Quickies
Quickies: Leslie Jones, Shutting Down Racist Coworkers, and Why the MBTI is Meaningless
- The Year in Weird Contentions – “Richard Dawkins is a grown man, a best-selling author, a prize-winning scientist and an emeritus fellow at Oxford. On Twitter, he is something else entirely. His self-presentation there is comically indistinguishable from that of a precocious, argumentative, peer-despised pre-teen who has read a few Richard Dawkins books: obsessed with his own internal logic but oblivious to the context in which people are rolling their eyes at him, relentlessly condescending and aggrieved by the opinions of other humans. ” From Amy.
- Ready for Prime Time – “After twenty-five years as a road comic, Leslie Jones becomes a star.”
- Woman Goes Viral After Shutting Down Racist Co-Worker in the Most Hilarious Way Possible – From Courtney.
- Do Ruthless People Really Get Ahead? – “Despite the previous findings on ‘snakes in suits’, Spurk found that the psychopaths in his sample actually performed worse on his measures of success: they earned less than their peers and tended to have lowlier positions on the career hierarchy. As you might expect, given these findings, they were also less satisfied with their lot.”
- Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless – “But the test was developed in the 1940s based on the totally untested theories of Carl Jung and is now thoroughly disregarded by the psychology community. Even Jung warned that his personality ‘types’ were just rough tendencies he’d observed, rather than strict classifications. Several analyses have shown the test is totally ineffective at predicting people’s success in various jobs, and that about half of the people who take it twice get different results each time.” From Rachelle.
BONUS: A new photography book, Geek Culture, is out and it features some work from Surly Amy. Check it out!
Just a note about the geek culture photography book. My work isn’t in it, I was photographed for the book. So my face and some of my jewelry is in it. :)
The “Do Ruthless People Really Get Ahead?” is depressing. I like imagining myself as more successful if only I was more ruthless. Oh well. I’ll just continue to be whatever I pretend to be.
Sort of like acupuncture/homeopath/chiropractic in the medical industry. Myers-Briggs is so entrenched, so blindly accepted, that negative evidence has no effect. I expect our grandkids will be stuck with this shit.
Is acupuncture or homeopathy really that entrenched? Chiropractic is in the States, obviously, with every state having licensed chiropractors, but not every state has licensed acupuncturists or homeopaths. Quite a few do, though, and Oprah’s children—Drs. Oz, McGraw, Stork, Masterson, Ordon, and Sears (and now Berman and Ross)—have made sure to put as positive a spin on alties of all stripes as possible. (Not that this is uniquely American: That Awful Poo Lady was on BBC, after all.)
Another trick is that alties love to say “Now we’ll be vindicated!” every time there’s a new Scary Disease of the Week.
Myers-Briggs has another problem: You’re just asking questions that I know the answers to. Hell, I took one just for lulz and mine said I was an ESTJ, but I generally don’t see myself as any sort of leader or face, quite the opposite really.
Regarding psychopaths, as the old joke goes, “Why is Donald Trump a millionaire? Because his father was a billionaire.” (Not that I’m a fan of Hillary or anything. In fact, I resolve that she will pay in 2016 for every dog whistle she made in 2008.)
Note that I’ve always suspected that true psychopaths simply are incapable of feeling emotions traditionally regarded as unpleasant: Without fear, you don’t develop a sense of caution. Without anger, you don’t develop a sense of justice. Without sadness, wow, there goes your empathy.