Is Socionics pseudoscience?

[Singu]

Socionics meets the following criteria for it being pseudoscience:

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is often characterized by the following: contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; and absence of systematic practices when developing theories.

The following are some of the indicators of the possible presence of pseudoscience:

Use of vague, exaggerated or untestable claims

• Assertion of scientific claims that are vague rather than precise, and that lack specific measurements^[43]
• Assertion of a claim with little or no explanatory power.^[31]
• Failure to make use of operational definitions (i.e. publicly accessible definitions of the variables, terms, or objects of interest so that persons other than the definer can measure or test them independently)^{[Note 4]} (See also: Reproducibility).
• Lack of boundary conditions: Most well-supported scientific theories possess well-articulated limitations under which the predicted phenomena do and do not apply.^[46]

Over-reliance on confirmation rather than refutation

• Assertions that do not allow the logical possibility that they can be shown to be false by observation or physical experiment (see also: Falsifiability).^[17][48]
• Assertion of claims that a theory predicts something that it has not been shown to predict.^[49] Scientific claims that do not confer any predictive power are considered at best "conjectures", or at worst "pseudoscience" (e.g. Ignoratio elenchi)^[50]
• Assertion that claims which have not been proven false must therefore be true, and vice versa (see: Argument from ignorance).^[51]
• Over-reliance on testimonial, anecdotal evidence, or personal experience: This evidence may be useful for the context of discovery (i.e. hypothesis generation), but should not be used in the context of justification (e.g. Statistical hypothesis testing).^[52]
• Presentation of data that seems to support claims while suppressing or refusing to consider data that conflict with those claims.^[25] This is an example of selection bias, a distortion of evidence or data that arises from the way that the data are collected. It is sometimes referred to as the selection effect.
• Promulgating to the status of facts excessive or untested claims that have been previously published elsewhere; an accumulation of such uncritical secondary reports, which do not otherwise contribute their own empirical investigation, is called the Woozle effect.^[53]

Lack of openness to testing by other experts

• Evasion of peer review before publicizing results (termed "science by press conference"):^{[54][56][Note 5]} Some proponents of ideas that contradict accepted scientific theories avoid subjecting their ideas to peer review, sometimes on the grounds that peer review is biased towards established paradigms, and sometimes on the grounds that assertions cannot be evaluated adequately using standard scientific methods. By remaining insulated from the peer review process, these proponents forgo the opportunity of corrective feedback from informed colleagues.^[55]
• Some agencies, institutions, and publications that fund scientific research require authors to share data so others can evaluate a paper independently. Failure to provide adequate information for other researchers to reproduce the claims contributes to a lack of openness.^[57]
• Substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all view points is not encouraged.^[58]

Absence of progress

• Failure to progress towards additional evidence of its claims.^{[48][Note 6]}Terence Hines has identified astrology as a subject that has changed very little in the past two millennia.^[46][59] (see also: scientific progress)
• Lack of self-correction: scientific research programmes make mistakes, but they tend to reduce these errors over time.^[60] By contrast, ideas may be regarded as pseudoscientific because they have remained unaltered despite contradictory evidence. The work Scientists Confront Velikovsky (1976) Cornell University, also delves into these features in some detail, as does the work of Thomas Kuhn, e.g. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) which also discusses some of the items on the list of characteristics of pseudoscience.
• Statistical significance of supporting experimental results does not improve over time and are usually close to the cutoff for statistical significance. Normally, experimental techniques improve or the experiments are repeated, and this gives ever stronger evidence. If statistical significance does not improve, this typically shows the experiments have just been repeated until a success occurs due to chance variations.

Personalization of issues

• Tight social groups and authoritarian personality, suppression of dissent, and groupthink can enhance the adoption of beliefs that have no rational basis. In attempting to confirm their beliefs, the group tends to identify their critics as enemies.^[61]
• Assertion of claims of a conspiracy on the part of the scientific community to suppress the results^{[Note 7]}
• Attacking the motives or character of anyone who questions the claims (see Ad hominem fallacy)^{[61][Note 8]}

Further reading:

Michael Shermer's theory of belief-dependent realism is driven by the belief that the brain is essentially a "belief engine," which scans data perceived by the senses and looks for patterns and meaning. There is also the tendency for the brain to create cognitive biases, as a result of inferences and assumptions made without logic and based on instinct — usually resulting in patterns in cognition. These tendencies of patternicityand agenticity are also driven "by a meta-bias called the bias blind spot, or the tendency to recognize the power of cognitive biases in other people but to be blind to their influence on our own beliefs."^[77] Lindeman states that social motives (i.e., "to comprehend self and the world, to have a sense of control over outcomes, to belong, to find the world benevolent and to maintain one's self-esteem") are often "more easily" fulfilled by pseudoscience than by scientific information. Furthermore, pseudoscientific explanations are generally not analyzed rationally, but instead experientially. Operating within a different set of rules compared to rational thinking, experiential thinking regards an explanation as valid if the explanation is "personally functional, satisfying and sufficient", offering a description of the world that may be more personal than can be provided by science and reducing the amount of potential work involved in understanding complex events and outcomes.^[78]

There is a trend to believe in pseudoscience more than scientific evidence.^[79] Some people believe the prevalence of pseudoscientific beliefs is due to widespread "scientific illiteracy".^[80] Individuals lacking scientific literacy are more susceptible to wishful thinking, since they are likely to turn to immediate gratification powered by System 1, our default operating system which requires little to no effort. This system encourages one to accept the conclusions they believe, and reject the ones they don't. Further analysis of complex pseudoscientific phenomena require System 2, which follows rules, compares objects along multiple dimensions, and weighs options. These two systems have several other differences which are further discussed in the dual-process theory.^{[citation needed]} The scientific and secular systems of morality and meaning are generally unsatisfying to most people. Humans are, by nature, a forward-minded species pursuing greater avenues of happiness and satisfaction, but we are all too frequently willing to grasp at unrealistic promises of a better life.^[81]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience

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It's actually pretty astonishing how much they fit in with Socionics. This pretty much confirms that Socionics is indeed pseudoscience.

[Limitless]

I don't have time to read through this right now, but I do appreciate your research!

[Bertrand]

yeah thanks for this amazing message

[lavos]

At it's current stage, yes , it's pseudosciente. Same as MBTI. This is only because nobody seems to have gathered the resources to investigate in depth and lay out all its intricancies. But it is a real phenomenon: People have types.

[Crispy]

Man Landing on the Moon is a Pseudoscience according to this criteria (and for reals).

[The Reality Denialist]

I wouldn't necessarily say that there are 16 distinct types. I would say that there are things in thought that tends to repress each other.

[Tallmo]

What's this obsession with pseudo-science? To me this question is totally uninteresting.

There are lots of things that can be labeled pseudo science, that doesn't mean that the phenomenon doesn't exist or can't be observed.

What's called pseudo science contains lots of different theories, from pure myths to really interesting stuff that's more like proto-science.

The nature of the phenomenon in socionics is very difficult. But it can still be observed and categorized. So what's the alternative? To just ignore it?

I don't understand the point of posting this list of criteria. Who cares if it's pseudo-science. What's interesting is the phenomenon itself. It works and can be used.


The frontiers of science are often in the domain of pseudo-science, because the methods are not developed and the phenomena still very difficult. You can't dismiss something based on these criteria. You have to look for yourself and try out new things.

[Sol]

Is Singu's reasoning a pseudoscience?

It's hypothesis. It fits good to my subjective experience and not so bad to some my experiments.
While your problem - low typing skills, probably the lack of theoretical understanding and the wish "all that was not true" due to your personal issues.

[velveteen]

VI is pseudoscience.

Socionics is a theory and a means of understanding people and human behaviour. It's not set in stone and can be subject to change. It'd be interesting to observe the 'types' across different contexts and cultures.

[Singu]

Types "exist" because you're trying to fit people into types, and not the other way around. You can potentially fit anyone into one of the types. And that actually becomes the problem and not the solution. It doesn't explain why there should be only 16 types and not 50 or 500 million. Perhaps there could be more types as we discover more things about people, but the types are somehow ideologically fixed on a certain number. This only proves the existence of a theory but it's not necessarily explaining reality as it is.

Types are abstractions. It's like measuring a height and labeling tall or short, but that doesn't mean that the actual measurement doesn't exist.

The motives behind a person can be explained in any number of ways, and the Socionics explanation is not necessarily the correct one. You could say that it was due to PoLR, but it could also be this or that. There's nothing that says that the Socionics explanation is the correct one.

Socionics claims that it can predict relationships, but there's no data showing that anyone has ever accurately predicted relationships in a statistically significant way.

The theory also has very little explanatory power. It doesn't exactly explain the mechanics behind Fe or Te or types and "what" it exactly is, it just states that they exist.

[Olimpia]

Yes.

[Alomoes]

Of course it is. At least the stuff I practice, which is why I don't practice it.

[hatchback176]

This is a dumb critique, Singu. You need a model of Causality, and you need a model of Neuroscience. If you had those then you would've been grounding the concepts and patterns into factual relationships as you were learning the theory of Socionics. You're attempting to critique us for the software running on our computer when all you've actually shown is that you have a bad operating system that can't run software programs. I've never had to throw out Patterns & Heuristics because my personal understanding is rock solid and that allows me to "set breakpoints in the debugger and patch faulty software". I know how to link cause-and-effect together into brain circuits myself which means I'm not left scratching my head wondering how another human managed to classify their experience into a specific set of categories. You need to focus less on Scientific Methodology and more on your Metacognitive Skills.

[strangeling]

If you look at the Jungian underpinnings, a lot of the theory is originally grounded in philosophy - more specifically a philosophy of types or different ways of orientating yourself with the world based on dualism. The conscious/unconscious, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, introversion/extroversion, so on and so forth, opposing, yet also influencing each other. In that sense, it's not so much pseudoscience as it is an attempt at a practical extension of Jung's dualistic types.

But yeah, the way Socionics tries to present itself as psychology and separate from its obvious Jungian roots probably does make it pseudoscience (at least in that regard).

[totalize]

socionics never claimed to be a science so calling it a pseudoscience is ‘im a rick and morty fan and an atheist’ type behaviour

[Singu]

It does say that it's science in some texts.

Anyway this is all hypocritical. If Socionics was proved to be "scientifically" true somehow, people would be going on about how it is proven scientifically. They wouldn't be going on about how it doesn't matter because it's not science. So they just want this theory to be right for the sake of being right. Which goes to the main point, this theory can't even be proven wrong in principle. Saying that it doesn't matter just reeks of sour grapes. If you don't want science, then turn to philosophy, religion or the arts. Jung's methods are closer to philosophy and art than science.

[Bertrand]

probably because being proven scientifically makes someone a fukken moron to dispute (unless they succeed, then we call them a genius), whereas something being unscientific but plausible only makes you a moron if you dismiss it on those grounds alone

it sounds like you've really latched onto this falsifiability idea, so that places you right around the 1920s in terms of philosophical development. consider learning Wittgenstein to realize why positivism is silly. then you can come back and evangelize that message until maybe you're ready for rorty

AJ Ayer, who came up with the idea:

By the late 1960s, logical positivism had clearly run its course.[42] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A J Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false".

[totalize]

Anyway this is all hypocritical. If Socionics was proved to be "scientifically" true somehow, people would be going on about how it is proven scientifically. They wouldn't be going on about how it doesn't matter because it's not science. So they just want this theory to be right for the sake of being right. Which goes to the main point, this theory can't even be proven wrong in principle. Saying that it doesn't matter just reeks of sour grapes. If you don't want science, then turn to philosophy, religion or the arts. Jung's methods are closer to philosophy and art than science.

It's incredible you can spend 8 years on a typology forum and not get the point tbh.

Sorting people into psychological types, manifested in personality, based on psychological concepts which are dichotomical explanations of how humans operate and then attempting to solve problems of perspective between people of various dichotomies is not a science, in the sense that people do not perform experiments upon hypotheses to reach more clear conclusions. But it doesn't claim to be and doesn't need to be, either, because it is just that: you use an arbitrary way of dividing people in order to see how those divisions might manifest as problems. That's almost elementary level human-relations logic.

I agree that some people do pretend that socionics is all-encompassing, falsifiable, and manifestly true, and that they have some kind of divine power to operate the system. This does not preclude the system from being (a) useful or (b) valid.

[huiheiwufhawriuhg]

Jungian cognitive functions have been proven wrong a long time ago. That's the reason why no professional psychologist would ever use MBTI or socionics and they rather use Big 5. Psychology is not an exact science and a lot of its theory stands on very vague facts anyway. I personally do not think that Jungian functions really exist as they cannot be read in the brain scan (as some people claim) and they can not been seen in movement, eyes etc... (that's why I believe VI to be crap), but I believe that Jung simply identified personality characteristics that can be theoretically seen in other people in puerly abstract way. Function in my opinion is something like a symbol of one's character. Jung's problem is that only 8 functions cannot definy human's personality, but they can symbolize its basic meaning within a subjective system.

Socionics however has a few blind spots.

1. It's been proven that there's no similarity between person's psychological profial during childhood, adult age and old age. People do change and they change rapidly.
2. Personality growth can happen and yes you can become good at things you've previously sucked at. Socionics doesn't allow that.
3. It's a theory known mostly in Russia... I mean Russia...
4. Jung has never claimed that combination of strenght like Si+Fi aren't possible. The only thing that Jung said when it comes to combination of functions is that everyone has a prefered strong functions and an inferior function which is its opposite. Socionics sort of ignores this one as well and rather works with PoLR function wich doesn't really work with any sort of an actual scientific ground or a decent research and I've never seen it to be really working IRL.

[Tigerfadder]

Maybe it should be called typology-art or the art of typing. Like pua xd

[Tigerfadder]

I think it is weird to look at science, and than at Socionics and than see if Socionics keeps the measure of Science. Science have this high status but it is also limited. We should keep that in mind.

[Singu]

Socionics is a system that ATTEMPTS to be science, but doesn't employ the scientific method. Any "good" scientific theory has both convincing explanatory power and predictive power. Socionics attempts to explain how our cognition works via Model A. Socionics attempts to predict relationships via inter-type relations. It just that none of those claims have been tested out via the scientific method. You can claim that it is "proto-science", but that's only because the testing out of the hypothesis is not feasible due to unavailable technology or the scale of the experiment, etc. But we currently do have the technology that we can use to look into the brain, even though we are still in its infancy and there are a whole lot of things to discover about the brain. We can also test out whether inter-type relations really work out or not.

But that's also the very problem of Socionics. Whether inter-type relations really work out or not lies on the assumption that there really is a person who is a "really great typer". And we can also say that this "really great typer" is originally Jung, and you could say that this "Jung's method of typing" has been "handed down" to Myers, Augusta, etc. So it is akin to an artisan handing down his skill to his disciple. This is kind of like how Confucianism was handed down to his pupils. The entire thing lies on the assumption of the correctness of Jung, because this "typing skill" is wholly a subjective EXPERIENCE, it is not exactly explained in an objective or rational sense, since Jung has never left anything objective in a real sense for his work. This is exactly why this theory becomes "cult-like" or "religious", because it is a system based on more or less personal trust (of authority, like Jung or Augusta), and not through rationally thinking about things in a realistic sense or coming up with evidence.

I think that by its very nature, Socionics becomes a theory that "fits reality into theory" rather than the other way around.

[hatchback176]

You are still only pointing to your own ignorance. Common Sense has only recently begun to be formalized in the form of CogAI-like architectures, you should be more than a little surprised that there is no scientific theory of Common Sense.

[Bertrand]

41:15 for singu

[hatchback176]

Nice find Bertrand, he's spot on about that gut feeling that I locate as Introverted Sensing, 3rd Chakra center of gravity, left parietal lobule time/space integration during collision judgments
Peterson is an EII, MBTI INFP, Mental Symmetry/Cognitive Styles Mercy person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Gendlin#Focusing
Eugene Gendlin is an MBTI ENTP, Mental Symmetry / Cognitive Styles Perceiver person
It's quite interesting how the lack of ISTJ's and ESTJ's in academia has left a giant vacuum that the other types crowd in on and take credit for as a new source of insight when it doesn't come naturally to them.

[Grendel]

socionics never claimed to be a science so calling it a pseudoscience is ‘im a rick and morty fan and an atheist’ type behaviour

Very well said.

[Bertrand]

Nice find Bertrand, he's spot on about that gut feeling that I locate as Introverted Sensing, 3rd Chakra center of gravity, left parietal lobule time/space integration during collision judgments
Peterson is an EII, MBTI INFP, Mental Symmetry/Cognitive Styles Mercy person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Gendlin#Focusing
Eugene Gendlin is an MBTI ENTP, Mental Symmetry / Cognitive Styles Perceiver person
It's quite interesting how the lack of ISTJ's and ESTJ's in academia has left a giant vacuum that the other types crowd in on and take credit for as a new source of insight when it doesn't come naturally to them.

to be fair they verbalize it in a way that is new, whereas the xTJs only act it out, which is of course more but also less meaningful in certain ways

[Pookie]

Just become smarter. You'll get it eventually.

[Singu]

Anyway, Socionics absolutely claims to be science. All current Socionists, Gulenko, Bukalov and Reinin claim that Socionics is science on their websites:

Socionics is a science
that discovered the laws of human compatibility

Socionics is a fusion of science and technology that makes it possible to predict behavior and activity style of an individual, group of people, and society as a whole; to ascertain compatibility of family members and business personnel and to create teams of like-minded individuals based on natural psychological, informational, ideological and business compatibility.

http://socionic.info/en/esocdef.html

Socionics is not just science - it's a new way of looking at the world, the opportunity to get freedom from stereotypes about right and proper.

https://socioniks.net

Well, it’s a very practical science with the most important ability to analyze interpersonal relations, which no other officially recognized psychological typology is able to provide. Ability to analyse personal types and interpersonal relations – that was a great step Aušra Augustinavičiūtė made, in comparison with other typologies. The next significant step was the typology of small groups that we discussed before, nobody has made any research before me us on that matter. And the fact, that it is not officially recognized science is the result of discreditation and lack of professional use.

https://socionicsmbti.com/2016/03/11...regory-reinin/

However, he is also cautious about the limits of typology:

You can read about the harmful effect that Socionics may cause. Personality can not be absolutized, as it has lots of dimensions and aspects. Typology is only one of them, you can not absolutize it. The whole psychology must not be narrowed down to typology. It’s absurdity.

[Bertrand]

you're just equivocating on science now

you attacked them for not being empirical enough but everyone knew what you meant, and played along using science to mean what you intended it to, now you're doubling down on the language while totally missing the point

[Singu]

As for the "philosophy of science" discourse, if you're going to say that "falsification isn't everything!", then ok, perhaps "explanatory power" and "predictive power" would suffice (though I would think many ideas behind Socionics are actually falsifiable). The "Model A" doesn't really sufficiently explain why our cognition is structured in such a way, or whether if it's even accurate, or the fact that there could be many other explanations for our behaviors (that are perhaps more plausible). It also seems to go against the mounting scientific evidence from the neuroscientific and psychological field. Such as the problems found in MBTI:

"No evidence for dichotomies"

As described in the § Four dichotomies section, Isabel Myers considered the direction of the preference (for example, E vs. I) to be more important than the degree of the preference. Statistically, this would mean that scores on each MBTI scale would show a bimodal distributionwith most people scoring near the ends of the scales, thus dividing people into either, e.g., an extraverted or an introverted psychological type. However, most studies have found that scores on the individual scales were actually distributed in a centrally peaked manner, similar to a normal distribution, indicating that the majority of people were actually in the middle of the scale and were thus neither clearly introverted nor extraverted. Most personality traits do show a normal distribution of scores from low to high, with about 15% of people at the low end, about 15% at the high end and the majority of people in the middle ranges. But in order for the MBTI to be scored, a cut-off line is used at the middle of each scale and all those scoring below the line are classified as a low type and those scoring above the line are given the opposite type. Thus, psychometric assessment research fails to support the concept of type, but rather shows that most people lie near the middle of a continuous curve.

It would seem to suffer the same fate that the MBTI has suffered, that in a more rigorous scientific analysis and testing, it wouldn't stand any ground and it would start crumbling and falling apart. Perhaps we should be looking into experts from neuroscience and psychology, but I wouldn't think that they would take it very seriously, and would cast it aside as some another "eccentric" theory, like on the level of alternative medicine and astrology.

If you're going to say that "Well I don't care if it's science or not, this is just something fun to think about, no one takes it seriously anyway", then well I somewhat disagree. It's a problem because the whole thing actually claims to be a science and pretends that it has any authority on explaining reality or the psychology and motivation behind people. Science enjoys the exact kind of prestige, trustworthiness and authority that it has because it's seen by the people to be reliable and a reliable method for approximating reality. If anyone can just "make shit up" and discuss anything that they want and claim to be science, then the whole point of science will be degraded and it will only become a matter of "battle of the minds", where people only subjectively disagree over their own and others' opinions without any reference to objectivity whatsoever, whether that be empirical objectivity or more logical or rational coherency and soundness of a theory.

And if you want to discuss thing like "subjectivity" or consciousness, then there's philosophy and the art for that. They don't belong in the realm of science.

[Pookie]

Aw man don't give up yet. You'll get it if you keep trying.

[Bertrand]

lol I'm sure science appreciates you holding the line in the face of threats to its prestige

ethical function straining hard to find work. this is sort of like the twisted version of a waifu

anyway, carry on

[Exodus]

Anyway, Socionics absolutely claims to be science. All current Socionists, Gulenko, Bukalov and Reinin claim that Socionics is science on their websites:


http://socionic.info/en/esocdef.html


https://socioniks.net


https://socionicsmbti.com/2016/03/11...regory-reinin/

However, he is also cautious about the limits of typology:

Yes - Russian socionists do claim that socionics is an empirical science.

It isn't one (yet), but it's still true.

It would seem to suffer the same fate that the MBTI has suffered, that in a more rigorous scientific analysis and testing, it wouldn't stand any ground and it would start crumbling and falling apart.

Pure speculation.

[ashlesha]

what is this argument about exactly? who here thinks its science?
i think at most ppl on the forum are overly hopeful about future developments (thinking we'll find a "Fe" area of the brain or sth lolz)

[Singu]

Yes - Russian socionists do claim that socionics is an empirical science.

Yes, so they claim that it's something that it's not. Is this a problem? Obviously, because they pretend that they have any validity or authority on explaining our cognition or having the ability to predict behavior, when it doesn't. Do I think that Socionics will be taken seriously anytime in the future, especially outside of Russia? Probably not, but it's just for argument's sake, and especially to maybe newcomers who might seriously think that this is some valid scientific theory.

Some people here brought up the "it's not supposed to be science!" as a counter-argument, not me. What do they say to the actual Socionists that DO claim to be science? Tell them to stop claiming that it's science?

It isn't one (yet), but it's still true.

Are you saying that it's not science yet, but it will be in the future?

It's a matter of demarcation, of drawing the line between what's science and what is not science (i.e. pseudoscience). Generally, "science" is defined as something that is falsifiable, and something that utilizes the scientific method, of coming up with a hypothesis, then testing it out, then gathering the data. There is some criticism that falsifiability alone isn't sufficient enough to decide what is science and what is not (e.g. it would be infeasible to "test out" some theoretical physics like the string theory, due to its scale), so in addition to that, they suggest that it have enough "explanatory power" and "predictive power". Since science is also a coherent and systematic discipline, it has to be coherent in that it would have to be consistent across all the other scientific fields and disciplines. For example, a theory can't ignore the laws of physics or biology. In the same way, Socionics can't ignore the laws or scientific evidence discovered by cognitive neuroscience.

Generally, "falsification" is what draws the line between "it's just a theory!" that some random crackpot has came up with, and what is considered to be a proper "scientific theory". You can't just come up with a theory and claim that it's not science, or it is science, since any theory is not necessarily science in that it has a hypothesis.

Pure speculation.

Do you really suppose that MBTI is any different than Socionics in a meaningful way? How? Aside from some minor differences, they are essentially the same, and they are both rooted in Jung and Jungian functions. They both obviously utilize the dualistic functions, which doesn't seem to support the evidence from neuroscientific research.

Also, I don't think that MBTI is claimed to be science by anyone, unlike Socionics. Doesn't change the fact that it's still pseudoscience.

[Singu]

what is this argument about exactly? who here thinks its science?
i think at most ppl on the forum are overly hopeful about future developments (thinking we'll find a "Fe" area of the brain or sth lolz)

I was talking about what is science and what is not science because that's something that I've been personally curious about, but maybe many people may not care.

Well I don't think "finding Fe in the brain" is all that far-fetched (they say that the brain is "localized"... in that specific functions of the brain are located in specific areas of the brain. But obviously that's a vast oversimplification. Another theory is that the brain has hundreds of thousands of different modules, and they all perform different things and they're all interconnected rather than specialized. So the brain is just a collection of many different modules that perform different things, and it's not exactly a coherent "one organ". That seems to make more sense to me.)...

Anyway, there's not much in this that suggest that it conforms to the "Model A" theory, so I don't see why people should keep holding onto it.

[Tigerfadder]

Are you saying that personality types do not exist because it is not science? @Singu

[hatchback176]

I was talking about what is science and what is not science because that's something that I've been personally curious about, but maybe many people may not care.

Well I don't think "finding Fe in the brain" is all that far-fetched (they say that the brain is "localized"... in that specific functions of the brain are located in specific areas of the brain. But obviously that's a vast oversimplification. Another theory is that the brain has hundreds of thousands of different modules, and they all perform different things and they're all interconnected rather than specialized. So the brain is just a collection of many different modules that perform different things, and it's not exactly a coherent "one organ". That seems to make more sense to me.)...

Anyway, there's not much in this that suggest that it conforms to the "Model A" theory, so I don't see why people should keep holding onto it.

There is an Extraverted Feeling area of the brain, the right orbitofrontal cortex, lesions to this area cause various forms of social inappropriateness without the ability to modify behavior in response to social cues, especially facial expressions.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lane_Friesen
So here is an independent researcher that has managed to integrate MBTI (renamed MBNI because of trademark infringement) with neurology. The inability on your own part to find the correct fit for a theory because you lack a coherent internal model isn't an inherent weakness of the theory. Not only that but I've known about these theoretical advancements for over a decade, I only mention this because the Keirsey Temperament Sorter says that the xNTx types are 'Rationals' that care about 'Competency' and it's important that you recognize when you've taken an incompetent approach to integrating your knowledge when you take up study/research projects. You should have been grounding the concepts and patterns into factual relationships SIMULTANEOUSLY to your study of Socionics.

[Muddy]

I really don't give two shits if socionics is psuedoscience or not, as long as there is something useful that can be learned.