Are there More than 16 Types?

[jason_m]

Before I get into this, I want to explain a mathematical notion called the pigeonhole principle:

Imagine that you have 10 pigeons that you have to fit into 9 pigeonholes. (I know it sounds strange, but just see where I'm going with this.) Notice that no matter how you try to spread them out, you will end up having at least one hole with more than one pigeon. For instance, if you tried to place one pigeon in each hole, you would have 9 holes with one pigeon, and one pigeon left over. That pigeon would have to fit into one of the other holes, so you would have a hole with two pigeons! This would be the best case scenario.. Therefore, you would always have a hole with more than one pigeon... If you wish, try it out with a smaller number. Try drawing five 'pigeons' into four 'holes'. You'll notice that you'll always have a hole with more than one pigeon. This, of course, applies to any number of pigeons and any number of holes - so long as there are more pigeons than holes!

So, what does this have to do with socionics? This principle got me thinking about socionics, and it led me to finding a flaw in the notion that there are exactly 16 relations - and therefore 16 types. Here's what I mean: first, let's make socionics simpler. Let's say there are two quadras, instead of four. Let's also say that everyone fits into one of the two quadras - everyone from quadra A likes each other, everyone from quadra B likes each other, and no one from quadra A or B like each other. Therefore, if you were to poll any group of people under this system, everyone would fit neatly into quadra A or quadra B - there would be no one who likes other people from both quadras! Notice that this issue is similar to the pigeonhole principle, and that socionics has a similar flaw to the two quadra system... Still not convinced? Pretend you are an ILI. You meet someone intellectual you don't like. You call them ILE. Then, you both meet a third intellectual person. None of you like each other. What do you call them then? EII? But then the ILI shouldn't mind them. Oh, they don't? Let's add a fourth intellectual person that none of you like as well then (and so on)... Do you see the problem here? If everyone fits neatly into one of 16 relations, then you get something like this, where the types are 'pigeonholed' (or something like it) into more unlikable relations than are possible...

Of course, there are ways around this: maybe the types are only correlated, or maybe there are exceptions to the rule. On the other hand, maybe socionics is just plain wrong.... Any of these are realistic possibilites. My answer would be that there are more than 16 types - there seems to be so much diversity in the human population on so many levels that this could easily be the case, and there also seems to be some pattern to the quadras and types... Based on this reasoning, more than 16 types seems to be the most intuitive answer...

In any event, what does this prove? It proves that you can't neatly fit a person into one of 16 types. It also proves that in the very least, socionics is not perfect. Remember this when you're arguing with someone that person A has to be (or cannot be) type B...

Jason

[some chair]

How do you feel about merging socionics and the lexical hypothesis? Let's say every type has a series of "inside" and "outside" personality words associated to them, kind of like a johari/nohari window. Get a bunch of people who self-type as whatever and get them to self-describe using words and simple phrases from the FFM lexicon. Similarly, get the community to rate words that describe the personality of types they aren't.

This reduces types to salient mixtures of FFM traits, for example it might turn out that ILEs are Open, Extraverted and Disagreeable, while ILIs are Open, Neurotic and Introverted.

A plus is that this removes all of the questionable causal "X is because of Y" narrative fudging inside Socionics. A downside is that this doesn't really translate across different cultural backgrounds (but does Socionics in its pure form do that anyway? )

P.S. brb, retyping ILE.

[Reuben]

Yes Lately, there has been discoveries of the 17th type.

Trolling aside, in socionics, there are only 16 types. When we talk about socionics, we fit everyone into 16 types. If you don't, you are a non-purist - you open yourself up to all sorts of theories that explain differences within types. That is not bad in itself; it is just that you will be opening a pandora's box, and despite all the fire that comes with it, it's troublesome.

To be honest, you raise an excellent point about human diversity. But criticizing socionics in this manner is not productive; we might as well criticize all models in the same way. What we would rather want to do is either talk about reality in terms of socionics, expand on the non-purist theories, or come up with your own massively originial personality typing system and orchestrate a daring exodus.

[Reficulris]

Well, to answer OP, I've tried fitting 9 pigeons in 10 holes and I actually found out that by cutting parts of certain pigeons, it's really easy to fit all 10 holes comfortably. I mean, you didn't state that all holes were the same size, so I just had some small holes that I could fit with just pigeon heads and some bigger holes that needed an entire pigeon body. To make the rebuttal of your rebuttal more thourough I increase the number of holes to 15 (while simultaniously shrinking the size of the holes) and I was still able to fill every hole! It was marvelous!


(needless to say the IEI's who victimly provided the holes where disgusted but thrilled by this new type of hole-abuse)

[Pookie]

If you really want to stand by the pidgeon hole principal, there are 6-7 Billion types. Everyone gets pidgeonholed through this type of thing. It's sort of the point.

[InvisibleJim]

This is like asking if there is more than 1 type of Se, me gusta.

[Aylen]

(needless to say the IEI's who victimly provided the holes where disgusted but thrilled by this new type of hole-abuse)

I prefer to let others dig their own holes. I am not into manual labor.

[some chair]

If you really want to stand by the pidgeon hole principal, there are 6-7 Billion types. Everyone gets pidgeonholed through this type of thing. It's sort of the point.

Did you seriously read and comprehend the OP? Where do you even get this reduction to the absurd from?

[The Martrix]

For me, the only thing wrong with socionics are the descriptions. It's extremely easy to mistype if one does not fit the archetype.

[Pookie]

Did you seriously read and comprehend the OP? Where do you even get this reduction to the absurd from?

It's not really a reduction to the absurd.

But the question itself is absurd. Are there more than 16 types? The system isn't real a thing, it's an idea. The question becomes "Are there more than 16 types in this idea?" The answer is no. Comprehending what the guy wrote the question is really "How do we know this is as accurate as it can be? There could be a whole entire type missing!" which is why i wrote my response. If you want accuracy and precision, you don't archtype in the first place. 7 billion people are pidgeonholed into 16 types. If it was 17 types it would make no difference, all that matters is the integrity of the system. 16 was a choice that made sense to whoever started it. It's obtuse to focus on the number.

[some chair]

@Pookie I think we've read the OP in different ways then. As far as I see it, your recursion of type additions does terminate when each and every person has a new type. It ends when you have the minimum language required to describe how relationship stability and "quality" (by some more abstract metric, say general satisfaction predicated on satisfaction sub-scales) is a function of the inner and outer personalities involved in that relationship. Maybe it turns out that this was over-enthusiastic dividing, and only outer personality matters, or maybe personality doesn't matter at all, and relationships are functions of some kind of as-yet unquantified "relationship lexicon".

The reference to mathematical pigeonholing doesn't require you to keep inventing more pigeonholes for every pigeon. The point I believe @jason_m was trying to make is that perhaps the relationships, which are 16 in number, don't work correctly for the number of types there are. Maybe there are more intertypes? Maybe some types overlap too much with other types? Maybe the top-down, expert, systemic approach of Socionics means there's not enough coverage of the full spectrum of personality? If it really disturbs you to tinker with what's already there, call it subtyping, and say each "real" type has ontological subtypes that relate differently with other ontological subtypes, in a way not predicted by vanilla intertypes.

I'm not actually too sure we disagree, though? I think Socionics started on the wrong foot, and as a member of the Holy Church of Factor Analysis, I'm pretty biased against it.

[trifling nincompoop]

facets of reality

= internal statics of objects
= external statics of objects
= external dynamics of objects
= internal dynamics of objects
= internal dynamics of fields
= external dynamics of fields
= external statics of fields
= internal statics of fields

could we categorize the different ways perceiving each facet effects one (make types of functions for example Ne 1 Ne 2 Ne 3) if we could we would be zooming the microscope so to speak giving smaller things definition thus more types imagine if there were 2 kinds of each info element thats 16 slots Ne 1 lead Ti 2 super lead Ne 2 creative Ti 1 super creative lol

[Pookie]

@Pookie I think we've read the OP in different ways then. As far as I see it, your recursion of type additions does terminate when each and every person has a new type. It ends when you have the minimum language required to describe how relationship stability and "quality" (by some more abstract metric, say general satisfaction predicated on satisfaction sub-scales) is a function of the inner and outer personalities involved in that relationship. Maybe it turns out that this was over-enthusiastic dividing, and only outer personality matters, or maybe personality doesn't matter at all, and relationships are functions of some kind of as-yet unquantified "relationship lexicon".

The reference to mathematical pigeonholing doesn't require you to keep inventing more pigeonholes for every pigeon. The point I believe @jason_m was trying to make is that perhaps the relationships, which are 16 in number, don't work correctly for the number of types there are. Maybe there are more intertypes? Maybe some types overlap too much with other types? Maybe the top-down, expert, systemic approach of Socionics means there's not enough coverage of the full spectrum of personality? If it really disturbs you to tinker with what's already there, call it subtyping, and say each "real" type has ontological subtypes that relate differently with other ontological subtypes, in a way not predicted by vanilla intertypes.

I'm not actually too sure we disagree, though? I think Socionics started on the wrong foot, and as a member of the Holy Church of Factor Analysis, I'm pretty biased against it.

"It ends when you have the minimum language required to describe how relationship stability and "quality" (by some more abstract metric, say general satisfaction predicated on satisfaction sub-scales"
To a cetain extent thats impossible to quantify. People are so shaped so wildly different through their enviornment and reaction to it that what constitutes stable and quality won't really ever be accomplished. In my opinion.
So the abstract metric comes into play and the answer to what is stable there is how far you want to zoom in (How much the relationship meets the veracity of the word stable to the person interpreting it), but people vary wildly there as well. I accept the 16 types as it is: relationship mixology at a certain measure. My definition of stable is thrown out to match the system. My opinions aren't being measured, do i defer. But someone else disagrees, and that begets the argument of what constitutes the stable we SHOULD be measuring. I see it as fruitless, but i do agree that you can go deeper.

16 types becomes 32 with subtypes, 32 becomes 64 with DCNH, 64 becomes 1152 with Enneagram wings. 1152 become 3456 with tri-tip steak stackings(or whatever its called). At a certain point it not only becomes hard to see the differences, but theres no data or personal experience to back it up with. What you get is a post here and there on a forum like this that makes sense to you(the subject) and you can take that and run with it. Extrapolate and apply. 16 types shouldnt be changed to adhere to accuracy, its a rigid structure. What point is there to focus on the system when it can never change? Our minds should be the flexible tool here, and we take in more knowledge as we see fit. We change. At a certain point socionics is just common language, to communicate with others. At that point the inaccuracy in the system doesn't matter, our own knowledge of the topic trumps it.
As long as there is something we dont know in the system, it still has value in our discovery of it. That's it.

[HERO]

I agree with the OP.

(needless to say the IEI's who victimly provided the holes where disgusted but thrilled by this new type of hole-abuse)

Just so you know, not all IEI's are analists or sodomites [regardless of sexual orientation]. There are probably more straight-identified analists on this forum than gay-identified ones.