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Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

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Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#171

Post by pavlov »

teekert wrote: post #84
Angostura wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still feel that there is value in this system, but mostly wrt awareness. And that's fine - but you might as well use astrology.

The difference being that these colors are based on character traits and questions being answered, not on the position of celestial bodies. And I'm saying they proved useful to me, I hope they proved useful to those I applied my insights to as well, I think so. Tfa also does not state the colors are complete bs, it mostly objects to the Thomas Erikson not being educated properly. It does not state any damage being do…

> “these colors are based on character traits and questions being answered, not on the position of celestial bodies”

When the questions aren’t based on any research, the results are not much sounder than using planetary positions as the input data.

One could devise a personality test where all the questions are long divisions with a short time limit. This would certainly be some kind of test of mental ability, but there wouldn’t be any basis to jump to conclusions: “This person failed all tests where the divider is larger than ten, which suggests that they’re afraid of tackling large problems.”

The color test is fundamentally based on this kind of “science” even if the proposed categories are well-meaning.

Re: damage done by the color test, the article did mention some anecdotes from Sweden like people being asked to switch teams at work “because we have too many green people”, etc.

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#172

Post by rwoerz »

HPsquared wrote: post #76
alkonaut wrote: post #41

The interesting question here perhaps isn’t so much whether knowing if you are a particular color or 4-letter Myers-Briggs combination helps you or whether there is a solid foundation to the categorization at all. What’s interesting here is rather: what happens when you think of everyone as a pigeonholed category. Intuitively it seems it should be mostly negative especially if the categories don’t even offer any beha…

Arbitrarily dividing people into groups with defined roles is the basis of the "Noble Lie" in Plato's Republic. In that, people are defined as having souls made of gold, silver or iron/bronze. The idea of giving people a role that they can focus on, from an early age, has some advantages. Of course pigeonholing people has a wide range of disadvantages; everything is a trade-off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%…

I think of pigenonholing as a cognitive heuristic that spares you to involve your "system two" [1] when dealing with or talking about other people. It is a heuristic insofar as peoples' behaviour is more like a continuous spectrum than a discrete set of categories.

The other cognitive heuristic that applies here is that of projecting n independent dimensions onto one or two, at best. Like in this case, the latter often comes with exactly two elements in each dimension yielding a 2⨯2 matrix.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy... (admittedly a pigeonholing of mental processes by itself)

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#173

Post by kgwxd »

hermannj314 wrote: post #29

I struggle often with this somewhat arbitrary desire for everything to be data-driven and backed by science. People hope, pray, follow best practices, listen to advice on the internet and yet, every now and then we are reminded that only fools do these things. Really intelligent people only listen to science and do things backed by science and lots of data. How does anyone accomplish anything if every step they take…

It's only necessary for extraordinary claims. Most books by "experts" make extraordinary claims. We have centuries of data that shows it's best to ignore them completely.

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#174

Post by rapind »

jd115 wrote: post #99
matbatt38 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should extend your concern about those 90% books. IMO, they're just as problematic. They're simply less successful so we pay less attention to them individually, but IMO the trend of having 90% of books sold being total BS dressing as science or personal development is a serious concern.

Just curious - do you also think 90% of people are a serious concern?

I mean philosophically speaking our entire species is a concern. What drives us can also destroy us. Paradox.

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#175

Post by beaconstudios »

Jensson wrote: post #168
beaconstudios wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4% of 3000 is 120 - that's a lot of studies. You're the one claiming they're the same - where's your evidence that napping causes the effects identified as caused by meditation? If you want to believe meditation is the same as napping, you're free to do so. As somebody with a great deal of experience in both meditation and napping, my experience is that they're completely different - meditation is not just quietly re…

> 4% of 3000 is 120 - that's a lot of studies. Accounting for placebo is the minimum you should do, that doesn't mean that the rest of the study is well done. > You're the one claiming they're the same - where's your evidence that napping causes the effects identified as caused by meditation? You are the one coming with the extraordinary claim, that meditation does something fundamentally different. > meditation is n…

> You are the one coming with the extraordinary claim, that meditation does something fundamentally different.

From your perspective, given you seem convinced that meditation is the same as a nap, sure. That itself seems to me like an absurd proposition.

At the end of the day, if you want to think that then that's fine. I think it's silly, like claiming that weightlifting and stretching are the same - and I doubt there are many studies comparing the two.

> Right, meditation isn't even a defined concept

It's many concepts under one umbrella. Meditation is just maintaining focus on one thing, to the exclusion of all else. It can be your breath, your internal emotional state, or even nothing (as per zazen meditation).

As the old saying goes, you can't reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, so unless you have an actual logical argument or evidence for them being the same thing, then there's little point debating it.

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#176

Post by zzbzq »

dmingod666 wrote: post #55
nradov wrote: post #10

And yet we still see fools in the US who actually believe that Myers-Briggs personality types like "INTJ" are somehow meaningful. It's hilarious.

They should read it's history. I think its audience is that of people who'd otherwise love astrology if it weren't so out of fashion.

astrology is very fashionable though

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#177

Post by wreath »

alkonaut wrote: post #41

The interesting question here perhaps isn’t so much whether knowing if you are a particular color or 4-letter Myers-Briggs combination helps you or whether there is a solid foundation to the categorization at all. What’s interesting here is rather: what happens when you think of everyone as a pigeonholed category. Intuitively it seems it should be mostly negative especially if the categories don’t even offer any beha…

My team did a workshop where we identified our colors. The result of that was very awkward communications and people making excuses for not stepping up or contributing in meetings because their needs, as described by these colors, were not met. Total disaster.

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#178

Post by chronotis »

mherdeg wrote: post #169
teekert wrote: post #7

I went through the Insights Discovery course [0], which sounds a lot like what tfa is discrediting. At work we still talk about the colors of people years after the course. After reading tfa I still feel that there is value in this system, but mostly wrt awareness. The course recognizes a spectrum and everyone has aspects of all colors. Many people at my employer are primarily green or blue. During the courses it cam…

I took what is probably the same all-day training course with my extended team at Microsoft about 10 years ago. I had some deep qualms about this -- "this cannot possibly have any scientific basis, right? What is the point of this? How can anyone possibly assert that there are four basic kinds of personalities, that they respond consistently, or that they way they interact matches consistently?" A colleague's view wa…

My team also went through this at Microsoft, back around 2008-09. My team was firmly in the "this is bullshit" camp, but there were others who took it quite a bit more seriously. And then there were the "reds", which more often than not used it as defense/justification for their normal aggressive behaviors.

Everyone received little foam color blocks; we were supposed to put our primary and secondary on our desks so that whenever people dropped by they would know what kind of person you are. We received binders with dozens of pages telling us who we were, how we think, what we cared about, what our barriers are, and so on.

It reminded me a bit of market segmentation studies -- a passing fad used to describe in a moment the nature of a population, but something that loses value and relevance over time.

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#179

Post by halpert »

mongol wrote: post #56
halpert wrote: post #20

I read some of this article. I have never heard about the color system in question. If it’s really a fraudulent system, it should be easy to say “The system claims thing X, here is evidence X is false.” Instead, this article is filled with anecdotes and what seems like random conjecture on what personality “really” is. This is not a convincing argument.

It does not need to be fraudulent, it is enough that it states facts as scientific when they have not been proven.

This article is naming “fraudster of the year.” I think they should show evidence of fraud in this case.

Re: Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)

#180

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

The "Head of People" at my previous employer in Sweden pushed this garbage.

She made us spend an entire day — it was mandatory — "learning" about the four colour-coded groups in this pseudoscience.

It's worrying that employers can essentially mandate religion in the workplace like this.

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