A lot of people around here don't like Phaedrus' ideas. I would suppose that this has more to do with the way he promotes his ideas than the ideas themselves. I haven't been able to find a thread that gets to the core of the issue, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that he promotes the notion that MBTI = socionics = Keirsey typing. I'm not going to say that it's true, but I can see how someone could come up with this idea. Socionics is not rigorously defined. The interpretation of how socionics should be tested at www.socionics.com (which is basically testing the four main dichotomies) is remarkably similar to the MBTI and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. Therefore, if you buy into socionics.com's conception or the idea that the four dichotomies are the main determinant of type, then they all could be viewed as the same.
As I said, socionics is not rigorously defined. Someone has to come up with a standard method of typing people. This is an advantage that the MBTI has over socionics. If you have no emphasis on what parts of the theory are essential and you have no method of typing people, then everyone has a different conception of what comprises socionics, and everyone will be typing people differently. The theory is complex enough that few could fit every aspect of it. Therefore, if someone were to come up with some standards, there would be less confusion, and it would be much easier to type people. Ideally, the best way to type people would be to figure out what the essential aspects of typing someone are, while remaining true to the theory, and then coming up with a test that gives fairly reliable results. It might seem like a daunting task, but what about a test that measures each informational element and types people based on their two most used and compatible functions? Sure, there's a lot more to being an INTp than simply having , but for testing purposes, is it really necessary to get much more complicated than that? The only serious drawback that I could see would be the wording of the questions. There are so many subtypes of people who have, for example, dominant , that it can be difficult to generate questions that will correctly determine most dominant types. However, this doesn't mean that it could never be done.
As for Phaedrus' ideas, if a test similar to my conception were to turn out to be a valid measure, then Phaedrus' notion would seem less credible. But who knows, perhaps we could never be able to come up with an accurate test, and if that's the case, we could never say for certain whether Phaedrus is truly right or wrong. (It seems wrong to me, but without aspects of the theory that we consider to be critical, we could never know. And if you do believe there to be central parts to the theory, then how could, for example, Wikisocion and socionics.com vary so much?)
Tell me what you think.
Jason