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"Academic research has found that people’s susceptibility to flattery is without limit and beyond satire. In a study published in 1997, B.J. Fogg and Clifford N

by tormeh 12y ago

"Academic research has found that people’s susceptibility to flattery is without limit and beyond satire. In a study published in 1997, B.J. Fogg and Clifford Nass of Stanford University invited people to play a guessing game with a computer, which gave them various types of feedback as they played. Participants who received praise rated both the computer and themselves more highly than those who did not—even those who had been warned beforehand that the machine would compliment them regardless of how well they were doing. Yes, even blatantly insincere, computer-generated flattery works." From: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21639500-being-good-networker-pays-offbut-it-requires-skill-well-shamelessness-network-effect http://www.economist.com/news/business/21639500-being-good-n... And thus the winners of the system justify our inequality.

atopal 12y ago
Since that study is never properly referenced, here you go: B.J. Fogg & C. Nass (1997) Silicon Sycophants: The Effects of Computers that Flatter. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 46(5), pp 551–561. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581996901044 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581996... And yes, that 10 page paper costs $36. Thank you, Elsevier.
- wslh 12y ago
  Happily you can use Google Search instead of Google Scholar to find it for free: http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/sea/c8cxce/readings/fogg&nass_1997.pdf http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/sea/c8cxce/read...
jerf 12y ago
Incidentally, this goes a long way towards explaining Marx's popularity. His philosophy flatters certain people, especially intellectuals, and tells them what they want to hear. For this, much can apparently be forgiven, even such minor details as "total nonfuctionality of the rest of his theories" and "hundreds of millions of corpses". Such minor trifling details are not important next to the fact that he says what many of us deeply, profoundly want to hear. And so the eternal and ever-desperate efforts by intellectuals to figure out how to separate the things they want to hear from the bits of the theory that are wrong. But, alas, I'm pretty sure they're inseparable.
- pikzen 12y ago
  >"hundreds of millions of corpses" Except that those millions of corpses were not caused by Marx or his theories but by a flawed implementation of it by some power hungry dictators. In terms of tech, don't blame the spec if you didn't implement it correctly.
  - ende 12y ago
    And when the same blue print produces the same horrorific implementation every time? At some point it has to be recognized when the flaw is with the architect.
  - cousin_it 12y ago
    In Soviet Russia, the three main waves of repression were the Red Terror, the Collectivization, and the Great Purge. Only the last of those was caused by a power-hungry dictator, the first two were caused by committee leadership.
    - canjobear 12y ago
      I'd dispute that the Red Terror and Collectivization were caused by committee leadership, since the authority of Lenin and Stalin was beyond question at those times respectively. But what is more disturbing is that these actions were unapologetically intended to be violent; the lives of "bourgeois" or "kulaks" were considered to matter not at all because of their "class". The ruling ideology was that certain classes were "bloodsuckers" unworthy of life. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin%27s_Hanging_Order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin%27s_Hanging_Order A philosophy that reifies an amorphous abstract idea like class to the extent that people's lives don't matter if they're in a certain class is extremely disturbing. It is not clear to me that this was a Bolshevik innovation rather than something that is latent in Marx.
      - scarmig 12y ago
        Two points: 1) It's true that there were uniquely powerful and dominant figures during both the Red Terror and the Collectivization. But those were people who genuinely had the support of the rest of the Party. Many of the other Bolshevik leaders were just as bad. In fact, Trotsky (the alternative on hand who usually plays the "if only the czar knew!" role to wishful leftists) was if anything worse, pushing for an immediate campaign of massive warfare and terrorism to be extended to other countries and being particularly brutal in putting down rebellions. 2) Thinkers trade in abstractions--thought is really just the application and generation of new abstractions. It's not clear to me that you can hold those thinkers responsible, though, when people proclaiming their ideology use their abstractions to ride roughshod over human rights (itself an abstraction...) Take Adam Smith, who's a secular saint in the Anglosphere. The liberal version of British imperialism embraced him and laissez-faire capitalism to justify actions that cost tens of millions of lives. E.g. the Irish famine, the Indian famines, arguably even the Opium Wars/Taiping Rebellion. A typical argument for not providing famine relief by the Indian Famine Commission: The doctrine that in time of famine the poor are entitled to demand relief [...] would probably lead to the doctrine that they are entitled to such relief at all times, and thus the foundation would be laid of a system of general poor relief, which we cannot contemplate without serious apprehension. This variant of capitalist ideology was the deadliest in the world during its time, until variants of Marxism managed to blow that record away. I think you can just as easily say, "A philosophy that reifies an amorphous abstract idea like property rights to the extent that people's lives don't matter if they lack property is extremely disturbing." It seems to me that the only ideologies out there with clean hands are the ones that only exist in people's heads. FTR, I think the healthiest approach is to reject all ideologies that pretend to be all-encompassing and use the analytical tools provided by them as needed. Epistemological, if not political, anarchism.
mc32 12y ago
How does this explain what is crudely called "biting the hand that feeds you"? Despite what this says, there are those who are strictly, to a great fault, at times, principled. And this principle can overcome the problem of flattery. This is the kind of thing which tends to bite some people at work. Pointing out the warts, short -sightedness, despite the promise of a steady job, some managers can see this as threatening, rather than an awakening. Not everyone caves in to the siren call...

by tormeh 12y ago

atopal 12y ago

Since that study is never properly referenced, here you go: B.J. Fogg & C. Nass (1997) Silicon Sycophants: The Effects of Computers that Flatter. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 46(5), pp 551–561. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581996901044 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581996... And yes, that 10 page paper costs $36. Thank you, Elsevier.

wslh 12y ago
Happily you can use Google Search instead of Google Scholar to find it for free: http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/sea/c8cxce/readings/fogg&nass_1997.pdf http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/sea/c8cxce/read...

jerf 12y ago

Incidentally, this goes a long way towards explaining Marx's popularity. His philosophy flatters certain people, especially intellectuals, and tells them what they want to hear. For this, much can apparently be forgiven, even such minor details as "total nonfuctionality of the rest of his theories" and "hundreds of millions of corpses". Such minor trifling details are not important next to the fact that he says what many of us deeply, profoundly want to hear. And so the eternal and ever-desperate efforts by intellectuals to figure out how to separate the things they want to hear from the bits of the theory that are wrong. But, alas, I'm pretty sure they're inseparable.

pikzen 12y ago
>"hundreds of millions of corpses" Except that those millions of corpses were not caused by Marx or his theories but by a flawed implementation of it by some power hungry dictators. In terms of tech, don't blame the spec if you didn't implement it correctly.
- ende 12y ago
  And when the same blue print produces the same horrorific implementation every time? At some point it has to be recognized when the flaw is with the architect.
- cousin_it 12y ago
  In Soviet Russia, the three main waves of repression were the Red Terror, the Collectivization, and the Great Purge. Only the last of those was caused by a power-hungry dictator, the first two were caused by committee leadership.
  - canjobear 12y ago
    I'd dispute that the Red Terror and Collectivization were caused by committee leadership, since the authority of Lenin and Stalin was beyond question at those times respectively. But what is more disturbing is that these actions were unapologetically intended to be violent; the lives of "bourgeois" or "kulaks" were considered to matter not at all because of their "class". The ruling ideology was that certain classes were "bloodsuckers" unworthy of life. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin%27s_Hanging_Order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin%27s_Hanging_Order A philosophy that reifies an amorphous abstract idea like class to the extent that people's lives don't matter if they're in a certain class is extremely disturbing. It is not clear to me that this was a Bolshevik innovation rather than something that is latent in Marx.
    - scarmig 12y ago
      Two points: 1) It's true that there were uniquely powerful and dominant figures during both the Red Terror and the Collectivization. But those were people who genuinely had the support of the rest of the Party. Many of the other Bolshevik leaders were just as bad. In fact, Trotsky (the alternative on hand who usually plays the "if only the czar knew!" role to wishful leftists) was if anything worse, pushing for an immediate campaign of massive warfare and terrorism to be extended to other countries and being particularly brutal in putting down rebellions. 2) Thinkers trade in abstractions--thought is really just the application and generation of new abstractions. It's not clear to me that you can hold those thinkers responsible, though, when people proclaiming their ideology use their abstractions to ride roughshod over human rights (itself an abstraction...) Take Adam Smith, who's a secular saint in the Anglosphere. The liberal version of British imperialism embraced him and laissez-faire capitalism to justify actions that cost tens of millions of lives. E.g. the Irish famine, the Indian famines, arguably even the Opium Wars/Taiping Rebellion. A typical argument for not providing famine relief by the Indian Famine Commission: The doctrine that in time of famine the poor are entitled to demand relief [...] would probably lead to the doctrine that they are entitled to such relief at all times, and thus the foundation would be laid of a system of general poor relief, which we cannot contemplate without serious apprehension. This variant of capitalist ideology was the deadliest in the world during its time, until variants of Marxism managed to blow that record away. I think you can just as easily say, "A philosophy that reifies an amorphous abstract idea like property rights to the extent that people's lives don't matter if they lack property is extremely disturbing." It seems to me that the only ideologies out there with clean hands are the ones that only exist in people's heads. FTR, I think the healthiest approach is to reject all ideologies that pretend to be all-encompassing and use the analytical tools provided by them as needed. Epistemological, if not political, anarchism.

mc32 12y ago

How does this explain what is crudely called "biting the hand that feeds you"? Despite what this says, there are those who are strictly, to a great fault, at times, principled. And this principle can overcome the problem of flattery. This is the kind of thing which tends to bite some people at work. Pointing out the warts, short -sightedness, despite the promise of a steady job, some managers can see this as threatening, rather than an awakening. Not everyone caves in to the siren call...