<story><title>Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)</title><url>https://soccermatics.medium.com/how-swedes-were-fooled-by-one-of-the-biggest-scientific-bluffs-of-our-time-de47c82601ad</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alkonaut</author><text>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 &lt;i&gt;think&lt;/i&gt; of everyone as a pigeonholed category. Intuitively it seems it should be mostly negative &lt;i&gt;especially&lt;/i&gt; if the categories don’t even offer any behavioral insight.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>NikolaNovak</author><text>I have a friend who&amp;#x27;s tremendously into astrology. After years of arguments etc I had a moment of enlightment when I realized she practically uses it more as descriptive model rather than predictive source of truth. I. E. She used classifications for personal shorthand on how she thinks about people. From that perspective, there&amp;#x27;s a sense where a summarizing framework is beneficial.&lt;p&gt;Almost every high level executive I met that&amp;#x27;s actually genuinely good with people, subscribes strongly and uses a personality model - whether it&amp;#x27;s the Disc model or four quadrants or whatever. The fact it has no scientific backing has no bearing in them &amp;quot;knowing its true&amp;quot; , but it also doesn&amp;#x27;t limit it being a useful if self fulfilling framework. And though we can accurately argue that system is stacked in what it rewards, these are leaders who genuinely do care and do well by their team. More than anything, it makes me introspect what does it mean for a model to &amp;quot;work&amp;quot;, because I deeply believe that these models are pseudo scientific garbage, overly simplifying and random bs&amp;#x27;s confirmation of existing bias... But I&amp;#x27;ve also had tons of personal anecdotal evidence they &amp;quot;work&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;help&amp;quot; - again, not just in self fulfilling or pegging into square hole way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time (2020)</title><url>https://soccermatics.medium.com/how-swedes-were-fooled-by-one-of-the-biggest-scientific-bluffs-of-our-time-de47c82601ad</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alkonaut</author><text>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 &lt;i&gt;think&lt;/i&gt; of everyone as a pigeonholed category. Intuitively it seems it should be mostly negative &lt;i&gt;especially&lt;/i&gt; if the categories don’t even offer any behavioral insight.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>HPsquared</author><text>Arbitrarily dividing people into groups with defined roles is the basis of the &amp;quot;Noble Lie&amp;quot; in Plato&amp;#x27;s Republic. In that, people are defined as having souls made of gold, silver or iron&amp;#x2F;bronze.&lt;p&gt;The idea of giving people a role that they can focus on, from an early age, has some advantages. Of course pigeonholing people has a wide range of disadvantages; everything is a trade-off.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Plato%27s_five_regimes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Plato%27s_five_regimes&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>