Thread split: is Socionics a religion?

[Myst]

I do this with any scientific or pseudoscientific theory. I think that there are a lot of implicit assumptions that go into creating a system for determining truth, and I want to see if I can spot those assumptions to see if they really matter. I also dislike the hive-mindedness or "absolutism" that goes on in a lot of established fields. No system is perfect and their flaws should be made known so that we don't delude ourselves into thinking something is "objectively true" or "irrefutable". That being said, I'm a pragmatist at heart, and so even if these holes are made known I don't really care about changing them since the system usually works well enough for our purposes. If it doesn't, then we just scrap it like we normally would. The only places this doesn't work are systems that rely on strict logical correctness to be useful i.e. math and philosophy.

Oh so it's essentially just because it works enough for you?

Here's my opinion. Socionics is a "theory of everything" because of our propensity to be confirmationally biased: we loosen our definitions of the functions to allow all real-world traits to be associated with some combination of the functions. However, it doesn't bother me that socionics is trying to be a universal system precisely because the labels we attach are essentially bags of traits that someone has irrespective of our categorization. We could turn socionics into a system that is so detailed to the point where every trait has its own subtype or something, but that's not useful for talking about who someone is in a simplistic manner. The high-level labels allow for that. Yes, it screws up nuance, but if we can minimize confirmation bias over time by modifying our ideas of the functions when a better one is told to us (this is what I was talking about in my responses to Singu), then we can build up that nuance since the system would only be able to categorize a finite number of things. So, it's essentially my goal to restrict what each cognitive function is so that the system can't actually categorize everything.

So because it seems to be working for you you are not trying to go outside the framework and modify or drop essential assumptions for its model?

The structure I'm talking about is the one that's inherently associated with having boxes around traits.

The reason I don't use other, scientifically rigorous systems, is because they lack these boxes. Basically, if you can identify patterns between traits and then box somebody, then you can predict how they will behave in different circumstances. This is much more difficult to do when there aren't clearly established boxes.

That being said, I'm generally against boxing things up because things are rarely ever so black and white. I merely do it out of its utility for living life.

Boxes, the 8 IEs and resulting types you mean?


EDIT: One more question. So you say Socionics predicts things for you better than scientific or other stuff. Are you able to quantify this at least somewhat? I'd like to hear your numbers or estimate.