Scott Adams endorsing the power pose:
Have you heard of the “victory pose.” It’s a way to change your body chemistry almost instantly by putting your hands above your head like you won something. That’s a striking example of how easy it is to manipulate your mood and thoughts by changing your body’s condition.
So easy to do, yet so hard to replicate . . .
Adams is a bit of a Gregg Easterbrook in that he alternates science speculation with savvy political commentary:
I’ve been watching the Democratic National Convention and wondering if this will be the first time in history that we see a candidate’s poll numbers plunge after a convention.
But even better is when he mixes the two together:
Based on what I know about the human body, and the way our thoughts regulate our hormones, the Democratic National Convention is probably lowering testosterone levels all over the country. Literally, not figuratively. And since testosterone is a feel-good chemical for men, I think the Democratic convention is making men feel less happy. They might not know why they feel less happy, but they will start to associate the low feeling with whatever they are looking at when it happens, i.e. Clinton.
Keep this up, Scott, and a Ted talk’s in your future!
You’re talking about Scott Adams. He’s not talking about you.
Note to self: read blog posts fully before judging
Epi:
Yeah, I can’t complain about Adams. He’s a professional entertainer and he’s entertaining me, in a train-wreck sort of way. Easterbrook bothered me because he had the air of a professional journalist and there was always the worry that someone might take him seriously. Adams, on the other hand, is merely expressing in an entertaining way what many of his readers are already thinking.
Kinda sad to see him falling for the power pose, though, as that’s the sort of management mumbo-jumbo that I could imagine him mocking mercilessly in his cartoons.
Sad but not surprising. Adams has been telling readers that affirmations can change reality since the Dilbert Future. As mentioned before, Adam’s discernment only works in one direction. He is exceptional at spotting absurdities and logical fallacies that come from others, but when he starts formulating his own arguments and business plans, it’s like he loses the capacity for critical thinking.
Mark:
I see an analogy to Conan Doyle, who was so skeptical in his persona of Sherlock Holmes author and so pitifully credulous in his role as himself; recall those embarrassing faked fairy photos.
I may be stating the obvious, but all of us have these incongruities.
Because Doyle & Adams are so famous, we notice. Because, Doyle & Adams are *supposed* to be astute these flaws look glaringly stupid.
In other words, I’d hate to be a famous person. :)
Rahul:
Yes, we all have incongruities. But those of Doyle and Adams are particularly striking.
Also, as a famous person myself (within a small sphere of influence), I think it’s actually good for me to be held to a high standard, so people can ask me questions like: If you think forking paths are such a problem in others’ research, why aren’t you concerned about your own forking paths?
Yes, we are all crazy, but as you statisticians might say, there are both variations between people and variations within people (“personal responses?”) So, not only are some of us a lot crazier than others, some individuals have the ability to wall off truly staggering amounts of crazy in one area and be hyper-rational in another. Sir Fred Hoyle, I’m looking at you. James Watson would be a lesser example. I’m sure you can think of many others. As a Canadian, William Lyon Mackenzie King comes to my mind as being more Conan Doyle than Conan Doyle.
Doyle also wrote fantasy and science-fiction (he arguably created the first modern day dinosaur story) so at least some of his characters were open to the fantastic and the supernatural.
One of the things that makes Adams’ lapses so interesting is how close his areas of strength and his areas of weakness are. When he addresses business practices and corporate culture as a critic and satirist, he is exceptionally good. When he covers the same topics as an entrepreneur or self-appointed business consultant, he is uniformly terrible.
+1 on the train wreck
His ‘analysis’ of the presidential campaigns through the lenses of his persuasion shtick, sprinkled with many hints that he approves Trump’s policies, has been amusing
Of course my interest is in understanding how this power-pose post changes our posterior beliefs about the possibility that @fraac is Scott Adams, and/or that Scott Adams is a regular blog reader here.
On the one hand, power pose! (One of AG’s favorite subjects to post about.) On the other hand, wouldn’t he say things that are not obviously wrong? (And the wrongness is evident if he has been reading here.) On the other other hand, perhaps he is just posting about power pose to get AG riled up, link, backtrack, and increase his Page Rank ™.
Maybe what I need is a flexible multi-level model?
ps, should have linked to this previous post.