Sometimes desire distorts perception

I thought this was pretty funny. It would seem that people were looking at Tony Blair's doodles and the experts concluded that he is stressed and not a good leader. The only problem with the conclusion? It wasn't Blair's writing - it was Bill Gates. I guess that is why he has been such a failure inthe business world - he is stressed and not a natural leader.

"We look forward to psychologists reassessing their conclusions of how these characteristics ascribed to the prime minister equally apply to Mr. Gates," the Downing Street spokesman said.

Something tells me that we'll never see a follow up on this one.

I think this is another good example of how we sometimes assess and analyze new input in such a way that it can only support our own preconceived ideas.

the story

Actually, that's interesting. There have been articles that claim that Gates has been as successful as he has because he tends to stress over the competition.

i also remember an excellent study that concluded gates was borderline autistic. i personally think the nerd rocks.

I probably wouldn't vote either into office...

ok, HM - why wouldn't you vote for Gates?

Reminds me of an old psychology study about perception based on expectations ... same article was passed around with either a male or female's name as the author ... subjects mostly reported that the female's article was more poorly written than the male's.

Who says Gates is NOT stressed? Maybe he is, and maybe he isn't. He's the head of his own outfit, not a nation. Surely the qualities required for the two different jobs would be more an intersection of sets rather than a union of them. I don't get the problem here. :confused:

I like my political and corporate leaders separated by several ten foot poles. Plus, I don't like Gates' views on corporate competition.

Kill the chief and adopt the survivors into your tribe to increase genetic diversity has been going on since the beginning of recorded history. It's just fallen out of fashion in the last couple hundred years.

Oh shit, I think I just figured out the secret microsloth business plan.

wolf wrote:

...adopt the survivors into your tribe...

Speaking of which, Google over the last few weeks has hired away Mozilla's top two Firefox programmers. Gee, I wonder what they're up to?

I wouldn't vote for someone who wanted to move us back a couple of hundred years either.

Happy Monkey wrote:

I wouldn't vote for someone who wanted to move us back a couple of hundred years either.

i don't know that much about gates, really. what does this refer to?

I was referring to wolf's post, not Gates. I identify more with the ethical views of the last two centuries than the time before.

Happy Monkey wrote:

I was referring to wolf's post, not Gates. I identify more with the ethical views of the last two centuries than the time before.

What's so great about the ethical views of the last two centuries? Let's see... Slavery, concentration camps, Watergate, 9/11, the atomic bomb...

Hmmm... I'll take the hunter-gathers. At least the destruction was limited in their era (ie a few dozen or at very most, a few hundred).

You say atomic bomb like it's a bad thing...

Schrodinger's Cat wrote:

What's so great about the ethical views of the last two centuries? Let's see... Slavery, concentration camps, Watergate, 9/11, the atomic bomb...

None of that stuff is new in terms of mindset, just (in the case of the bomb) in magnitude. In any case, wolf's the one who chose the cutoff point.

Schrodinger's Cat wrote:

...I'll take the hunter-gathers. At least the destruction was limited in their era (ie [color=Navy]a few dozen or at very most, a few hundred[/color]).

...depending, of course, on the particular statistical method used to quantify the estimate.

Happy Monkey wrote:

In any case, wolf's the one who chose the cutoff point.

Aribtrarily.

Beestie wrote:

...depending, of course, on the particular statistical method used to quantify the estimate.

You didn't hear it from me, but I understand that Heisenberg and Tommy Franks are new best friends! :lovers: