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Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

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Re: Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

#72

Post by mkn »

Between the Forer Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect), confirmation bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias), and the fact that people routinely retest into different categories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs#Study_of_scoring_c...), I don't place much stock in Myers-Briggs. Add to that the dubious way in which the theory was developed, and I'm completely mystified by the appeal of this system to so-called hackers.

It just seems like you could take any 4 either/or categories and have a test that's equally valid. Do you like apples or bananas? Wear corrective lenses or not? Like dogs or cats? Rent your home or own your home? (I'm ACDR, for the record. My type is particularly rare, yet makes up a majority of CEOs and start-up founders. Yay, me!)

Can we please put a stop to this nonsense?

Re: Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

#75

Post by kaens »

petercooper wrote: post #20

Wow, pretty amazing. I test myself every year or two, and other than flipping from ENTP to INTP several years ago, it's been INTP ever since. I'm surprised just how many INTPs there are on here considering the supposedly low prevalence. FWIW, my wife is ESFJ, the polar opposite. It actually works out rather well. It's worth seeing what your SO is too, I wonder if that's a pattern.

I'm fairly certain that INTP is more the norm when looking at the set of people who would be interested in HN. (Well, obviously. I mean that the stereotypical programmer / hacker-in-the-classical-sense seems like they'd fall close to INTP)

Re: Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

#76

Post by steveplace »

bouncingsoul wrote: post #73
tricky wrote: post #19

for all you INTPs out there, have a look at this: http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html I was floored when I found that link. Describes me to a T.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

That's why horoscopes and fortune cookies work.

Re: Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

#78

Post by Tichy »

bouncingsoul wrote: post #73
tricky wrote: post #19

for all you INTPs out there, have a look at this: http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html I was floored when I found that link. Describes me to a T.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

Interesting, but somewhat unsatisfactory, I feel. What if the description really did describe everyone quite well? For example "you are a human" would describe everybody quite well. So the experiment seems incomplete.

Re: Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

#79

Post by brl »

bouncingsoul wrote: post #73
tricky wrote: post #19

for all you INTPs out there, have a look at this: http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html I was floored when I found that link. Describes me to a T.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

It's not just identifying with some vague general points of the description. For some people reading an INTP profile for the first time is blow-your-mind-and-shit-your-existential-pants amazing.

INTPs would be first in line to understand and point out the kind of cognitive bias that make people believe in horoscopes and astrology (and possibly the other 15 MBTI categories).

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