone in our group - mostly rational devs - was positively surprised how accurate these analyses w…

> But I've got to say that everyone in our group - mostly rational devs - was positively surprised how accurate these analyses were.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect

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

#226

Post by msla »

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…

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is related to General Semantics, which was developed by Alfred Korzybski. General Semantics isn't bullshit like NLP is, but it does have some useful insights.

For example, General Semantics says that the map is not the territory, which isn't the most absolutely ground-breaking thing in the world but is helpful to keep in mind, whereas Neuro-Linguistic Programming might as well be "NLP: Language is Magic!" for all of the grandiose claims it makes about controlling people using crafted speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics

GS also came into the SF world:

> During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, general semantics entered the idiom of science fiction. Notable examples include the works of A. E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A and its sequels. [48] General semantics appear also in Robert A. Heinlein's work, especially Gulf. [49] Bernard Wolfe drew on general semantics in his 1952 science fiction novel Limbo. [50] Frank Herbert's novels Dune[51] and Whipping Star [52] are also indebted to general semantics. The ideas of general semantics became a sufficiently important part of the shared intellectual toolkit of genre science fiction to merit parody by Damon Knight and others; they have since shown a tendency to reappear in the work of more recent writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin and Robert Anton Wilson. In 2008, John Wright extended van Vogt's Null-A series with Null-A Continuum. William Burroughs references Korzybski's time binding principle in his essay The Electronic Revolution, and elsewhere.

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

#228

Post by riversflow »

OJFord wrote: post #127
yhoiseth wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

The article starts by stating fairly that the book's author is a professor of psychology and neuroscience and UC Berkeley. The article author's homepage says: > I'm an independent researcher with background in Economics, Mathematics, and Cognitive Science. Since I don't have any prior knowledge of the area, I'm sure either of them could convince me of their argument. So I'm inclined to believe the published Berkeley…

As suggested by sister comment, consider the content of the well-cited review instead of being blinded by credentials.

>or perhaps the auto-bio is being too modest?

Human beings are perfectly capable of autodidactism.

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

#229

Post by aidenn0 »

ncmncm wrote: post #170
_pzof wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an American who does not “believe” in Myers-Briggs types and I know plenty more of the same.

There is nothing to "believe". If it is useful in expanding your comfort zone, it's useful, full stop. If it's useful in helping to get along with people who are different from you, it's useful, full stop. If it's not useful to you, that does not mean it is not useful to anybody else.

Meyers-Briggs claims that

1. We all have specific preferences in the way we construe our experiences, and these preferences underlie our interests, needs, values, and motivation

2. The MBTI is an accurate measure of #1

There's also an implicit claim that each of the 4 dichotomies are well represented by a binary value.

There are far more claims made about it by Meyers and Briggs, but those 3 are baked into the MBTI test.

People have definitely had their comfort zone expanded by following advice in horoscopes, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to "believe" with regards to horoscopes.

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

#230

Post by type0 »

epx wrote: post #203
oefrha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, this reminds me of zodiac signs, which every single non-scientist female friend of mine seems to take very seriously (not sure about male friends since this topic seems to never come up). No wonder it sells.

And the zodiac signs are also divided in 4 groups (air, fire, earth, water) so it seems the idea of dividing people in 4 quadrants is pretty old.

What idiot-colors do you think it would corresponds to?

fire - red

water - blue

earth - green

air - yellow

pretty sure it's "scientific"

Post reply on HN