Late to this, but it reminds me of 'the rise of the idiots' from the 2006(!) series 'Nathan Barley'
How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
311–320 of 340 posts
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#312Provocative title. More accurate, but less surprising would be "A significant portion of a population were fooled by a charlatan offering simple answers to complex questions". That wouldn't be as salacious though. But I'm very happen with what VoF did. The book has still been a huge annoyance for years though, and I've seen personally workplace accomodations based on its idiocy. But if I'm allowed to generalize a bit…
> I hope that people smarter than me can create tools and models to make it easier. On a happy note, people smarter than you may make even worse mistakes.
I thank you for the effort, but I'm not sure that makes me feel better :)
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#313I don't know the book, but judging by the title the author was apparently 110% correct! :D
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. It's clearly written: "Despite the use of colours, it turned out that the “Surrounded by …” books were not based on Myers-Brigg. Instead, they built on another personality theory, the so-called DiSC model. The most noteworthy outcome of a search through the academic literature on this model was that, despite the fact that the test had been around for fifty years, there was in principle no research on whether or n…
There is no disagreement with Mr. Dan Katz's views; the licensed psychologist and psychotherapist, whose words make up the article. He suitably hammers home his point that the content of the books is nothing more than airport science, as he openly rages against the profession of 'behavioural scientist'. He also mentions the book sales, conferences, TV appearances, bestseller lists and ever increasing circulation of t…
> he only brings more welcome publicity for the author and his books.
That‘s obviously not true. Spreading the information that the books were written by a person who is falsely claiming his qualifications and that the premises of the book have no scientific confirmation is surely not supporting their acceptance.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I may have a slightly different view than most players, since I also read the novels for the era I played the game (Invasion through Fifth Dawn). It fits during the Mirari and post-Mirari arcs, Odyssey through Scourge, and in the same era black also wasn't just "death and negativity" (though Phage certainly embodied those aspects).
Oh, my PoV was about MtG in the 90s until say Tempest. It is probably out of date at this point, but I never liked the new stuff that much (after a few times jumping on the latest hype expac got boring, esp as the older cards were more powerful). I read a bit into the lore (IIRC there wasn't much available) and I read one magazine with a story within the Ice Age.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
In matters of layman discussion, would you trust their input more than someone with no formal education in physics? To go with a more practical example, say a news report comes out that some new exercise called joopies are better than burpees. Then say someone with a B.S. in Exercise Science says the article is wrong and says burpees are better than joopies. Without either peer reviewed research nor an expert with a…
Thus far the discussion has focused on non-Ph.D. posing as field expert and coming up with original research. However, if you’re trying to evaluate some pop science in media (which is likely garbage, so always start with negative points) and have a friend or family member with a B.S. to talk to, they’re often qualified to debunk a large class of bullshit. For instance, if there’s a news report of a perpetual motion m…
>Thus far the discussion has focused on non-Ph.D. posing as field expert and coming up with original research.
I had thought we had already diverged from that when we were discussing noise filtering. In regards to original research in the actual field, I agree the standard must be tougher and personally wouldn't depend upon a single expert or peer reviewed paper to accept something as truth, especially in the social sciences. In physics, I assume any ground breaking results would be quickly redone by independent researchers and a consensus for or against would follow.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it unpalatable to ask questions about how much discrimination exists and against whom it is directed? The only “evidence” I’m aware of are implicit association tests and Goldin’s study of blind auditions, neither of which demonstrate discrimination. And asking this question often just gets me downvoted. If we are so certain that there is discrimination and tons of it, why is the real evidence treated as a closely…
I think you are getting downvoted because the argument is exasperating. It's argument by ignorance: "I don't know therefore it isn't true." It is very easy to find ample evidence of discrimination documented in published peer-reviewed studies. E.g https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html "The results indicate large racial differences in callback rates to a phone line with a voice mailbox attached and a message re…
> I think you are getting downvoted because the argument is exasperating. It's argument by ignorance: "I don't know therefore it isn't true."
That would be unfortunate, because I'm very clearly not saying any such thing. Specifically, asking about the magnitude of discrimination is not asserting that it doesn't exist at all. For what it's worth (hopefully very little), I'm a True Believer in discrimination--it exists, I've experienced it. I'm skeptical about specific truth claims about discrimination (notably claims that it explains a significant part of any gap in the US). I'm also skeptical about social science's ability to accurately study discrimination due to its political homogeneity and track record (more on this below).
> It is very easy to find ample evidence of discrimination documented in published peer-reviewed studies.
Undoubtedly. It's easy to find peer-reviewed studies that support almost any popular conclusion; however, I'm not looking to confirm my own biases (nor anyone else's) but rather to understand what's really going on. Notably, neither the IAT study and Goldin's orchestra study should have passed peer review and yet they did and were held up as exemplary for decades. Between issues like these and the social science replication crisis, I don't put much stock in individual studies.
> The other exasperating thing is at presenting evidence almost never work. The step after someone has presented evidence of discrimination is for the person who doesn't "believe in discrimination" to challenge the result. Either the result doesn't actually prove discrimination or the study is flawed in some way so you can't draw any conclusions.
Discrimination is indeed difficult to prove; the reasonable response isn't to be frustrated that others remain skeptical after being shown problematic evidence, but rather to question why you are compelled by said problematic evidence. Skepticism is the reasonable position here. Note again that skepticism about various discrimination claims isn't the same thing as asserting the opposite of those claims. Note also that skepticism about various discrimination claims doesn't mean that we need to stop investigating discrimination; it merely means we don't have conclusive evidence (and consequently, we probably shouldn't be drafting policy that could hurt people or otherwise propagating myths about the conclusiveness of said evidence).
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#318> · 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…
At MSFT, they made everyone go through this training, along with a "personality test" to figure out which colors you were. Then everyone got foam blocks that they were told to stack in their window to tell everyone else how to communicate with them. This was exactly the same color model, although we gave names to the colors, like red was commander, blue was analyst, etc. Of course, everyone wanted to be red. I'm sure…
Just to reduce generalization, while I was at Microsoft we never had to do any of these psychology things. From day 1 to the last day all I had to do was work and maybe once complete a compliance and security 1 hour course.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yet we’re supposed to believe that we can do even better through different methods, and become even more successful than Apple and Amazon etc. This is a prime example of why diversity training is needed. People are deeply biased in regards to seeing something successful and then thinking that is the formula to success. It's textbook survivorship bias. Furthermore, it completely misses the material basis for why the…
Yes, aspirants pattern-match from success and make tweaks they deem essential to their goals. That‘s the history of human endeavor. Already you see female software engineering hiring growing in priority in the companies that are struggling with hiring.
Doesn't the existence of women lead teams and initiatives throughout the history of the discipline of computer science suggest that you're deliberately ignoring lots of examples and distorting your filter based on ideological motivations?
It sure looks that way from here.
Re: How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots”
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no disagreement with Mr. Dan Katz's views; the licensed psychologist and psychotherapist, whose words make up the article. He suitably hammers home his point that the content of the books is nothing more than airport science, as he openly rages against the profession of 'behavioural scientist'. He also mentions the book sales, conferences, TV appearances, bestseller lists and ever increasing circulation of t…
> he only brings more welcome publicity for the author and his books. That‘s obviously not true. Spreading the information that the books were written by a person who is falsely claiming his qualifications and that the premises of the book have no scientific confirmation is surely not supporting their acceptance.
>books were written by a person who is falsely claiming his qualifications
You seem to be simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing. I refer you to the points, made in your previous post; there are NO educational and professional qualifications, scientific grounds or any legal regulations required to write these books or conduct personality analysis, none whatsoever!