
I tried three apps that claim to make you more likable - pmcpinto
http://fusion.net/story/192659/crystal-moodies-us-apps-that-make-you-more-likable/
======
jameshart
"Crystal has just 64 personality types, and humans rarely fit so neatly into
any given box. But when I sent a dozen or so friends and family members their
Crystal profiles, most of them were creeped out by how accurate they were"

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.

~~~
ThomPete
Best proof of this I ever saw was when they did a test with 20 students.

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.

~~~
nerfhammer
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2HoscBLIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2HoscBLIw)

------
jfaucett
"Us+ creator Lauren McCarthy, an artist and programmer at New York University,
told me that the tension her technology creates was part of her intent" what??

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.

~~~
jschwartzi
It sounds like the intent with Us+ was to be performance art. In other words,
if it's baffling or strange and it makes you reconsider how you think about
something, it worked.

~~~
allencoin
I think it fits in well with a lot of her other projects, which are seemingly
obviously jokey:

[http://lauren-mccarthy.com/](http://lauren-mccarthy.com/)

This one in particular: [http://lauren-mccarthy.com/goodbye/](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.

------
personjerry
I've spent a lot of time reading about how to improve myself socially, and the
gist of it is this: be honest.

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.

~~~
venomsnake
A great thing that I mastered is when I lie to believe myself. I know it is a
lie, but i also know it is truth. Helps a lot.

~~~
Jtsummers
Eh. I had a girlfriend like that. We're no longer friends because we'd end up
with exchanges like this:

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.

------
notahacker
Whilst I'm sure the underlying technology has amazing potential, the Moodies
app sounds almost like it was designed for the type of scenario a satirist
might dream up.

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...

~~~
wanderfowl
I do speech analysis for a living, and automated emotion detection from speech
is fantastically hard.

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.

------
binarymax
So I took a dive and signed up for Crystal, then did a vanity search. I have
to say I'm impressed with the analysis:

 _" 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!

~~~
jerf
"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."

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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect#Forer.27s_demonstration)

~~~
redblacktree
> in general people do not pursue goals aggressively and methodically.

On the other hand, people may want to believe that they do this.

------
crusso
How much of the benefit of Crystal was due to just having a positive game plan
for dealing with people that bolstered the author's confidence.

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.

------
tempodox
Just out of curiosity, is this article a payed placement?

~~~
karlb
You can easily spot paid placements; they don't have the “upvote” triangle
next to them.

~~~
JosephRedfern
I don't think they are paid placements, are they? I always just assumed Job
Ads from YC companies got free listings?

~~~
andyfleming
Yeah, there aren't any paid placements on hacker news that I know of. There
are job listings for YC companies that start at/near the top and work their
way down over time automatically.

~~~
karlb
Ah, I assumed that the job listings were paid.

------
jccalhoun
I'm using noscript and when I went to the page I had the placeholder for a
javascript element. I allowed it and it was a header image. Curious, I
inspected the element and found they were converting the gif to video which
looped. It looks like Fusion have developed a wordpress plugin called
gif2html5 to do this:
[https://github.com/fusioneng/gif2html5-plugin](https://github.com/fusioneng/gif2html5-plugin)

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.

~~~
zimpenfish
I know why imgur do it -

[http://imgur.com/blog/2014/10/09/introducing-
gifv/](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?"

~~~
jccalhoun
interesting. I don't think fusion serves as many images as imgur but I guess
every little bit helps?

------
facepalm
Crystal sounds impressive, then again underlying they might just have
"universal personality descriptions" that fit everyone - like the astrological
star signs.

------
hurin
> Theoretically, it can guide operators to course-correct during a call to win
> over an angry customer

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.

------
pistoriusp
A real time "how to win friends and influence people!"

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](https://vimeo.com/46304267)

