Comment by wamatt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wamatt | Hacker News Reader

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Wow, it's great to be so confident. You must be correct then. /sarcasm

If you dig a little deeper into the foundation of analytical psychology, you might be surprised. Carl Jung popularized the terms Extravert and Introvert, and there have been at least 2 studies (that I know of) in neuroscience showing that dichotomy to exist, physically in the brain.

I'm hyperrational, started 2 successful companies, majored in CS, atheist, don't believe in horoscopes, or any bullshit for that matter, but do believe not all brains process information in the same way.

Now to say the MBTI test does not have some validity issues, would be delusional. But on the other hand, only an arrogant fool, would conclude that therefore there is a fundamental problem with the theory.

For example, if I construct a test that asks 500 people (assuming highly randomized sample) if they like sugar. And 250 people say "yes". One cannot conclude 50% of people like sugar.

The best you can hope to conclude is that 50% of people, self report as "liking sugar".

So what this means is that the test makes some flawed assumptions: eg

  1. people are honest (consciously and/or subconsciously)
  2. people know themselves enough, to give accurate responses

There may be more, but those appear to be the major flaws accounting for validity and reliability issues (engineering synonyms are, accuracy and precision). It is also plausible, that these challenges are not insurmountable.

Had I said "all people are the same and think the same way", this would be an interesting and almost appropriate response.

As an answer to "putting your MBTI result on your CV like it's relevant and you think it offers some kind of insight is bad", it's a little weird.

Be careful. The criticism was:

Putting your Myers-Briggs personality type in your CV suggests to me that you probably believe in horoscopes, too. At the very least, you think it's relevant somehow and reflects positively on you (or why would you include it?). It's twee, self-indulgent, and pseudo-science - I want more from my developers.

This poster is not saying, "everyone processes information the exact same way." Rather the poster is saying, "The Meyer Briggs type inventory (as currently administered) is extremely flawed. Therefore, putting your type on your resume is akin to putting your horoscope."

In that regard, the original commenter is correct - the description of INTP is not useful as the test itself is fundamentally flawed. While there is a whole lot of science that says, "We are all different," MBTI doesn't do a very good job of quantifying these differences.

>Putting your Myers-Briggs personality type in your CV suggests to me that you probably believe in horoscopes, too.

I have a problem with the credibility of that claim.

>the description of INTP is not useful as the test itself is fundamentally flawed.

Another logical fallacy. The test and a person's test result, are irrelevant to a persons actual personality type. It may or may not correlate. That is all we can say.

For example a person could test as an ESFJ, whilst in reality actually uses the cognitive functions, Fi Se Ni Te which correlates with an ISFP personality type.

And anyone that thinks everyone has the same personality type or thinks the same way, or that different personalities do not exist, is simply delusional.

It's not like myers-briggs is administered under anything resembling controlled conditions. It really is useless except for self-identifying that you like the myers-briggs categorization scheme and which of the 16 boxes you think that you are in.

Also, if you're going to cite scientific studies to rebut someone else's point, it goes much further to making your case when you actually dig up references or links to them.

Wow you really didn't get the entire point I was making then. The test in it's current form, has significant issues.

But the test != the theory.

Here is another:

Neuroanatomical Correlates of Extraversion and Neuroticism Christopher I. Wright, Danielle Williams1 et al, Oxford JournalsLife Sciences & Medicine Cerebral Cortex (2006) http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/12/1809.full

If you're interested, perhaps a good place to start is Carl Jung's Psychological Types (1921), here it's in my dropbox. I had it digitized into electronic form https://www.dropbox.com/s/hrf6whb66fbmaux/Psychological%20Ty...

Many very intelligent, rational people believe introverts and extroverts exists in the population.

Here is a great talk by Susan Cain on introverts http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts....

Look forward to further discussion...

Could you explain how these relate to the Meyer-Briggs test?

It's a beachhead. It does not increase the perceived validity or precision of the test, but it does help support the claim that the theory and model, may have a basis in reality.

That is the foundation of science, models and theories describing reality.

There are also plenty of new theories being created today that have yet to be empirically evidenced. But that in itself, does not make that theory unscientific.

Thus, "What is science?" This is actually an extremely thorny question and perhaps better suited for another time. Although I should add philosophy of science and epistemology happen to be two passions of mine.

Falsificationism is a pretty good start if you are interested. It is by no means not contentious (as is probably any position in contemporary philosophy - but that is another matter)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Falsificationism

Many engineering types with a brief flirtation with the philosophy of science, tend to like Popper's idea of a theory being solid, if in theory it is able to be shown to be false.

That is the major reason why the MBTI is not at all like horoscopes. Horoscopic predictions cannot be shown to be false (because they are too vague), but the MBTI test can be.

For example, I have never ever met a single person that has said or thinks that "all 16 types fit a person equally".

> It really is useless except for self-identifying that you like the myers-briggs categorization scheme and which of the 16 boxes you think that you are in.

That's about the gist of the MBTI reference when I included it in the page.

Here is one of the references:

Cerebral Blood Flow and Personality: A Positron Emission Tomography Study

Debra L. Johnson, Ph.D.; John S. Wiebe,et al (1990), The American Journal of Psychiatry, VOL. 156, No. 2

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/156/2/252

I'll try dig up the other.

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