From "They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie? Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino became famous for their research into why we bend the truth. Now they’ve both been accused of fabricating data" (The New Yorker). There's much more in that article obviously. I didn't choose a representative clip, just something that struck me as interesting and that didn't overlap with the NYT article on the topic of dishonest behavioral economists, which I blogged here yesterday.
I'm glad to see I have a tag "Obama's clothes," and of course, this post gets the tag "The Fly," because under the secret rules of this blog I am required to compare Obama's dressing methodology to Seth Brundle's:
Ronnie : Do you ever change your clothes?
Seth Brundle : What?
Ronnie: Your clothes. You're always wearing the same clothes.Seth Brundle : No, these are clean. I change my clothes every day.
Ronnie : [Veronica looks into his closet and finds five sets of the same suits, ties, shoes and pants] Five sets of exactly the same clothes?
Seth Brundle : Learned it from Einstein. This way I don't have to expand my thought on what I have to wear next, I just grab the next set on the rack.
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44 comments:
No man who ever walked the face of the earth was less susceptible to "ego depletion" than Barack Obama
They could've just ripped off Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders. Better to be called plagiarists than scientific fabulists.
I knew a guy who was the head of investment banking at a major regional firm who owned seven identical navy blue suits. He said he never had to worry about what to wear or grabbing the wrong trousers or jacket.
But he didn't want to fundamentally transform the US. *eyeroll*
That must explain the break with tradition regarding the official portrait...
Yeah right. Nothing Bareback Obama does has anything to do with "ego depletion", but thanks for playing.
I've studied Barack Obama's ego extensively and determined that it would be nigh impossible for it to ever be depleted, despite having zero reason to even possess one.
Social psychology and sociology routinely fail in the real world. This is not because any of their ideas are 'bad' per se, but because they cannot consider more than a fraction of the relevant evidence and factors. So, they routinely have randomized and diluted outcomes.
I say this as a person who witnessed knock-down, drag-out fights between factions in one academic department. "Another group of profs are going to tell you lies." and "Don't believe what they say in those classes." Just read social "science" journals, textbooks, and reference handbooks. No agreement. This is the unintended consequence of relativism and the social construction ideology. When you base your beliefs on no ground truth, there can be no truth at all. Only cliques with shared unwritten assumptions.
Obama...men wearing suits and gray or navy suits...male professional dress 101. You don't need anything beyond a desire for standardization, being prepared for work, and avoiding distractions. The same principle applied to UK courtrooms, as dominated by goofy white wigs 300 years after they fell out of general fashion.
https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/national-traditions/why-british-lawyers-barristers-wear-wigs.htm
"He eventually created a behavioral-sciences team in the White House.... But as these ideas began to intermingle with those in the adjacent field of social psychology, the reasonable notion that some small changes could have large effects at scale gave way to a vision of individual human beings as almost boundlessly pliable.... "
While I'm too lazy to find it over on my blog, I did note IRT when this bullshit started in the White House. I think it's fascinating, how politicians bring in these weirdo advisers (many of them members of the NewAge movement) to teach them how to manipulate us, and they still, somehow, have supporters afterwards.
It's almost like the American people were never the people that America claimed.
Erik Satie had multiple copies of the same corduroy suit he wore a lot - but maybe not 100% of the time.
purported to show that subjects who held an assertive 'power pose' could measurably improve their confidence and 'instantly become more powerful.
Show me a wisdom pose to go along with the power pose, so the subject instantly knows what to do with power when they get it.
The Power-poser policy making process:
"Abracadabra...Abacadabra!...Abracadabra!...God Dammit...What the fuck?"
to teach them how to manipulate us, and they still, somehow, have supporters afterwards.
Supporters are certain it’s the other people who need manipulating.
The Crack Emcee said...
It's almost like the American people were never the people that America claimed.
I thought Africans were the people America claimed...
I'd like to see the algorithm that gets one from Barack Obama's closet to The Fly. Of course, having been teleported by my magical computer I see it now. It's like an unanswered question - as if the image of Obama were boiling and stretching in a change, a superhero or supervillain type change. But the unanswered question is - did he change or do we understand him better or have changes he initiated developed along their natural line into something no one intended? Is he Wormtongue or the Sorcerer's Apprentice? Just a Hawaii guy, a beach guy, good at catching the wave?
When I left graduate school and entered the business world (almost fifty years ago) I was counseled to get a plain navy blue suit — the “sincere suit.” Also a light blue Oxford cloth dress shirt with a button down collar. These days I only own one suit, in black, suitable for funerals. At my age I attend too many of them, and they’re about my only reason for putting on a suit at all these days.
Obama and empty suit are immediately correlated. It also fun to have an opportunity to equate oneself with Einstein cough Steve Jobs cough…
…and nobody has done more harm to humanity in the behavioral genre than Cass Sunstein. I want to ‘Nudge’ that asshole right in the nose…
“The same principle applied to UK courtrooms, as dominated by goofy white wigs 300 years after they fell out of general fashion. “
Rumpole of the Bailey claimed that he purchased his wig second hand from the retiring Chief Justice of Tonga. Funniest line in the whole of literature.
I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a Venn diagram of Barack H. 0bama and Ego Depletion today.
“ It's almost like the American people were never the people that America claimed.”
Brilliant &extremely sad.
Obama, the ultimate con.
did they define /dishonesty/?
@RideSpaceMountain: Yeah right. Nothing Bareback Obama does has anything to do with "ego depletion", but thanks for playing.
I hate to be pedantic, but you misspelled "Brokeback".
"Abracadabra...Abacadabra!...Abracadabra!...God Dammit...What the fuck?"
I was eating cereal when I read this. Damn you, Boyd. Now I have to change clothes.
Life is cruel, comments are funny.
"[A] researcher at Cornell, reported that an attractive wire rack and a lamp increased fruit sales at a school by fifty-four per cent, and that buffet diners likely consumed fewer calories when 'cheesy eggs' weren’t immediately at hand..."
No shit Sherlock.
Hide the good stuff and people will eat less of it.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Ivy League.
Credentialed morons.
'I knew a guy who was the head of investment banking at a major regional firm who owned seven identical navy blue suits. He said he never had to worry about what to wear or grabbing the wrong trousers or jacket.'
It also works for priests and Steve Jobs.
There's a variant of Occam's Razor which holds that the most plausible sophisticated explanation for a phenomenon is the explanation for that phenomenon. From Galen to Freud,savants have tended to believe what they lying eyes tell them.....The most logical part of a human's behavior is his economic behavior, and that's none too logical. I've had some setbacks in the market, but I take comfort in the fact that I've never invested in anything as foolish as the South Sea Bubble like that putz Newton. Well, a fool and his money are soon parted.
I think Obama wore grey or navy suits because he tried wearing a tan suit once on August 28, 2014, and people talked.
I think the last US president who got away with wearing unusually coloured suits may have been Bush I, who occasionally wore tan (cotton?) suits as well as light grey. Reagan wore brown. I don't have a recollection of Clinton or Bush II doing so. I think it ought to be fine, though -- DC is practically tropical in August, so colours like beige and khaki are totally appropriate. (I say, on second of October, in DC, wearing a khaki cotton suit.) I might have mocked Obama at the time though.
On the broader topic, a lot of the possibly-garbage research in this field makes a kind of intuitive sense, like "self-licensing," where people feel like doing something good in one context frees them up to behave badly elsewhere. Like in diets (I ate a salad so I can gorge on ice cream now), or activism (I protested against police violence so I can be a total asshole to everyone in my personal life) or Christianity (I just went to church, so I can tip my server with fake money covered in Jesus quotes). But I guess I wouldn't be too surprised if it all turned out to be bullshit.
"... the reasonable notion that some small changes could have large effects at scale gave way to a vision of individual human beings as almost boundlessly pliable."
I take it there was no mention of 'pliable' people getting 'boundlessly' pissed off when endlessly manipulated by people who saw themselves their betters?
I have a very limited wardrobe for that reason; I'm thinking about the upcoming day when I'm getting dressed. Choosing clothes is a distraction. I don't really care what I'm wearing.
"No man who ever walked the face of the earth was less susceptible to 'ego depletion' than Barack Obama"
Obama's successor in the White House is at least equally impervious to "ego depletion," or more so.
Re: Big Mike:
These days I only own one suit, in black, suitable for funerals. At my age I attend too many of them, and they’re about my only reason for putting on a suit at all these days.
I've been thinking I should buy one (I was mulling over stopping by my the place I have my suits made yesterday morning, before my flight to the US, specifically to see what fabrics they had that would be appropriate for reifuku), but I hesitate. I'd use it for Korean ceremonies to be sure. I wore an extremely dark, matte, navy suit for a funeral earlier this year, which was not quite correct for a mourner in my position (two stripes on my armband) even if it wasn't particularly noticeable. Black would have been correct, which is why I was thinking about having a suit done up in the first place.
But in the US, unless I'm one of the principal mourners I worry it might be a bit showy and obtrusive to wear full mourning black these days, and that would defeat the whole purpose. I attended the funeral of an elderly relative in the US some years ago, and to my surprise, I was the only person in a black necktie. I think funerary customs in the US are just a lot more casual than they had been in the past.
"I knew a guy who was the head of investment banking at a major regional firm who owned seven identical navy blue suits. He said he never had to worry about what to wear or grabbing the wrong trousers or jacket."
The "Seth Brundle" strategy! A perfectly logical and practical wardrobe approach.
"When, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Obama was told that money 'framed' as income was more likely to be spent than money framed as wealth, he enacted monthly tax deductions instead of sending out lump-sum stimulus checks."
Well, no. This is a reference to the seven dollars and fifty cents a week, or fifteen dollars biweekly, of our own income that was "given" to us as a feature of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
It was called the Making Work Pay tax credit and was "distributed" by ordering employers to not withhold the weekly or bi-weekly Social Security tax out of employees paychecks up to a total of $400 annually for single employee/filers.
I recall some degree of righteous ridicule towards the supposed effect of an extra seven-fiddy a week on the individual and the economy.
As an example of small things having great downstream effect I think it missed the mark because the smallness was noted and seen as out-of-touch misjudgement.
Obama was created by a cadre of Chicago academics, almost all of whom are devout Marxists. I personally know two of the Psychologists on the Obama team. They are way to the left of most liberals who strongly supported Obama.
It makes sense that Obama created a behavioral science team at the White House, given how he was created.
In the bullshit derby, we mustn't forget Wilson Brian Key (the successor to Packard) and his "Subliminal Seduction" theory, which turned out to be Madison Avenue goofs, following the advice of Freudians and sex researchers but was just another dressed up fad. (Saw Key's show-- I won't dignify it by calling it a lecture-- when I was a student at BGSU, circa 1975.) Madison Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue have a lot in common.
Robert Cook said...
"No man who ever walked the face of the earth was less susceptible to 'ego depletion' than Barack Obama"
Obama's successor in the White House is at least equally impervious to "ego depletion," or more so.
That is both true, and irrelevant.
but nice try
I'm surprised this post didn't garner (heh, heh) an "Insect Politics" tag.
@Balfegor, what do you plan to wear at your funeral? That will answer your question.
"Seth Brundle : Learned it from Einstein. This way I don't have to expand my thought on what I have to wear next, I just grab the next set on the rack."
Shouldn't that be 'expend?'
Re: Big Mike:
@Balfegor, what do you plan to wear at your funeral? That will answer your question.
Mmm, the usual hempen robes if it can be arranged.
IMO — 90 % of the discipline is fake. It’s not that people think they are fraudsters. It’s more that people really believe in a certain theory, and then the data doesn’t really bear it out in the way they imagine, and you start thinking, what if I just change one control variable so the result matches what you know deep in your heart to be true but that damn measurement error isn’t showing it… and voilà it works :)
No man who ever walked the face of the earth was less susceptible to 'ego depletion' than Barack Obama"
Obama's successor in the White House is at least equally impervious to "ego depletion," or more so.
10/2/23, 10:28 AM
Yes, Cookie, but Obama's successor never assembled a team of "social scientists" to study "ego depletion." Duh.
"He eventually created a behavioral-sciences team in the White House.... But as these ideas began to intermingle with those in the adjacent field of social psychology, the reasonable notion that some small changes could have large effects at scale gave way to a vision of individual human beings as almost boundlessly pliable.... "
Well, now we know where the brilliant advice to fullly inflate your tires as the solution to rising gas prices came from. "Science!"
Balfegor
Try a Parson's grey worsted suit, it's a charcoal so dark it looks black from a distance.
Rich said...
IMO — 90 % of the discipline is fake. It’s not that people think they are fraudsters.
It's that they're leftists, and therefore anything is "right" when they decide it is.
No, they all KNOW they are fraudsters. They just think they're entitled to get away with it.
Kind of like the people who celebrated the FDA using its power to decide what you're allowed to do with your body, while screaming "my body, my choice" WRT Roe and abortion
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