
Ask HN: Can we get a good theory of categorical personality types? - ErotemeObelus
Look at the types of fundamental particles. There&#x27;s no nice symmetric number of types of fundamental particles (like a prime power, or a highly composite number such as 72). Types that occur in the universe are usually a nasty number. All existing theories of personality types either come in nice prime powers (2, 4, 16) or they&#x27;re continuous models (which are not useful for fixing yourself; someone in the Big Five whose dominantly agreeable or dominantly open to experience doesn&#x27;t get a differently designed therapy from someone who is dominantly disagreeable or dominantly closed to experience).<p>Is anybody else interested in designing a categorical personality theory that can be used to fix yourself or am I just a fool? If you are, I need you to get in contact with me.  I need all the help I can get.
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gshdg
No, because human personalities don’t fit neatly into boxes and because we
currently know very little about our own psychology. And putting people into
boxes can be very destructive.

Even something like introversion/extraversion, which we have strong evidence
and measures for, is a continuous scale rather than a binary, with most people
landing somewhere near the middle.

Most personality measurement systems (such as the MBTI) are pseudoscience; and
we know this because the same person will not reliably get consistent results
when testing again a few weeks after an initial test.

Sure, if we knew a lot more about psychology than we currently do, you could
probably come up with a way to place a person’s personality in a continuous
N-dimensional space, where N > 1000... but what good would that do you?

But anyway, that’s not the part of your message that’s most interesting. What
about you do you think needs “fixing”; and how would such a theory help you?

~~~
ErotemeObelus
> What about you do you think needs “fixing”; and how would such a theory help
> you?

My mind broke. And yes, it's my mind and not a neuropsychiatric problem. What
happened is that my mind had a segmentation fault and now I'm trapped in the
same psychological space that elsagate videos exist (search youtube to get an
idea of what I'm talking about) in. As a consequence of this I have strange
paraphilias that I cannot get rid of.

No existing method of therapy works.

And don't say I'm trolling just because this is outside your quotidian
experience. Remember that you inquired into the matter and I am giving you the
whole truth.

~~~
gshdg
Why do you think that’s a “personality” issue? And why do you feel compelled
to “fix” it yourself instead of seeing a therapist?

~~~
ErotemeObelus
Personality type is kind of like God's OS that he gave you. You don't approach
a problem in an Amiga the same way you would approach a problem in Mac OS 9.

I don't know any therapy that is appropriate for this. CBT is for depression
and anxiety and I don't have THOSE problems.

~~~
gshdg
Psychology is far more than just personality. And CBT is effective for many
issues besides depression and anxiety. I’d still suggest speaking with a
therapist.

~~~
ErotemeObelus
Okay I will take your advice!

------
feelthedata
Personality psychology:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_psychology)

There are a number of studies which identify a set of features and then search
for clusters / 'categories' with various methods.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_discriminant_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_discriminant_analysis)

> _LDA is also closely related to principal component analysis (PCA) and
> factor analysis in that they both look for linear combinations of variables
> which best explain the data.[4] LDA explicitly attempts to model the
> difference between the classes of data. PCA on the other hand does not take
> into account any difference in class, and factor analysis builds the feature
> combinations based on differences rather than similarities. Discriminant
> analysis is also different from factor analysis in that it is not an
> interdependence technique: a distinction between independent variables and
> dependent variables (also called criterion variables) must be made._

...

> _Is anybody else interested in designing a categorical personality theory
> that can be used to fix yourself_

How helpful is personality theory in developing a clinical model for behavior
change?

~~~
feelthedata
"Because I need to treat my robot"

~~~
ErotemeObelus
Futurama's <i>All My Robots</i>

------
greenyoda
The identification of fundamental particles is based on scientific evidence:
physicists created this theory to explain their observations of the physical
world. The current theory can be tested, and disproved if it doesn't hold up.
(Previous theories of fundamental particles have been replaced as new facts
have been discovered.)

What scientific facts are there to suggest that there are discrete
"personality types"?

~~~
ErotemeObelus
Umm... the DSM-V has psychopath and narcissist. Those are two distinct
categories of personality.

So which one is more parsimonious: there are two discrete personality types
(narcissist and psychopath) and everyone else is ill-defined, or everyone
exists in a discrete personality type?

~~~
ohyeshedid
"...the DSM-V has psychopath and narcissist. Those are two distinct categories
of personality."

Those are personality disorders.

~~~
ErotemeObelus
Maybe they're personality types and we're being too politically correct,
unwilling to admit that some type are actually bad.

~~~
ohyeshedid
That would be at odds with the book you drew your conclusion from.

~~~
ErotemeObelus
The DSM-V pretends they're personality disorders instead of personality
types...because they want to be politically correct. But the truth is that
they're personality types because they're always ego-syntonic. If they were
disorders they would be ego-dystonic.

~~~
ohyeshedid
DSM-5: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of _Mental Disorders_, 5th Edition.

They are personality disorders; trying to insert some kind of bias against
political correctness isn't going to change that, nor does it support anything
you're trying to say.

"If they were disorders they would be ego-dystonic."

I'm not sure you understand the concepts of disorders, or you're on some
conspiracy trip; either way I'm not interested in debating someones opinion
versus current scientific understanding.

------
gus_massa
Fermions: 8 * 3 * 2 (or perhaps 8 * 4 *2)

(note: the quarks need to be counted 3 times because each color is different)

(note: I like to count the L and R particles as different)

(note: antiparticles don't count)

Force Bosons: 1 + (2^2-1) + (3^2-1) + something for gravitons when we confirm
them

Higgs Boson: 1

Looks like a nice symmetric scheme for me.

