I tried three apps that claim to make you more likable
fusion.net
fusion.net
That's not a good confirmation. Astrologers have been creeping people out by arbitrarily assigning them to one of just twelve personality types for centuries, so this seems hardly surprising. The Forer Effect is named after a study where people were all given the same 'personality profile' and yet they rated it as accurate.
Each of them got their own personal horoscope made and was asked to read it.
Then they where asked how accurate it was 75% thought they were very accurate.
Then they were asked to switch their personal horoscope with the person next to them only to realize they had all been given the same horoscope.
"Y ... appreciates open, casual conversations."
These read like dopey profile statements people write about themselves on Twitter.
So the intent was to create an app that frustrates people and shows them "that there are things the computer can’t do as well as a human". We have this experience I'd argue the majority of time with computers anyway, the whole point is breaking down that barrier. So if her statements are not a joke its just bad software design.
Otherwise, the concept of realtime communication aid seems ridiculous IMO. Do we really need a software buffer between us and another human in order to communicate better? I still prefer talking to people on the phone as compared to chat, and face-to-face over the phone, I'd assert you always loose information once you add buffers between two communicating parties.
This one in particular: http://lauren-mccarthy.com/goodbye/
>This past fall I left Boston, after spending the past 5 years there. To deal with the emotionally and logistically overwhelming task of giving a goodbye hug to all of the acquaintances and friends I have accumulated over this time, I designed the Hands-Free-Auto-OK/GOOD/GREAT-BYE! Machine.
I do see how the concept of an emotion reader would be helpful for some people. In particular, I know people who could really use a "sarcasm" flashing on the screen because they seem to miss it.
If you give a false compliment, people can tell. If you aren't paying attention, people can tell. Even more importantly, YOU can tell.
Therefore it's more important to change your attitude to be a receptive, open minded, friendly one. In my opinion, this Crystal app seems to cheat the system. However, if you merely change your behavior to suit people's personalities, you lack a personality yourself, and you'll find it start to haunt you, as other people, no matter how bad they may be at subconsciously picking up signals, will likely catch on to your insincerity over time.
Me: Man, I miss camping. I once went to...
Her: I love camping! We should go sometime! There's this place...
Couple months later
Me: Hey, it's getting into fall and the weather's great. We've both got a couple long weekends coming up. Want to go camping on one of them?
Her: I hate camping.
Me: ...
(this is just a sample, the same thing happened on several, far more serious, issues that couples face)
Seriously, insincerity and dishonesty, even if you have yourself convinced of your lies in that moment, really fucking sucks.
Our goal at Crystal isn't to game the system when communicating with others, but to help you be more aware of these personality differences (and show them at the right time with tools).
For example, my dad is extremely task oriented and logical. I'm the exact opposite. When I listen to him talk about something for an hour in extreme detail, understanding his personality helps me be a little more empathetic, as I know it's naturally something he's going to do.
Person on first date glances at their phone every thirty seconds and wonders why the app seems to be implying the conversation is going downhill...
I'm sure Moodies (and their parent company) is frantically dumping money into it, but it's likely an AI-Complete problem to get beyond the absolute simplest of metrics. No shock that it failed here.
"Max prioritizes achievement, pursues goals aggressively and methodically, and doesn't like when someone makes a decision on his behalf."
That last one really does piss me off. The rest of the analysis is quite good as well. Basically I like it when people get to the point. It possibly gleaned that from my short writing style - I don't carry on, and I tend to write short emails and posts.
Not sure what I'll be using this for in general now that I am a subscriber, but next time I need to write an ice-breaker I think it would come in handy.
--EDIT-- It just occurred to me that this may be of the horoscope variety, where analysis is on the safe side and can apply to almost anyone. I may have been fooled!
Paraphrased from http://my.horoscope.com/astrology/free-daily-horoscope-leo.h...
I'd say your edit sums it up nicely.
One of the better defenses is to look for where it is wrong, instead of where it is right. If it is really "correct", it shouldn't be wrong anywhere. In your own message, you highlight the thing that you think it really got right... is there anything it's really wrong about?
In a sentence that short, it's hard to tell, but if there's more content you didn't paste you can have a look at that.
Reading for myself the classic Forer text [1], sure, like everyone else, there's a lot of hits. But there's also a lot of huge misses, like, 100% diametrically-opposed wrong. It's not hard to tell a lot of the hits aren't all that direct either, if you look at them and ask "How many people would this be false of?" If the answer is "nearly 0%", then it's worthless.
I actually think your Crystal profile is more specific than that... it might describe a lot of HN people, but in general people do not pursue goals aggressively and methodically. (It's why "make goals and pursue them" is a frequent self-help message... for a lot of people the entire idea is a bit of a revelation! It may sound lamely obvious to $YOU but it isn't in general.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect#Forer.27s_demons...
On the other hand, people may want to believe that they do this.
The comments from Crystal reminded me of horoscopes. They could be correct about lots of different people or perhaps be correct at certain times for most people.
Feeling like you know how to deal with people in an interview can be a majority of the challenge.
I am wondering why they would do this. I'm not a developer so is there any reason why they would rather play a video instead of a gif (when the source material is a gif to start with)? It doesn't really seem necessary to me but I'm probably missing something.
http://imgur.com/blog/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/
"The above GIF started at a whopping 50MB. After conversion, the final file is 3.4MB and loads at warp speed. Pretty sweet, right?"
It's more like I feel like I have to get heated during every customer service call I might make now-a-days (at least when it comes to big companies) since calmly and rationally explaining your problem seems to give much worse results and waste much more of your own time.
I enjoyed the book though, it was honest and generally tried to make you a better person. This seems really gross, and reminds me of this short Sci-Fi film: https://vimeo.com/46304267