Scientific and unscientific typologies

[Myst]

All typology and all of psychology is unscientific if you define science as based on empiricism. You can't empirically measure people's motivations, feelings, and thoughts. You can empirically measure things that correlate with people's motivations, feelings, and thoughts, but to do that, you have to know what people's motivations, feelings, and thoughts are in the first place, which is inherently unempirical. It's like my criticism of the Milgram experiment. To me, the Milgram experiment, as shown in recordings, is bad acting with a fake B-movie machine and Wilhelm screams, and the situation of shocking someone with a heart condition in a scientific experiment to see if it'll help them learn through pain sounds like a bad B-movie plot that'd never happen. I think the reason most people shocked the "student" was to try to befuddle the experimenter and show how obviously false they thought it was, like some sort of reverse psychology, and a lot of first-person accounts do mention that the "teacher" thought it was fake. But the theory put in place is: if people can resist authority, they won't press the button, and if they do, they won't. But there's absolutely nothing that can empirically be done to show that my explanation is wrong, and if someone did that, someone would come up with another explanation and that'd have to be controlled for and so on. As far as people can be creative and tell what's going on or even have an idea of what's going on in a psychological experiment even if it's false, they can't remotely be controlled for in experiments. Psychology can only rely on case studies and look how that's turned out.

I don't like how there are so many uncontrolled for factors in these experiments either but it doesn't make the entire discipline of psychology unscientific. It still follows the scientific methodology. This science is just still in its early phase. Also it has very different aspects - social psychology experiments like the Milgram one are very different from the cognitive psychology experiments performed using EEG. Etc.

Also, the Big Five is nonsense to me. For one, look at "Conscientiousness". It clearly includes both an egotistical drive for accomplishment, a desire to do one's duty to please others, and a fearful desire not to fail due to possible punishments and losses, but it only looks at the superficial trait of people getting things done. "Agreeableness" is likewise a combination of sensitivity (which I think is really the opposite of "Extraversion"), optimism (which correlates with "Extraversion" and shouldn't be put in the same trait), and guilt, which don't necessarily correlate with each other. All the Big Five sub-traits together are probably expressed through the "Big" traits in a way that triangulates people's motivations and characteristics (such as if someone is abysmally low on both Agreeableness and Extraversion, they're probably a sensitive, hurt cynic without a guilt complex, while if they're low on Agreeableness and high on Extraversion, they're probably a completely insensitive, unapologetic con artist who fits the typical "psychopath" description), but then most tests assume that the "Big" traits are the fundamental aspects themselves and don't weigh the sub-traits equally.

Actually I do have the problem with Big5 with subfactors correlating too much for my taste, yes. It's funny how you interpreted Conscientiousness but I don't really agree with the conclusion on artists and philosophers. Too much of a taste of conspiracy theories there with conclusions drawn from limited data.

Socionics is a Ti construction of how things could work in reality - so Ti and Ne. Working from the bottom up from various aspects of reality, the model that follows makes sense and holds together in a coherent way. People however don't cooperate with the model, people don't quite fit it as neatly as they should, and that's where the disconnect comes in. Explanations that fit various observations of people are added in to try to make it fit better, and so socionics itself has to stretch in new ways and lose a little bit of its original coherence to cover things.

I have certainly seen some people do this but it's a really bad way of trying to apply the model, yeah. Unfortunately this is because the Socionics model as put together is invalid in the first place anyway even though some ideas are good.

[squark]

I have certainly seen some people do this but it's a really bad way of trying to apply the model, yeah. Unfortunately this is because the Socionics model as put together is invalid in the first place anyway even though some ideas are good.

If you're going to quote me, might as well leave my name on the quote. It's not about typing, or what "some people do." Every single type description ever written was made to try to fit the model to real people. Every single one tries to capture a sort of stereotype and in doing so each author infuses their own ideas, biases and deviations. The type descriptions were written to demonstrate how the model applies to real people. Things have to stretch a bit to do this. The model (referring to model A) itself makes perfect sense, it's internally coherent - it just doesn't entirely fit real living people in all their variations and permutations. Type descriptions and explanations try to cover this gap and morph the categories a bit in the process. The model, and the explanations of the model aren't the same thing.

[DavidH]

Dishonest individuals wreck any system. In a system that includes subjective correlating with objective it is simple for the system to result in not. Ten people take a test. Ten people are typed. Ten people are given descriptions of their thought processes. One person lies. One person states to prove they are lying. The entire system must be altered to accommodate a lie. The entire system is now dishonest.

[Singu]

Well at any rate, the rest of the world has greatly moved on from the worlds of Jung, Socionics, Freud and other psychoanalytic theories... Perhaps the old Soviet world has been stuck in a time-loop for a while (perhaps most don't even have access to the latest brain scanning technologies)... and the "edgy" Westerners are "rediscovering" this theory, and treating it as if it's some grand ancient wisdom...

The fact of the matter is, a lot of psychoanalysts back in the days made a lot of assumptions about the mind and how it worked, even though it was not really knowable (even most cognitive psychologies these days are statistical and evidence-based). The vast majority of them have been proven to be wrong, but perhaps a few of them were right.

[Pallas]

Too much of a taste of conspiracy theories there with conclusions drawn from limited data.

You mentioning that elsewhere a while back pretty much made me think about the dynamic that's going on here more (which I also mentioned). I do think businesses are using MBTI to try to weed people out in a sense, and I do think they're trying to weed out the most intelligent and creative people not because some stereotypes that they can't work, but because they know when they're being cheated and they tend to feel entitled to a higher salary, more raises, and all of those sorts of things, which means less profits for business owners, who feel pressure due to owning a business being very high risk and pretty close to gambling.

So it's just easier to promote less intelligent people higher in the hierarchy and say that the reason more intelligent and creative people aren't being promoted has to do with some other factor, and best of all to silence them as much as possible so their ideas like "hey, maybe you're working too much for too little pay" don't contaminate less intelligent people's minds, which means putting them low as possible in the hierarchy since worthiness of an idea = authority of the speaker to many if not most people. This does have pretty disastrous implications for society at large, but that isn't the proximal cause in the slightest.

Considering that there are "MBTI workshops" after people do the tests, this implies that it's important that people don't cheat the test and put ESTJ to get paid more when they're "really" INTP, and since "MBTI workshops" cost time and money, and co-workers get to know each other perfectly fine (and in more detail than 16 stereotypes could ever provide) without MBTI just through normal interaction, businesses have to be gaining more money then they lose from it.

And most (all?) of the "MBTI is scientific and correlates with Big Five!" studies are done by Elzevier and other shady businesses rather than anyone from a purely academic background. Someone might try to capitalize on the Big Five correlations combined with MBTI lacking a category and people wanting to remove "Neuroticism" (you can pretty much derive Neuroticism from the correlations of the other four in Big Five anyways) but that doesn't have to be pre-planned either. It's just dumb because intuition and openness don't traditionally correlate at all and a lot of "re-interpreting" will have to be done to make that work (ISFP = "Composer", how much more "Open" can you get than Literally Beethoven?).

[DavidH]

Well at any rate, the rest of the world has greatly moved on from the worlds of Jung, Socionics, Freud and other psychoanalytic theories... Perhaps the old Soviet world has been stuck in a time-loop for a while (perhaps most don't even have access to the latest brain scanning technologies)... and the "edgy" Westerners are "rediscovering" this theory, and treating it as if it's some grand ancient wisdom...

The fact of the matter is, a lot of psychoanalysts back in the days made a lot of assumptions about the mind and how it worked, even though it was not really knowable (even most cognitive psychologies these days are statistical and evidence-based). The vast majority of them have been proven to be wrong, but perhaps a few of them were right.

I wouldn't go so far as to say they were disproven.

The topics of psychoanalysis are personal and at times intimate. Freud may have been correct concerning each bit of his sexually focused topics. That is to say. People lie through their teeth when they have something to hide. The closer one gets to a truth the greater others will fight to hide it.

Separate topic. To your thoughts on Big Five I present the following.

Two individuals take the test six times in a year. Individual 1 is inconsistently scattered on each dimension over the six testings but consistently below average on agreeableness and below average on neuroticism. Individual 2 is consistently average on each dimension over the six testings but consistently above average on agreeableness and above average on neuroticism. For each testing the individuals are presented with descriptions of their results. Every odd number test taken they are presented with the correct descriptions for their results. Every even number test they are presented the opposite of the correct descriptions for their results. Individual 1 agrees with all descriptions. Individual 2 agrees with no descriptions.

Which individual is more neurotic? Which individual is more agreeable?

[Nanooka]

You mentioning that elsewhere a while back pretty much made me think about the dynamic that's going on here more (which I also mentioned). I do think businesses are using MBTI to try to weed people out in a sense, and I do think they're trying to weed out the most intelligent and creative people not because some stereotypes that they can't work, but because they know when they're being cheated and they tend to feel entitled to a higher salary, more raises, and all of those sorts of things, which means less profits for business owners, who feel pressure due to owning a business being very high risk and pretty close to gambling.

They could also put that creativity to use helping that business grow, Google has cornered the market in a number of tech fields through sponsoring associated start-ups that basically just let creative techies do their thing. Then whatever they come up with is associated with Google, and it's another tentacle in their monolith.

That seems a lot smarter than losing themselves money and power because someone might sue at some point. Your theory also doesn't really work because it seems like that has much more to do with assertiveness than intellect. Many smart people will let people walk over them because they're pretty low in assertiveness, this is a common problem among geeks who were bullied their whole lives. So, it's especially a problem for the most creative/intellectual types; people who are both assertive and smart are most likely to have a more practically oriented sort of intelligence (Sensing > Intuitive and Te > Ti), also the types most likely to succeed in business to begin with. Many otherwise non-intellectual people will make mountains of molehills and create hell because they're pushy, and that's where most frivolous lawsuits (humongous cost drain) come in.

Considering that there are "MBTI workshops" after people do the tests, this implies that it's important that people don't cheat the test and put ESTJ to get paid more when they're "really" INTP, and since "MBTI workshops" cost time and money, and co-workers get to know each other perfectly fine

Improving group coordination by having co-workers get to know each-other seems like a very likely reason for those. That and the E3 yuppies who occupy most high-level business positions are often dead sold on whatever the latest management and self-improvement woo is. It's one more fad that can help them deal with the nagging self-doubts that get in the way of their constant drive to succeed. These are the people who give "I'm successful for talking about success" people like Tony Robbins their money. It makes complete sense that they'd want to promote "finding yourself through MBTI" and stuff, because they feel they've benefited from it. It beats Deepak Chopra, I guess...

(you can pretty much derive Neuroticism from the correlations of the other four in Big Five anyways)

Certain combinations probably make Neuroticism more likely, but I can't think of any combination that's necessarily neurotic or calm. Every one seems like it can have a neurotic example or a non-neurotic example.

If it maps to anything, it goes best with unhealthy/healthy since in most cases people who score as C are healthier than people who score as L. That's imperfect though because someone who feels no hesitation at squandering all their money through gambling will score as calm, but is clearly unhealthy. In MBTI there's an emerging trend towards adding Turbulent and Assertive in an attachment (e.g. I'm ENTP-T), those are basically just Limbic and Calm.

It's just dumb because intuition and openness don't traditionally correlate at all and a lot of "re-interpreting" will have to be done to make that work (ISFP = "Composer", how much more "Open" can you get than Literally Beethoven?).

If we're basing it on test scores, more open-minded people do tend to score as N and to a lesser degree P. That's how the correlation works, it's not correlating the function theory behind it. It's correlating just the four basic Jungian dichotomies.

Beethoven is traditionally typed INFP, with INFJ the main competing typing. "The Composer" is a title, it doesn't really mean all composers are that type and it's in this case mostly a reference to Mozart. Who made many enjoyable pieces from a "this is sonically pleasing" perspective, but was actually pretty formalistic/non-innovative in his composing style.

[Singu]

Read this:

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

In statistics and research, internal consistency states that you can't just answer questions randomly and come up with an internally consistent result. A test has to be well-made in order to be internally consistent across all the answers. This is measured by Cronbach's alpha. Such tests seem difficult to create by mere amateurs who don't have nearly the time and resources required.

--

A healthy dose of skepticism might be good for Socionics and this forum... Questions like, "Why Model A, and how does this accurately describe the structure of the brain? Do functions even accurately describe our cognitive processes? How do we know? How is any of this actually accurate, and how do they actually far in reality? Are there any tests and experiments done to prove these assumptions?"

Most of the so-called "Socionists" are at the end of the day, merely making some observations about the people, and saying that so and so fit into the theory. Now, they may be making some astute observations about people in general. But they are their own subjective observations and evaluations, while claiming universal applicability. They're not actually doing any kind of statistical research and analysis, nor are they performing any kind of tests and experiments. We are only taking their words at a face value, and are merely having "faith" in their words. It's like we are believing in some sort of "gurus", who are just people who might be good at observing people in general. We ought to be, again, be skeptical of what they say especially if they don't actually provide any data or evidence, and not just take their words at a face value. I'd suppose this is normally done via "peer review", but Socionics is not any kind of a serious scientific research, social science or otherwise...

Such a lackadaisical attitude towards serious research spreads onto the general onlookers and practitioners... which is why most of the members on this forum suddenly turn into self-proclaimed Socionics "experts"... and even expert psychologists. Suddenly, they are the masters of understanding people's motivations, masters of relationships, and even masters of how the entire world operates, being able to predict every human interactions big or small, because supposedly, they understand the most fundamental basic structure of our psyche. It's like as if they have found out the Laws of Physics, except that it's the Laws of Human Psyche, which is a pretty damn gigantic claim to make, a typical red flag for being pseudoscience.

[Pallas]

They could also put that creativity to use helping that business grow, Google has cornered the market in a number of tech fields through sponsoring associated start-ups that basically just let creative techies do their thing. Then whatever they come up with is associated with Google, and it's another tentacle in their monolith.

Google is a very narrowly focused corporation and, considering their various odd beliefs and objectives, seem to have worked particularly hard to make a screening process for a certain kind of person who will fit into their hierarchy rather than challenging it. Their hierarchy also seems different than most companies' in the first place, since all of their policies are ridiculous and their only rule is "don't be evil" (they seem to just fail at that too).

That seems a lot smarter than losing themselves money and power because someone might sue at some point. Your theory also doesn't really work because it seems like that has much more to do with assertiveness than stupidity. Many smart people will let people walk over them because they're pretty low in assertiveness, this is a common problem among geeks who were bullied their whole lives. So, it's especially a problem for the most creative/intellectual types; people who are both assertive and smart are most likely to have a more practically oriented sort of intelligence (Sensing > Intuitive and Te > Ti), also the types most likely to succeed in business to begin with. Many otherwise non-intellectual people will make mountains of molehills and create hell because they're pushy, and that's where most frivolous lawsuits (humongous cost drain) come in.

This is incorrect. First, the "practically oriented" people you mention are just the people who don't see the big picture as much and therefore wouldn't challenge their position as much as a default. Second, there isn't a negative correlation between intelligence and assertiveness:

Out of 45 dimensions of personality, 23 dimensions were not related to IQ. This included gregariousness, friendliness, assertiveness, poise, talkativeness, social understanding, warmth, pleasantness, empathy, cooperation, sympathy, conscientiousness, efficiency, dutifulness, purposefulness, cautiousness, rationality, perfectionism, calmness, impulse control, imperturbability, cool-headedness, and tranquility. These qualities were not directly relevant to IQ.



8 dimensions of personality outside the openness to experience domain were positively related to IQ, including organization, toughness, provocativeness, leadership, self-disclosure, emotional stability, moderation, and happiness-- although the correlations were much smaller than with intellectual engagement and mental quickness. IQ was negatively related to orderliness, morality, nurturance, tenderness, and sociability, but again, the negative correlations were much smaller than the relationships among IQ, intellectual engagement, and mental quickness.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...o-personality/

Improving group coordination by having co-workers get to know each-other seems like a very likely reason for those. That and the E3 yuppies who occupy most high-level business positions are often dead sold on whatever the latest management and self-improvement woo is. It's one more fad that can help them deal with the nagging self-doubts that get in the way of their constant drive to succeed. These are the people who give "I'm successful for talking about success" people like Tony Robbins their money. It makes complete sense that they'd want to promote "finding yourself through MBTI" and stuff, because they feel they've benefited from it. It beats Deepak Chopra, I guess...

...But what's the reason for having these classifications in the first place? Even Deepak Chopra doesn't use things like that. If you just want people to get to know each other, you could have them color mandalas from "adult coloring books" after rounds of icebreakers like "what's your favorite movie with a John Williams soundtrack?" which would be a lot more personal since it'd directly elicit stories and people could talk about their favorite colors and what that means. Yet, it's consistently MBTI and enneagram and typologies that are promoted.

Certain combinations probably make Neuroticism more likely, but I can't think of any combination that's necessarily neurotic or calm. Every one seems like it can have a neurotic example or a non-neurotic example.

It maps best to unhealthy/healthy. Though in MBTI there's an emerging trend towards adding Turbulent and Assertive in an attachment (e.g. I'm ENTP-T), those are basically just Limbic and Calm.

Some tests measure Neuroticism as Limbic and Calm though ("I get angry/anxious easily") while others seem to almost exclusively measure actual unhappiness regardless of those kinds of feelings ("I feel discontent with life")."Limbic and Calm" can be matched to the other four traits, and actual "health" can show errors or manipulations in the testing.

If we're basing it on test scores, more open-minded people do tend to score as N and to a lesser degree P. That's how the correlation works, it's not correlating the function theory behind it. It's correlating just the four basic Jungian dichotomies.

MBTI is well-known. The types already have common meanings and communities around them. The tests are incredibly transparent and easy to manipulate to get the results you want. You can't tell whether this is because open-minded people genuinely show N and P characteristics more, or whether they prefer to type themselves and others prefer to type them into N and P types.

Beethoven is traditionally typed INFP, with INFJ the main competing typing. "The Composer" is a title, it doesn't really mean all composers are that type and it's in this case mostly a reference to Mozart. Who made many enjoyable pieces from a "this is sonically pleasing" perspective, but was actually pretty formalistic/non-innovative in his composing style.

Yeah, because people can do more than one thing and do the same thing for different reasons so typing people based on type names can't work. And Mozart is pretty musically conservative, but I'm not sure I'd put him all the way into the Un-Open category with a lot of the things he's written and done. He innovated opera a lot (although not the music itself) and wrote multiple canons based on a recently-coined German vulgarity, neither of which screams "conservative" even without knowing more about his personal life.

[DavidH]

Read this:

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

In statistics and research, internal consistency states that you can't just answer questions randomly and come up with an internally consistent result. A test has to be well-made in order to be internally consistent across all the answers. This is measured by Cronbach's alpha. Such tests seem difficult to create by mere amateurs who don't have nearly the time and resources required.

--

A healthy dose of skepticism might be good for Socionics and this forum... Questions like, "Why Model A, and how does this accurately describe the structure of the brain? Do functions even accurately describe our cognitive processes? How do we know? How is any of this actually accurate, and how do they actually far in reality? Are there any tests and experiments done to prove these assumptions?"

Most of the so-called "Socionists" are at the end of the day, merely making some observations about the people, and saying that so and so fit into the theory. Now, they may be making some astute observations about people in general. But they are their own subjective observations and evaluations, while claiming universal applicability. They're not actually doing any kind of statistical research and analysis, nor are they performing any kind of tests and experiments. We are only taking their words at a face value, and are merely having "faith" in their words. It's like we are believing in some sort of "gurus", who are just people who might be good at observing people in general. We ought to be, again, be skeptical of what they say especially if they don't actually provide any data or evidence, and not just take their words at a face value. I'd suppose this is normally done via "peer review", but Socionics is not any kind of a serious scientific research, social science or otherwise...

Such a lackadaisical attitude towards serious research spreads onto the general onlookers and practitioners... which is why most of the members on this forum suddenly turn into self-proclaimed Socionics "experts"... and even expert psychologists. Suddenly, they are the masters of understanding people's motivations, masters of relationships, and even masters of how the entire world operates, being able to predict every human interactions big or small, because supposedly, they understand the most fundamental basic structure of our psyche. It's like as if they have found out the Laws of Physics, except that it's the Laws of Human Psyche, which is a pretty damn gigantic claim to make, a typical red flag for being pseudoscience.

You are under the impression that the Big Five are any different?

They are not. The big five is newer and more easily mutable. This makes it easier to alter and decide direction. That is all.

There is a difference between proving something creating something and developing something. One does not prove a non-existent house has certain qualities and properties. One builds a house to the qualities and properties one desires.

MBTI built a house as two women decades ago.
Socionics built a house as a woman and her friends decades ago.
Big Five built a house as a group of sociologists decades ago.

They are each houses. Some look nicer. Some are more entertaining. Some are still being remodeled and upgraded. They are each houses. They prove nothing. They cannot prove anything.

[Nanooka]

Google is a very narrowly focused corporation and, considering their various odd beliefs and objectives, seem to have worked particularly hard to make a screening process for a certain kind of person who will fit into their hierarchy rather than challenging it. Their hierarchy also seems different than most companies' in the first place, since all of their policies are ridiculous and their only rule is "don't be evil" (they seem to just fail at that too).

That last thing almost seems more like a joke than anything nowadays, this policy is itself an example of Google as a vaguely terrifying octopus that can and will run your life in the near future.

But their policy should work for any company with the resources and that doesn't have an extreme time investment. Let your employee run a side-project, give them the start-up capital and an association with your firm if that side-project seems like it could go somewhere, then if they succeed the company has another field it's expanded into or even possibly (e.g. self-driving cars) quickly come to dominate. It's just internal venture capital, a quick and easy path to world domination.

I think something else should be pointed out here: this discussion started on pay and promotions. If someone isn't going to fit into a company's hierarchy, they're not going to be paid well, because that pay is based on usefulness to the company. An example of a creative person who will be paid well and hold a high station in a company not of their own founding, by definition, is going to be someone who fits into that company's hierarchy with or without personality tests.

This is incorrect. First, the "practically oriented" people you mention are just the people who don't see the big picture as much and therefore wouldn't challenge their position as much as a default. Second, there isn't a negative correlation between intelligence and assertiveness:

I'd wonder how the scoring is on the margins of high IQ. For example, I could easily see people who score as 120-130 being more assertive on average. This is the IQ bracket most likely to succeed in most aspects of life, your high school class president was probably in that bracket. They're smart enough to out-think those around them and deliver competent performances, but not so smart that they're vastly cut off from the human norm, at high risk of mental disorder, or regularly burdened by analysis paralysis. Above that and especially above 140 though, where you get actual geniuses (by definition the height of creative logic), you start to see feelings of isolation, poor social skills, and a lifetime of bullying associated with both. I haven't seen studies on it, but anecdotally I'd assume over 135 or so tend to fare poorly in assertiveness.

...But what's the reason for having these classifications in the first place?

It helps them "discover themselves." The same reason we're all here, they're just stupidly applying it to their corporate structures despite the myriad of problems with sorting people's jobs based on tentative and half-unrelated personality test scores. Modern corporate structures in the West are all themselves based on half-baked interpretations of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, pop-psych fads and the business world (read: E3s) go hand in hand. A continuation of that ever-present trend towards self-help woo among yuppies seems a lot more likely than a concerted effort, despite personal benefit and this theory having far too many moving parts (i.e. every company that uses personality tests), to keep creative types down rather than harness them to expand said yuppies' business empire.

Some tests measure Neuroticism as Limbic and Calm though ("I get angry/anxious easily") while others seem to almost exclusively measure actual unhappiness regardless of those kinds of feelings ("I feel discontent with life")."Limbic and Calm" can be matched to the other four traits, and actual "health" can show errors or manipulations in the testing.

I agree on the latter, describing the L/C scale as unhealthy/healthy has a few problems mentioned above. But another thing mentioned above, I also can't think of any type combination that is necessarily neurotic or necessarily calm, though some probably do lean more often in one direction or another. The ability to create a match doesn't mean the match is accurate.

MBTI is well-known. The types already have common meanings and communities around them. The tests are incredibly transparent and easy to manipulate to get the results you want. You can't tell whether this is because open-minded people genuinely show N and P characteristics more, or whether they prefer to type themselves and others prefer to type them into N and P types.

I think you're assuming way more knowledge of our hobby than most people have. I don't think most people know MBTI beyond the tests, most peoples' only familiarity with it is having taken a test in high school or in job training. It's also grown into a fad in the last few years on Tumblr (like the corporate world, a hive of people looking to explain their issues), that's a new phenomenon though. In general people won't take it particularly seriously and will usually just refer to themselves as whatever type they first get on the test. And that's if they know anything about it at all. In my history as a typology geek, it's a completely new subject to a significant majority of people I've talked with about it who aren't actually from type forums.

So yes, rather than selecting for the archetype of xNxP that they usually know nothing about, I think more open-minded people generally score as xNxP on dichotomy tests.

And Mozart is pretty musically conservative, but I'm not sure I'd put him all the way into the Un-Open category with a lot of the things he's written and done. He innovated opera a lot (although not the music itself) and wrote multiple canons based on a recently-coined German vulgarity, neither of which screams "conservative" even without knowing more about his personal life.

Big Five is structured in such a way that 50% is supposed to be the mean, if there's not at least a rough bell-ish curve around it then the test isn't weighted to the average and is therefore structured wrong. So the question isn't whether he's a vegetable without an ounce of creativity, which is extremely rare, but whether he was above the norm in that category. Even in MBTI, which generally doesn't weight like that, Sensors aren't usually seen as lacking creativity so much as having a less abstract/more practical creativity than Intuitives. Inquisitiveness is specifically defined as having an "insatiable desire to know more," which requires some degree of casting practicality aside in not investing your time simply in the most useful info.

N isn't necessarily conservative. Though it does correlate with it in that people who are more open-minded will have less reason to be uptight and therefore are slightly more likely to make a canon based on "kiss my ass," sure. It seems only weakly indicative though, plenty of non-inquisitive people like bawdy humor and the correlation between it and inquisitiveness is only a slight one. The opera stuff is a shaky point IMO, his operatic "innovations" didn't change the form in any way. They were simply emotionally stirring uses of the form.

I should also add that contra Keirsey, Mozart is far from a benchmark. A number of non-crankish people type him xNFP, ISFP is just the most common typing.

[Pallas]

Now, they may be making some astute observations about people in general. But they are their own subjective observations and evaluations, while claiming universal applicability.

The moment you make a model or claim universal applicability, you have fewer astute observations than you could have. Let's say you have a few observations with no explanation. You have a simple model, and you match up a few simple observations to them, so everything fits neatly. The model creates all the explanations, and from there you have to extrapolate. But no matter what, it's never going to match completely, and any observation that apparently contradicts it has to be rationalized, and anything that is not obviously in line or the polar opposite is just ignored. And all the ignored things are far more than the things that ca be accounted for in the model.

This forum is basically a game to fit as many of them as possible, but you have to divide up the world a certain way, which inevitably leaves out other things. There was some discussion here about whether or not ESIs can like spicy food which mostly got the reaction "that has nothing to do with typing". If you're dividing up people based on whether or not they like spicy food, you're going to see and not see certain other information by default. If you assume ESIs can't like spicy food, you're going to look for Fi-related behaviors and traits to be Fi Hidden Agenda or for Judicious quadra traits for EII or something else for people who show those significantly but do like spicy food. So you just keep breaking up the world in so many arbitrary ways you can basically make a mosaic and make people into whatever type you want by slicing it different ways for different people. It's like how people type Hegel: Aren't all philosophers just LII? But then people type him based on his kind of philosophy, and then people say "actually, historicism is just Ti" but someone could also not care about philosophy much and still think in historicist terms, or care about philosophy a lot and not be historicist (hello Captain Obvious).

It's basically the reason that there is no subtractive color theory. You just cut things down by contrasting X and Y until you get whatever you want, regardless of what the original things are. Socionics has basically an infinite number of things that it's selected for a type, and people do basically an infinite number of small things, so you can make people whatever type you want this way. Depending on what you pick and what you excise, the other person might not be very happy, and it's an incredibly strange way to think about people anyways, never mind relate to them.

[Singu]

Well, it depends on what kind of claims you want to make with the information that you gather. You can just say, "Well, these are just rough models and observations, and they may not mean much, so take it with a grain of salt". But Socionics doesn't do that, it actually makes some big claims, like it has predictive powers and implications when it actually kinda doesn't.

I think a lot of Socionics observations basically amount to a lot of cherry picking. You can read some type description and recognize some traits and behaviors that you notice in yourself and think, "This totally fits me!", but you're ignoring all the others things that don't actually fit you. In observations of other people, it could say "This person's behavior is a typical behavior of Type X", but it's probably ignoring all the other behaviors of said person and cherry picking that single information. I think those kind of knowledge/information only start to crystallize once you start to turn those observations into "objective" data, like statistics.

Socionics "seems" to make sense and "seems" plausible, if only because there's no proof and evidence for it, so to speak. It's like our minds automatically fill in the gaps because our minds have blind spots called cognitive dissonance. It's like you believe some story that your friend tells you at a face value, if only because you're not bothering to scrutinize your friend's story and look for hard evidence. As a theory that is based much around anecdotal evidence, Socionics is not that much different than some people's gossips.

[Aylen]

Agreed it is all subjective from my perspective. Some will agree and others won't. People can come to their own conclusion... Same people vehemently arguing their own typings of others, not long ago, are now disavowing the whole system. I hope the irony is not lost on you as you argue the opposite now. It would be nice if there was an abridged version of this thread.

*by "you" I am not targeting any one person.

[Aylen]

Anyone interested:

http://www.yourpersonality.net/

I have made a whole $5 in amazon credits so far for taking their quizzes over a period of months so that they can track my personality over time. I signed up for it because I was curious, not for the gift cards. It is interesting since I have not changed much but there have been some fluctuations in two specific areas.

It is a research project. I don't remember how I ended up in the paid research study but I get reminders every now and then to complete another survey. I don't know if it is still open but you can still track yourself over time. I will post my results.

Status
You completed your last survey on Jun 05, 2017. It has been 8 days since you completed your last survey.
You have completed 4 surveys thus far.

Take Your Next Survey
Take your next survey. It has been less than 30 days since you completed your last survey. You can complete another survey if you wish, but you cannot earn money for doing so until 30 days have passed since your last survey.
Take Survey »

Track
See your personality results. How has your personality changed across time?
View Results »

*Dates: Nov 15, 2015 - June 5, 2017 (I was a bit lax on responding to one of the requests.)

The biggest fluctuation was in neuroticism. I was going through something in the beginning. At the highest it was 3.75 and now it is 2.4.

[Singu]

Well, it seems like just by looking at the Cognitive psychology page on Wikipedia, you can see that much more progress and understanding of the mind has been made than what Socionics and Jung can provide. You can notice some of the languages used by Socionics like "perception" and "intuition", but they usually mean differently than than the typical definitions of the words provided by Socionics:

Current perspectives on perception within cognitive psychology tend to focus on particular ways in which the human mind interprets stimuli from the senses and how these interpretations affect behavior. An example of the way in which modern psychologists approach the study of perception is the research being done at the Center for Ecological Study of Perception and Action at the University of Connecticut (CESPA). One study at CESPA concerns ways in which individuals perceive their physical environment and how that influences their navigation through that environment.

This is interesting:

Modern perspectives on cognitive psychology generally address cognition as a dual process theory, introduced by Jonathan Haidt in 2006, and expounded upon by Daniel Kahneman in 2011.^[25] Kahneman differentiated the two styles of processing more, calling them intuition and reasoning. Intuition (or system 1), similar to associative reasoning, was determined to be fast and automatic, usually with strong emotional bonds included in the reasoning process. Kahneman said that this kind of reasoning was based on formed habits and very difficult to change or manipulate. Reasoning (or system 2) was slower and much more volatile, being subject to conscious judgments and attitudes.

It seems like they have expounded on the conscious and unconscious processes of the mind:

System 1 vs System 2 Decision Making



What Are System 1 and System 2?

System 1 and System 2 are two distinct modes of decision making:

• System 1 is an automatic, fast and often unconscious way of thinking. It is autonomous and efficient, requiring little energy or attention, but is prone to biases and systematic errors.
  
• System 2 is an effortful, slow and controlled way of thinking. It requires energy and can’t work without attention but, once engaged, it has the ability to filter the instincts of System 1.

http://upfrontanalytics.com/market-r...cision-making/

You can read about it on this book:

[The Reality Denialist]

Kahneman's test. Analytical vs intuitive. (Let's rephrase it: can we screw you)

1) If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? _______ minutes

 

Assuming that machines are similar then one machine produces one widget in 5 minutes. Therefore in 5 minutes 5 machine produces 5 widgets.
Assuming similar machines in similar conditions and 100 machines it is going to produce 100 widgets in 5 minutes.

2) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Everyday, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half the lake? _________ days

 

You could build ground up solution for this using exponents but since you can go also backwards it is 47 days from start as it is halved from 48th day (when it is full). So the answer is 47 days

3) A bat and ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? _________ cents

 

let price of the bat be t and price of the ball be l.
therefore
t+l=1.10
t-l=1.00
From systems of equation we get:
t=1.05 (in $ price of the bat) and
l= 0.05 (in $ price of the ball) so ball costs 5 cents.

I call other answers sloppy thinking more than intuition. You need mental check your "intuition" because your intuition should remind you.

[Aylen]

Scientists have identified genetic links between a set of psychological factors known as 'the big five' personality traits - extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience - and say they could also influence risk factors for certain psychiatric disorders.
While it has already been established that personality is partly linked to genetics, recent genome-wide association studies like this will allow researchers to take a closer look at which parts of our DNA code affect certain aspects of our character.

"Although personality traits are heritable, it has been difficult to characterise genetic variants associated with personality until recent, large-scale GWAS," explains lead researcher Chi-Hua Chen from the University of California, San Diego.

Chen and his team analysed genetic data, including around 60,000 genetic samples collected by private firm 23andMe and some 80,000 samples provided by the Genetics of Personality Consortium.

With so much DNA data to work with, they were able to look for correlations between specific genetic features, personality traits, and psychiatric disorders.
We know that parts of our personality, such as intelligence, are down to a combination of the genes we were born with - our inherited DNA - and our life experiences, such as how good our teachers are when we're growing up.

But scientists aren't certain about how these two factors balance out, which makes large-scale studies like this very useful.

The researchers found links between certain genes and certain traits. For instance, the genes WSCD2 and PCDH15 are connected to extraversion, while the gene L3MBTL2 and the chromosome 8p23.1 are tied to neuroticism.

They also found that genes related to neuroticism and openness to experience were clustered together in the same regions as genes linked to certain psychiatric disorders.

Other genetic correlations showed connections between extraversion and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); between openness and schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; and between neuroticism and depression and anxiety.

In other words, the same parts of DNA coding that help define our personalities could also affect our likelihood of developing mental health problems.
That's not to say the genes we're born with fully define our personality and make psychiatric problems inevitable, but they do seem to have an influence - and could be closely linked to each other, based on these findings.

On the other hand, the research found no genetic overlap between mental illnesses and agreeableness (being cooperative and compassionate), or conscientiousness (being responsible and self-disciplined).

It's still early days for the research, and the study has only shown a correlation, not a causative link between personality traits and certain psychological disorders, but the team says with more investigation, we might be able to find a way to predict and treat these disorders in the future.
"Our study is in an early stage for genetic research in personality, and many more genetic variants associated with personality traits are to be discovered," says Chen.

"We found genetic correlations between personality traits and psychiatric disorders, but specific variants underlying the correlations are unknown."
The work has been published in Nature Genetics.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scienti...atric-diseases

I joined selfdecode.com recently and have been slowly going through the different gene packs. It is really interesting and there is information that actually supports some of my personality traits. I believe in the future this will be more useful than brain scans but it is not there yet.

[Singu]

@unsuccessfull Alphamale Those are not exactly Kahneman's tests, but it seems like they're Gervais and Norenzayan's hypothesis on whether you will have a religious belief or not, which drew up on Kahneman's findings.

http://bigthink.com/praxis/a-three-q...believe-in-god

The study these questions are drawn from was conducted using 179 Canadian college students. After completing the quiz task, the students were asked about their intrinsic religiosity, religious beliefs and beliefs in supernatural entities (including God, angels and the devil). The results followed expectations:

the more religious the undergrads were, the less likely they were to have demonstrated effective analytical reasoning on the three questions. And the better the students did on the questions, the less likely they were to have strong religious beliefs.

It doesn't exactly say that either the "intuitive" or "analytical" modes are "better", but they are different cognitive processes that are more useful in specific scenarios, and they can sometimes converge, overriding the other:

one (System 1) relies upon frugal heuristics yielding intuitive responses, while the other (System 2) relies upon deliberative analytic processing. Although both systems can at times run in parallel, System 2 often overrides the input of system 1 when analytic tendencies are activated and cognitive resources are available...

Available evidence and theory suggest that a converging suite of intuitive cognitive processes facilitate and support belief in supernatural agents, which is a central aspect of religious beliefs worldwide...Religious belief therefore bears many hallmarks of System 1 processing.

[Singu]

I think this was the most interesting part...:

On the other hand, the research found no genetic overlap between mental illnesses and agreeableness (being cooperative and compassionate), or conscientiousness (being responsible and self-disciplined).

I joined selfdecode.com recently and have been slowly going through the different gene packs. It is really interesting and there is information that actually supports some of my personality traits. I believe in the future this will be more useful than brain scans but it is not there yet.

Well, I think brain scanning will help us understand and cure brain diseases and psychiatric disorders that we currently have, in the future... unlike with the DNA stuff which is more fixed and there's no way of changing it.

[The Reality Denialist]

@unsuccessfull Alphamale Those are not exactly Kahneman's tests, but it seems like they're Gervais and Norenzayan's hypothesis on whether you will have a religious belief or not, which drew up on Kahneman's findings.

http://bigthink.com/praxis/a-three-q...believe-in-god



It doesn't exactly say that either the "intuitive" or "analytical" modes are "better", but they are different cognitive processes that are more useful in specific scenarios, and they can sometimes converge, overriding the other:

The bat-and-ball problem is our first encounter with an observation that will be a recurrent theme of this book: many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.

This one presents set of new possibilities. Maybe the conclusion itself is partially correct trusting his/her intuition by making these claims too narrow. For example effort vs ability vs trust vs low risk. I have tested people with this test and there are people who refuse to accept correct answer even when I provided proof using simple algebra while some will appreciate it. Side note: There are people who refuse to accept existence of exponential function.

[Singu]

This one presents set of new possibilities. Maybe the conclusion itself is partially correct trusting his/her intuition by making these claims too narrow. For example effort vs ability vs trust vs low risk. I have tested people with this test and there are people who refuse to accept correct answer even when I provided proof using simple algebra while some will appreciate it. Side note: There are people who refuse to accept existence of exponential function.

Wow, that's really interesting that there are people who will REFUSE to believe in the answer, even with proof...

[Myst]

If you're going to quote me, might as well leave my name on the quote. It's not about typing, or what "some people do." Every single type description ever written was made to try to fit the model to real people. Every single one tries to capture a sort of stereotype and in doing so each author infuses their own ideas, biases and deviations. The type descriptions were written to demonstrate how the model applies to real people. Things have to stretch a bit to do this. The model (referring to model A) itself makes perfect sense, it's internally coherent - it just doesn't entirely fit real living people in all their variations and permutations. Type descriptions and explanations try to cover this gap and morph the categories a bit in the process. The model, and the explanations of the model aren't the same thing.

OK, I can do that.

I see in what context you meant that. I take a stricter view here than that, basically as I said, I think if the model has to be stretched, then it already needs fixing anyway.

PS: this makes me think of something - I think our disagreements would often stem from this, your approach to systems involving playing around stretching things freely while I treat them in a stricter way which does get in the way of such "playing around", while your "playing around" with the logical ideas gets in the way of treating and applying the system's logic in a strict way. All this while we both have a pretty strong preference on how to approach systems so that's where the incompatibility would especially show up.

You mentioning that elsewhere a while back pretty much made me think about the dynamic that's going on here more (which I also mentioned). I do think businesses are using MBTI to try to weed people out in a sense, and I do think they're trying to weed out the most intelligent and creative people not because some stereotypes that they can't work, but because they know when they're being cheated and they tend to feel entitled to a higher salary, more raises, and all of those sorts of things, which means less profits for business owners, who feel pressure due to owning a business being very high risk and pretty close to gambling. (...)

Just letting you know I saw your reply. Nanooka already explained how this makes no sense.

[Myst]

Kahneman's test. Analytical vs intuitive. (Let's rephrase it: can we screw you)

(...)
I call other answers sloppy thinking more than intuition. You need mental check your "intuition" because your intuition should remind you.

Exactly, one can "feel it out" "intuitively" that there is more to it than just combining salient numbers in the question to try and arrive at an (incorrect) answer. That's at least the case with me, I "feel out" the quantities for the 1st and 3rd questions as being different from the salient numbers mentioned and for 2nd question, I "feel out" that the growth progress of the patch as stated is not quite linear.

Essentially whatever they call "intuition" is just superficial processing of the numerical information... it does not make me "feel" that I have an actual answer because I cannot see (or even "feel out") the logical progression to the (incorrect) answers.

The bat-and-ball problem is our first encounter with an observation that will be a recurrent theme of this book: many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.

Eh wow that's sad.

[squark]

PS: this makes me think of something - I think our disagreements would often stem from this, your approach to systems involving playing around stretching things freely while I treat them in a stricter way which does get in the way of such "playing around", while your "playing around" with the logical ideas gets in the way of treating and applying the system's logic in a strict way. All this while we both have a pretty strong preference on how to approach systems so that's where the incompatibility would especially show up.

When I say that I like playing with the aspects I don't mean "stretching the system" to fit, I mean, playing with them like the building blocks that they are. Looking at the aspects in their pared down state, and then adding them together, seeing what comes up, and how this interacts with this, or doesn't. When you look at them in their simplest form, and start putting them together, the model itself makes sense for how it was made the way it was. That's why I said that the model itself is internally consistent - the pieces do fit together and work without contradiction. You look at the aspects and the elements built from them, and you see why Ne cannot coexist simultaneously with Se within a single perspective, why Ti clashes with Fi in the same way, and how a person can switch between these, but not employ both at the same time. And other such connections start to appear. What I do is just Ti. Seeing the connections between the blocks of the system and how they relate to one another. Quite simply and literally it's the external statics of fields. I'm like a kid using legos and seeing what kind of structure I can build, or looking at puzzle pieces and seeing just how they fit together. It's fun for me, but it's never stretching logical ideas as you imply - the connections themselves are logical connections- Ti.


And me playing with aspects has nothing to do with how the system is applied, or type descriptions or any of the rest that I was talking about.

[Myst]

When I say that I like playing with the aspects I don't mean "stretching the system" to fit, I mean, playing with them like the building blocks that they are. Looking at the aspects in their pared down state, and then adding them together, seeing what comes up, and how this interacts with this, or doesn't. When you look at them in their simplest form, and start putting them together, the model itself makes sense for how it was made the way it was. That's why I said that the model itself is internally consistent - the pieces do fit together and work without contradiction. You look at the aspects and the elements built from them, and you see why Ne cannot coexist simultaneously with Se within a single perspective, why Ti clashes with Fi in the same way, and how a person can switch between these, but not employ both at the same time. And other such connections start to appear. What I do is just Ti. Seeing the connections between the blocks of the system and how they relate to one another. Quite simply and literally it's the external statics of fields. I'm like a kid using legos and seeing what kind of structure I can build, or looking at puzzle pieces and seeing just how they fit together. It's fun for me, but it's never stretching logical ideas as you imply - the connections themselves are logical connections- Ti.

I never said you "stretch logical ideas", to clarify, I meant that in terms of stretching the model, which isn't the ideas themselves but the framework for them. Yes, I like it in the Socionics model compared to MBTI's model or even Jung's that it builds up things from the ground in that way. And btw yes this is exactly how I imagined you playing with it - like with legos.

And me playing with aspects has nothing to do with how the system is applied, or type descriptions or any of the rest that I was talking about.

Cool, it simply reminded me of this.

[Myst]

Well, it seems like just by looking at the Cognitive psychology page on Wikipedia, you can see that much more progress and understanding of the mind has been made than what Socionics and Jung can provide. You can notice some of the languages used by Socionics like "perception" and "intuition", but they usually mean differently than than the typical definitions of the words provided by Socionics:

Hmm did I not post my reply to you? I was saying that there's a few very interesting ideas I like in Socionics that I didn't find elsewhere yet, so for example the idea that you can process information to create output (Ego functions) or as input (Superid).

Otherwise I strongly agree with your points on how some other (academic) psychology models do go beyond quite some of the ideas in Socionics.

[squark]

I never said you "stretch logical ideas", to clarify, I meant that in terms of stretching the model, which isn't the ideas themselves but the framework for them.

Except that I don't do this either. When I'm playing with the aspects they stay within the framework of the system.

This is separate from and not related to anything else I mentioned, just something that I personally do for fun.

[Myst]

Except that I don't do this either.

Well I just don't see it the same way in terms of what you said here: "The type descriptions were written to demonstrate how the model applies to real people. Things have to stretch a bit to do this. The model (referring to model A) itself makes perfect sense, it's internally coherent - it just doesn't entirely fit real living people in all their variations and permutations. Type descriptions and explanations try to cover this gap and morph the categories a bit in the process."

That was my point with how if that's the case then I prefer to fix the model or replace it with a better one, instead of stretching it while claiming that it still makes perfect sense even though finding it doesn't fit people without having to morph things. So this is what I meant by you stretching things.

[squark]

Well I just don't see it the same way in terms of what you said here: "The type descriptions were written to demonstrate how the model applies to real people. Things have to stretch a bit to do this. The model (referring to model A) itself makes perfect sense, it's internally coherent - it just doesn't entirely fit real living people in all their variations and permutations. Type descriptions and explanations try to cover this gap and morph the categories a bit in the process."

That was my point with how if that's the case then I prefer to fix the model or replace it with a better one, instead of stretching it while claiming that it still makes perfect sense even though finding it doesn't fit people without having to morph things. So this is what I meant by you stretching things.

No model fits people exactly. People are cantankerous and like to throw wrenches in things. Their behavior is complex, and their thought processes more so. That's why there are far more models and explanations beyond Model A, that's why there are so many conflicting descriptions, and why people can argue for such opposite types for a given person and both find reasons to back up what they're saying. To search for a model that precisely maps human beings is an exercise in futility. It's a misunderstanding of the very purpose of a model to begin with.

A model is a simplified structure that is meant to capture key elements without being exhaustive in nature. (To match every aspect you'd have to recreate reality itself, and defeat the whole point.) By its nature it will leave out a lot, and still cannot be a perfect fit.

When various socionics folks write type descriptions, or descriptions of functions in various types, they are taking a basic model and trying to make it fit a group of people with a limited number of representatives to draw from (those within their own experience) and so each author's description even of the same types using the same model can vary quite a bit, as they're each applying it from their own perspective. In the process of creating a description they redraw the categories of the model itself in slight ways, or sometimes in larger ways. This is what I meant by they morph the categories. You can't create a description of a group of people and try to apply characteristics of that group to a static model without stretching the model in the process.

Every time you use yourself as an example of a type you're doing the same thing. Once you apply it to yourself as a type you've redrawn the framework, but you're using yourself as the yardstick, and creating categories around it. Every time someone tries to explain their own behavior through the prism of type (ie. I'm Ne polr so . . .) they are morphing the model around their own understanding, stretching it to fit their own experiences. This is inevitable because reality and experience is the basis, the ground level, and the model is simply trying to capture elements of that reality and explain it.

[Singu]

I think that the most significant aspect of a model is that its predictive power that it gives... How useful a model is going to be, is how much it can accurately predict things. You don't just write a description of how a ball fell to the ground, and call it physics (because that's what Socionics looks like is doing to me). A physics model can very very very accurately predict how long it will take for the ball to fall to the ground when you give an input, and for the most part, why that is so. And this model will work nearly 100% of the time. I very much doubt that you can say, type 100 people and accurately predict every one of their human interactions (even in long-term). That's why the usefulness of Socionics is in doubt. I think that such an inaccurate and imprecise model of anything would have been abandoned a long time ago.

I also don't necessarily think that a model has to be too simplified and leave out the rest as to not create a 1:1 model of reality. For example in biology, it does try to include as much information about possible about a biological phenomena or taxonomic categories to create an accurate model of reality, while leaving some superfluous information out. At any rate, if you're going to make a model of the human mind, then it will have to model after something that is universally applicable to all humans. The Big Five model squeezed out all the possible human traits and squeezed down to just 5 that can be universally observed in all people.

[Singu]

Bad explanations: easy to vary

Good explanations: hard to vary

​Philosopher and physicist David Deutsch offers a criterion for a good explanation that he says may be just as important to scientific progress as learning to reject appeals to authority, and adopting formal empiricism and falsifiability. To Deutsch, these aspects of a good explanation, and more, are contained in any theory that is specific and "hard to vary". He believes that this criterion helps eliminate "bad explanations" which continuously add justifications, and can otherwise avoid ever being truly falsified.

Examples:

Deutsch takes examples from Greek mythology. He describes how very specific, and even somewhat falsifiable theories were provided to explain how the gods' sadness caused the seasons. Alternatively, Deutsch points out, one could have just as easily explained the seasons as resulting from the gods' happiness - making it a bad explanation, because it is so easy to arbitrarily change details. Without Deutsch's criterion, the 'Greek gods explanation' could have just kept adding justifications. This same criterion, of being "hard to vary", may be what makes the modern explanation for the seasons a good one: none of the details - about the earth rotating around the sun at a certain angle in a certain orbit - can be easily modified without changing the theory's coherence.

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

Watch the TED talk about it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_explanation/

A "bad explanation" is an explanation that is highly variable and keeps adding justifications that gives more "explanations", without ever being proven wrong.

e.g. If something doesn't add up in Socionics, perhaps someone is "mistyped". Perhaps it's a "strong Hidden Agenda" or a "strong unconscious function". Perhaps the reason why the intertype-relations isn't working as it should be, is because of something that may or may not be "non-Socionics related factors". You can just keep adding things infinitely to "explain" when things don't add up. Socionics explanations are too variable.

Or perhaps Socionics is simply a bad theory that gives bad explanations to phenomenas.

This easy variability is the sign of a bad explanation, because, without a functional reason to prefer one of countless variants, advocating one of them, in preference to the others, is irrational. So, for the essence of what makes the difference to enable progress, seek good explanations, the ones that can't be easily varied, while still explaining the phenomena.

Perhaps a good explanation is for instance, to explain exactly what portion of the brain is responsible for certain thoughts, and gives exactly precise reasons on why. Perhaps a "type" is say, 30% of the portion of the brain is so and so, 20% of the brain is so and so. But does it exactly have to be 30%? What if it was 25%? 20%? What are the exact, precise numbers? And so on... so I think that it would be very difficult to explain what a "type" exactly is.

[Aylen]

I think this was the most interesting part...:

Well, I think brain scanning will help us understand and cure brain diseases and psychiatric disorders that we currently have, in the future... unlike with the DNA stuff which is more fixed and there's no way of changing it.

I do not discount brain scanning. I have had a few myself. DNA is not as fixed as you might think. There are a variety of things that can affect dna therefore personality. Nutrition for example can make a huge difference in children. I believe nurture makes a big difference too when it comes to any kind of mental illness. Someone who is repeatedly told they are defective will most likely accept those beliefs. I know schizophrenics who are extremely well adjusted because their families did not leave their treatment options entirely in the hands of so called professionals.

"Personality must be accepted for what it is," Oscar Wilde counseled. "You mustn't mind that a poet is a drunk." We'll defer to Wilde on the debt that literature owes to booze, but he was definitely on shakier ground in implying that a man's personality is what it is and will remain what it is until he is cold in the ground. Although that belief has found support in both casual observation (people seem to retain the same basic personality from childhood) and science (neuroticism, risk-taking, resilience, ruthlessness, social awkwardness and more have been linked to genes, which, as we all know, don't change), it suffers from a basic fallacy. Really, people, can we start recognizing that just because something does not change doesn't mean that it cannot change?

Consider this thought experiment. You measure the blood pressure, heart rate, weight and other aspects of cardiovascular health of thousands of couch potatoes year after year. The numbers hardly change, so you conclude that they're unchangeable. Unfortunately, you neglected to test whether a little thing called aerobic exercise might change them. So it is with personality. Just because it seems stable over the years doesn't mean it's immutable. Instead, maybe we just haven't identified what changes it. And that goes for genes, too: with the growing recognition that experiences can silence genes or activate them, it is clear that even traits under genetic influence are in play.

One hint of the mutability of personality comes from the arrival, finally, of long-term studies that follow people for decades. As people age from 20 to 40, a 2006 study reported, they tend to become more conscientious and emotionally stable. After age 40, they tend to become less open to new experiences and ideas, and less outgoing. All of these traits have been linked to genes. But curiously—and here's hope for anyone who resents his genetic baggage—the influence of genes wanes with age: in middle and later adulthood, environment plays a larger role than genetics in shaping personality, a hint of the power of accumulated experiences.

Such as? Yale students who got a brief course in fitting in became, over their college career, more resilient and motivated, more likely to reach out to professors and to participate in university life than students who did not have this experience, a recent study found. "Something that seems like a small intervention can have cascading effects on things we think of as stable or fixed," says psychology researcher Carol Dweck of Stanford University, "including extroversion, openness to new experience and resilience"—all of which are thought to be partly genetic. "More and more research is suggesting that, far from being simply encoded in the genes, much of personality is a flexible and dynamic thing that changes over the life span and is shaped by experience," she argues in the December issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. In particular, traits such as how you cope, how you perceive yourself and others, and how you act in everyday situations are malleable. Even a broad category such as introversion is like Silly Putty once life gets hold of it: a "genetically shy" child whose parents gently encourage her to get herself into the sandbox and mix it up with other kids is more likely to outgrow her shyness by age 12 than a shy child whose parents take her trait as a given.

We can't open up that child's head to see how personality genes in her brain might be affected by this or other experiences. But scientists can do that in other animals, and when they do they are finding that "social information alters gene expression in the brain to change the way an animal behaves," says neuroscientist David Clayton of the University of Illinois. In zebra finches, for instance, hearing the song of a strange male increases the expression of a gene in the auditory forebrain, triggering a cascade of changes that culminate in a neural circuit that guides new behavior—namely, defending his territory from the interloper. In a rat, being licked and groomed by its mother turns off brain genes linked to fear of the unknown and neuroticism. DNA is not an inert set of blueprints; it responds to life experiences.

Ironically, the belief that personality cannot change may be self-fulfilling. "Whether you believe that your core traits, such as intelligence, are fixed, or are things you can develop, matters a great deal," says Dweck. In a recent study, she and colleagues taught a group of students entering junior high that intelligence is malleable, that the brain forges new connections throughout life and that it grows in response to intellectual challenge. These kids became significantly more conscientious and diligent compared with kids who didn't receive this lesson. "Beliefs about yourself play a causal role in how likely you are to seek out challenges and in how resilient you are," says Dweck. "If you change beliefs, you can change broad traits that many people think of as stable, including openness to experience, conscientiousness and sociability. Beliefs can be changed, and when they are, so is personality." No one claims that genes play no role in shaping personality. But it's time to junk the old idea that only the part of a trait under environmental, not genetic, control is malleable: the life we lead and the experiences we have reach deep into our double helix.

http://www.newsweek.com/when-dna-not-destiny-85025

[Myst]

No model fits people exactly. People are cantankerous and like to throw wrenches in things. Their behavior is complex, and their thought processes more so. That's why there are far more models and explanations beyond Model A, that's why there are so many conflicting descriptions, and why people can argue for such opposite types for a given person and both find reasons to back up what they're saying. To search for a model that precisely maps human beings is an exercise in futility. It's a misunderstanding of the very purpose of a model to begin with.

A model is a simplified structure that is meant to capture key elements without being exhaustive in nature. (To match every aspect you'd have to recreate reality itself, and defeat the whole point.) By its nature it will leave out a lot, and still cannot be a perfect fit.

When various socionics folks write type descriptions, or descriptions of functions in various types, they are taking a basic model and trying to make it fit a group of people with a limited number of representatives to draw from (those within their own experience) and so each author's description even of the same types using the same model can vary quite a bit, as they're each applying it from their own perspective. In the process of creating a description they redraw the categories of the model itself in slight ways, or sometimes in larger ways. This is what I meant by they morph the categories. You can't create a description of a group of people and try to apply characteristics of that group to a static model without stretching the model in the process.

Every time you use yourself as an example of a type you're doing the same thing. Once you apply it to yourself as a type you've redrawn the framework, but you're using yourself as the yardstick, and creating categories around it. Every time someone tries to explain their own behavior through the prism of type (ie. I'm Ne polr so . . .) they are morphing the model around their own understanding, stretching it to fit their own experiences. This is inevitable because reality and experience is the basis, the ground level, and the model is simply trying to capture elements of that reality and explain it.

Singu already addressed much of this in the later post #72.

A few additions: nope, a model doesn't have to recreate entire reality, only certain causal mechanisms that it wants to capture. (Not just categories, btw.) However that's to be applied consistently without the stretching thingy (at least until the model is disproven and a better one is created). So no, a model is not to be stretched in the way socionics gets way too easily stretched. And it's precisely because many principles in the model are wrong. I verified how they are wrong through my own observations, though I wasn't expecting it to be the holy grail or anything like that anyway.

[squark]

why do I even try. . .

Somehow optimism always gets the best of me, I always think, "Maybe THIS time I'll get through, THIS will be the time finally I'll be understood. . . "

Never happens.


Actually, it does happen. Some people get what I'm saying. Other people just. . . can't.

[Myst]

why do I even try. . .

Somehow optimism always gets the best of me, I always think, "Maybe THIS time I'll get through, THIS will be the time finally I'll be understood. . . "

Never happens.

Lol, I understood you fine, and instead of this emotional ranting, I think you really should read post #72 because it doesn't look like you got its point at all since you never got to draw the conclusion that the socionics model has serious issues beyond just not perfectly fitting people.

[squark]

Lol, I understood you fine, and instead of this emotional ranting, I think you really should read post #72 because it doesn't look like you got its point at all since you never got to draw the conclusion that the socionics model has serious issues beyond just not perfectly fitting people.

No, I'm sorry, but you really don't understand. I know you think you do, and that's a big part of the problem. . .

[Myst]

I think that the most significant aspect of a model is that its predictive power that it gives... How useful a model is going to be, is how much it can accurately predict things. You don't just write a description of how a ball fell to the ground, and call it physics (because that's what Socionics looks like is doing to me). A physics model can very very very accurately predict how long it will take for the ball to fall to the ground when you give an input, and for the most part, why that is so. And this model will work nearly 100% of the time. I very much doubt that you can say, type 100 people and accurately predict every one of their human interactions (even in long-term). That's why the usefulness of Socionics is in doubt. I think that such an inaccurate and imprecise model of anything would have been abandoned a long time ago.

I also don't necessarily think that a model has to be too simplified and leave out the rest as to not create a 1:1 model of reality. For example in biology, it does try to include as much information about possible about a biological phenomena or taxonomic categories to create an accurate model of reality, while leaving some superfluous information out. At any rate, if you're going to make a model of the human mind, then it will have to model after something that is universally applicable to all humans. The Big Five model squeezed out all the possible human traits and squeezed down to just 5 that can be universally observed in all people.

Psychology is a young science with no very good understanding or tools for investigation of the mind/brain's workings available yet so it would be unreasonable to expect the same from it as from physics at this point. However yeah, socionics got problems beyond just these general issues in (academic) psychology...

[Myst]

No, I'm sorry, but you really don't understand. I know you think you do, and that's a big part of the problem. . .

You keep claiming this without even being able to show how I don't understand. That is, you have not been able to show your interpretation of what you think the point of my post was and how it supposedly missed what you wanted to express. Show it or your claim remains baseless emotional ranting.

[Nanooka]

If the model is wrong, why not reform the model to make it more right? I assume that's what "stretching the model" is here, revisions based on personal experience showing that some earlier assumption is off.

In science, you don't toss out a model unless it has literally zero predictive power or there's been a paradigm shift. "X, Y, and Z are off" isn't cause for a paradigm shift unless one of those things is a fundamental precept of the model, absent that it's a call for revision. If things aren't being revised consistently, you either have a perfect set-up (obviously wrong here), or you have exactly the kind of cult-like rigidity Singularity is describing.

I think you see various efforts at this, which is why as Squark mentioned there are a varying definitions of each type. From the looks of it, no reform effort besides Reinin's and maybe Gulenko's (both of which are more tacking on additions than actually changing anything from the basic initial model) has gotten wide currency though. Some of it because it honestly seems like crankery that fits real examples even less than what we're working with now, others possibly more due to hidebound rigidity.