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In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

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Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#331

Post by RogerL »

iso1210 wrote: post #201
MattGaiser wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was once a poll of engineers at the tech company I work at, and I think the results were like 70% INTJ, 25% INTP, and 5% other. If MBTI lacked all predictive power, you would expect a distribution roughly equivalent to that of the general population. Could people self-select what they "want" to be? Sure, but it's still predictive of something in that case. I was once part of an accelerator that used the Herrm…

Does that make the information actionable? Does being an INTJ allow a prediction on anything else other than being an INTJ? What is the point in clustering them? If your team is 75% ravenclaw, 20% Hufflepuff and 5% other, how does that help? Are you going to go out and try to recruit a Slytherin? What if your team is 45% Rachel, 15% Chandler, 20% Joey? What benefit do you get from clustering people in this way?

You are spot on. I would suspect that everyone that I work with falling this cluster. You could sum us up as a bunch of nerdy engineers, and I don't think anyone would really take exception with that.

But it captures almost nothing except a very small range of behavior. We are very different people. 'Sally' lights up whenever she talks of her children, but mostly pines to be a librarian one day. we have cluster b people, we have Jokers and humorous people, perhaps a bit of Asperger's, adventurers and the meek, storytellers, partiers, tea totalers. One seems to live for firing people, another I'm pretty sure I cannot model another human mind. some of us paint, play music, others disdain that stuff. Jocks and couch potatoes.

Those that say they use the mtbi for self-understanding puzzle me, because it tells you nothing of any of these very human traits. knowing somebody has one of the cluster b traits for example tells you a lot about how you might need to modify your behavior to interact with them successfully in a work environment, and MB days nothing. I could go on and on on what it is not measuring.

Yeah we're engineers. I knew that. I didn't need the test.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#332

Post by pdamoc »

jplr8922 wrote: post #217
pdamoc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I now understand it as a gateway to Jung ideas, which I find helpful during my current period of professional questionning. Jung's ideas are quite attractive, I'll give you that. We all love a good story, especially if feels so full of meaning. That being said, I would point out that there are stories and good research that might be a lot more helpful. I would suggest: Chris Argyris work on management, especially h…

Hi pdamoc! First of all I want to thank you for sharing modern authors. I was aware of Carol Dweck's older theories and Toyota management model. I do plan to learn from your suggestions. Have they been helpful in your career? One of the fist thing I've noticed after I started Zen meditation training 5 years ago was that I had recurrent daydreams about killing my bosses. I switched position 3 times until I found mysel…

The challenge of scientific thinking is becoming aware of the ways in which your mind might lead you to wrong conclusions. This is the Toyota way and what Chris Argyris calls productive reasoning. It is becoming aware of your cognitive biases [1] and using processes to overcome them. You don't need randomized controlled trials but you do need to emit hypotheses about your actions, act and then evaluate the results of your actions.

Mindful meditation has been proven useful and has helped me too. What also helped me was writing exercises (like the Self Authoring program [2] )

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitiv...

[2] https://www.selfauthoring.com/

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#333

Post by Smaug123 »

ncmncm wrote: post #314
Smaug123 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the purpose is merely to understand how people different from you view the world, then why take the test at all, rather than just reading about the ~sixteen personality types MBTI distinguishes between? The MBTI consultant who administered the test to me couldn't answer that question.

I don't need to take the test to know which box I'm in. But I do need other people to take it, to know which box they fit in. Is this really hard to understand?

If I've worked with someone for three years, shouldn't I have discovered how to work with them along the way already?

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#334

Post by 0x737368 »

Bakary wrote: post #323
0x737368 wrote: post #305

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…

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 intellect…

I'm sorry but I don't follow you here.

>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.

Peterson DOES encourage informed discourse. Unlike some public figures that are wont to use strawman arguments and/or voice their opinions in an echo chamber, I've seen Peterson go on almost hostile interviews, keeping calm and giving accurate and measured answers to their questions whilst ignoring their jabs(see Cathy Newman or Vice interviews for example). And as was mentioned before, he's also known to change his opinion if he's convinced that he was wrong - now you show me another public figure that's willing to do that, not too many of those from what I've seen.

>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.

I can't speak about Shapiro since I haven't watched him or his stuff, but I have no problem with Peterson getting money or attention from his lectures, interviews, or books. I cannot find what harm his material can cause either.

>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.

I think it's healthy to be at least A LITTLE bit sceptical of new norms. Our society was pretty much the same for at least thousands of years and in a few decades we're changing things up very drastically. Are you that sure that it's not going to cause issues that can have dire consequences in the future? I'm not.

I'd like to reiterate again that I don't think Peterson is as conservative as you seem to be implying, he doesn't want everybody being under Sharia-like social rules of Christian propriety. He does seem to lean towards traditional family values, which I don't think is a bad thing. Otherwise he seems to champion personal freedom, especially against any form of tyranny.

With regards to him not understanding traditional norms I'd like to disagree. If you can show me some examples of where he does that please do.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#335

Post by dyno-might »

souprock wrote: post #303
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?…

Sorry, I accidentally pushed it to live before I was finished revising it, then hurriedly (but not hurriedly enough, clearly) pulled it down again. Blame me, not the site.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#336

Post by dyno-might »

armoredkitten wrote: post #286

I've got a PhD in psychology. I have things. I. could. say. about this topic. But I would like to emphasize, in the strongest of terms, that Cronbach's alpha is not a measurement of test-retest reliability. Cronbach's alpha is a measure to answer the question, "If we ask five questions to measure the same thing, how well do they agree?" Test-retest reliability says, "If we ask these same questions X days/months/years…

Do you have any pointers for better studies regarding test-retake reliability with the MBTI and/or Big Five? The Wikipedia page does not appear to be helpful in this regard. As far as I can tell, every citation is regarding 16 discrete bins.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#337

Post by Bakary »

0x737368 wrote: post #334
Bakary wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intellect…

I'm sorry but I don't follow you here. >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. Peterson DOES encour…

To avoid confusion around semantics, I'll try to draw up a more stripped down version of the argument.

Cultural shifts linked to specific left-wing ideas underway in various parts of society → concern based on the idea of the foundations of society being weakened or changed too quickly as a result → public figure comments against the former shift in an accessible and engaging way → fanbase forms around public figure, who is then held in high esteem for their work → criticism of the figure is primarily interpreted as censorship and deplatforming

The above would be the simplified and idealized description of Peterson or another such figure from one of their supporters. The following is what I believe is happening instead:

breakdown in discourse over time for various factors → ideologies spring up based on their online marketability and accessibility instead of their depth → the change oriented/left-wing version turns into intensified identity politics that moves away from economic concerns → the conservative oriented version turns into a decaf, pretend version of what it used to be → media personalities from each camp do battle online with debates that are essentially entertainment only but are interpreted as discourse by fans on either side

From this we can see that a supporter of Peterson would see the Newman interview as an example of bravery and intellectual strength, whereas from the second framework it would look like another addition to the huge frothing pile of low-quality infotainment. This is what I meant by using a flamethrower on a flaming house. Peterson himself and others like him contribute to the alteration of traditional norms instead of defending them. Or to be more precise, the fact that they are the figures being listened to is the mechanism that accelerates this decline. This is what I meant with the Fizz Buzz analogy: Peterson and co. would have been laughed out of the room by earlier generations of conservatives for not having basic knowledge of the issues they argue about, and these would in turn have been horrified by the idea that a speaker's accessibility and popularity would be seen as a justification of their worth.

In the end, you have people who nod in appreciation when Peterson "destroys" a reporter/student/heckler in a meme-worthy contest, but don't actually know much at all about the Western canon or the traditional values they claim allegiance to or even the ideas that they claim to oppose. They repeat the words but don't actually live these values, and this is a direct consequence of decaf intellectualism taking up all of that mental space. The conservatism is then ironically no longer conservative, in the sense that it no longer conserves the norms it references.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#338

Post by ncmncm »

Smaug123 wrote: post #333
ncmncm wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to take the test to know which box I'm in. But I do need other people to take it, to know which box they fit in. Is this really hard to understand?

If I've worked with someone for three years, shouldn't I have discovered how to work with them along the way already?

Maybe, someday, you will have to work with somebody new.

Maybe somebody who could never in a million years do what you do, but finds things easy that you could never do. You could hope they are better at figuring out how to communicate with very different people than you are. Or, you could learn it yourself. It turns out not to be so hard, with the right tools. MB is one. It's not the only one, and not the best for any particular thing, but it's quick and easy to pick up.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#339

Post by nicoburns »

runarberg wrote: post #301
nicoburns wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't have proof. I'm merely correcting the parent on what the theory claims. That said, the only thing that "underlying baseline from which your personality starts" really claims is that there is a "nature" (as opposed to nurture) component to people's personalities.

While I'm sure not everyone would agree with that, it's not exactly implausible. Indeed it must surely seem likely to anyone who has observed how wildly differently young children react to the same situation. And has been borne out in twin studies, etc.

Now that doesn't mean that the MBTI has the right theory about the nature of the "nature" component, but my point is that if you are taking the MBTI to be a description of someone's total personality rather than just the nature component of their personality, then you are completely misconstruing what it is claiming.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#340

Post by ncmncm »

anotherfish wrote: post #330
mcphage wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Obviously no one would ever notice.

Horoscopes are the archetypal example of a thing that doesn't matter. "Filler" is the newpaper term, also said of the stories laid out between the ads (which weren't). Nowadays we say "content".

Winning didn't mean you were any smarter than average; the other guy was an idiot. But despite horoscopes being maximally random before they got to you, to which you therefore added exactly none, they have a purpose and a valid use that you failed to perceive, year after year, since. I don't use them; but people who do are not, thereby, wrong.

So, your smugness is a case of imagining yourself smarter than you turned out to be. In life, few will explain your mistakes to you so carefully.

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