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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)

#41

Post by alkonaut »

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 behavioral insight.

But something tells me that there could also be some positive effects from actually wondering about the behavior of others and how you treat them, even if it’s pigeonholing and preconceptions based on bogus research.

A bit like every single diet works (compared to no diet) because the fundamental thing is dieting in the sense that you think actively about diet.

As for this book: It’s a pretty useless book, but I can see how it’s appealing. I can’t see how it being unscientific makes it worse than 90% of similar books in the bookstore. This is a pop book you read on a plane. It’s not a scientific publication. If he claims it’s solid science that’s obviously bad, but I’m sure all the mindfulness and yoga books do too - and all of those are certainly not very scientific.

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

#42

Post by boomboomsubban »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #23

I thought the text about personality colors sounded familiar. @dang This same article was discussed on HN almost two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064530 I think the title could use a (2020) tag.

From the epilogue,

>Since this article was published in spring 2019...

So 2019

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

#43

Post by rubidium »

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…

“ Really intelligent people only listen to science and do things backed by science and lots of data.”

You know _no one_ smarter than you who follows a deity?

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

#44

Post by jdmichal »

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.

I thought the article was very direct and fair about the fact that the system in question seems based on DiSC, and that there's not enough evidence to really say one way or the other.

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

#45

Post by neom »

"Some professionals recognised talk of colours from the infamous Myers-Briggs test, administered by less-respectable management consultants. It built on the mystical ideas of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, active at the start of the 20th century, whose theories are now mostly of historical interest. The theory of Myers-Briggs was not something modern psychologists took seriously. Since the test had been developed quite some time ago it had been the subject of extensive research and the results had revealed serious flaws."

I didn't know Myers Briggs has a colour component, tangentially: crazy to me how often I see a "Myers Briggs Score" on resumes these days, especially in Korea. I was under the impression most people didn't take it very seriously, at least not seriously enough to put on a resume.

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

#46

Post by strken »

ShockedUnicorn wrote: post #11

As a swede. This is the first time I've seen this 4 colour system. I'm 30, so maybe it's more popular around younger people? I have seen things like "INTP-J" on friends profile. I think it's called 16 personalities. Me and my colleagues did that test, and the suggested one for me did not fit in with me at all, and most of us thought the results were bullshit. Why anyone would follow this to make work groups, or to ex…

The INTP thing is MBTI type, and although it's widely derided, it's pretty strongly correlated with the much more respectable Big Five personality traits[0]. It's not 100% bullshit, since knowing it tells you a little bit about how someone will act.

I do agree that cutting someone out of your life solely due to a personality test is putting the cart before the horse, regardless of how scientifically rigorous it is.

[0] https://dynomight.net/in-defense-of-myers-briggs.html

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

#47

Post by yxwvut »

sampo wrote: post #27
kriro wrote: post #12

I'm not a psychologist but this sentence: """Modern evidence-based methods in behavioural science adopt the ground principle that people’s behavior mainly depend on context.""" doesn't have any source to back it up and is opposed to what I have read about the introvert/extrovert divide which seems to be more genetic than context dependent for example. And those are character traits that directly shape behavior (I'd r…

> """Modern evidence-based methods in behavioural science adopt the ground principle that people’s behavior mainly depend on context.""" Adopting ground principles doesn't sound very evidence-based to begin with.

The ground principle here is one of flexibility: that your model of behavior should allow for context dependence, not that it need be entirely context driven. As an analogy, consider a ground principle that your statistical model shouldn’t assume normal distributions or equal variance.

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

#48

Post by dmingod666 »

wwilim wrote: post #9

Anything that boils an entire branch of science down to something this simple is by definition a scam. The funniest part of the article was how Forbes lists this as a top ten must-read. And why wouldn't it, removing all nuance and operating on big words invented by an "expert" is peak C-level thinking. Finally, I feel obliged to point out that the four types described are essentially the Houses of Hogwarts with the c…

Big 5 boils down to 5 words, not a scam..

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

#49

Post by keewee7 »

Scandinavian society gives a lot of airtime to "radical" intellectuals talking bullshit about things outside their field of expertise.

Bjørn Lomborg was a hipster economist who denied man-made climate change and had an embarrassing amount of clout in Denmark:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

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

#50

Post by coliveira »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #32
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.

It's not Meyer Briggs: > 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.

But it is a similar kind of BS. No scientific basis as well.
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