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In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

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Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#321

Post by Terretta »

heliodor wrote: post #148
smokey_circles wrote: post #75

I don't know how/why people defend this test. 1. It's inaccurate. And that's not just "technically true", it's very rare that the test reproduces results. 2. Jung's theories (the ones used in the test) aren't just "controversial". They're wrong. He says it himself, in the same document they used to create the test. It is just a cash cow now. The _biggest_ problem with the test is it is harmful, not helpful. People be…

What surprises me about Myers Briggs is that people are placed on each dimension either on one side or on the other. Three no center for each dimension. Yet these traits are normally distributed so most people would fall in the center. Telling most people they are average would not sell well. So yeah, this test is unnecessarily polarizing.

Sort of the main point of the article, wouldn’t you agree?

At least that’s why I gathered it proposed a letter “x” for centered traits.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#322

Post by Terretta »

einpoklum wrote: post #240

Having taken this "test" a good number of years ago, and I remember I often did not have a proper straight answer to give. On many questions, I would want to say something like: * You're mis-representing the choices. * Well, you say that, but I'm not sure what it would actually mean. * Depends on the circumstances. * I'm not sure. * I might choose one option and then regret it, and maybe switch to another. * Those th…

That’s why they sample each trait repeatedly through a dozen lenses. Just do it fast without thinking. Unless you’re STJ then I can’t help you. :-)

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#323

Post by Bakary »

0x737368 wrote: post #305
Bakary wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is a bit counter-intuitive, but the cultural shift you describe is a mirror image of Peterson's popularity, in the sense that both are the result of sloppy, black-and-white, and adversarial thinking and ideological repackaging.

If this cultural shift is a concern due to its effect on society and its norms, then Peterson would be a counter-productive solution, since this sort of person being considered an intellectual worth following is a step down from these very same norms. It's like putting out a house fire with a flamethrower. The problem is the breakdown in informed discourse.

The result is that the money and attention of people concerned about cultural shifts is then funneled into the pockets of people like Peterson or Shapiro or whomever, with some pretty unenviable results. You end up in a situation where people talk of rediscovering traditional norms and opposing them to new norms, without actually understanding what the traditional norms are or engaging with them beyond vague social-media ready descriptions. What could have been effective or at least thoughtful conservatism paradoxically turns into a post-modern parody of itself, with plenty of references to the aesthetic aspect (flags, slogans, freedom of speech etc.) without the substance that originally generated those symbols. And this substance and world lying outside of the Petersons and Shapiros starts to shrink because they monopolize the attention of people who would have otherwise engaged with deeper material and applied it in productive ways.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#324

Post by Terretta »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #31
paulie_a wrote: post #12

I find it amazing that anyone uses it in the business world. Next up HR will be adding tarrot cards and oiji boards Then again I find it amazing that anyone uses it at all. It's complete trash

It should not be surprising at all. How many companies have you worked at where part of your performance review involves dividing and averaging ordinal numbers? If you give someone some sort of numeric rating in N categories you cannot mathematically (trivially) average these rating to get a meaningful score. Ordinal numbers only allow you to say A is greater than B and B is greater than C therefore A is greater than…

HR isn’t spending time on this ritual for performance reasons, but for risk management. It doesn’t serve your desired purpose, and the math would make no sense. Yet it perfectly satisfices what’s asked of them.

// https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#325

Post by anotherfish »

ncmncm wrote: post #216
anotherfish wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, horoscopes are fun. I used to mess with my school by shuffling the horoscopes in the weekly newsletter. No one noticed or complained.

The purpose of horoscopes is to keep people from doing the same thing every day. It doesn't matter which sign you check, or even if you check the same one each time. So, scrambling them did not interfere with what people used them for. There was no reason for anyone to complain. The astro-BS just randomizes assignments, so everybody doesn't all get the same advice at the same time. You have spent years feeling smug,…

I felt quite good actually both then and now. But you seem angrier than you should be. Certainly angrier than someone who would have wrote "It doesn't matter which sign you check" and actually meant it.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#326

Post by [deleted] »

cb321 wrote: post #266
specialist wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the exact same person at church, work, hanging out with your buddies watching sports (or playing board games), doorbelling for a political campaign, baby sitting your nieces, etc? Per the article, your traits are on a spectrum. Not binary. You may be more extroverted at church and less at work.

While the article does mention non-"binarizing" (I prefer "non-discretizing" as the more common parlance) in the sense of treating the 4 dimensions as axes not buckets, the article does not mention context sensitivity like church-home, buddies, babysitting, same/opposite sex, older/younger, etc., etc.

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#327

Post by lcuff »

nicoburns wrote: post #181
lcuff wrote: post #11

The scale titles are terrible. Based on Kersey's work, I think of the four scales as answers to four questions: (1) How do you get your batteries recharged: Extraverts do so by being with people, introverts by the world of ideas. (It's not about your social skills. I'm an introvert who can easily converse with strangers). (2) How do you take in the world? Details, or larger, vaguer impressions. My wife's friend walks…

If your 1-4 are in I/E, S/N, F/T, P/J order then I have this instead: (1 E/I) How much external stimulation do you prefer. this may be socialisation (Fe/Te), but it can be more general than that, to include things like physical sense stimulation (Se), and exposure to external ideas (Ne). (2 S/N) I largely agree. (3 F/T) Whether you focus primarily on values: good/bad (F) or facts (true/false) (T). (4) What you've put…

Yes, that 1-4 was my ordering. Interesting, alternative (external stimulation). As I think about external stimulation though, I wonder if being stimulated by people is fundamentally different from other stimulating things (art, ideas, the stimulation of being in nature). I'm guessing this is an area where the theory could fruitfully get more complex.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#328

Post by mcphage »

anotherfish wrote: post #325
ncmncm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of horoscopes is to keep people from doing the same thing every day. It doesn't matter which sign you check, or even if you check the same one each time. So, scrambling them did not interfere with what people used them for. There was no reason for anyone to complain. The astro-BS just randomizes assignments, so everybody doesn't all get the same advice at the same time. You have spent years feeling smug,…

I felt quite good actually both then and now. But you seem angrier than you should be. Certainly angrier than someone who would have wrote "It doesn't matter which sign you check" and actually meant it.

You interpreted them as being angry, but I think they were just laughing at you.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#329

Post by ncmncm »

mcphage wrote: post #328
anotherfish wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt quite good actually both then and now. But you seem angrier than you should be. Certainly angrier than someone who would have wrote "It doesn't matter which sign you check" and actually meant it.

You interpreted them as being angry, but I think they were just laughing at you.

I am laughing at the mystery of existence. None of us have anything to be smug about, but we can laugh about it. Have to, really.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#330

Post by anotherfish »

mcphage wrote: post #328
anotherfish wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt quite good actually both then and now. But you seem angrier than you should be. Certainly angrier than someone who would have wrote "It doesn't matter which sign you check" and actually meant it.

You interpreted them as being angry, but I think they were just laughing at you.

Accusations of being smug are usually made by people who chose a team and you've encroached or offended that team somehow. There's often an aspect of admonishment in using that word as well.

As for my part it wasn't based on arrogance as you'd likely expect. It was simply the result of a bet. I won that bet since no one noticed.

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