Conversation

Dan DeRobertis

@chagmed

Mar 28, 2018

why are you putting Myers–Briggs and astrology on the same level?

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In fairness to @failed_buddhist, you don't need to see them as being at the same level. That said, I hardly think MBTI is valid as such - and I say that as someone who used to be able to ascertain someone's MBTI type with very high probability (~80% agreement with test results.)

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It's a very good framing/storytelling device, but otherwise it has little going for it that Big Five doesn't do better and more reliably.

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so pork is invalid because beef has more iron

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Invalid for the sorts of things it's usually claimed to matter for (e.g. job choice, motivational structure...) Big Five is different, I agree.

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Go ahead, find reliable behavioural correlates of MBTI types. It's extremely difficult, but if you can find something replicable I'll grant you that. Most personality typologies suffer from this lack of clear relationship with behaviour, yet they make assertions about it...

symbol creation function

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don’t conflate type theory as a whole with the MBTI, a psychometric test. the latter is only a doorstep to the former. it’s nothing to do with behavior either, it deals with cognitive temperament/orientation directly

symbol creation function

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Jung heavily criticized Freud’s theories as trying to essentially boil human behavior and personality down to affect alone, so his theory makes no comparable pretense

symbol creation function

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big five is better behavior data collection, but pretty useless as an interpretive practical framework for individuals, because it insists on pulling apart the way different factors interact and treating traits as isolated

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Sorry, but there are at least 4 basic errors here. Firstly, MBTI is not Jung's theory. Jung had his own theory. Briggs and her daughter are not Jung. Secondly, MBTI claims to be do all of the things you listed. It doesn't get extra points for actually doing something else.

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Thirdly, there is no conflation. MBTI claims to be the same category of test as Big Five etc., and functionally it is. It just happens to be bad at it. Fourth, I am not saying Big Five is great. I think it sucks. The problem is MBTI doesn't have anything it does better, really.

7:51 AM · Mar 29, 2018Twitter Web Client

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I agree it'd be nice to have a unified personality theory that doesn't view everything analytically, but MBTI makes unjustifiable holistic claims. That's no improvement.

symbol creation function

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the conflation I was referring to was between Jung and MBTI, but as you already stated, we’re on the same page about that. I would disagree that MBTI has less merit than big 5 though - traits do very little to cohesively model personality past a statistical/clinical context

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Big Five doesn't remotely model personality in a cohesive way, that is true. The problem, though, is that MBTI models it worse and claims to know more. There is a discrepancy between the strength of the claims made and their provability. A big discrepancy.

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