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Everyone knows that MBTI is pseudoscience, barely better than astrology - with too-vague descriptions and "well most of these sorta fit me" personality descriptions. Well, you're only halfway right! Buckle up kids, I'm gonna take us on an overly-detailed steelman of MBTI.

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1) I always found the astrology comparisons kinda weird because I accidentally ran the experiment. When I was a young teenager, 13 or 14, someone sent me my horoscope and I was surprised.

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2) It described me so well! I knew enough, even then, to know the universe didn’t work that way so something else had to be going on. So I read some of the other horoscopes, and sure enough those described me pretty damn well too. Mystery solved.

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3) Well, a few years later someone sent me a MBTI test and I was shocked at how well it described me. But this time I was onto them. I knew the trick. So I read 2 or 3 of the other personality profiles. I was shocked.

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4) Is this what was going on in other peoples’ heads all the time? The descriptions of the other personalities were utterly alien to me. I couldn’t really believe other people thought that way but people I actually knew and trusted confirmed it.

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5) They’d been aliens this whole time! It was a very eye-opening experience. Now obviously I’m just one data point. MBTI might still be pseudoscience, but it’s at least less pseudoscience than astrology.

Aella

@Aella_Girl

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@Jake81447131

This is very similar to my experience learning about MBTI.

10:09 PM · Nov 21, 2021