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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”

#271
post #185
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't get personal about this. It only provokes others into doing worse, as happened downthread. Your comment would be just fine with just the second paragraph. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The second paragraph is the useful part of the comment. You seem to be reacting to the presence of the word "jerk", entirely ignoring the context.

Yes, we agree. The comment would be fine with just the second paragraph.

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

#272
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ha ha, good find, thanks! Sure there is a lot of generalization in these reports, but still I found their description of my personality type quite spot-on and recognizable, and hence useful to me. (And I don't believe in astrology and the whole supernatural shebang :)

PS The whole follow-up with team communication, organization impact etc. was not for me.

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

#273

> The invocation of a personality Gremlin is one example of careless thinking. Am I supposed to accept this because it already makes sense, because Katz or Sumpter wrote it, because other people believe it, or because of research to back it up? I sympathize with all the so called foolish Swedes.

You're supposed to follow the argument in the article. The idea of invoking these colours as an explanatory tool is circular reasoning. You're taking a bunch of traits, call them blue, and then use that colour as an explanation for why you have the traits, when in fact you have just restated some behaviour using slightly different words. it's like saying "the weather is bad because it rains". That's not an explanatio…

> You're supposed to follow the argument in the article.

Yes you certainly are. When I read the article I regretted not having read it already, and quickly revised all my ideas before anyone could see.

My point is more about inevitable error.

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

#274
I'm probably in the minority and I believe I am giving an unpopular opinion: this is pretty much gatekeeping.

The tone of this article is acerbic. My cynicism says that this is someone who got a piece of paper after much effort and cost and they think that makes them something more than the author. They are upset that this book is being given more attention then work they deem to be more valuable.

They aren't just fighting bad information with better information, they seem indignant anyone would listen to this man at all. I'm very glad that, in general, programming and computer science is a place where credentials matter significantly less than contributions. Sure, the programming language you wrote or the library you maintain may not be the best but no one listens to whiny academics demanding everyone bow down to them and disregard your work.

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

#275
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 huma…

Personalities doesn't cluster so k-means would not give anything interesting. Big 5 is pretty close to a factor analysis on a questionnaire data set though, so that's a reasonable though. Four colours is not based on anything like that though.

I'd say that astrology is better than DISC in that it's obviously bunk, the problem with the colours is that while some people claim to enjoy it as a pastime or conversation starter, some seem to take it further and base actual decisions on it. People reading horoscopes in a magazine wouldn't typically actually follow the advice therein.

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

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took this stuff in an introductory college course. I kind of knew it was bs but it was also easy to understand and score an easy mark. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to tell the emperor they have no clothes.

> Sometimes it just doesn't pay to tell the emperor they have no clothes. Indeed. I worked a job in which I worked more hours than my coworkers and was (measurably) more productive on a per hour basis than my coworkers. I loved my job, the people in other departments loved it when I worked because things got done that they needed, and I always had a smile on my face. But I had a "bad attitude" because I objected to s…

For some reason in corporate environments, the ideal employee "gets along with others" but also "doesn't waste time." I mean quite literally they want an oxymoron.

Also I find that these things can easily be gamed because they can try to figure out "what" contains the variables that allow for them to make themselves appear to be the ideal candidate; moldable to whatever position they desire.

I think there is an over emphasis on this because upfront seeing that in an interview doesn't tell you much, and if you're skeptical of it, the supervisor already has a skewed view of you. Also from my experience, supervisors want complacency, not "diverse views." The whole diversity phenomenon is completely garbage that does not exist practically. I don't get why it's taught when it's not followed. The nature of the beast is for the top's will to be executed downward, not marginalized upward.

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

#277
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…

these are just harry potter houses with the colours switched up a little

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

#278

> The invocation of a personality Gremlin is one example of careless thinking. Am I supposed to accept this because it already makes sense, because Katz or Sumpter wrote it, because other people believe it, or because of research to back it up? I sympathize with all the so called foolish Swedes.

The paragraph preceding your quote has the citation for their characterization of the concept of personality:

Perugni, M., Costantini, G., Hughes, S., de Houwer, J. (2016). A functional perspective on personality. International Journal of Psychology, Vol. 51, №1, 33–39.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is HR types are absolute conformist authoritarians. They don't have any critical thinking skills whatsoever, otherwise they wouldn't be in that field. It's the exact kind of thing I expect colleges and universities to push out. People that can only regurgitate information and then get indignant if you as much as question it's validity. Brainwashing really works, and people often pay for the privilege.

I completely agree with you. HR seems to aggregate all the people that you wouldn't allow anywhere near the actual business of the company.

HR's primary existence is prevent lawsuits between the company and the employees.

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

#280
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not a Ph.D., but I have some idea the bar is lower for psychology.
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