![]() ![]() Once you’re an adult, however, IQ is somewhat meaningless. This leaves aside the whole fact that the concept of “EQ” is pretty questionable in the first place and that even IQ is a pretty limited and misleading tool, which may be useful for determining some innate problem solving skills in kids, but means little once they reach adulthood. O’Brien tells some of the same stories he’s told before - claiming the company only hires people with IQs over 150 and that people with high IQs have “low EQs” and they try to help them on that front. Fast Company, which co-produced the conference, and thus, perhaps, had business reasons for suppressing all skepticism, also wrote a big article again repeating the O’Brien myth, though that article appears to have been dropped behind a paywall. Instead, there were just more questionable claims from O’Brien, on a panel moderated by Fast Company’s Chuck Salter, an “award winning” reporter who didn’t seem interested in challenging a single claim from O’Brien, taking them all at face value. A microphone stand that had been present for Q&A during earlier sessions was removed prior to the panel, so it was clear that there was no intention of a Q&A at all. Despite the agenda specifically promising a Q&A with O’Brien and multiple producers, there was no Q&A (and those other producers weren’t even there). They did appear to show up right before going on stage, and then I was told they had to leave immediately after (though, at least one other conference attendee posted a selfie with O’Brien well over an hour after O’Brien got off stage). Instead, despite multiple requests, I was denied an opportunity to interview them before or afterward. Last week, O’Brien appeared with Scorpion producer (and Justin Bieber manager) Scooter Braun at the “Techmanity”* conference in San Jose, and I went to the show hoping to talk to O’Brien and/or the producers of the show to see if they could help clear up the inconsistencies in his story (many of which we detailed in the original post). It worries me that some people will take the TV show’s inflated claims at face value and think that throwing gobs of money O’Brien’s way will get them the clearly exaggerated solutions the show is pitching. ![]() What concerns me about the bogus Walter O’Brien story is twofold: (1) Gullible reporters simply repeat his claims without even the slightest bit of skepticism, which is just shameful reporting and (2) O’Brien and his friends aren’t just making a TV show: they’re trying to spin the TV show (which, as far as we can tell has close to no basis in reality) into a way to promote O’Brien’s “business” with claims that are wholly unbelievable - in that, literally, I don’t think most of the claims are true. If that’s all that was going on, it wouldn’t be a big deal and everyone could get on with their lives. I don’t even mind bogus claims like “based on a true story” because, hey, Fargo was pretty awesome. Since a few people brought this up, let me make it clear: I have no issue with exaggerating on a TV show for the sake of good entertainment. The problem we had was that O’Brien made a ton of absolutely fantastical claims and, after doing a little fact checking, none of them seemed to check out. A few weeks ago, we wrote about “Walter O’Brien,” the guy who is supposed to be the basis of the CBS TV show Scorpion.
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