Originally Posted by
Singu
There's a lot of confusion over how Socionics actually works, what it actually is, when is it accurate, and when is it not.
This post will attempt to clarify those questions and confusions.
So what actually is Socionics? It can be summed up by this simple sentence:
"It has happened before, so it will happen again"
That's really it.
If you think about it, it makes total sense. Let me explain.
Supposedly, you have a "type" with certain observable characteristics. And that past fixed observation will supposedly continue into the future, leaving the characteristics intact. E.g. a logical person will always be logical in the future. An emotional person will always be emotional in the future. An Activity ITR played out in a certain way, will always play out in the same way in the future. Or at any rate, it probably will, or it might.
But how do we know that just because we have observed it happening, it will happen again? How do we know that it will repeat indefinitely, and that it's not just some fluke or a coincidence or a partial observation where we're missing some other important aspects?
How do we know that just because it has happened 500 times in a row, it will happen again?
Well the fact is, we don't. Or at least, we won't know without an explanation for why that is the case.
For example, a chicken might get fed by a farmer for 140 days in a row, thinking that the farmer will always feed it. But on the 141st day, the farmer chops off the chicken's head to be sent off to the market.
So whether the chicken gets fed or not depends entirely on the explanation of what the farmer will do. It can't be said that just because the chicken was fed yesterday, it will be fed again tomorrow. What the chicken needed was an explanation of what the farmer will do, in order to escape the farm before it was killed, and not merely rely on what has happened before, so to assume that it will happen again.
So the question becomes, how or when do we know when something is a regularity, and when something is not? We can only know that through explanations for why something should be a regularity, and when something isn't.
We can't know that just because we have observed something, it will happen again. Just because we have observed a "type", doesn't mean that the "type" will always stay the same and always be doing the same things like we might expect them to. We can't expect that just because we have observed a certain "ITR", doesn't mean that the ITR will always play out the same way in the future. It could change, it could be different, it could play out in a different way.