
How is the internet still obsessed with Myers-Briggs? - dredmorbius
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/myers-briggs-test-internet-fans
======
legohead
It's a guide, not an answer. And it's pretty damn good at what it does.

Another thing to look into and try out are the "Clifton Strengths". Now
unfortunately, you have to pay to take the test, but you can just buy the
companion book and get a code along with it.

What I like about clifton strengths is they are more targeted, and you can
more easily use the information to actually better yourself. You can focus on
improving your strengths, or recognizing how they can or cannot be used in
your profession.

For example, my #1 strength is adaptability. I do well under pressure and even
look forward to emergency-like situations. I had always wondered why all the
engineers would freak out when we would get hacked, or get DDOS'd, etc. and I
would immediately spring into action and handle things, and even enjoyed these
ugly situations. As a manager, if you know your team's individual strengths,
you can better set them up for success.

~~~
nradov
How do you assess its goodness? Any how can you be sure you're not just
experiencing confirmation bias?

A lot of people believe horoscopes are good at what they do.

------
nicoburns
People don't understand Myers-Briggs. The scientific experiments all test
against questionnaire results, which are admittedly pretty useless. But the
theory posits internal mechanisms, and nobody has determined a reliable to
measure this yet (except expert-guided self-assessment - which _is_ pretty
reliable, but generally disregarded by researchers). And most of the studies
don't even use this model, and fallback to a frankly ridiculous trait model.

The two fundamental distinctions made by the theory are
introversion/extraversion and "judgement"/"perception" aka rational/irrational
which remarkably similar to Dual-process theory's System 1 and System 2
thinking (as popularised by Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow).

Both of these models have a ton of experimental evidence validating them.
Myers-Briggs just needs a reformulated hypothesis that removes all the Jungian
jargon, and explicitly puts it in these terms. When that happens, and with
advances in neuroscience, the flood gates for evidence for Myers-Briggs will
open.

I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on this topic, and I'm vaguely planning
to turn it into a book at some point.

~~~
aidenn0
I'd be interested in your response to the criticism that MBPI assigns binary
categories to things that are largely normally distributed?

~~~
cagenut
I took my first MBTI test by running mbti.exe on my 386's DOS command prompt.
After answering all the questions it gave me a score on a 10 point scale for
each letter. So for instance I scored an 8 on the Introversion/Extroversion
scale, but only a 6 on the iNtuition/Sensing scale. As such when I read the
ensuing results/profile information I would always check INTP and ISTP knowing
that i personally fell somewhere inbetween. That had to be somewhere in the
mid 90s.

The four letter code has only ever been about having a conversational starting
point, it has never been a binary thing. Anyone that ever said (like this
article, or your comment) made that up in their head and then projected it on
the world around them. Very INxJ behavior ;)

------
blueadept111
The Myers-Briggs categories are more neutrally named than those of the "Big
Five".

SENSING VS INTUITION is called OPENNESS in the Big Five. THINKING VS. FEELING
is called AGREEABLENESS JUDGING VS. PERCEIVING is called CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

So people who rate as SENSING, THINKING, and PERCEIVING in the Myers Briggs
scale would be rated as "low" in openness, agreeableness, and
conscientiousness in the Big Five.

Seems pretty clear why the Big Five would never catch on in popular culture.
Oh, and the fifth category is "Neuroticism". Not exactly a neutral label
either.

~~~
rtkwe
I think even if it were more neutrally named it would still be less popular
than Myers-Brigs because MB gives you an either or which gives you the simple
[E/I][S/N][T/F][J/P] categories which maps to just 16 convenient categories
where the Big Five tests spit out numerical scores ranking you relative to the
population. The former lends itself to the kind of short in grouping and
desire for fast categorization that keeps horoscopes popular, Myer-Brigs
giving you ENSP is a clear group to belong to with all sorts of "what does it
mean to be ENSP" articles to write, where the former doesn't really give you a
clear concise slot to use it in. The closest would just be ranking high or low
in each category but that's 32 groups and long to type compared to the 4
letter MB personality groups.

------
kemiller2002
It's simple. It's the same reason that people are fascinated by their sign and
horoscope. People want to feel like they belong to a group. They want to feel
like they belong and can relate to other people. This gives them a
"scientific" (the article mentions that it has long been abandoned as useful)
validation. To the lay person it's very hard to explain to them how, how
according to this theory and such, it doesn't really work. People are going to
always like things like this, because it's easy to relate to and makes them
feel better about not a single anomaly that is like no one else.

~~~
testoo
You're exactly right, I think, as to the reason most people are attracted to
Myers-Briggs.

That said, it's odd that the narrative persists of M-B having been
discredited, when, as the article mentions but doesn't explore, the opposite
is true. Myers-Briggs traits strongly correlate with the categories in the
FFA, which is the dominant model in psychology, as the article states. But
this doesn't even include the cross-correlations between the 4 MB traits and
the 4 main FFA traits (minus neuroticism)

Myers-Briggs is in fact basically identical to FFA but in a different
eigenbasis, and minus the "neuroticism" dimension. This information is
available in every major source on MB vs FFA, including just on Wikipedia. And
yet, the "MB as horoscope" idea continues, despite having been scientifically
discredited, so to speak.

the mapping is roughly this: E/I <=> Extroversion N/S <=> Openness F/T <=>
Agreeableness J/P <=> Conscientiousness

But it is fun to make fun of the MB-scale (and its enthusiasts) as a horoscope
and it's also fun to USE its categories as horoscopes, and the first meme
feeds off the second, so both persist.

~~~
LiquidSky
>That said, it's odd that the narrative persists of M-B having been
discredited, when, as the article mentions but doesn't explore, the opposite
is true.

What? The article directly says M-B has been discredited:

>In academic circles, however, the test has long been discredited. While the
Myers-Briggs test lumps people into “types,” most modern personality tests
measure traits on a continuum. Another objection rests on the test’s inability
to predict meaningful life outcomes. “Basically, there isn't an algorithm that
translates how people answer into how they're likely to behave,” explains
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of business psychology at University
College London. Today, this is considered a crucial element of a personality
tests. The backlash against the Myers-Briggs test has been powerful – beyond
being shunned by academics, a steady drip of articles over the years have
condemned its shaky scientific grounding. But this hasn’t stopped diehard
Myers-Briggs fans seeing themselves within the test’s categories.

You're falling into exactly the same trap that horoscope enthusiasts have,
gesturing to vague correlations and associations with no scientific grounding
or basis.

You're simply wrong. M-B is pseudoscience.

~~~
testoo
Thank you for the reply!

I'm not sure what the best way to link a source on HN is, but I'll do my best.

McCrae and Costa did a study in the 1980s that looked at correlations between
MB and FFA, as part of a larger, longitudinal study on aging. There were 468
participants.

Here are the correlations found in the study:

E/I=>Extraversion: 0.74 N/S=>Openness: 0.72 F/T=>Agreeableness: 0.44
J/P=>Conscientiousness: 0.49

As you can see, these are extremely strong, and the reason F/T and J/P are in
the 0.40s is the cross-correlation I was mentioning, with part of the T/F
prediction being tied to intra/extraversion (0.19), and part of the P/J
prediction being tied to openness (0.30), which is intuitively just what you'd
expect.

The full table of 16 correlations is available here: McCrae, Robert R; Costa,
Paul T (1989). "Reinterpreting the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator from the
Perspective of the Five-Factor Model of Personality". Journal of Personality.
57 (1): 17–40

...so that's one of the sources for the correlations I mentioned, though there
have been other such studies. But as I said, the strange thing is that this
information has been publicly available and is even referenced on both the M-B
and FFA Wikipedia pages (i.e that M-B and FFA are more or less measuring the
same thing) and yet the popular narrative remains that one is dogma while the
other is pseudo-science.

(and sorry, yes indeed, the article directly says M-B has been discredited,
which is part of the point I'm making. It SAYS that, but it doesn't offer any
support for that claim, and the only data it cites shows the opposite)

(edit: author does cite one source, a Vox article, which has the same problem
of not citing any data and also plugs the FFA, saying "the newer, empirically
driven test focuses on entirely different categories" which suggests the Vox
author has also not delved into the research. Most of the people quoted in
both pieces make statements like "[using the M-B] would be questioned by my
academic colleagues," which may suggest the echo-chamber nature of the
problem)

~~~
LiquidSky
>yet the popular narrative remains that one is dogma while the other is
pseudo-science.

Because it's not "the popular narrative", it's a factual statement. MBTI is
unsupported pseudoscience while the Five-Factor Model is the more widely
accepted model in psychology.

You seem fixated on the correlation point, as if that provides any validity to
MBTI. For instance, you cite the study you mention being referenced on
Wikipedia but ignore the numerous other studies cited in the lengthy section
detailing the various criticisms and problems with MBTI. The article even
opens with:

>Though the MBTI resembles some psychological theories, it is commonly
classified as pseudoscience, especially as it pertains to its supposed
predictive abilities. The test exhibits significant scientific (psychometric)
deficiencies, notably including poor validity (i.e. not measuring what it
purports to measure, not having predictive power or not having items that can
be generalized), poor reliability (giving different results for the same
person on different occasions), measuring categories that are not independent
(some dichotomous traits have been noted to correlate with each other), and
not being comprehensive (due to missing neuroticism).[10][11][12][13] The four
scales used in the MBTI have some correlation with four of the Big Five
personality traits, which are a more commonly accepted framework.

Your fixation on the correlation between the two models is noted, but MBTI
otherwise lacks a valid scientific basis.

Again, you are simply wrong on the facts. MBTI is indeed pseudo-science, and
selective use of sources doesn't change that. You keep trying to frame this as
a popular misconception when it is simply the academic consensus.

------
velcrovan
From Venkat Rao on Twitter a couple days ago:

‘One of the most useful effects of nerding out over Myers-Briggs or Enneagram
is that it gives you a structure to easily relate to people in multiple modes.
Either/both under stress or relaxed conditions gives you 4 modes. Already 4x
better than “harmony or conflict”.

‘Such unflattening is good for all relationships. You can do it without
crutches like Myers-Briggs but it will stress your reserves of compassion and
empathy way more. So why not use any crutches that seem to help continue the
game rather than blow it up under stress.’

(continued at
[https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1167897376876421120](https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1167897376876421120))

~~~
wenc
This. Cerebral people tend to denounce personality types as pseudoscience,
astrology, Barnum effect etc. which they likely are.

But the usefulness of personality types is that they are shorthand for people
who are into them to _describe themselves_ without going through every story
in their lives. It gives people a kind of crude vocabulary to convey their
rough self image without using a lot of words and without the need for
repeated exposure. It is kind of like an aggregate statistic that is wrong but
still useful.

Oddly enough, that is extremely valuable guide to reading their behaviors.
They may self identify as a ENFP or whatever while being something else, but
even knowing what they perceive themselves to be is extremely useful
especially in relationships. In romantic relationships it helps you navigate
unknowns by anticipating them (trust but verify still applies but this gives
you some Bayesian priors).

Just because a tool is not scientific doesn’t mean it’s not useful and to be
summarily dismissed. (Note the subtle point: I’m not saying all non scientific
tools are useful — just that some are) You just have to know how to extract
the signal.

P.s. the big 5 personality test is more scientific and reproducible and
reports along dimensions in percentiles. This is useful for research but no
one ever mentions their big 5 scores in casual conversation. (I don’t even
remember what my scores are)

~~~
nicoburns
> the big 5 personality test is more scientific and reproducible and reports
> along dimensions in percentiles.

It's also pretty useless for genuinely understanding people because it's
claims are so shallow. You like talking to people, therefore you are
extraverted, which means you like talking people. Brilliant.

The equivalent claim in Myers-Briggs on the other hand is something more akin
to "you like talking to people", therefore you are extraverted which means
that your mental processes are tuned to process a high quantity of external
input, which you can then use to make predictions well outside of the domain
of talking to people.

> personality types as pseudoscience, astrology, Barnum effect etc

Personality types at least have a plausible mechanism - different processes in
the brain. If you think about it, the idea that people have different mental
processes is actually a more sensible starting point than the idea that
everybody thinks in the same way.

~~~
o09rdk
1\. There's utility in information compression. Extraversion encompasses a lot
more than "talking to people"; it encompasses things like positivity, social
proactivity, energy level etc. If you say "someone is more extraverted than
99% of the population" you can make a lot of inferences other than "likes to
talk to people". The Big Five aren't everything, but they convey a lot.

2\. There are theories underlying the Big Five; the Big Five and its variants
are so well-replicated and appear in so many settings that they have become
something to be explained, which is generative. E.g., there's a theory that
extraversion basically refers to basal level of active, positive emotion,
neuroticism refers to basal level of negative emotion; agreeableness to
empathic ability processes etc. Maybe these are or aren't right, but there are
non trivial theories about them that are very elaborated. You just don't hear
about them as much necessarily because you don't hear about the Big Five as
much, and because there are multiple theories for the Big Five -- as opposed
to the Myers Brigs, which is tied to one account.

~~~
nicoburns
> There's utility in information compression.

This is a fair point. It's just much _less_ useful than the description of an
actual underlying mechanism.

------
socalnate1
Because it is a useful framework to discuss your personality and social
preferences.

That's it. This obsession with everything in life having to be either total
nonsense or perfectly predictive scientific theory is silly.

~~~
thanatropism
There's a distinction to be made between the framework and the tests.

The framework is ultimately literary. The tests might be terrible at telling
you what's your type, and therefore nonscientific. I mean, this was literally
a meme with Harry Potter characters like six months ago.

------
kjs3
Same with why the Internet is still obsessed with many things: it reduces very
complicated things to simple, easy to consume buckets. Instead of having to
understand and relate to an individual, you can lump lots of people into one
of a relatively small number of piles and treat them the same under the guise
that it's 'scientific'.

------
aazaa
> Despite the Myers-Briggs test being rejected by mainstream science, people
> like him are leading its online resurgence.

This claim pops up throughout the article, but without evidence. What would be
an example of an unambiguous scientific "rejection" of Myers-Briggs?

~~~
ggggtez
Let's put it this way: you've put people into buckets. Great. Science says: if
these buckets represent something inherent about the person, then you should
be able to predict using this information.

Maybe you can predict the likelihood of someone getting depression? Or of
having a high paying job? And those predictions have to be better than random
guesses, and hopefully better than existing tests for those things.

So, where is the scientific evidence _for_ Myers-Brigs? What exactly does the
typing predict about a person that we can't predict better using other
methods?

~~~
inflatableDodo
I'd get depressed if I was put into a bucket.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
Not if there were other crabs in there with you!

~~~
inflatableDodo
Nahh, The Count is getting the hell out of Barrytown.

------
smacktoward
I think it has less to do with Myers-Briggs itself (which was around for
decades before most people had ever heard of the Internet) than it does with a
particular quality of online social interaction. By removing barriers like
distance, the Internet encourages us to sort ourselves into groups based
entirely on specific shared interests. And since the only thing these groups
have in common is their specific shared interest, they tend to spin off into
_obsessing_ over it, just because _it 's the only thing they have to talk
about._ When you only have one patch of cud to chew on, the only thing you can
do when it stops satisfying is chew harder.

This is true of people in communities like Myers-Briggs subreddits, but it can
also be observed among participants in all sorts of interest-organized online
communities. And a lot of the really damaging social pathologies of our time
are a direct result of it. When you look at things like "incel" culture, for
instance, you see a group of people who have taken what was a shoulder-
shrugging "whaddaya gonna do?" kind of routine life problem before everyone
became extremely online, and collectively obsessed over it so hard they built
an entire ideology around it. That didn't happen nearly as much before social
interaction became primarily an online thing. But it happens _all the time_
today, on all sorts of subjects, because the online medium encourages it.

Personally, I find my Myers-Briggs typology (INTJ, if anyone cares) to be
mildly interesting, as it highlighted some aspects of my personality that I
had previously not really understood very well. For me, that's as far as it
goes -- I don't see Myers-Briggs as some kind of all-encompassing Key to Life,
the Universe and Everything. But if I spent lots of time on a Myers-Briggs
discussion board, where the only thing we had to talk about is Myers-Briggs, I
can totally see how I could end up becoming convinced that it _is_ the key to
everything. Not because it actually is, but because once you fall down a
rabbit hole it's hard to see anything but the walls of the hole.

------
madrox
I was really into Myers-Briggs in my early 20s. As a bit of a lost soul it was
a great beginning for understanding how I could be different from other
people. It’s right up there with “Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus.”
(Talk about a book that probably hasn’t stood the test of time!)

~~~
ZeWaren
I've also used Myers-Briggs quite a lot in my 20s as well.

It helped me a lot to understand why and how some people function differently
than others. Instead of thinking "this guy is an asshole", I began to think "I
understand this guy does not behave correctly when dealing with this kind of
stress" and I could improve the way I communicate with different types of
people quite a lot.

------
ggggtez
The only useful thing to come out of Myers Briggs is awareness of
"introvert/extrovert" as ideas. It's better than what was there before, but is
still woefully inadequate to describe people's personalities.

The implication is that people fall into the _extremes_ of these factors. But
in truth, most people probably deviate very little from the mean. If you're a
tiny bit more introverted, it doesn't mean you never want to go to a party,
and if you are more extroverted, it doesn't mean you don't want to sit down
and read a book alone now and then. Not only is the test not very accurate,
but it is almost impossible to interpret.

------
jchw
This debate shows up periodically and it's perplexing. Of course the buckets
are arbitrary, I’m pretty sure most people are aware of that actually.

I don’t know much of the cult like following but it was a source of amusement
for me and some friends years ago. It gives you some discrete, if ultimately
meaningless, classifiers to compare against. (FWIW, I am strongly in the INTP
bucket.)

Better personality classifications certainly exist, but there is something
amusing about being placed into buckets. Some workplace personality
classification systems do this exact same thing, probably for nearly the same
reason.

~~~
ggggtez
The article highlights that diehard fans _do not think the buckets are
arbitrary_.

>As an INTJ, what are the things that I can do to better understand, relate to
and communicate with my INFP wife?

If you thought your label was arbitrary, you wouldn't phrase your question
like that. Clearly these people think that these labels provide an accurate
shorthand summary of their marital communication issues... which is kinda sad.

------
ghostbust555
The internet is obsessed with astrology. Comparatively this is pretty alright.

~~~
ggggtez
Citation needed. I would be super surprised if astrology was popular by any
large margin with people under 50.

~~~
gnicholas
Well, there's this: [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/the-
new-a...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/the-new-age-of-
astrology/550034/)

------
achenatx
we have found that it is quite accurate and even precise. I can talk to people
and generally figure out their MBTI pretty accurately. Each of the attributes
are scored numerically and arent binary.

For example in our organization most people are INTs. We have a mix of Ps and
Js. The main difference is that Ps tend to be slower to make decisions and Js
make decisions much more quickly. Ps are more likely to walk back decisions,
where Js are stronger to commit.

We have a few ISTs and they tend to be our most detail oriented people.

We have very few Fs.

We have Es that get their energy from being around people. They are generally
the ones that are always up for going out after work and with clients. The
ENTJs tend to drive to be leaders. We mainly talk to clients all day. By the
end of the day the Is want to go home, the Es are ready to go out with
clients.

It is not like a horoscope in that it is based on your preferences determined
by answering questions. If you answer them honestly then you can get a
reasonable result. Over time people that were borderline can flip, but
typically not in multiple areas.

I personally am a classic INTP as are many people I work with. Engineers are
commonly INTP and INTJ even though they are a very small percent of the
population, they show up at like 70% in our workplace even though they are
around 6% of the population.

------
Simulacra
Meyers Briggs is a lot like miracle cures: People want to believe in
something, that one thing that answers all.

------
rewgs
Anecdotally: MB is a very useful, extremely high level abstraction (and thus
can only be so accurate) of real cognitive behavior.

I reject the notion that it's just like a horoscope. I've routinely tested as
INFP, leaning towards an INTP (based on their cognitive stack, a grey area
between the two makes perfect sense), and reading about the two feels like
reading a very accurate blueprint of my brain, whereas reading, say, an ESFP,
feels totally foreign. Even something that's apparently "close," such as an
INFJ, still feels totally wrong, like a shirt that fits well except for being
too tight across the chest. If it were really like a horoscope, I could pick
any of them out of a hat and find something to relate to, but -- I mean, I
guess you've gotta trust me here -- that simply is not the case.

Perhaps I'm the "time at which the broken clock is stuck" and am benefitting
from an accidentally correct explanation, but learning about and deeply
understanding my "cognitive function stack" has allowed me deeper insight into
my strengths and weakness (not _what_ they are -- I already know that -- but
_why,_ and how they manifest in ways I don't always readily see), and has
genuinely made my life better -- more so than any therapy sessions, and that's
saying something, as I easily count seeing a therapist as one of my best
decisions in life.

I suppose that my type more or less predicts that I'm the kind of person who
would find value in tests precisely like these, and my test always has the
"-T" flag (for "turbulent," meaning "not secure in oneself"), so it's
certainly a chicken and egg problem. I take it with more than a grain of salt,
but not a mountain.

I'm also not a "personality test" junkie at all. I remember a decade ago I
tried a few random ones, and they were clearly all bullshit, more along the
lines of a horoscope. MB is a different beast.

Furthermore, I later learned that I'm actually friends with the types of
friends I'm "supposed" to be friends with, and in hindsight, we had bonded
precisely the way the test had predicted. Same for who I'm attracted to, and
who I'm repulsed by. It's not like I go around asking about peoples' types,
but the handful of times I have, the conversation has been pretty eye-opening.

All I'm saying is: don't totally discount it just because you heard someone
compare it to a horoscope once. There are a lot of flaws -- the most obvious
one being that its accuracy depends upon the ability of the person taking it
to answer authentically and truthfully, rather than what they wish they were
like.

But my gut tells me that it's a good direction for science to go. Are there
probably too few many types? Absolutely. But like I said, it appears to be an
extremely high level abstraction of actual psychology, just as so much in
psychology is (Jung's Archetypes come to mind).

~~~
trophycase
Considering you know enough to know about the cognitive stack (more than most
who take those awful online quizzes), you also should know that INFP and INFJ
aren't close at all. It's a complete mirror of the entire stack :)

~~~
rewgs
Right, but we tend to be drawn to our inferior functions, and thus the end
result of those mirrored stacks can end up being pretty similar. That's what
I'm getting at. Should have been more clear.

------
ablation
Because people love ways to easily label themselves, feel a part of
something/feel different and this is one such way. It also happens to be in a
short, snappy four letter format.

Just look at the amount of Twitter bios that have Myers-Briggs personality
types listed on them.

------
thedanbob
Ever since I researched into Myers-Briggs, I've considered it to be the
equivalent of a Buzzfeed quiz ("Which Star Wars character are you?").
Entertaining, perhaps even insightful on a superficial level, but not at all
useful.

~~~
wenc
Not accurate or not useful? These are two different things.

I’ve personally found it to be not that accurate but still tremendously
useful.

~~~
thedanbob
It’s not useful to me _because_ it’s not accurate. I already knew everything
it told me about myself and recognized the parts that weren’t accurate, but
what can I do with that information? I can’t expect that its conclusions about
anyone else or how to relate to them are any more accurate.

~~~
wenc
I use them as Bayesian priors in my model of a person's behavior.

In my experience, when someone tells you they are x personality type, that's
generally a starting point for you to refine your understanding of them as
opposed to starting from zero. Unless they had meant to throw me off
altogether, I generally find that information helps my mental model of them to
converge fairly quickly.

Example: you ask a girl out and she tells you she self-identifies as INTJ, so
you think to yourself -- she gets her energy by being alone or with a few
people, she's probably a little cerebral and probably tends toward
orderliness. You then have a basis of testing your hypothesis to see what her
actual preferences are (vs stated), and also you might not want to plan your
dates around meeting lots of strangers and doing crazy stuff. Remember, the
utility of the MBTI isn't so much whether it is actually accurate or not -- it
is more what it communicates. When someone gives you their type, it's them
communicating to you a compressed signal that says, "I think I kinda fit this
description" \-- and that's a useful signal.

You may later learn that your model of her is wrong and needs refinement, but
you'd be making iterations in small steps as opposed to throwing the entire
model out. Once you know her, you no longer need MBTI or whatever, but during
the initial stages, it definitely helps guide the exploration.

How is that not useful?

Sure, there are more complex instruments like Big5 and such that are more
"accurate" but outside of research circles, no one uses them. That right there
is an example of a more accurate, but less (day-to-day) useful signal.

(though I would say Big5 is good for understanding where you are on certain
dimensions with respect to the general population. And it is undeniably useful
in psychology.)

------
rpmisms
Myers-Briggs is, to me, much more helpful for understanding my reaction to
stimuli, but doesn't provide as much use for me to engage with other people.
The enneagram, arguably less scientific, helps me understand my tendencies
when interacting with other people. I'm an ENTP type 8, which essentially
translates to an extroverted intuitive person with _very_ low agreeableness.
It helps to police my own interactions, since I can't exactly apply the golden
rule.

------
rsynnott
I mean, why are tabloid newspapers still obsessed with horoscopes? Much the
same thing for a different demographic.

------
badatshipping
Here's an argument that although Myers-Briggs isn't scientific, it doesn't
need to be, and is still as useful as it promises to be:

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/27/on-types-of-
typologies...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/27/on-types-of-typologies/)

If anything, MBTI helped me assimilate the meta-fact that there are lots of
different types of people out there, many of whom I'm simply never going to
really click with.

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LiquidSky
Because it's astrology with a scientific veneer, so people who think they're
too smart for astrology feel okay about using MB.

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egypturnash
Meyers-Briggs: astrology for boys and rationalists.

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cr0sh
I did not know that MB was not considered "mainstream" or scientific, nor did
I know that likely no such test is (one I have reference before is the MMPI).

I have recently in other venues advocated for the idea of such testing as part
of the controls implemented for the purchase and use of guns. Not so much
those lengthy tests (except maybe on occasion), but something shorter that
could be filled out casually. Ultimately evaluated and scored by a randomly
picked independent body of psychologists.

I will refrain from now on with this kind of rhetoric in the future, unless I
can find something that would be workable for such a test - if there is
anything.

I don't believe such a test, administered fairly and properly, in a non-biased
manner, with the score/outcome other than pass/fail being kept - would violate
the 2nd Amendment. I think if such a test could exist, it would be better than
the catch all of past mental health issues being a part of the judgement for
current background checks; a proposal which has many proponents and opponents
for various reasons.

The idea I was trying to propose was to gain a sense of who this person was at
the time of the purchase of a firearm, of bullets, before practice at a range,
etc (the idea I had involved a lot of additional restrictions - such as where
and when guns could be used, by whom in what situations, and penalties for
straying from those - ultimately, my goal was to make things broad enough that
people wouldn't feel constrained as gun owners, but narrow enough that such
laws and regulations could identify threats before they became "out of
control" problems).

Constant regular checks of a person - if they could tell that such a person
had an intent to harm others at some point in the future - would likely be a
sound method to reduce incidences of mass violence that I believe will not and
cannot be solved by laws targeting just the weapons.

I am one of those strange liberal souls who also supports 2nd Amendment
rights; there's a good reason it's in the BoR right behind the first, and I
don't believe it was meant only for those in a "standing army"; the Framers
didn't want a standing army - they were fairly united against it. Instead, I
believe they wanted each individual to be armed, well trained in arms usage,
and that he (or she) could band together with fellow citizens to repel both
external and internal threats as such arose.

But things have changed in so many ways from that ideal - most notably we have
a huge standing army (I do not believe the Framers would approve at all), and
we allow guns for everyone without proper training and care. What we don't
seem to have, though, is a proper understanding of violent extremism and how
it festers and arises among a local population of people. What starts it, how
do you detect it, and what can you do about it without violating the rights of
that person, in order to defuse it or protect against it?

Apparently we don't know - but I thought tests like MB and MMPI could help
solve that problem, and, if administered properly in coordination with other
changes on how we as a society allow for guns within it, it could help to
quell what we currently witness (on a seemingly weekly basis lately). Since
such tests are not what I thought they were, my advocacy will stop until I can
figure something else out.

I don't believe for one second that what I was proposing would stop all gun
violence, nor violence in general, but I did think it had a good chance of
drastically reducing it, in the unlikely event that such a thing was adopted
(highly unlikely - but I was hoping it might spark discussion). As a gun
rights supporter, my hope was to make it compatible with the wants of gun
owners and users, and current law, while also balancing that with restrictions
that would promote safety of the general public who may or may not be gun
owners themselves.

If anyone has thoughts on any of this, please feel free to respond, as I would
love to hear any suggestions on this...

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nradov
It's prima facie absurd to categorize human personalities across 4 arbitrarily
chosen dimensions. Why those 4 specifically, and why not 3 or 5? There's no
real justification for any of it.

But as a way to break the ice when introducing new team members I suppose it
isn't terrible, as long as no one takes it seriously.

