Comment by Nasrudith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nasrudith | Hacker News Reader

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I've heard worse from an interviewing course from a Human Resources veteran who left the field to care for family that has me conclude that much of humanity is frankly batshit insane by the definition of 'divorced from reality'.

In addition to paying 80% attention to how it is said instead of the content of what is said they tend to judge people who are better at putting on an appropriate 'mask' of confidence as 'trustworthy' when they all know that nearly everyone puts on a show for interviews anyway. That is believing that people who demonstrate better capabilities of actively faking emotions are more trustworthy. When aptitude is widely linked to practice. Saying you want a surgeon who can't stand the sight of blood so they'll make fewer unnecessary cuts is more logical than that.

That is beyond trusting your intuition and into flat out divorced from reality and putting on a heaping helping of cognitive dissonance on top.

The revelation was disturbing yet it also explains /a lot/ of societal dysfunctions and why high functioning sociopaths are disproportionate among CEOs.

I somewhat agree with you, but I don't think you're giving these intuitions enough credit. Feelings are fine-tuned over millions of years to be good signals. Things like the halo effect, for example trusting people because they are attractive, are well-rooted in empirical evidence.

Humans may recently have found a better way but that remains to be seen; on the face of it, reason is much more abstract and hence more 'divorced from reality'. It certainly doesn't warrant an immediate switch of strategies.

>> Feelings are fine-tuned over millions of years to be good signals.

If you're going for a hunt on large mammals, gut feelings about your peers is probably a good way to judge a person. An interview for a job is (usually) an entirely different situation.

>> Things like the halo effect, for example trusting people because they are attractive, are well-rooted in empirical evidence.

Oh my god, please don't tell me you trust people because they are looking good. If you do, you should consider establishing a different trust-metric, one that maybe has to do with the job a person is actually requested to do.

Yeah, that statement seemed odd to me as well. I've often heard of the halo effect as a description of something that happens unconsciously, not something we should actively strive towards.

I didn't read it as "we should trust people based on looks", but more as "we DO trust people based on looks" (I assume the "empirical evidence" refers to evidence of this being hardwired into us, not to evidence of it being useful).

I meant that the existence of the effect means it was selected as beneficial. If we want to override this response we should use our higher-level reasoning to (1) understand why it works that way (2) show that we can do better.

The burden of proof is on those proposing a new system. I doubt it’s as easy as many rationalists assume.

darkerside pointed out a great rational benefit of trusting emotional people [1]. What would be the benefit of trusting better-looking people?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17668937

... not necessarily.

The existence of the effect really means that it wasn't selected against.

Sounds right; maybe it's a side-effect of something else.

Well "how a thing is said" gives a lot of information about the intent of the person saying it. You can say nice things with a heavily condescending tone. Words alone are not the whole information.

Absolutely. Nonverbals likely bypass the rational forebrain and skip to the primitive reptilian parts of the brain that create emotions, judgements and snap decisions.

Some relevant books:

Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear

Blink (looks almost like Freakonomics)

Well yes, it's something you discover at a certain point. But it's also something you may or may not want to use for your advantage. Because faking it once isn't enough, you'll need to fake it always. Just like these tricks to win over an attractive partner by putting on appearances of being way more confident etc. Sooner or later you face the question: is it worth it? Do I really want to live my life pretending someone I'm not? For some people, it's fun. For other's, it's just tiring.

This "be yourself" line of speaking is garbage. It makes the speaker sound wise while doing nothing to help the person who is desperate for a romantic partner. About as useful as telling a depressive person to cheer up.

Imagine we flipped it around and said it to entrepreneurs: "Do you really want to live your life as CEO of a successful startup knowing you got there by faking confidence?"

"Be yourself" is very vague statement, I wouldn't tell anyone that; it's also meaningless without a context. What I mean is that there is a whole business of people telling other people they can do anything if they start acting some different way. For some, it works. For others, it's a source of frustration. Some people discover it quite early in life - that they can fake some feelings to take advantage of others. They start playing all these little games, especially in relationships, instead of being frank with the other person. My friends are telling me these stories all time.

That's radically different from deciding to make a change in one's life, to make some effort in order to change bad habits and so on. The key difference is how you feel once you succeeded. Are you 100% happy? Then everything is fine. Are you always anxious, tired of acting (e.g. like you care or you don't care), and something doesn't really feel right? You may want to rethink your priorities in life.

“Keep doing what you’re doing” would certainly be bad advice for someone unhappy with their current prospects.

But some combination of “improve yourself” and “examine your expectations” will work better than “pretend to have qualities you don’t” as a long term romantic strategy.

E.g.: instead of faking confidence, work on improving actual confidence.

I would tend to agree with them since nearly all of most people’s worldviews, experience and information is carefully-manufactured chicanery via mass-/social-media so they take up certain preferences and attitudes. Libertarianism is a perfect example of a faux political centroid that cherry-picked from utopian views and sentiments against communism, but leads inexorably to unworkable, corrupt, extractive, inverted totalitarianism like the US has at present (ie public-private partnerships, destroyed govt departments, hundreds of vacant diplomat posts).

I would agree with sociopaths /narcissists skew towards seats of power because such people are more willing to take big risks, feel entitled to more and DGAF other than themselves. Also, the amount of wealth and prestigous title/s someone has tends to change them to behave similarly.

The main ways to bring balance back are to:

- forcibly remove the cancer of and vigilantly guard against corrupt political-wealth complex from all areas of government

- sensible wealth-redistribution; having millions of people whom are homeless living on the sides of highway on-ramps or can never retire is obscene

- more co-op businesses, employeee ownership and workers on the board of directors

- stronger unions that work

- US: single-payer

- more minimum vacation time

- even in times of hyper-mobility, community rebuilding, across all demographics, in a standard format people know about: something to replace church/atheist “church”... it’s unhealthy to have an anonymous, closed society of mostly lonely people with only fb friends and few/no one to talk to regularly.

You are attempting to pull politics into a largely unrelated discussion and based on the downvotes, most people here would agree with me that you should probably stop.

Because of this I am not going to respond to your entire point however I would urge you to do some research on the origins of libertarianism, communism, and socialism. It may surprise you that they all tend to be mischaracterised and traditionally set out to resolve the same issues in similar ways.

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