How Swedes were fooled by the book "Surrounded by Idiots" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Soccermatics/how-swedes-were-fooled-by-one-of-the-biggest-scientific-bluffs-of-our-time-de47c82601ad <comment><USER8> > · 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' employer, of course. But I didn't know that the "color model" was THAT popular.

In french speaking countries, that's often presented as a package called PNL, aka "Programmation Neuro-linguistique" ([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmation_neuro- linguistiq...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmation_neuro- linguistique)). Based on my experience, that kind of pseudo-science is super popular in corporate environment, and is really difficult to fight against.

<comment><USER9> I think a big part of it is that corporate HR types are trying to turn people into interchangeable cogs in the machine. But this ignores the richness of our experience -- even if the color model were both static and true, I'm willing to guess that the expression of those characteristics would vary widely from person to person.

Better to just get to know people individually and talk to them about their desires, capabilities and needs. But I guess that takes too much time in the corporate world, so we classify people by color (and I suspect it also sells a lot of books).

<comment><USER10> 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.

<comment><USER9> 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.

<comment><USER11> HR's primary existence is prevent lawsuits between the company and the employees.

<comment><USER9> I understand that, but in my experience HR is more often than not the _cause_ of most of those lawsuits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Couldn't help but check that it is rated 4.6/5 (113 reviews) in Amazon.

[https://www.amazon.com/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavior- Effectivel...](https://www.amazon.com/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavior-Effectively- Communicate/dp/1250179947/)

Excerpt from one of the top review..

 _The book really helps you to understand why 'blues' ask 100 questions, want to problem solve all the time, always ask for more information, and can be cold and distant instead of being emotional creatures. Yellows on the other hand are always day dreaming, coming up with broad ideas, trying to plan social gatherings and always seemingly have their 'head in the clouds' (this is totally me). Reds can seem really aggressive, very dominant, demanding, and short with those around you, and frankly they can't help it, and greens are very amiable. They agree to everything, but are often afraid to speak their mind._

Looks like it is not only Sweden but other places as well. Seems like easily relatable and digestible like those on Sun Signs and Personality and hence a 'good seller', if not a best seller.

<comment><USER13> Hah, this reminds me of zodiac signs, which every single non-scientist female friend of mine seems to take very seriously (not sure about male friends since this topic seems to never come up). No wonder it sells.

<comment><USER14> And the zodiac signs are also divided in 4 groups (air, fire, earth, water) so it seems the idea of dividing people in 4 quadrants is pretty old.

<comment><USER15> What idiot-colors do you think it would corresponds to?

fire - <USER2>

water - <USER3>

earth - <USER4>

air - <USER5>

pretty sure it's "scientific"

<comment><USER14> I don't know, the only thing I remember is water ~= Pisces ~= melancholic ~= <some color>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had never heard of this book, or color system before, but it makes me think of my time working in car sales. Our senior sales managers trained us to identify personalities, and they used similar groupings.

There were four 'buckets' and they are very close to this color system. They are dominant driver, complacent, ego driven, and analytical. The idea is to, as quickly as possible, identify the customer's type, and adapt your sales approach to that. You learn to use a communication style for each bucket. Different types of questions to ask, different speed/ energy, different body language.

I was a terrible salesperson, but I watched the managers and top salespeople use this approach with much success. They would match their style of communication with the customer's, in an attempt to earn their favor and make them feel more comfortable. The hypothesis is this increases the likelihood of closing the sale.

I understand these buckets (colors) aren't scientific, and it sounds like some folks in Sweden might have taken it too far or been misled. But the article says

 _" Erikson has repeatedly claimed that the benefit of his colour approach is that it helps us understand ourselves and others and, as a result, improves our communication and reduces conflicts."_

So I'm not sure that the idea of learning different ways people communicate, and in turn, how you yourself can communicate in different ways is a 'fraud'. To be fair, I haven't read the book so I don't know how or what ideas are presented.

I think the 4 buckets/colors can just be a loose 'framework'. As long as you understand it's not the end all - be all of personality. In fact it's not really 'personality' at all. It's just a quick and dirty way of grouping common characteristics of people.

Maybe it's not useful in all situations, but for some applications (like sales), there is certainly value in communicating with people in a way that is compatible with their style. In the case of car sales, it's very tangible value, a larger paycheck :)

<comment><USER17> > _I was a terrible salesperson, but I watched the managers and top > salespeople use this approach with much success. They would match their > style of communication with the customer 's, in an attempt to earn their > favor and make them feel more comfortable. The hypothesis is this increases > the likelihood of closing the sale._

Yes. People are less "unique" than they think, and some scientists (or non scientists) can come up with useful pattern matching/abstractions over people types (like in the book), while others study subtlety and small differences at another level, and are sometimes deluded that higher level personality types don't exist.

That doesn't mean that this or that theory of types is fool-proof and always applicable. But it also doesn't have to be, to be scientific (which just needs it to be falsifiable, empirical based on observation, testable, and useful for predictions).

A scientific theory != a law of nature. The former doesn't have to always hold. It could still create very useful models for predicting people behavior with success.

<comment><USER16> Well said. This is the right way to look at it I think. It's a loose model, or abstraction. For some applications it provides utility/ value. Others, not so much.

It's not a universal definition of personality, but more a rough set of patterns of communication style, where in really many different personalities might fall under.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How come dividing personality into introverted and extroverted (1 dimension) is generally accepted, but dividing personality into more dimensions (disc has 2, mbti has 4, big five has 5, etc), people tend to feel uneasy (e. g. "I am more than just this")?

All traps aside (confirmation bias, overdoing it), I do believe these categorizations do make sense as a way to learn about behavior, especially for the general public. That people misinterpret the meaning of the results is obviously bad, but it doesn't invalidate the theory.

<comment><USER19> I look at MBTI as a hash function. Rather than having someone ask a few dozen questions about myself and me answering them and them putting them together, it's simpler to hash those answers into a 4 letter string. People with some big differences do get the same hash value, but the loss of accuracy seems an acceptable trade-off in casual situations.

<comment><USER20> Hash functions are repeatable. MBTI types are not--people often receive different results when retaking the test, even in short time periods. It categories are not based on research about significant aspects of personality, and often go against it. The Big Five personality test is a scientifically grounded one that actually works as you describe, and with less loss of accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I skimmed the entire article and am still confused about how this guy managed to persuade the media and "large parts of the Swedish population" that he's a behavioral scientist. I mean, especially for laypeople, the first question you should ask when someone claims to be an expert in a certain science is "does s/he have a Ph.D.?". This guy did not disclose his academic background, which no Ph.D. holder would ever hide, and his best claim to authority appears to be "in an interview with Filter I referred to a psychologist who supported my claim [to be a behavioural scientist]", which is truly bizarre (and false btw). Additionally, this guy debuted as a crime novel author ffs (according to Google-translated version of his Swedish Wikipedia page[1]). What a joke.

(Granted, there's a small percentage of frauds among Ph.D. holders. Meanwhile, the percentage of frauds among self-proclaimed non-Ph.D. experts is likely close to 100%.)

[1] [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=h...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fsv.m.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThomas_Erikson_\(ledarskapscoach\))

<comment><USER21> The PhD is a fraternity.

I think the only thing a PhD makes you an expert in is "PhD-ing".

Don't get me wrong. I think having a PhD is a signal that you are very intelligent, I respect, work with and love people with PhDs (I disrespect the system). But if you believe this:

> Meanwhile, the percentage of frauds among self-proclaimed non-Ph.D. experts > is likely close to 100%

then I would say the percentage of frauds among PhD experts is 99%. No one knows anything. Perhaps non-PhDs are better than PhDs at remembering that. PhD's don't tell you how expert someone is at something. Unless the task at hand is making PDFs. People with PhDs are all great at that.

If you look at the track record of "Psychology PhDs" in the past 100 years, I wouldn't be surprised if this fellow has done better work than more than half of them. Purely by chance, knowing nothing about his book.

I trust experience and open data more than academic credentials.

I would not be surprised if in 50 years we have a much more scientific method of doing science than the current PhD system.

<comment><USER13> Outside a small percentage of fraudsters, having a Ph.D. in a subject is hard proof that one has devoted thousands of hours into said subject and has treaded a more or less established path, with at least a modicum of quality assurance from field experts. That doesn't automatically make someone an expert (depending on the definition of course), but it does indicate one can have a serious conversation on said subject with said individual. It also depends on the institution of course: I would place high confidence on someone with a Ph.D. from Princeton Physics, and less on someone with a Ph.D. from a no-name school/department.

With alternative scientists (I've seen many even when I was only a Ph.D. candidate -- some like to email an entire department at a time) there's simply no quality assurance whatsoever. You may review their work, but 99% of the time it's nonsense, so you probably don't want to waste time on the next one. And that's when you're qualified to review their work; when you're not, it only makes sense to assume it's nonsense, unless their work is endorsed by multiple field experts (without conflict of interest, which can be a murky issue in certain fields).

So, you're welcome to propose better noise filters, but I maintain that having a Ph.D. or not is the first question to ask when anyone is trying to sell you a scientific theory you're not qualified to evaluate.

Obligatory mention of _The Crackpot Index_. [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html)

<comment><USER22> 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 might just limit that to programming and computer science fields.

<comment><USER13> 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.

<comment><USER22> 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 Ph.D. (or other doctorate) to weigh in on the issue, would you think that joopies are better, that burpees are better, or that you don't have enough evidence to decide either are better.

And if you would recommend the third option as a matter of course, would the same hold true if we replace joopies with staring at a clock?

<comment><USER13> 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 machine, and a physics major tells you it's obviously bullshit because it violates the first and/or second law of thermodynamics, they're likely correct. In less obvious scenarios, hopefully they would try to track down the source and try to make sense of it, and tell you if the source is garbage (in case they're qualified to evaluate it), and/or if the source is misrepresented in media. This isn't always possible and assumes a humble person who don't brag about things they don't understand, though; if the person is known to be boastful then you probably won't place too much trust on them anyway.

The above is probably more useful for hard sciences though. Honestly when it comes to psychology I take theories endorsed by actual field experts with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER22> >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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> fredrik-j As a swede this is a bit embarrassing to me. I have a few friends who's bought into this completely, and of course bought the book. All without even a hint of critical thinking. It is hard to tell your friends they've been conned.

I can understand it to some extent. Here's someone, who claims he is a behavioral expert and scientist, and who offers a seemingly plausible simple method to understand yourself and other people, and how to use that method to efficiently interact and work with others. Who wouldn't want that?

Unfortunately the books are still sold. I've considered printing stickers that warns about the nonsense and sneak it on to copies in book stores. How else can we stop the proliferation of this junk?

<comment><USER23> Well, some/many Japanese believe that blood type determines a lot about your personality, and Americans believe in Myers-Briggs types, and I'm sure there are local equivalents everywhere else too, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

<comment><USER24> I always thought of Myers-Briggs as being about identifying the things you are less comfortable with and learning to address them. It's about identification of tendencies, not blaming a Gremlin.

<comment><USER25> It has always struck me as odd when somebody insists Myers-Briggs has been "debunked". It asks a lot of questions about what amount to boundaries of your comfort zone. Of course as we age that zone changes, ideally, but sadly not always, by expanding.

Naming various borders of your comfort zone is useful if you want to push them back. If M-B has a failing, it is that its advocates never seem to suggest that being dead center on all axes is an ideal to strive for.

<comment><USER26> "Debunked" is probably overstating it, but Myers-Briggs has been shown to have fairly significant statistical deficiencies and its predictive claims are largely pseudoscientific. It's not complete garbage, but there are personality trait models like Big Five and HEXACO that are more robust and have more research behind them, but even those are not as strong predictors as pop management literature makes them out to be.

<comment><USER25> I never considered it to have _any_ predictive meaning at all, so saying it doesn't seems to miss the whole point.

Predicting others' behavior on the basis of a generic quiz is a pretty silly expectation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I applied to Volvo when looking for graduate schemes in my final year of university and recall having to complete a personality test there. I'm not sure whether or not that particular test corresponded to the referenced 'method', however it was a series of very arbitrary statements that one had to either agree or disagree with.

None of them seemed particularly useful for determining my aptitude as a software engineer or professionalism more generally. I can still recall this statement, verbatim, which I believe I stated I agreed with:

"I greatly enjoy the saucy and slapstick humour of some television shows"

<comment><USER28> I'm guessing this was in Göteborg. I also worked on a team in Göteborg and was presented with this nonsense. I ended up telling the HR manager that this "method" is obviously pseudoscience and a waste of my time, and I ended up leaving the team.

<comment><USER27> You're right. Was an interesting sounding role and it didn't get my application discarded before a Skype interview, but I didn't get very far in the process and wonder how much bearing my love of slapstick had on their decision to pass on me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 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.

<comment><USER30> > 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.

Yes, and that works for all exact sciences. If you can somehow prove a formerly unproven mathematical conjecture, guess what, they will listen to you. You may even get prizes.

But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Since in psychology very few things can be "proven", studies are the next best things. But you cannot just spout nonsense and expect people who are actually experts in their fields to endorse you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Provocative 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 myself, I would say that it's not more people than are swayed daily by political facebook memes or fake internet "news" publications with superficially professional design, regardless of nation.

Critical thinking is hard, and takes a lot of time to process, and we're continuously hit with increasingly more information that it's impossible to deal with. I hope that people smarter than me can create tools and models to make it easier.

<comment><USER32> > 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.

<comment><USER31> I thank you for the effort, but I'm not sure that makes me feel better :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "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."

The Myers-Briggs corporate product is an interesting confirmation of 20th Century scientific method. With standard methodologies, reviewed and published by standard peer review processes, Myers-Briggs was shown to be useless before 1990. So science seems to work well. Nonetheless, the last time a company I worked for paid (and spent on employee time) for Myers-Briggs testing was 2017. Science works well, but corporate purchasing of consulting does not have such a good track record.

</comment><comment><USER34> I am more analytic than most of my friends. If you want to label that as "Blue" or "7" or "J", "Conscientiousness" or "Engineer", that's one way to represent the general classification. And it's useful, especially when used as some kind of mirror for reflection. Whether it's useful in sum across a population to answer specific questions like "Will this specific group of people work well together" is highly suspect. The categories just are not resolute enough, and people are more like clouds than clocks. Categories, while a necessary first step to understanding, ultimately become a trap if that's all you understand people as.

<comment><USER35> > Categories, while a necessary first step to understanding, ultimately become > a trap if that's all you understand people as.

And perhaps a trap for yourself too, if you find yourself saying things like "I could never do something like that, I'm a blue!"

<comment><USER34> Some guitarists never learn to play beyond the scales they first learned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It is hard to figure out from this verbose article, whether it is just professional jealousy or a genuine need to debunk the theory of assigning colours to personality types, as described in the book titled _Surrounded by idiots_. The crux of the argument is that a professional psychologist, who is also a member Swedish Skeptics Society, is refuting the author's claim of being a 'behavioural scientist', yet he admits that it is a meaningless term and also legal in Sweden.

 _Erikson e-mailed me (we both shared the same international agent, so we had met briefly once before) and asked whether, given my own profession as a psychologist and my position as a board member of the Swedish Skeptics Society, I would support his claim that he was a 'behavioural scientist'. I declined to offer such support, despite the fact that from a legal point of view in Sweden, it is possible to call yourself a 'behavioural scientist' without any formal qualifications. He has just as much right as my poodle to call himself a behavioural scientist._

<comment><USER37> He also points out that the theory has no evidence behind it, that it appears to be based on an older theory, also completely unevidenced, and that that older theory draws on discredited Jungian archetypes.

To read this purely as an attack on someone's credentials out of jealousy is to have missed the meat of the criticism.

<comment><USER36> I stated quite clearly, that it is hard to work out the intention of the article. The professional psychologist in question seems to be spending an awful amount of energy dispelling a theory that has been already discredited. There is an unhealthy fixation on the circulation and sales of the book, throughout the article. It is now a futile exercise to convince the readership if it is drivel and providing the book with even more publicity. They will come to a realization of their own accord and banish the book to the kooky category.

<comment><USER38> 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 not it worked._ "

"According to Sune Gellberg, the owner of IPU, the organisation in Sweden which sell the DiSC test, no qualifications are required to carry out personality tests. "I don't know what education our consultants have because it doesn't matter", he told us, "It is a computer program that does the personality analysis and gives the consultant a report which he can go through with the respondent."

 _Not even the representative for the test thinks that knowledge of psychology is important! Personality consultants have no education in test methodology and no knowledge of personality theory._ They just feed in numbers to a computer and have no idea what the results mean or what their scientific value is. It is very possible that Erikson believes that the test has scientific grounds and, given his lack of education, it is very likely that he has no idea what it actually says. "

<comment><USER36> 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 the books etc.

I get it. He feels passionate and sees a charlatan, who is hitching a free ride on the back of his respected profession and getting the rockstar treatment. These compendium of books could have effectively been languishing under the sections of new age, self-help, therapy etc., except they hit home with a certain audience. Now that he has vented his spleen, what more does he hope to achieve, especially under the circumstances that there are no laws or regulation in place to curb any of the activities. Also, by continuing to rage against it, he only brings more welcome publicity for the author and his books.

<comment><USER38> > 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.

<comment><USER36> >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!

<comment><USER38> > there are NO educational and professional qualifications, scientific grounds > or any legal regulations required to write these books

If some activity is not legally regulated it still doesn't mean that uneducated person doing it should be tolerated as he presents himself as an expert.

The media which didn't check these facts are also to be blamed and shamed.

<comment><USER36> I feel you are being unnecessarily obtuse. I have expressed my opinion based entirely on the article, but on each occasion, you completely disregard the presented facts, demonstrate your displeasure and produce a reply within a context that does not exist nor does it reflect my views.

We have arrived at a point, which is mirroring the predicament of the person in question, so I must respectfully decline to enter into any further debate on this particular topic.

<comment><USER38> > I feel you are being unnecessarily obtuse.

> you completely disregard the presented facts

No. If the "fact" is that he can't go to jail or pay a fine in Sweden because he falsely presents himself as an expert, it doesn't mean anybody should support him, or doubt the real expert writing about that.

And I still don't understand what's the intention behind your activity here which includes you being rude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> They could have saved people a lot of time by just marking down the dominant color of each person's aura instead of making them complete a questionnaire.

</comment><comment><USER40> >"talk of colours from the infamous Myers-Briggs test, administered by less- respectable management consultants" //

I think in the UK Myers-Briggs was fronted by "respectable" management consultants and was mainstream.

Or perhaps no management consultants are respectable because they primarily seem to front the current fashionable pseudo-science?

<comment><USER41> Got it the second time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This article is a hack piece, in my opinion. First, formal qualifications do not a scientist make. Second, using phrases like this, with zero real evidence to support them:

>a distinction that even a someone who has studied a four-week course in the area will know is incorrect.

Regardless of the validity of the 'color' theories, this is not journalism. It is opinion presented as fact.

Full disclosure, I have never bought into colors theories, even though they are currently en vogue in my field. But we need scientific study, not more opinion nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER43> This (and the DiSC model) is a revamp of the four humors?

red = choleric

blue = melancholic

green = phlemetic

yellow = sanguine

<comment><USER44> Yes, it's even described in the book and used as a clever trick to suggest it's ancient wisdom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Original (in Swedish):

[https://www.vof.se/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Katz- Erikson-1...](https://www.vof.se/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Katz- Erikson-19-1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER46> This seems strikingly similar to the "shape" nonsense being sold to managers as an explanation of explain team dynamics [1].

[1] [https://www.delcor.com/resources/blog/project-management- per...](https://www.delcor.com/resources/blog/project-management-personality- types)

<comment><USER47> As a matter of fact I have done a very similar color-coded personality test at a corporate event.

[https://www.insights.com/us/products/insights- discovery/](https://www.insights.com/us/products/insights-discovery/)

After the test, we were even given blocks to keep at our desks so that people who interact with us knew whether we were 'blue' or 'yellow' and adapt their reactions accordingly.

I guess I should have just said I was an Aquarius or Capricorn or some such and it would have been just as scientifically accurate.

<comment><USER48> 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 - <USER7> positively surprised how accurate these analyses were.

<comment><USER49> > But I've got to say that everyone in our group - mostly rational devs - <USER7> > positively surprised how accurate these analyses were.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect)

<comment><USER48> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This sounds like the stupid pre-employment tests they make you take for lower level jobs. Which by the way, I've taken many. You just lie and pick the answers that don't make you sound like a grumpy introvert.

</comment><comment><USER51> > the question remains as why so many people bought the book

I tend to think that people like very simple answers to complex questions.

Full spectrum of personality traits back-and-forth? The answer is four colors.

Perhaps the fact of just being able to understand any given answer makes people feel _smart_. I deduct it this way, since the author defends himself by claiming skeptics "are attempting to make out that his readers are idiots".

</comment><comment><USER52> To be fair, a some of the supposedly peer reviewed management science we learned in engineering wasn't too far away from this.

Edit: And while I cannot say if it is right or wrong - it isn't like you can put this stuff into a particle accellerator and smash it and verify predictions - useful things can be extracted from it. One of the biggest ones might be that it gives everyone a common terminology to discuss such topics.

I've said before that organizational psychology and management seemed like a huge waste of time when the young me looked at the subjects I was supposed to learn in engineering and yet sometimes feel like the most useful ones now that I look back on it.

I mean: everything useful I nnow about programming from school I learned in the C and microprocessors course. Almost everything else I know aboit programming I learned either before or after my engineering degree.

</comment><comment><USER53> Is it not the same for the current wave of anti-bias/discrimination/racism training? There is zero evidence that it has any effect. What few brave researchers have risked their careers exploring the effectiveness of the training have found that it does basically nothing. None of that stops companies from paying millions for it and good luck to the employee or executive that even dares suggest that perhaps there's better ways of tackling the problem/issue.

<comment><USER54> Exactly! I had 'unconcious bias' training at work, one of the learning outcomes of which was to understand the 'scientific basis' for unconcious bias. After reviewing the material and finding myself somewhat dubious of its claims, I - as a good scientist working in a technical role in a technical company - went off to research for myself. Turns out the supposed scientific basis is deeply flawed. And yet, this training is being rolled out in many companies across the UK: training based on nonsense. What's deeply insulting - and worrying - is that this should be pushed on educated, intelligent people whose jobs in no small part depend on sniffing out bullshit. Do they think we won't find out the truth? Are the management so clueless/compromised that they actually believe in it? IDK.

<comment><USER55> Let me ask you something: Is unconscious bias training the worst example of bullshit you have experienced in your professional life or the thing that has aggravated you the most? Does that tell you anything about your unconscious biases?

The point of the training is for companies to absolve themselves of culpability. If you act like a jerk after unconscious bias training you are on your own and the company hopes that it can't be blamed for it.

<comment><USER56> 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](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER25> 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.

<comment><USER56> Yes, we agree. The comment would be fine _with_ just the second paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I got this book as a Christmas present from my mom. Then I ran into the same argument about pseudoscience that we have each year...

<comment><USER58> It was a little distressing to me to realize believing in pseudoscience (for anyone not a scientist, doctor, engineer etc) has very little negative affect, and lots of people seem to be much happier begin in a deluded state than rigorously searching for truth.

<comment><USER57> I don't think that's true though it sure seems like it.

Pseudoscience is very seldom harmless. There is often someone making money off of someone else in the background, and in other cases it's just plain health risks (for example Chiropractors killing a young girl by injecting her with turmeric or a naprapath taking a cancer patients money for snake oil for something that could be spent on proper healthcare).

I can't think of a single harmless pseudoscience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Paraphrasing L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of Scientology: "If you want to get rich, you come up with a new psychological theory".

</comment><comment><USER60> Reading the article, the various comments and the linked "Why We Sleep" criticism, I feel really disillusioned.

Honestly, there will always be people who write stuff they have no idea about, or write stuff that are factually wrong.

But where does that leave me, and perhaps many other layman readers? I, as a layman in psychology/neuroscience/<insert field>, do not have the academic qualifications or the time to go through and understand the latest/greatest scientific literature of the respective fields, nor am I equipped with the necessary "instincts" to tell the doubtful or suspicious claims apart. Most of the time, all I want is condensed information which is well, from the scientific literature, yet put in one place in a way that laymen in the fields have access to the subject. And to me atleast, books are the best way. But then I find the books I thought were right and did not doubt, had factual errors, or were written by someone who has a possibility of not knowing what they are saying... This is sad.

So let me ask the community: what heuristics do you employ when trying to decide whether you can trust a book on what it says or not? Especially if it's not your field of expertise?

<comment><USER61> Number of citations per paragraph is a pretty good indicator in my experience. Typically this is high (close to 1) for good text books in psychology and low (1 per page or less) in bad ones. Citations isn't everything though, many authors misrepresent the content to fit the narrative and in some areas it's not as important. For instance in math, arguments can be made based on very few axioms and you can evaluate the correctness yourself.

In general it helps to have a skeptical mindset, try to figure out the intent of the author by how they treat facts, do they present inconsistent arguments or gloss over relevant fallacies in the claims? Then their intent is probably more about presenting a good argument than correct representation of facts.

Another thing to be watchful for is claims that "make sense" or are "obvious", it's easy to fall in the trap of ignoring conflicting evidence when the theory sounds good.

<comment><USER60> Ah, citations and "obvious" claims, and to approach everything with a skeptical mindset, I see! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> When I started my current work (Swedish software company) a few years ago, all new employees performed the "DISC" analysis (bought from a consultant firm). It was a fairly long questionnaire with situational questions and it was advised not to think too much about each question before answering. Stupid as it sounds.

Anyway, we got our profiles and at the follow up session we went through the colors and everything else about the model. Some of my colleagues were skeptical, some more enthusiastic ("this explains so much"). I was somewhere in the middle. For sure I recognize some of the behaviors with my profile, on the other side I questioned the validity mainly due to the way the foundation to the profile what conducted (the questionnaire). I also read the book but got the feeling that it was more of entertainment than the session and profiling we did (in the book it's a lot of "real life" examples etc).

In work life we mostly used the "tool" to describe persons outside our organization. "The customers' project manager in this project is very red", would be something a sales rep could say at a hand of. They probably mean "He's kind of a jerk but they pay so deal with it". Although it was a pretty long time since I heard anyone use it. I also think that the article describes why the model is not sufficient even for describing people loosely.

Lastly I think that the article headline is kind of over exaggerating. I mean, yes many read the book and might have use it to talk about themselves and/or other people. Some organizations went to far and tax money was wasted. But mostly it was consumed as most other books and people got entertained. I haven't encountered anyone who preached the message and method, more like a conversation starter. The people who swallow the message fully is probably already converted to the next personality model fraud. Or too busy reading other truths on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm Swedish and yes, it was almost insufferable when this book was the hotness during the past two years, but this is hardly "one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time". It's not even the worst one that got mainstream in Sweden. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity[1] is far more stupid and God knows how much money has been wasted on shielding people from electromagnetic fields by local governments. Hell, just the fact that this has been debated and taken seriously by politicians and government officials is astounding to me. It's a sad reflection on the state of physics literacy in my country.

So, stupid? Yes. One of the worst pseudo-scientific scandals ever to have swept over Sweden? Not even remotely close.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity)

<comment><USER24> I think it is less "physics literacy" and more a complete lack of teaching and using critical thinking / reasoning. For whatever reason, the West in general (and maybe the world) seems to be spending less and less time on critical thinking and more time on picking a side and then running with it. I have no idea if this is true or just a feeling I have, but if I was a betting man and it is, I would blame media and short attention spans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Another case of "something called Psychology was random and not real science in the end"?

Cant help to remember this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm1dwB1U43A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm1dwB1U43A)

</comment><comment><USER65> Issue is and always will be that people are quick to cide with anything that promotes their narrative/World view as it is easier to be right than it is to be wrong and change your narrative/World view for many people.

But in the realms of books, science does seem to be more accountable than religious books and yet both have their effects and sway upon people. Just that one is more open to being questioned and the other is not.

Sad truth is, if you wrap bad science under another banner, you can get away with it more easily and less open to being questioned in a way that is accepted in debate.

</comment><comment><USER66> I still remember being at a company where we took an expensive (company funded) personality test to rate is in these four colors and place us.

The director in charge of the team was concerned about our "Color Dynamics."

</comment><comment><USER67> Late to this, but it reminds me of 'the rise of the idiots' from the 2006(!) series 'Nathan Barley'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhAr_UeroCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhAr_UeroCk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqfkuc5mawg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqfkuc5mawg)

</comment><comment><USER68> I enrolled in a management training course through work and the first thing they had us do was take a personality test and then they sent us a grading on the "personality color wheel" and it ruined the whole course for me. I'm digging deep to pull out useful nuggets of truth but any time it goes back to Myers-Briggs stuff my brain shuts down.

</comment><comment><USER69> Not to be the devils advocate here, but does the fact that there isnt any scientific proof proof it doesnt work? Not everything has to be tested and verified in a lab, right?

Perhaps I am justifying myself though: I've had the DiSC traing THREE times now. Is it all just a lie? I was kinda hoping this article would show actual proof it doesnt work.

<comment><USER20> Tests like DiSC and Meyers-Briggs are hard to disprove because they make contradictory, non-falsifiable claims. This is part of what makes them appealing: there's something identifiable for everyone in most of the profiles, and stuff that doesn't fit is easy to dismiss. It's the same strategy that enables horoscopes and psychics. Don't feel bad for believing it --it's designed to be believable, rather than correct. If you want a more in- depth breakdown of this and the other problems that make the test false but also hard to falsify, this [1] is a pretty good analysis.

[1] [https://medium.com/@ronsoak/a-warning-against-using-disc- mye...](https://medium.com/@ronsoak/a-warning-against-using-disc-myers-briggs- profiling-in-the-workplace-6e96e6eb1a81)

<comment><USER69> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> What you will guarantee is that if you ever agree to take one of these tests, you'll only ever be seen through that lens. It becomes self-fulfilling, and people see what they want to see. The people setting and commissioning the tests are somehow always a miraculous and perfect blend of all of the colours.

</comment><comment><USER71> Even Myers-Briggs is considered to be very problematic.

I think the only personality elements fairly well backed by Science are the 'big 5': Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience.

It's fundamentally scary that any advanced nation would be taken in by any of this.

</comment><comment><USER72> One feature of these personality taxonomies is that inevitably in the set of different categories designed to be of equal human value or worth, one or two categories are always discernably worse than the others.

<comment><USER73> The only scientific personality scale, Big5, was not designed that way. It is pretty easy to figure out that workers with high conscientiousness and low neuroticism are preferable. Which makes sense, we didn't evolve to be corporate drones so not all personalities are equally fit for the role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> There is also something hilarious about the name of the book, in this context. It could only be better if it was "The Idiot's Guide To If You're Reading This You're An Idiot"

</comment><comment><USER75> That seems like an exaggregation. Certainly there must be larger "scientific bluffs"? Examples of articles in peer reviewed journals, relying on manipulated data or something.

<comment><USER76> True, climate change denialism is certainly a bigger deal, but it's not simply a case of a single guy making stuff up to make money.

<comment><USER77> True, that's instead a case of many guys making stuff up to make money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> People really yearn for systems like this, whether it's some weird color coding, myers-briggs, astrology... this definitely won't be the last one to go mainstream

</comment><comment><USER79> Oh yeah, i high school our psychology teacher was applying such a colored cubes test to me.

Then she read the results of the test to class. While having a laughing fit.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think all of these "personality tests" are total BS -- while it's great to think you can tl;dr a person, in reality we're far more complicated than that. When you make assumptions about a person's "personality color" or Meyers- Briggs profile, you disempower them from making their own decisions.

As adults mature, we all learn to be comfortable with a range of communication styles. This kind of pop psychology may be comforting and in some ways holds some element of truth, but the entire idea that a "personality" is fixed in any way dismisses the potential for growth that makes us all so human.

</comment><comment><USER80> _> Unfortunately, the theory behind this book, and the various follow-ups, is no more than pseudoscientific nonsense. And Erikson appears to lack even basic knowledge of psychology or behavioural science._

This seems to happen often. Are there _any_ non-pseudoscientific psychology theories? AFAIK only IQ and (possibly) the "Big Five" personality traits.

Short list of (likely) "failed" (pop-)psychological theories:

\- _stereotype threat_ [1]

\- _implicit bias_ \- specifically refers to unconscious prejudice that exist independently of any explicit / conscious bias; however, measurements of implicit bias do _not_ predict biased behavior [2] and therefore implicit bias training is likely completely useless [3] (this is _not_ to say that explicit bias doesn't exist or that bigots don't try to conceal their bigotry)

\- _power posing_ , the idea that putting your body in a "power" position (a pose that projects confidence) alters your hormonal levels - even the original author no longer believes [4] that this effect is real (although I personally still think that "power poses" can have an effect on _other_ people and how they perceive you)

\- _growth mindset_ , the belief that you can learn and improve (which I personally think is probably better than the reverse), doesn't actually result [5] in better educational outcomes (but can result in millions of dollars wasted [6]). The original researcher since came up with [7] a convenient concept of "false" growth mindset - "saying you have growth mindset when you don't really have it" \- but critics rightfully counter with (from the Wikipedia link above):

 _> "If your effect is so fragile that it can only be reproduced [under strictly controlled conditions], then why do you think it can be reproduced by schoolteachers?"_

and

 _> to claim that your performance in a cognitive task is entirely dictated by how hard you try and is nothing to do with raw candle-power flies in the face of more than 100 years of intelligence research"._

\- _Stanford Prison Experiment_ [8] (where participants were knowingly acting out their roles and which was never successfully replicated)

\- _Milgram Experiment_ (which, although somewhat replicated, was recently criticized [9] that few participants actually believed the experiment was real - a potential issue with any replication attempts as well)

Hope I didn't mess up any links. This is based only on my completely amateur research of online sources, I'm more than happy to be pointed in the opposite direction!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype#Statement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype#Statement_by_Original_Authors)

[3] [https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed- psyc...](https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed- psychological-test-to-fight-racism/)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_posing#Replication_failu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_posing#Replication_failure)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism)

[6] [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180522114523.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180522114523.htm)

[7] [https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how- pr...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-praise- became-a-consolation-prize/510845/)

[8] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Cri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Criticism_and_response)

[9] [https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-shocking-truth- of-...](https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-shocking-truth-of-the- notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments)

<comment><USER81> Myers-Briggs is just about as unscientific as it gets. Neither Myers nor Myers-Briggs (her daughter) had any formal education in psychology or any serious experience. Their personality types are based on Jung's ideas that are over a 100 years old and have been long since discredited. There are no studies that confirm that MBTI type is predictive of anything. There are studies that seem to confirm that the dichotomies used in MBTI might not actually exist. Et cetera.

<comment><USER80> Thanks for the clarification. I actually had the Big Five in mind - somehow I confused that and MB. Even there, I don't really have any idea if Big Five is "true" (stable and/or predictive) or not, I'm really just listening to Jordan Peterson here.

I'll edit the post above.

<comment><USER33> Before you invest in the Big Five, you'll want to check on how much it can change your posterior odds, and compare that to results of investing time and money into other approaches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I'm curious if it is possible we are being fooled by other scientific hoaxes at this very moment but yet don't even realize it.

<comment><USER25> Of course we are.

As Josh Billings is usually quoted these days, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

We are so sure of things that are not true that we don't bother to check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I bet that the next title in the series will be _Surrounded by Fat People_ , and it will sell 100 million copies.

</comment><comment><USER84> I don't know the book, but judging by the title the author was apparently 110% correct! :D

</comment><comment><USER85> there is something about psychology that really invites all types of pseudoscience. In all honesty I cant tell whether what I've learned in introductory courses makes more or less sense than what is described as fraud in the article

</comment><comment><USER86> What if religions were just the self help theories that survived the erosion of time?

</comment><comment><USER32> > 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.

<comment><USER87> 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 explanation for why the weather is bad, it's just the definition of what bad weather is.

When people are led to believe they have this or that trait because of some sort of colour schema they tend to believe that this classification is an explanation for their behaviour and has some sort of control or ontological meaning, which it has not. In reality, the behaviour is complex, dynamic, context-dependent and escapes easy classification. Which really should be obvious to anyone with a critical mind because human psychology is slightly more complicated than a test which has fewer colors than the power rangers.

<comment><USER32> > 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> This is literally the Hogwarts houses right down to the colors matching...

</comment><comment><USER89> I hold the opposite view. I think this type of segmentation of people is (1)beneficial and (2)mostly harmless.

(1) The sole reason for the feeling of "being surrounded by idiots" is lack of understanding of the other. If someone has different opinions/behaviors/moral values than I do, the easiest thing I could do is just label them "Idiot". Real understanding and empathy are just too hard. Actually, this also true when looking at one's own behaviour. We are mostly quick to judge and be angry at ourselves.

Having a system such as this (even if it is pseudo-scientific) gives one pause in judgement. For example: John isn't an idiot or an asshole, he's just a Green. The implicit idea here is that John doesn't do it on purpose, he's part of a group. So I should be more accepting of him and I should learn to deal with Greens' quirks better. This neutral judgement (instead of the negative one) automatically side-steps the anger, elicits more empathy and accepts partial responsibility for the interactions. It also gives a feeling of increased understanding of "how the world works" which feels good (even if it's false). This also works when introspectively looking at one's own behaviour: Us Blues have a hard time doing X. I should be easier with myself.

The actual underpinned theory is irrelevant (as so far as the aforementioned benefits are considered). It works just as well with "John's just a Gemini/INTP/Type 8". It's just the ability to attribute _something_ to the person's actions I dislike other than stupidity or incompetence.

(2) People love this stuff. Personality segmentation models are abundant and people love taking assessment quizzes. Astrology, Enneagram, Big-5, Myer&Briggs and many others. I'd venture off saying that most people don't take these things too seriously. Even the theories themselves recognize that human's personality can't really fit nicely in n boxes, so all of them have "extensions": You can be several colors, Astrology has "horizons", Ennegram has "wings", Big5 gives a running score to each trait, etc. Proponents of a system can easily utter something like "Mary's not a typical Aries, though". So while there are some people that might take it too far, I feel it's mostly used benignly.

The fact that the theory behind some of these systems are anywhere between questionable to down right ludicrous is a pickle, though. But sometimes system benefit people even when the people don't understand the mechanism in which they do, or hold a wrong one. Therfor truth seeking shouldn't, in and of it self, be enough of a reason to tear down such a system. This idea was explored in an article posted here a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037749)

<comment><USER90> At a previous employer we did a similar training program called True Colors, to understand how to communicate differently based on personality types. It broke down personality styles as follows:

Green - Intellectual; prefers less communication generally

Blue - Emotional; likes small talk and connecting with people

Orange - Spontaneous, life of the party, hates structure/rules

Gold - Analytical, needs order, boundaries and structure, makes lists for everything

Generally you have one dominant color, and some mix of the other three as less important factors in your personality. Most software engineers tend to be Green, HR people are Blue, CEO's are Orange (outgoing, rally people around them) etc.

I actually found it to be tremendously enlightening; I can usually bucket people I know into one of the four colors pretty easily. For example my wife is a Gold; she loves literally creating lists and checking off things when she's done, and she can't stand things being out of order.

Edited for formatting

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Psychologists annoyed that an outsider is edging in on their grift.

</comment><comment><USER92> oh this _gem of a book_ , I remember I saw it at some managers desk, where there was no attempt to hide it or anything. I often wonder wtf he was thinking.

<comment><USER25> In parts of Bloomberg, as in apparently many other places, there is a cult around what Geoff Pullum calls "the nasty book", Elements of Style.

It is similarly full of ignorant proclamations that serve mainly to make people insecure about their communication skills.

Whenever I found one that didn't obviously belong to someone, I recycled it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> These types of things may not be science, but they are so popular and will always be popular because they are useful heuristics to make sense of the chaos of dealing with humans.

<comment> maze-le They might be heuristics, but how can they ever be useful? They can neither be used in the analysis of a person nor are they predictive...

<comment><USER93> Managers like them as they try to make sense of how their reports behave and work together, people they know but not really. Sounds like some people like them as a way to make sense of issues with their personal relationships. People outside yourself make decisions that are frequently confusing, and people like this sort of categorization to make sense of them.

<comment><USER94> People liking something doesn't mean they are actually useful, though. Some folks like fake medicine because they feel like they are doing something useful - even when we can prove that no, "memory water" isn't curing your cold. People like horoscopes for your same reasons - because people are confusing and some sort of categorization is a way to make sense to them.

It doesn't actually mean it is useful or even accurate in any way - it just means you are doing _something_. You could probably put the energy into managing the environment or better communication or coming to terms with "Other people are complicated".

<comment><USER93> Sure but it's worth exploring why these are popular beyond simply writing it off as "people are dummies."

<comment><USER95> 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.

<comment><USER93> 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 humans in this way offensive, and latch onto some of the claims that it's "science" as an avenue of attack.

Edit: And I think it's slightly better than just categorizing people based on their birthday like you do in Astrology, as you are using at least responses to a personality test in most instances.

<comment><USER61> 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.

<comment><USER95> > _People reading horoscopes in a magazine wouldn 't typically actually follow > the advice therein._

How do you know? See also, by the way, Japanese people's beliefs about blood types:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_personality_theory#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_personality_theory#Popularity)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Has anyone stopped to look and see if any of his advice worked though? Pragmatic psuedoscience is more valuable than true science that can't find a repeatable answer.

</comment><comment><USER97> Hmm, I didn't read the article. Seems a little tacky considering the first word in the title is "swedes"

<comment><USER24> Huh? It's about a book written by a Swede that was published in Swedish that gained popularity in Sweden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Great title.

</comment><comment><USER99> As someone with more than a fair bit of experience with DISC, I wanted to provide some pushback on the article a bit:

> Erikson has repeatedly claimed that the benefit of his colour approach is > that it helps us understand ourselves and others and, as a result, improves > our communication and reduces conflicts. This is his argument as to why > companies and organisations should adopt his approach. Since there is no > scientific support for the four colours, there is naturally no support for > this claim either.

Bullshit. Just because there was no study published on it in Nature doesn't mean it doesn't have value or you should dismiss it completely! If I went around proclaiming the importance of Agile, you shouldn't just dismiss me because "there is no academic support". And to more of a point, it seems unfair to single this guy out of the sea of pop-psychology and business management books.

> It is difficult to imagine a more unpleasant and unfair way of dealing with > a problem than simply attributing it to the fact that the person in the > centre of a conflict "is blue".

This seems to be a gross mis-characterization of the expected outcomes of the behavioral training. The outcome of them (at least the ones I've gone through) is to reframe work conflicts away from "this guy is stupid and should be fired" to "we have completely different ways of talking through problems". In that regards it's been super freaking helpful. I don't need an academic consensus that I feel warm and fuzzy afterwards.

I strongly recommend this post from SlateStarCodex: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/27/on-types-of- typologies...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/27/on-types-of-typologies/)

>The claim that MBTI gives you new information would be a bold scientific claim and would require bold scientific evidence. I don't know to what degree the MBTI people make this claim, but I don't think it's necessary for me to enjoy the test and consider it useful. All it needs to do is condense the information you put into it in a way that makes it more relevant and digestible.

>Five Factor and MBTI are trying to do fundamentally different things. Five Factor is trying to give us a mathematized, objectively correct version of personality useful for research purposes. MBTI is trying to separate people into little bins that put continuous personality space into discrete and easy- to-think-about terms suitable for human processing, and even very poorly drawn bins will do a pretty good job, just like European countries.

100%, DISC is just a construct, but it can still be a super useful and effective one. Even if it's a placebo, I don't need someone running up and knocking it out of my hand and telling me they did me a favor.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a problem with the article author's implication that someone without credentials (read: university degree) isn't a scientist, or at least is a lesser scientist.

A scientist is someone who employs the scientific method. That's it.

Thomas Erikson does not seem to qualify from what I can tell (he's just winging it), but he absolutely does not need to have a doctorate (or even a bachelors) in order to be a "behavioral scientist" \- he just needs to be using the scientific method when testing the claims he makes in his book or elsewhere.

No, your poodle does not have just as much right to call themselves a scientist, as a poodle is literally incapable of ever using the scientific method. You don't need an extensive "scientific background" in order for your first book to be perfectly scientific.

<comment><USER100> I am the professor who translated the article from Swedish. I agree that anyone can be a scientist. But, as you Erikson neither has qualifications, nor does he show understanding and nor does he use the scientific method. So very poor all round.

<comment><USER24> Oh, I agree. Erikson does not appear to be a scientist at all. But I think the criticism should be along the lines of "he was not using the scientific method or citing sources which used such in the writing of this book", not personal attacks of "he doesn't have a degree in behavioral science".

To illustrate my point, this article[0] paints a very dim view of the science used in the book "Why We Sleep". The author of the book is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley. Being in academia (even a professor at a prestigious school!) doesn't mean the book he wrote is de facto "scientific".

[0] [https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-what-do- you-d...](https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-what-do-you-do-when- a-part-of-the-graph-contradicts-your-argument-you-cut-it-out-of-course)</comment></comment></comment>


GoDaddy is scrambling to do damage control - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/111996409013825587891/posts/7AMw7gDQ7Bi <comment><USER2> (copied from my response at [http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the- godaddy-victory-is...](http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy- victory-is-a-red-herring))

The GoDaddy victory is a red herring.

That GoDaddy reversed its SOPA stance (or at least its PR stance) about SOPA in the wake of our boycott is good news, but it's also distracting news. While it does demonstrate that we, the citizens of the righteous internet, can have P&L impact as consumers in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies.

A very small proportion of a normal B2C company's revenues come from policy- aware internet citizens. Tactics like the GoDaddy boycott simply will not have an impact (any more than the ongoing boycott of Wal-Mart among the idealistic).

_I don't want us to get distracted from that fact._

_Here are the questions we should be considering._

What can we do to flex our muscles before the many (far more evil) consumer- facing companies out there? How do we legally channel our energy into harming their P&L statements in an unequivocally attributable manner? What about the B2B companies over whose procurement processes we regular citizens have no control?

The companies of greatest concern should be those with contractual and/or infrastructural lock-in:

        * telecoms like AT&T and Verizon

        * ISPs/media pipes like Comcast and Dish Network

        * top-down sales companies like Microsoft and Symantec

        * conglomerate-monopolies like Adobe and Autodesk

Unless and until we find a way to hamstring those attacking monsters, the internet will always be in peril -- even if we somehow win this battle like we _barely_ won the Net Neutrality battle a few short years ago.

<comment><USER3> > _While it does demonstrate that we, [...] can have P &L impact as consumers > in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies._

Influence on the P&L is great. Influence at the voting booth is one better, and somehow the tech community has to convince congress that the voting booth is in play.

(Yes, P&L leads to political donations, which lead to reelection, but politicians are always playing the trade-off game. So somehow they have to get convinced that supporting dumbass legislation will come back to kick them in the nuts.)

<comment><USER4> Politicians don't like distractions. If support for some legislation will end up causing distractions, especially during campaign season, they will take notice.

The best distractions come from primary challenges directly attributable to their stances on issues, but even having hecklers show up to campaign events can work.

The right has been using primary threats for a long time to keep politicians in line. I suspect we could be effective using this strategy as well if we put our energy where our mouth is.

<comment><USER5> It's not a matter of distraction, it's a matter of support and influence and money.

If you can convince a politician that a sizeable percentage of influential people who are liable to donate money to a cause are for or a against a particular issue that that they are legislating on, preferably people who are from within his/her riding/ward/district and thus directly impact him/her.

Say, like well connected, high earning (mostly white, male) nerds. If you stop to think about the amount of power we are actually capable of wielding, it's actually really shocking that msft/goog/aapl etc seem to have really crappy lobbyists.

(As an aside, here for instance is a good Planet Money podcast on lobbying: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the- tues...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tuesday- podcast-inside-washingtons-money-machine) )

<comment><USER4> "It's all about money" is a one-dimensional caricature that really doesn't reflect the way most congresspeople actually think.

Money matters, of course, but it's not the only thing that matters.

<comment><USER5> Well, I proposed three dimensions!

Check out that podcast I linked. Short of running as or supporting your own candidate, it's kind of how politicians are swayed in any democracy.

If you walked up to a representative and say, "I have these many thousands of members in your constituency, all of whom manage or work in large companies or other institutions and we suggest you do this or that" then that politician is likely to take notice.

The sad part is money is often required to grease all of those wheels, from simply getting private quality time with your rep (see that lobbying podcast) to paying someone to have the time to write up policy recommendations and collect member names and so on so forth.

<comment><USER6> > If you walked up to a representative and say, "I have these many thousands > of members in your constituency, all of whom manage or work in large > companies or other institutions and we suggest you do this or that" then > that politician is likely to take notice.

Nope. He'd say "you and everyone else who talks with me".

Most House members represent about 720k people. (310M/435 and small states get at least one regardless of population.) On almost any issue, there are "thousands" of people on both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too little, too late. I'm still moving my ~20 domains away. Their initial stance, plus their ridiculous initial response ("We heard some people were mad, but we're not changing our tune until we start losing money") indicates that they don't actually care about dropping SOPA support.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if behind this "we're so sorry" facade, Bob Parsons and Lamar Smith are having dinner and a laugh.

<comment><USER8> Same here. I've moved most of mine to gandi.net. They are foreign sites now.

<comment><USER9> Aren't they still applicable to SOPA if they are .com .net .org .us domains such as homeland security taking down domains previous example shows.

<comment><USER10> This is correct. They're not foreign if the registry is controlled by the US.

<comment><USER11> Which is why I prefer eu for my own stuff.

<comment><USER12> Would one also need a non-US registrar to go with that .eu domain?

Right now i'm using Dreamhost, but what would you recommend for a completely non-US solution with decent quality?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure if I'm alone in this, but I had to actually look up the name of SOPA's founder (Lamar Smith). He should be facing heavy criticism right now, at least to the extent that SOPA-supporting companies are. It's as if his career isn't in any jeopardy at all over this.

<comment><USER14> This might help: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_S._Smith>

Lamar Smith is a Texas Republican in a district that is 2/3 R -- any effort to unseat him would have to involve a primary challenge and thus speak to Republican primary voters.

<comment><USER15> This says he represents (among other places) much of _Austin_. Isn't Austin a tech hotbed?

Surely there are a couple hundred people _in his district_ who have a lot at stake here? Judging from the campaign rhetoric I've heard, "XYZ's policy destroyed [or will destroy] my business" definitely speaks to Republican primary voters.

<comment><USER16> It's a ridiculously gerrymandered district, winding around to catch the Republican precincts in Austin. I live in the district. Sure, I'll drop him an email. Just for the exercise. I've done it before. There's zero chance he'll react. You can't vote this guy out of office with a district like this. He collects the big money -- not from constituents, but from The Interests -- as Judiciary chairman. Untouchable.

<comment><USER17> I live in Cedar Park, which is Judge Carter's district. I called to see where he stood on SOPA, only to find out he's not only a supporter, but a cosponsor. Williamson County is a similarly safe district, so it doesn't cost Carter anything to support his buddy. My goal for the next few years is to make sure that it costs him a lot more than he anticipated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can confirm damage control. I'm just your average nerd. 34 domains. Had some of them for over a decade. Transfered to NameCheap last night.

Just got a call/voicemail from Mandy from the Office of the [GoDaddy] President (480-505-8828) wanting to talk about my account.

I haven't returned the call yet. I bet others are getting this call.

<comment><USER19> Please do let them know that you are doing this for protest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Migrate away from GoDaddy.

I couldn't care less that they have changed their position when they started seeing people are migrating their domains from their services.

After all, let's not forget other "great" news about GoDaddy we've seen in the past.

Migrate, migrate and don't look back. Any company which supported SOPA doesn't deserve my money (or yours) in the future.

Who can say they will not be using that money to try to subvert the rights of the people in the future or that they deserve to be trusted now?

</comment><comment><USER21> GoDaddy is owned by private equity firms KKR and Silverlake. These firms aim for short term profits at the expense of creating long term value.

Silverlake was the firm behind the whole Skype compensation fiasco, which was basically a quick flip. KKR does dividend recaps where it issues debt and funnels money out of the company. The company, such as HCA or Dollar General, then has to fire people and raise prices on customers.

Do you think they'll do what's right for customers over the long term or try to extract every penny? That's why they'll flip flop on an issue like SOPA - no long term values. I moved my domains to namecheap a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER22> GoDaddy needs to become a very loud opponent of SOPA if they want to retain any customers that have a clue.

</comment><comment><USER23> "The true measure of a person is what they do when nobody is watching. You lose, Godaddy."

</comment><comment><USER24> I got the same "yeah lol, whatever" email last night after I emailed them my concerns regarding their support of SOPA.

Knowing they helped create SOPA is the most damaging fact in my opinion which is why I'm still heading for the door.

I admired Bob back in the day but it seems things have changed over the years.

</comment><comment><USER25> Stop being opportunist flip floppers bent on the bottom line Go Daddy (worse name you could ever come up with for a company). Go Daddy deserves to go extinct their time has come. You have shown your true face (forget the damage control). You've only gotten by up until now because of people not willing to their research and mass marketing, and now it's plainly obvious you are a shill of a company, money can't buy everything. Go form yourselves a new company under a different name. No knowledgeable person on Hacker News would ever choose Go Daddy for anything so go do your online marketing somewhere else. <http://blog.operationreality.org/2011/12/24/sopa-nope-a/>

</comment><comment><USER26> It would be really interesting to know how many domains were transferred yesterday. I moved 6 of my 9. On the other 3, I turned off auto-renewal so they'll just expire.

</comment><comment><USER27> So, who's next?

It's going to be immensely tougher to demonstrate power against the media moguls as directly.

<comment><USER28> I've been considering for some weeks whether I can simply go "cold turkey" on paid, mainstream media for a period of time.

When I consider this, I have enough backlog of reading and (legitimately free, e.g. SICP and the like) online videos in my mental queue to do so. I might -- really -- be better off for doing so.

I haven't formulated a well-worded proposal and scenario/approach to share, but I would suggest working towards an opt-in mainstream media blackout -- or brownout, for those who can't opt-out altogether (and that includes me as far as needing to keep up with the news and maintain an ISP connection that doesn't have a viable alternative).

This will seem too extreme to many. But I encourage you to stop and think for a minute or five what a month or two's "brownout" would look like for you, and for media companies currently trying to ramrod through SOPA et al.

Let them see what it really looks like when their U.S. (and other) revenue stream "dries up", _for real_ \-- as opposed to their claims of losses. Particularly right when they're foisting this crap on us.

<comment><USER29> > and that includes me as far as needing to keep up with the news

You don't actually "need" to keep up with the news. It's not a sin not to, nobody's forcing you, and if something _really_ important happens, it'll filter down to you via your friends.

I did this a decade ago and it was really refreshing. I did start following the news again at some point, but if you plan on just a month or two, there's nothing except a self-appointed "duty" why you "need" to keep up with the news.

Not that following the news is a bad thing or anything (rather the contrary) and maybe it is the most important form of media consumption, but it's not _that_ important either, especially if you got a reasonably active social life.

<comment><USER28> Well, actually I do, for... let's call it reasons of "due diligence". I have obligations and responsibilities that could go wrong if I'm not sufficiently informed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thinking about moving my domains - any suggestions on the best alternative?

Update: For what it's worth, here's a reddit link that lists a number of alternatives:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/no1ux/reddit_if_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/no1ux/reddit_if_one_wants_to_switch_domains_from/)

<comment><USER31> I have been a big fan of Gandi.net for quite some time - they have an anti- SOPA [1] stand point for a while, their administrative tools are great and easy to use, and their support for the one time I required it was friendly and knowledgeable and last but not least offer a free SSL certificate with each domain.

[http://www.gandibar.net/post/2011/12/23/Gandi-s- Opposition-t...](http://www.gandibar.net/post/2011/12/23/Gandi-s-Opposition- to-the-SOPA-Legislation)

<comment><USER32> > Gandi.net [...] offer a free SSL certificate with each domain.

For _one_ year. <http://startssl.com/> offer them for free to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was thinking, we can safely assume theres a lot of start-up CEOs/founders/whatevers around here. What if all of these companies prominently displayed dissatisfaction with SOPA. Wouldn't this be an immediate, effective way to reach the uninformed masses?

If PG can involve politics in his company, why can't you?

<comment><USER25> What are you suggesting? I'm pretty sure we've all been voicing our opinions or at least acting as conduits to expression against such endeavors.

Do the politicians take notice though? Sounds like we may all need to step it up a notch? Apparently power in numbers in is the only thing that counts to law makers and their lobbyists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> GoDaddy needs to be boycotted anyway. We're talking about a law that would create a national Internet censorship infrastructure in the United States. This is serious stuff.

We need to send the message that when you pull crap like this, it might really hurt your bottom line. Permanently.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would pay $100 to anyone that made a one-click (or close) auto transfer of domains from GoDaddy.

<comment><USER35> Transferring domains is fairly painless already, but one click transfer would be insanity. The few speedbumps that do exist when transferring exist to prevent domain name hijacking. If you could one-click transfer then domains would be completely unsafe against hijacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Isn't it counterproductive to keep punishing a company where you've already successfully affected their actions?

But I secretly wish PayPal had been dumb enough to sponsor SOPA.

</comment><comment><USER37> ah s hit.. what's going on?

</comment><comment><USER38> In the words of Bloodhound Gang:

"The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn, Burn motherfucker burn"

</comment><comment><USER39> Urgh. I can't be the only person who is getting exceptionally tired of seeing self-congratulatory blog posts about GoDaddy rise to the top of HN.

Dear interwebnerds: the point has been made. Stop obsessing. Every time you get your knickers in a knot and write a crowing blog post about how you just put it to The Domain Provider Who Shall Not Be Named, you give them more name recognition, free press and SEO. So stop it. Transfer your domains, make your point to customer service if/when they call, then _stop talking about their service_.

Maybe you folks can spread a little more of your furor around to the _other_ companies on the list...a list that includes most of the major providers of media in our culture.

<comment><USER40> It's only been a day or two. GoDaddy is getting free press but bad press. It's getting name recognition but not the kind it wants. This will have a dramatic effect on the image of the company, and personally I want to see how GoDaddy handles this and what effect it has on the company and its competitors, if any, as well as the effect on the bill's passage, if any. I'll agree that some of the revelry may be unwarranted, but this submission is still entirely relevant.

<comment><USER39> As they say: _"there's no such thing as bad publicity"_.

This old maxim is particularly true when the publicity helps you to come up as the #1 search result for "domain registration" (or worse, links directly to your press releases), and most of your customers don't care about your position on SOPA.

Every seething blog post you vote up to the front page of HN sends potential customers to GoDaddy, if only to see what the fuss is all about.

<comment><USER41> "There's no such thing as bad publicity" is a highly profession-dependent proposition.</comment></comment></comment></comment>