Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

dynomight.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 352 posts

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#301

Post by runarberg »

nicoburns wrote: post #182
esperent wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with these results is not that they're inaccurate, it's that people think they measure a permanent aspect of themselves. In truth, people's personalities are malleable - if you spend all your time working on a computer, you become more introverted - or at least, you start to express your introverted tendencies more strongly. If you switch jobs and have to spend all your days talking to people, you'll beco…

People's personality's certainly are malleable, but the MBTI does not purport to measure personality. It (attempts to) measure personality type . i.e. the underlying baseline from which your personality starts. At no point does it claim that people's personalities don't change. Of course they do. Perhaps you are assuming that people are "tabula rasa" - blank slates - from which their personalities develop. The MBTI i…

> It (attempts to) measure personality type. i.e. the underlying baseline from which your personality starts.

Which proof do you have that such a thing exists? Underlying personality traits sounds to me like a theory of epicycles when a simpler more plausible theory exists.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#302

Post by Bodell »

danaris wrote: post #235
Bodell wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jordan Peterson is a great example of the failing of Psychology in the academic world. I'll list some quotes by him below and you can decided weather or not he should be listened to, or if he is simply selling right wing propaganda on Youtube. "If men are pushed too hard to feminize they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology." "the current hierarchy might be predicated on competenc…

Your conclusion ("the failing of Psychology in the academic world") is not supported by your evidence. You have demonstrated that there is one prominent psychologist who holds some fairly-obviously terrible and inaccurate beliefs, and is willing to trumpet them to anyone who will listen. This is no more an indictment of the field of psychology than the occasional right-wing "climate scientist" Fox News brings out to…

I'm sorry. I was very murky with my wording. I was not trying to say that the field of Psychology had failed or was a failure. What I meant to say was that, our current state of academia has in this instance demonstrated "a" failure. That failure to me is highlighted by the comment I responded to when it was implied that Peterson's view was more "bonafide" because it was from a "real" psychologist. By all academic standards the commenter would be correct. Peterson is not only a Psychologists but also a professor, A widely published and cited one at that. One who has been afforded debates at collages with Sam Harris and Zizek. This to me is a failure of the academic world to distinguish between leaders of the field of psychology and crackpot YouTube personalities. By credentials alone he is both and this is unnerving to me.

That said, of course, I do not believe that it speaks to psychology as a whole. But again I poorly worded that sentence and take responsibility for the misunderstanding. I would only add that I think, and I may very well be wrong, that if a physicist were to parrot "free-energy/perpetual-motion" to anyone that would listen, that person would be promptly removed from teaching at any legitimate university. That is not to say physics is better than psychology, if anything it implies that it is easier than the still very important soft sciences.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#303

Post by souprock »

dyno-might wrote: post #173

Hi, I'm the author of this post. Any way we can change the link to here: https://dynomight.net/in-defense-of-myers-briggs.html ? This is a slightly updated version of the post (new links, slightly less unhinged language, and a link to this MBTI quiz that I made to promote non-binary axes: https://dynomight.net/mbti )

It was changed the other way. I originally posted with your suggested link, but then moments later it was a "404 Not Found" error page. Your web site might be unreliable. Also, until I found the other link, I was unaware that there were any images. I had seen only plain text. Currently there are images, but will they stay? Do you know what went wrong with the web site? Might it go back to being "404 Not Found" again?

If you are certain that your web site isn't going to go "404 Not Found" again, contact dang.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#304

Post by souprock »

pseudalopex wrote: post #102
roenxi wrote: post #41

The article observes that if the Myers-Briggs axis are treated as continuous then they map very closely to the Big 5 personality traits. It seems to me that observation is substantially more important than the space it is given. If M-B is basically measuring 4 of the Big 5, that really sets up a lot of the rest of the conversation. Why measure 4 of the big 5 when you can measure 5 of the 5? The complaint here seems t…

Myers Briggs tests have profiles of each type usually. Big 5 tests don't.

So, to fix the Big 5 tests:

1. Write up 32 profile descriptions, each with an inoffensive name.

2. Come up with less-offensive names for the Big 5 traits. You can't politely call somebody neurotic, even if it is true. Most people wouldn't admit to being neurotic. It's not nice to ask about that.

3. Somehow, make sure the old names like "neurotic" are dead and buried.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#305

Post by 0x737368 »

Bakary wrote: post #295
0x737368 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I am willing to concede that his approach and ideas might not be novel, it is his fantastic delivery of lectures and connecting different phenomena in a network to explain/support a concept is what draws me to his stuff. As a counterpoint, I really like Campbell's a Hero with a Thousand Faces, but darn if his book isn't hard to read. I think it's a fair argument against him, but it is not Campbell or Evola who…

He is captivating to a certain audience, but so are televangelists. That's the whole crux of the problem. If you recognize it as being entertainment and an aesthetic/subculture, that's fine. But Peterson is presented as a leading thinker to people, which is a problem. Despite what I've written, Peterson isn't even someone I'm specifically interested in, it's more about the underlying issue of which he is a prominent…

>He is captivating to a certain audience, but so are televangelists. That's the whole crux of the problem. If you recognize it as being entertainment and an aesthetic/subculture, that's fine. But Peterson is presented as a leading thinker to people, which is a problem. Despite what I've written, Peterson isn't even someone I'm specifically interested in, it's more about the underlying issue of which he is a prominent example.

I think that's a reasonable point. I'd still maintain that his message is useful and his ideas are, imo, interesting and illuminating. I haven't thought of JP-televangelists comparison before so I'd need some time to mull it over. But in my personal experience I listened to Peterson for a while, internalised what I thought was useful and moved on. Whether televangelists have the same effect - I don't know.

>Consider the following: during the Žižek debate, it became clear that not only was the Communist Manifesto the only Marxist text he had read, but he could not accurately recall some of its main points. And it's a really short pamphlet! That means that Peterson had expounded at length on Marxism, made it a central point of his critique and philosophical brand, while having almost no knowledge or understanding of it. Even with the most charitable interpretation, that goes way beyond just occasionally making mistakes due to a discursive style.

I wish I had more knowledge on Marxism/leftists school of thoughts right now to have a more interesting discussion on this, but I don't. It does look bad on Peterson that he was so ill prepared for that debate.

Having said that, we cannot not say that there isn't a cultural shift happening in the academia and in our societies at large. Traditional cultural norms are being thrown out and in some extreme cases even shamed(not saying that's a 100% bad thing, but imo such things must not be done rashly), instead of bringing equality there are some attempts of inversing the inequality, and people are getting cancelled/silenced/fired/deplatformed in some cases simply for having a different opinion. Whether this is Marxism or not is really irrelevant, what's important is that we note these changes and act to mitigate them, and I believe this is what Peterson was referring to as "cultural Marxists". It might be embarrassing if he got the name wrong, but it doesn't change WHAT he's talking about.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#306

Post by bjoli »

mcguire wrote: post #277
Retric wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raw IQ scores aren’t very stable over time. At 90+ peoples raw scores have dropped significantly vs age 30. Trauma, Alcoholism, and other diseases can also lower scores dramatically. You can correlate adult IQ’s with tests taken by 2 year olds, but the individual raw scores again vary significantly. It seems stable because of how age is adjusting for and the huge sweet spot where 64.2% of the population is grouped be…

My high school transcripts show the results of IQ tests taken in the 4th and 6th grade. Between those two tests, my IQ had dropped by 10%.

What test was it? I have only taken one test (WAIS and WISC, which are more or less the same but for adults and children respectively). It takes about 1 to 1.5 hours and is done alone with the psychologist that administers it.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#307

Post by heliodor »

criddell wrote: post #287
todd8 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to personality, I believe that there are likely a number of independent factors, perhaps hundreds, that affect in some way where one’s position lies on each of the axes of personality. These factors could be particular childhood traumas, birth order, parent’s behavior/addiction, childhood friends, and genetic factors. Even if each of these numerous random variable is binomial the central limit theorem ap…

This article [1] about what determines a persons handedness starts out: > Like most aspects of human behavior, handedness is a complex trait that appears to be influenced by multiple factors, including genetics, environment, and chance. It goes on to say that there are up to 40 genes that contribute. It seems like it's complex enough that the central limit theorem should apply yet handedness is definitely a bimodal d…

Handedness is not what people care about in discussing personality assessment.

Check out the big five model: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion.

On each dimension, many people are average and a few are on each extreme. At least that's the world I've observed. It's not a world full of extreme introverts and extreme extroverts. Most people are in the middle of that scale.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#308

Post by IndySun »

dfn43589 wrote: post #229
IndySun wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, the test has been dismissed enough times. People are far too complex. It has recently been renamed and represented by Jordan Peterson. Unfortunately, the JP readers I've met who mention his version were unaware of the MB version. The critical history of MB should serve as a warning. They are not eureka moments, but smaller steps.

>It has recently been renamed and represented by Jordan Peterson. You've been downvoted because the OCEAN/Big Five model is not Myers Briggs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator

Ok. Thank you.

My reply would be...

By any other name.

Another way of how 'not' to understand the world, but a way to simplify it, for both benign and nefarious reasons. Control is in there somewhere. And it is more than mildly concerning that people here understand something that is considered deeply complicated by most, computers, and yet seem convinced humans can be pigeon-holed into a few 'types'.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#309

Post by runarberg »

esperent wrote: post #150
yarcob wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument sounds like it's taken out of a motivational book. You can do it! You can become a better person! You just need to change every single detail of your life and you will be a better person!

Well, I was trying to phrase it positively because the original example I came up with was that if your entire family dies in a car crash, it's likely to cause an instant, long lasting negative change in your personality. Guess I swung it too far in the other direction haha. But changes can be negative in a less drastic way too. For example, I'm sure the forced isolation of the past year has brought out depressive te…

Worth noting is that many psychologists are calling for the end of solitary confinement in the prison system citing the adverse effects it has on inmates personalities.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#310

Post by runarberg »

Udik wrote: post #90
esperent wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with these results is not that they're inaccurate, it's that people think they measure a permanent aspect of themselves. In truth, people's personalities are malleable - if you spend all your time working on a computer, you become more introverted - or at least, you start to express your introverted tendencies more strongly. If you switch jobs and have to spend all your days talking to people, you'll beco…

I just don't understand which of these criticisms doesn't apply to the Big Five too.

They do. The best criticism I see on the Mayers Briggs is the one that attacks the whole notion of personality tests (including Mayers Briggs and the Big 5).

Big 5 is not an established scientific theory, it has never been. In fact in the field of psychology, personality is as useful as a concept as your astrological sign is. There is no evidence that personality trades exists outside of factor analyzing pen and paper tests, let alone that they can be measured and classified.

For personality to be a useful psychological concept it would need to be predictive of behavior. So far we have more evidence that religion has a bigger role then personality traits. E.g. studies find that the more religious people are the less they obey in the Milgram experiment, however there is no evidence that people that score highly on the agreeableness factor do.

Post reply on HN