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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”

#231

Post by type0 »

dkdklk wrote: post #13
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.

It has to be true then, the book author did state that he was surrounded by such.

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

#232

Post by n4r9 »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #209
n4r9 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will very readily suppress or withhold questioning something that confirms their wolrdview.

I feel bad for people who don't use worldview, like the scientists that discover things you thought were true already.

Why? Science isn't just for discovering new things.

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

#233

Post by duderific »

air7 wrote: post #216

I hold the opposite view. I think this type of segmentation of people is (1)beneficial and (2)mostly harmless. (1) The sole reason for the feeling of "being surrounded by idiots" is lack of understanding of the other. If someone has different opinions/behaviors/moral values than I do, the easiest thing I could do is just label them "Idiot". Real understanding and empathy are just too hard. Actually, this also true wh…

At a previous employer we did a similar training program called True Colors, to understand how to communicate differently based on personality types. It broke down personality styles as follows:

Green - Intellectual; prefers less communication generally

Blue - Emotional; likes small talk and connecting with people

Orange - Spontaneous, life of the party, hates structure/rules

Gold - Analytical, needs order, boundaries and structure, makes lists for everything

Generally you have one dominant color, and some mix of the other three as less important factors in your personality. Most software engineers tend to be Green, HR people are Blue, CEO's are Orange (outgoing, rally people around them) etc.

I actually found it to be tremendously enlightening; I can usually bucket people I know into one of the four colors pretty easily. For example my wife is a Gold; she loves literally creating lists and checking off things when she's done, and she can't stand things being out of order.

Edited for formatting

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

#234

Post by Fnoord »

Izkata wrote: post #218
novok wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the color themes of Magic the Gathering, replace yellow with white and add black. Red: Firey & high energy characters that act like that. Blue: Intelligent & 'meta'. Lots of 'wizards' with that kind of personality. Green: That might as well describe an Ent. Yellow/White: Nice extroverted people, with a dash of self-righteousness Black: Death and negativity.

White is also largely about control and order, so I don't think that one fits well (which is fine since it is mapping a different color). The others, yeah, fairly close.

White was traditionally about defense, purity, and positiveness. Kind of like holy energy in WoW, or Diablo 3, or ...

I'm kind of reminded by the book/movie Divergent as well.

You can also see it (albeit roughly) back in all kind of new age subculture.

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

#235

Post by awb »

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…

> Based on my experience, that kind of pseudo-science is super popular in corporate environment, and is really difficult to fight against.

Because it has some merit. It's not the complete picture of a human, but it's a shortcut that gets you in the ballpark. Kind of like a fuzzy picture coming into focus.

People can be evaluated on any spectrum: morality, intelligence, friendliness, creativity, etc. They're all useful, but an incomplete representation of the human.

There are tons of systems that try to lump people into categories. The systems that tend to get popular have enough metrics to be roughly useful but few enough to be easily remembered.

We used to lump people into two categories: good and bad, or friend or enemy. Then we figured out that people can change and be on different parts of that spectrum in different contexts. That blurry picture wasn't clear enough to help us succeed.

The danger comes when you start thinking: "Reds are jerks" or "Don't worry about what that Yellow said." and fall into that mental trap that the fuzzy picture is all there is.

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

#237

Post by SkyBelow »

oefrha wrote: post #192
breck wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you reduce your standard from a Ph.D. to a 4 year degree from an accredited university, how well does the filter work?

If someone is speaking physics and has a B.S. in physics, while it isn't as good a check as a Ph.D., they are fare more likely to know what they are talking about than someone without any degree in physics.

I would also add another standard of career experience at applying knowledge, though I might just limit that to programming and computer science fields.

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

#238

Post by epx »

type0 wrote: post #230
epx wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I don't know, the only thing I remember is water ~= Pisces ~= melancholic ~=

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

#239

Post by SuoDuanDao »

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.

I've seen an analysis of the phenomenon where the four elements correspond to 4 major neurotransmitters, with the traits associated with having a lot of one element being pretty close to having a lot of the corresponding neurotransmitter. Maybe there really is a potentially useful means of categorizing people there.

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

#240

Post by oefrha »

SkyBelow wrote: post #237
oefrha wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you reduce your standard from a Ph.D. to a 4 year degree from an accredited university, how well does the filter work? If someone is speaking physics and has a B.S. in physics, while it isn't as good a check as a Ph.D., they are fare more likely to know what they are talking about than someone without any degree in physics. I would also add another standard of career experience at applying knowledge, though I migh…

I’m a physicist so I can say for certain that a typical college graduate majoring in physics but not looking into a Ph.D. isn’t equipped to discuss any advanced topic (say, quantum field theory). They are usually fifty to a hundred years behind frontier research.

That doesn’t necessarily translate to psychology, which I have no idea.

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