Why "typing" doesn't work

[Bertrand]

that's not the exact same thing as proving the old theory wrong, but in any case, if that's what you mean with all the foregoing then we agree

[squark]

Well, I think that you'd have to start with what types are NOT and what functions are NOT. But then this makes someone not being able to fit into any of the type, so this becomes a problem for the entire premise of the theory because there are only ever 16 types of people.

So it's like how Popper said, the problem of "psychoanalysis" is that it can basically fit into anything and it can "explain" anything. Which is its exact weakness, not a strength.

Here's the full text of it:

The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which 'verified' the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasized by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation--which revealed the class bias of the paper--and especially of course in what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their 'clinical observations'. As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analysing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. 'Because of my thousandfold experience,' he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: 'And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold.'

What I had in mind was that his previous observations may not have been much sounder than this new one; that each in its turn had been interpreted in the light of 'previous experience', and at the same time counted as additional confirmation. What, I asked myself, did it confirm? No more than that a case could be interpreted in the light of the theory. But this meant very little, I reflected, since every conceivable case could be interpreted in the light of Adler's theory, or equally of Freud's. I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and in Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact--that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed--which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.

With Einstein's theory the situation was strikingly different. Take one typical instance-- Einstein's prediction, just then confirmed by the findings of Eddington's expedition. Einstein's gravitational theory had led to the result that light must be attracted by heavy bodies (such as the sun), precisely as material bodies were attracted. As a consequence it could be calculated that light from a distant fixed star whose apparent position was close to the sun would reach the earth from such a direction that the star would seem to be slightly shifted away from the sun; or, in other words, that stars close to the sun would look as if they had moved a little away from the sun, and from one another. This is a thing which cannot normally be observed since such star are rendered invisible in daytime by the sun's overwhelming brightness; but during an eclipse it is possible to take photographs of them. If the same constellation is photographed at night one can measure the distances on the two photographs, and check the predicted effect.Now the impressive thing about this case is the risk involved in a prediction of this kind. If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. The theory is incompatible with certain possible results of observation--in fact with results which everybody before Einstein would have expected. This is quite different from the situation I have previously described, when it turned out that the theories in question were compatible with the most divergent human behaviour, so that it was practically impossible to describe any human behaviour that might not be claimed to be a verification of these theories.

These considerations led me in the winter of 1919-20 to conclusions which I may now reformulate as follows.

1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory--if we look for confirmations.

2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory--an event which would have refuted the theory.

3. Every 'good' scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of 'corroborating evidence'.)

7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers--for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by re-interpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a 'conventionalist twist' or a 'conventionalist stratagem'.)

In short, we should try to prove a theory wrong, not right. Because if you try to prove it right, then you will find "confirmations" of the theory everywhere - if you look hard enough for them.

It's just groupings, categorizations when you're talking about testing and typing. There's not really anything to prove. I could just as easily say something like, I have observed that there are loud people and quiet people, and there are tall people and short people, so people could fit into the four categories of: Tall loud, Tall quiet, Short loud and short quiet. Then, I could find a ton of people fitting in each category and compile a bunch of other traits they have in common, and maybe some patterns would emerge. And then you test the patterns and see how predictive they are. That's more or less what Talanov did with his lists, but started with people sorted into 16 types. It's data-collection based on pre-determined categories. And then you test the strength of the correlations between trait and category.

Does everyone fit neatly into a category? Probably not. Are the categories meaningful? That's up for debate and mostly a matter of opinion. But, you can test how well other traits line up with whatever categories you start with.

When you get into people making a bunch of assumptions about others based on the categories they have decided that someone is in, based on nothing more than a vibe or more assumptions about the person, yeah, that's all a bunch of bullshit. Or telling someone that they have certain character qualities due to their type, definitely more bullshit.

[Singu]

Yeah I get that, but it would be a lot easier if it said "Tall, loud, but NOT brown hair". But Socionics says, "Tall, loud, brown hair", and if you fit even one of them, then it's a type. But it should be more specific, like how many of the criteria should it fit to become a type? Is it two or more? Three? Four? etc.

[Bertrand]

it blows my mind to think people still assume socionics must be used that way, and that since that usage of it is not useful to reject it without ever thinking to use it in a different sense and then taking it a step further and realizing its that sense others are using it in, and their criticisms apply only to themselves, and that entire sense of superiority was actually misbegotten and a symptom of actually being behind--what seems to be running ahead is actually being lapped

[lavos]

Well, here's the thing. What exactly does it mean by "it works"?

That it can be applied. That it can be used. And don't tell me this not true because a lot a people are using socionics. You can't use it? That might have something to do with your own makeup (i.e. your type). But just because you can't use it yourself, don't assume that it is useless or has no basis in reality. You're starting to sound like a militant atheist...

[Singu]

That it can be applied. That it can be used. And don't tell me this not true because a lot a people are using socionics. You can't use it? That might have something to do with your own makeup (i.e. your type). But just because you can't use it yourself, don't assume that it is useless or has no basis in reality. You're starting to sound like a militant atheist...

Yes, and Newtonian mechanics also "work". But Newton couldn't have explained how this "gravity" exactly worked, so he simply called it "Force", some kind of a magical attraction between objects. But then Einstein came along, and he has managed to explain how gravity worked in a whole new way, by combining geometry with physics, and explained that there was no such thing as "Force", but the gravity is due to the curvature of spacetime. This has overturned Newtonian mechanics, and it has made predictions much more accurate than Newtonian mechanics.

So "it works" isn't exactly good enough, since it is the explanations that cause us to understand things in a new way, and hence can offer us newer and better answers to the problems that we are attempting to solve.

[Bertrand]

I saw a guy on a busy corner of campus today yelling into the air, quoting scripture, and generally disturbing everyone and it made me think of you, Singu. What I realized is that he firmly believes, much like you, that his Ti interpretation of the world is better than the rest, although it happens to be an explicitly religious one, and that since only that Ti framework is real, it delimits precisely what rights and duties the world is ruled by. what this means is its his absolute duty to preach, via Fe, to everyone the gospel of this kind, because Fe sort of exists as fair game in the gaps of that grid and functions to allow one to do whatever they can in that space.

The problem as I see it is for you science has replaced this person's religion, but the fundamental approach is the same, which is they mistake their Ni Ti loop for Te and then use that as their logic of action. It creates extremely idiosyncratic behavior... from your point of view you would concede that this guy is wrong, but only because you think your theory does what his does but better. Since science has a certain claim on "objectivity" it seems like it might actually be a Ti framework suitable to replace Te as a cognitive apprehension of reality, but it fundamentally falls into the same category of stance-towards-the-world when subsumed into Ni Ti. In other words, Ni Ti, even if filled with the language of science cannot transform those functions into different functions. A religious approach to science subsumes science, it is not transformed by science into a non religious approach to life. In other words, you have more in common with that guy than you realize and only the gloss over the surface has changed. its fundamentally a commitment that animates a theory as if it were a person then treats it as a form of personal loyalty to the abstraction, which is the essence of fanaticism. when Jesus said he embodied the truth he was actually elucidating the validity of such an approach, but across a deeper commitment to transformation itself not to dogma. when science replaced Jesus that underlying ideal was totally lost but preserved in a kind of conceptual mummy, which you now worship. when Fi becomes conscious at least people peg their personal commitments to real people so the whole thing isn't an idealogical delusion which results in people preaching on the street. When Jung talks about Ni doms ultimately becoming a voice crying in the wilderness I believe he is talking about people like you.

in the final analysis I felt nothing but compassion for this guy, because you could see how much everyone was threatened and disliked his presence, but at the same time he was absolutely convinced of his own rightness and was sincerely acting out of genuine concern for everyone around him, he just did not know how to reach them, because the Ni Ti world he existed in was %100 self contained, and because the language he used was so cut off from real life to express that concern, it failed at its essential purpose right at the onset. thus the creative Fe act was just sort of creepy and quite literally diffused into the wind. I don't think he was insane at all, but rather this is precisely how people become cut off from eachother, but in its most extreme form. the problem is the very Ti they worship will ultimately cordon them into an asylum or other prison because it does not know how to understand it. this is what I believe RD Laing was getting at in the divided self, which is to say ultimately if you tempt power you will reap it, but it will ultimately all have been a waste rooted in misunderstanding

anyway I hope you can find your way back to earth, because declarative allegiance to science is actually a pernicious form of dissociation with reality. the scientists you admire don't actually view science in the way you view science nor the way you think they view science, they actually think of science as an inert map without the underlying ideological commitments, which is precisely what makes them scientists and not populizers and camp followers. realize people have compassion for you, but they can't reach you as long as you hold yourself out as above them. this is nothing but pride so it is no surprise it is bound up with lucifer, "rational" lies, and so forth. in the meanwhile you're literally the guy on the street corner with your posting, try and remember that. when Jung says moral effort is at the heart of psychotherapy think of it as a personal challenge to see the limitations of science, because I think that is the path forward for anyone stuck in an idealogical rut

[Singu]

@Bertrand "I don't understand what he's saying! Therefore, he must be saying something crazy. And therefore (?) I will retreat into my own world to explain his behavior".

I don't know, I often find that when people say these things, it seems to me that they're really talking about themselves. Niffer recently told me that "I was trying to sound smart", when I think, she is trying very hard to sound smart in many of her posts. So it is a matter of irony, when Bertrand writes a 5000 words post about how I'm rambling, and how I must think that I'm always right and that my thoughts are better than others, when it is generally Bertrand that can never admit that he's wrong about things. I often find that, you, Bertrand, completely misunderstand what I say, and even accuse me of saying the complete opposite (literally) of what I have just said (the "me" that exist in your head is not actually me, Bertrand).

It's also a case in point, of how someone can be so irrational, and keep running in circles in believing in things that don't actually work, while they hit themselves on the wall over and over again, but they get up and run into the wall, because they believe that somehow, this time, it will work, and something will happen. But it will never work, of course. It is kind of funny I guess, and that's how I feel when I look at people discussing Socionics. But I have also learned a lot, like what is science and what is pseudoscience etc., so it has been a good learning lesson for me.

So I have now finally found a satisfactory answer for why Socionics doesn't work, and I think that is because the theory lacks proper explanations for what it purports to explain (Fe, etc), and therefore, the theory is a one of superfluity.

[Adam Strange]

No one really knows why gravity works, either, but it does. There are even some pretty good models of its behavior which work under most circumstances, but they predict singularities, so we know they aren't correct. Nevertheless, I'm betting on their accuracy for most of my predictions.

[Bertrand]

the thing is I don't feel like I misunderstand you, I feel like I know exactly what you're saying. That said one of my foundational beliefs is that this sort of thing is ultimately not a matter of argumentation or logic but comes down to individual effort, so there's nothing I can say to force you to be anything. if force is the only sufficient condition for change then I must leave you to your fate! the guy when he saw me on the corner knew though

[whodat]

Yes, and Newtonian mechanics also "work". But Newton couldn't have explained how this "gravity" exactly worked, so he simply called it "Force", some kind of a magical attraction between objects. But then Einstein came along, and he has managed to explain how gravity worked in a whole new way, by combining geometry with physics, and explained that there was no such thing as "Force", but the gravity is due to the curvature of spacetime. This has overturned Newtonian mechanics, and it has made predictions much more accurate than Newtonian mechanics.

So "it works" isn't exactly good enough, since it is the explanations that cause us to understand things in a new way, and hence can offer us newer and better answers to the problems that we are attempting to solve.

Why does mass bend space-time? And how? That is the big question. One of the few big questions left out there. Black holes, dude. Some secret of the Universe lies inside them.

[whodat]

the thing is I don't feel like I misunderstand you, I feel like I know exactly what you're saying. That said one of my foundational beliefs is that this sort of thing is ultimately not a matter of argumentation or logic but comes down to individual effort, so there's nothing I can say to force you to be anything. if force is the only sufficient condition for change then I must leave you to your fate! the guy when he saw me on the corner knew though

As an illustration, your story is successful.

Objectivity is still available for everyone, though. Just because your extreme example of Ni-Ti-Fe axis showed you something, don't forget Ni also gets a Te - Fi- Se treatment.

[Singu]

Why does mass bend space-time? And how? That is the big question. One of the few big questions left out there. Black holes, dude. Some secret of the Universe lies inside them.

Well if you're curious, then you can read about why that is...

But the point is, if something doesn't have a satisfactory explanation, then it can't be considered to be the right answer.

[whodat]

No one really knows why gravity works, either, but it does. There are even some pretty good models of its behavior which work under most circumstances, but they predict singularities, so we know they aren't correct. Nevertheless, I'm betting on their accuracy for most of my predictions.

I'd love to know how it works. Maybe some mind will come along and build a model for humanity to view. Are not singularities real? Why is it called singularity? Something almost significant about that terms/word/phrase.

[whodat]

Well if you're curious, then you can read about why that is...

But the point is, if something doesn't have a satisfactory explanation, then it can't be considered to be the right answer.

Well the thing is that no-one knows, yet, why that is. People are spending their whole careers trying to figure it out. Two super massive instruments, found in two facilities in America, are measuring gravitational waves, ripples in space-time itself, sent through space by galactic black holes created far in the past.

An explanation needs to be a cohesive crystallization that would encompass all the information, justify it, and follow all tangible threads to their source. A Unifying Theory of Physics.

The real crazy part is that its not space we are seeing in front of us, but time. Collective Humanity has not made the intuitive leap yet, even so many years after Einstein discovered space-time.

[Bertrand]

As an illustration, your story is successful.

Objectivity is still available for everyone, though. Just because your extreme example of Ni-Ti-Fe axis showed you something, don't forget Ni also gets a Te - Fi- Se treatment.

i'd be interested to hear you describe that in action, because the Ni Ti Fe thing struck me with the force of a revelation, and I would like to know that in regard to every combination

[Adam Strange]

I'd love to know how it works. Maybe some mind will come along and build a model for humanity to view. Are not singularities real? Why is it called singularity? Something almost significant about that terms/word/phrase.

Here's a start on what I think is a pretty good theory of Gravity. https://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0785

[whodat]

i'd be interested to hear you describe that in action, because the Ni Ti Fe thing struck me with the force of a revelation, and I would like to know that in regard to every combination

Well look for it in your own life. You are bound to see it now.

[Bertrand]

well I will try, but its actually hard for me to get a clear eye on, most the time its not how I see things. like it was a real paradigm shift when it clicked into perspective

[strangeling]

No one really knows why gravity works, either, but it does. There are even some pretty good models of its behavior which work under most circumstances, but they predict singularities, so we know they aren't correct. Nevertheless, I'm betting on their accuracy for most of my predictions.

I think the best I heard was a theory based on magnets. It was explained that all objects in the universe rotate and are aligned in a certain way, like magnets. And that any changes that occur relate back to these rotations, these alignments.

Actually, if you look at the universe, galaxies have a spin and the individual parts all have their own spin and alignment relative to everything else. Objects in space all tend to rotate on a 2d plane. Even atomic particles wrap themselves around other particles in a certain manner. I wonder if that would explain why quantum entangled particles can be manipulated almost instantly from great distances away. Perhaps they are just aligned with each other.


Well, I guess I have my own "idea", which I don't suppose I could ever prove. But it seems that matter is matter because it is in motion. If you could collide a particle with another particle that has opposite motion, like two cars ramming each other with the same speed and momentum, they would simply stop moving and stop existing, similar to using anti-matter. In theory, the vacuum of space would be full of matter that is not felt because it is not in motion. Light would in theory be the kinetic energy of matter as it propagates across this dead matter and transferred to other matter. You could in theory direct electromagnetic waves to resonate at certain points and "theoretically" excite dead matter into matter that is in motion, or what we generally think of as matter. I wonder if that's the idea behind Nasa's EM Drive.

But anyway, I just see gravity as this push/pull from matter to dead matter. A rotating body pushes against the dead matter, compressing it and repulsing it at the same time, via Einstein's curvature of space. Kind of like a centripetal force, except the dead matter provides some kind of counter-force to keep the rotating body from shooting itself into space as many fractured pieces.

[Singu]

Well anyway, it seems like most of the "ideological divides" on this forums seems to be about holism vs. reductionism, qualitative vs. quantitative approach.

Reductionism reduces things into simpler component parts, and isolated variables, so that they can be measured, tested and experimented. This is more of a scientific approach.

Holism takes a look at more of the "whole" and emergent phenomena, such as personalities and subjective experiences, which can't be exactly measured, so holism is viewed as being unscientific.

Qualitative method focuses on things like meaning, understanding, subjectivity. Quantitative method focuses on things like numbers, objectivity, predictability, tests.

It's not really a matter of which being more "right", because it depends on what kind of problems that you're attempting to solve.

The "paradox" of Socionics is that it thinks that it can have repeatable results (reductionism) of holistic, emergent phenomena, such as interaction between people. But things like interaction between people are way too complex to have consistent, stable and repeatable results, if we were to consider the entirety of the individual as a WHOLE. It's also trying to "objectify" the subjective, by turning functions and types into some sort of objective entities. Then I think, they would no longer become emergent phenomena that they were supposed to be. It's saying that the functions are BOTH the simpler component parts, AND emergent phenomena (i.e. Fe = emotions). I think this is the reason for much of the intellectual confusion and muddiness of Socionics.

Mostly, Socionics is a holistic, qualitative approach.

But I don't think Socionics solves either approaches. It's just kind of a... conceptual mess, which seems to be why it's creating so much confusion.

[Pallas]

Everything is both a whole and a part though. For example, the human foot. That's a part of the body, but it also has parts, like toes and a heel and toenails, and those have parts like nerves and skin and whatever. At some point, you just have to decide what you're measuring. I do think psychology is barely a science, but it's still kind of a science, just a kind of pointless one since I don't think science is very well-suited to solving psychology problems, just like a screwdriver isn't very well-suited to being a hammer even though you can drive in a really tiny nail with a screwdriver no problem so a screwdriver is kind of a hammer. Socionics isn't really being used as a science by most forum members to begin with though.

[niffer]

Everything is both a whole and a part though. For example, the human foot. That's a part of the body, but it also has parts, like toes and a heel and toenails, and those have parts like nerves and skin and whatever. At some point, you just have to decide what you're measuring. I do think psychology is barely a science, but it's still kind of a science, just a kind of pointless one since I don't think science is very well-suited to solving psychology problems, just like a screwdriver isn't very well-suited to being a hammer even though you can drive in a really tiny nail with a screwdriver no problem so a screwdriver is kind of a hammer. Socionics isn't really being used as a science by most forum members to begin with though.

One of my favourite posts on the forum of all time, that is all

[Singu]

Everything is both a whole and a part though. For example, the human foot. That's a part of the body, but it also has parts, like toes and a heel and toenails, and those have parts like nerves and skin and whatever.

That's exactly what I said, and that's why both holism and reductionism are wrong.

[Pallas]

That's exactly what I said, and that's why both holism and reductionism are wrong.

Didn’t you just praise reductionism though? Socionics is holistic and reductionistic at the same time and you bashed that.

[niffer]

Well, I guess I have my own "idea", which I don't suppose I could ever prove. But it seems that matter is matter because it is in motion. If you could collide a particle with another particle that has opposite motion, like two cars ramming each other with the same speed and momentum, they would simply stop moving and stop existing, similar to using anti-matter. In theory, the vacuum of space would be full of matter that is not felt because it is not in motion. Light would in theory be the kinetic energy of matter as it propagates across this dead matter and transferred to other matter. You could in theory direct electromagnetic waves to resonate at certain points and "theoretically" excite dead matter into matter that is in motion, or what we generally think of as matter. I wonder if that's the idea behind Nasa's EM Drive.

I wish there was a "love" button for this. The idea of this feels almost romantic to me.

But anyway, I just see gravity as this push/pull from matter to dead matter. A rotating body pushes against the dead matter, compressing it and repulsing it at the same time, via Einstein's curvature of space. Kind of like a centripetal force, except the dead matter provides some kind of counter-force to keep the rotating body from shooting itself into space as many fractured pieces.

Would be interesting if this were refined a bit. How would thermal expansion fit in with this, or would those dynamics take place on a different plane?

[Dee]

It doesn't work here, if you referred to typing not working here. This is because people just throw off their opinion on what is the vibe they get off you, without actually being typed right themselves, or having poor idea of what types are. If people could really see the type of person when they see the person (meaning 100% certainty, no less), then they would be able to tell well. But until they can, there will be a lot of divergence in opinion and bad typing reliability. One suggestion is for everybody to lay out their analytical thought process first, before making a suggestion, relying on accepted socionics notions to tag the observed actions/traits of the person (another matter is justifying that a certain action or trait that was observed actually exists, which is a function of the person that observed it and is therefore subject to possible error).

[strangeling]

...
Would be interesting if this were refined a bit. How would thermal expansion fit in with this, or would those dynamics take place on a different plane?

I'm not sure what you mean. But I understand thermal expansion as increased kinetic energy of matter. So an atom that gets excited say has both larger orbits and rotations of its particles, but also a magnetic outward push because it is disturbing the natural alignment of itself to other things. Kind of like how magnets want to line up North to South, which is another way of saying all particles share the same spin. Cause if you line up North to North, it's like trying to put a car in gear when the engine and gear are spinning in opposite directions. They will resist each other, until one aligns with the other. That's what I think anyway, almost like the universe is in a constant struggle to align everything. Or maybe that's more like an opposite theory of entropy - the theory of disentropy?