Actually, that's exactly right, according to Bud Tribble, the person who coined it, inside Apple:
"Bud, that's crazy!", I told him. "We've hardly even
started yet. There's no way we can get it done by then."
"I know," he responded, in a low voice, almost a whisper.
"You know? If you know the schedule is off-base, why don't
you correct it?"
"Well, it's Steve. Steve insists that we're shipping in early
1982, and won't accept answers to the contrary. The best way to
describe the situation is a term from Star Trek. Steve has a
reality distortion field."
"A what?"
"A reality distortion field. In his presence, reality is
malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.
It wears off when he's not around, but it makes it hard to
have realistic schedules. And there's a couple of other
things you should know about working with Steve."
"What else?"
"Well, just because he tells you that something is awful or
great, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll feel that way tomorrow.
You have to low-pass filter his input. And then, he's really
funny about ideas. If you tell him a new idea, he'll usually
tell you that he thinks it's stupid. But then, if he actually
likes it, exactly one week later, he'll come back to you and
propose your idea to you, as if he thought of it."
I thought Bud was surely exaggerating, until I observed Steve
in action over the next few weeks. The reality distortion field
was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an
indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the
purpose at hand. If one line of argument failed to persuade, he
would deftly switch to another. Sometimes, he would throw you
off balance by suddenly adopting your position as his own,
without acknowledging that he ever thought differently.
Amazingly, the reality distortion field seemed to be effective
even if you were acutely aware of it, although the effects would
fade after Steve departed. We would often discuss potential
techniques for grounding it (see Are You Gonna Do It?), but
after a while most of us gave up, accepting it as a force of
nature.
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Fi...