Discuss.
Why is MBTI evil?
Discuss.
Because it was designed by an Ethical type?
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An ILI at rest tends to remain at rest
and an ILI in motion is probably not an ILI
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In the Evil MBTI, the focus is on the ego functions, which are naturally hidden from sight. You need to understand other people as much as you need to understand yourself, and for that you need to understand the subconscious functions.
Furthermore, the cognative functions are not well defined. Giving the IM elements and functions a better definition changes everything. The introverts in socionics are more realistic.
The quartra make more sense, better than the idea of guardians, artisans, idealists and rationals. Any given quartra can integrate the sensors, feelers, thinkers and intuitives together. This makes them less elite, they too feel more natural and real.
Everything is much improved.
Because it is geopolitics-polluted and (by now) conservative dominated? The dominant voices in the MBTI groups are quite insane, I must say.
laughed out loud at this.Originally Posted by EyeSeeCold
Well, I've been bitching about the MBTI for quite a while now.
I can describe the *ways* that it's bad. Or I can speculate about the reasons why it has become that way and stayed that way.
Or I can talk about the things that are good about the MBTI. It's good because it's easily accessible in the USA and there's a high likelihood that a random person, such as myself, will stumble upon it in college, and become fascinated with personality types.
After learning that personality types existed, it was easier for me to accept that there were some patterns in myself that I probably could not easily change. That's actually frustrating, if you still don't have any idea about things like what kind of job you can do, or whether or not you'd be able to start your own business and succeed at it (which I have wanted to do).
So it's good for catching a large number of random people and telling them that personality types exist.
And it types everybody as INTP. That sucks. The test gives inaccurate results. But nobody is doing anything to, for instance, change the wording of the questions so that more people will understand what they mean. Instead they probably just blame the test-takers for not thinking hard enough.
Tests will always be harder for the types of people who don't like to choose logical categories. If someone asks you, 'Do you fit this definition, or that definition?' and definitions are that person's greatest weakness, then they won't find it easy to take an entire test full of questions like that and actually know the right answers to all of them, and they will have the strongest feeling of 'Well, both of these answers are true sometimes.'
But that's true of all the tests, not just MBTI.
MBTI is sort of copyrighted, I guess. (I don't know the details.) Somebody 'owns' it and somebody is making money off it. And whoever they are, they seem to have no desire whatsoever to change the wording of it. They themselves might not be good test designers, but instead have taken responsibility for a test that somebody else designed, and all that they know how to do is keep it and protect it, sort of like a tradition.
So... ehh, we'll just have to make our own underground, open-source tests, and the more tests there are floating around, the better it is, I guess. We'll just have to compete against them.
it isnt. its just a system with its uses and flaws like every other. i like how functions are described in mbti better than the more caricatured ones in socionics. i also appreciate that it doesnt revolve around trying to predict who you'll be able to form good relationships with.
the main flaw with it imo has to do with how its used, with the 4 dichotomies being of primary importance and not enough emphasis on the functions.
* ducks *
Because it doesn't use Jung yet calls itself Jung typology. So that's a lie or something?
Also N types are supposed to be more rare and gifted? By my and others' measures that's laughable.
Extraverted, logical, irrational... what does the V stand for?
But seriously, MBTI just touches the tip of the iceberg, in terms of human personality. It observes external behaviors, places people much more quickly into boxes, and doesn't touch the underlying psychological phenomenon, HOW a person observes reality.
MBTI = how a person interacts with reality. (more action focused, real and observable)
Socionics = how a person perceives reality. (more thought focused, subconscious)
Socionics is much more psychological, more in-depth, and more accurately describes the inner workings of a person's brain, and their perception. Therefore, it can more accurately describe someone's personality, and goes to more accurate, in-depth measures of describing intertype relationships, which MBTI has trouble even touching.
Therefore, Socionics>MBTI.
A gun, in and of itself, is not evil.
How a person uses that gun, however, may be 'evil'.
Imo, same would apply to MBTI and yes, even socionics.
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
Yes, and a lot of corporations/schools use it briefly to classify people and put them into different fields, or recommend career paths, when really they greatly mistype people!! What was the statistic, I think 75% of people who take the MBTI, are typed DIFFERENTLY than the 1st time they take it? This is why MBTI is "evil", because it's misused, leads people to misunderstand themselves further, and just a very general, inaccurate approach to a deeper science.
On the positive side, MBTI is a nice gateway to socionics!
Heresy!
What the classification is used for. MBTI can place someone in the wrong career field, wrong career path, wrong division in their company, for their personality, which can lead to years, and years, of frustration.
Socionics is much more intricate to be used on a massive level for quick-typing and placing, and even if one types their socionics type wrong, it's still very easy to gain a new friendship or relationship with someone you want. Not nearly as cemented as devoting years towards a career path.
And now we're back to it's how it's used that brings on this 'evil'.
If socionics were to be used to place people into career fields, it currently comes with just as much risk of placing someone in the wrong career field, wrong career path, wrong division in a company, for their actual IMtype, which can lead to years and years of frustration.
Socionics currently lacks any grounding.
It currently lacks any empirical evidence or methods for checking validity of a typing. Or has little more than MBTI's 'observations'.
You advocate a "quick typing and placing" on a massive level. Yet even in this forum, even in russian socionics schools, there is enough disagreement that you're risking wrongful placement. You risk cementing someone into devoting years towards a wrong career path. Just as much as MBTI does.
I would also say, using your own words, that
"even if one were to type their [MBTI] type wrong, it's still very easy to gain a new friendship or relationship with someone you want."
Kassie had a good point.
You mistyped yourself...how many times?
If you had devoted yourself to a career based on those self typings, or worse, if you had devoted yourself based on this forum's various typings of you, you would be the one carrying the risk and consequences. Think about what those could have been. And you think socionics people are ready to impose that onto others?
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
Kassie, anndelise, this thread is about why MBTI is evil. Please assume we have already established that it is.
It doesn't hurt to have alternative views.
MBTI is evil that it's vague with the prominence in the dichotomies. I have a really big problem with the E/I scale because it's just a source of confusion. Come to think of it, so would the other scales.
I concur with anndelise. The N bias didn't come out just like that, lol.
언제나.
Fine, I'd still say that it's not the religion of MBTI that is evil,... it's how it's faithful followers use it that creates the 'evil'.
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
i mainly think MBTI is an awkward system because of the way it doesn't make polar claims about the relations between types. as a result the claims of the system are tautological and don't add any new information. you get a test that asks "do you spend much time socializing?" and the description says "this type spends a lot of time socializing." only slight transformations between information inputed and outputed take place.
other than that the MBTI does a lot of things better than the socionics community. they have a much better developed battery of statistical and experimental research, which is a major requirement for properly developing explanations or models of any phenomenon. before you can seriously theorize about how anything works, you need an extensive array of data about the observable characteristics of it's workings.
supposedly there are russian socionists that have done work along these lines. if we could somehow get ahold of some of their results that would help the quality of discussion in this place along a lot.
The tests are a huge problem.
Not only is it that "E", "N", "T", and "P", as well as their counterparts, are looked at as entirely self-contained units, but the tests themselves roughly equate "F" and "S" with "retard" (in ascending order as far as potency is concerned), slaughter "P" and "J" by conflating them with all sorts of unrelated things, and use "E" and "I" as a metric for how big of a people person someone happens to be at the specific point in time of taking the test. From there, a jumble of internals is created...
I've consistently tested as ENTJ in MBTI. I am probably not an LIE.
p . . . a . . . n . . . d . . . o . . . r . . . a
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I always test the same type in MBTI and relate to their descriptions the most. That's one good thing about it. Maybe people who always type differently are confused about themselves?
Too commercial.
In a sentence, MBTI can be evil the way socionics can be evil the way a belief system and a worldview can be evil.
To the extent that we allow a system to take control and replace our own conscious decision making processes, it is evil. To the extent that we allow it to color our views of the objective world, it is evil. What more one we to allow to form our expectations of who we are, dictate our actions, and even our relationships with people?
Therefore I deem socionics the greater evil by far.
Because it is the Other. The Other is to be hated and feared. No reason needed beyond that general principle.
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
i see in socionics the possibility for liberation from a system of stereotypes and prejudices that is evil in much the same way as you describe, held by many people who have not been in contact with alternate models. the alternative to socionics is not necessarily a "clean slate".
Nah, Ethicals can be awesome theorists. More like because it was designed by a Ti-PoLR.
What do these signs mean—,
, etc.? Why cannot socionists use symbols Ne, Ni etc. as in MBTI? Just because they have somewhat different meaning. Socionics and MBTI, each in its own way, have slightly modified the original Jung's description of his 8 psychological types. For this reason,
Just one example: in MBTI, Se (extraverted sensing) is associated with life pleasures, excitement etc. By contrast, the socionic function(extraverted sensing) is first and foremost associated with control and expansion of personal space (which sometimes can manifest in excessive aagression, but often also manifests in a capability of managing lots of people and things).
For this reason, we consider comparison between MBTI types and socionic types by functions to be rather useless than useful.
-Victor Gulenko, Dmitri Lytov
The way I see it, it represents the replacement of a simple system to a more elaborate and convoluted one. Both with its own sets of pitfalls, except that the dangers inherent in the latter are hazier and harder to catch hold of, due to our unfamiliarity with the alluring traps of complexity. It is liberating at the beginning. But as we extend deeper, getting fascinated by and hungering for the elusive holy grail of answers, liberation turns into a prison of the mind of a different form creeping up on us unawares. So immersed are we in the seeking of liberation that this very desire leads us to an imprisonment like no other. Like the ancient kings of yore, who in their love of life delve into an avid search for immortality only to die without properly living.
The alternatives may not necessarily be a clean slate, yes. But at least a cleaner slate than this, and one less strangling.
I've had an overdose of caffeine (my idea of high) and I'm not sure if I'm writing sense.
Last edited by InkStrider; 09-30-2011 at 07:29 AM.
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