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Comment by willeh | Hacker News Reader

Jungian personality types are not a good way to look at personality. Just having a number of categories fails to capture something so complex as personality. The Five-factor model of personality is much better in this sense as it places people on a continuum rather than attaching pseudo-scientific labels to people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Invento...

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You can say that about any model. Reality is complex, and sure, it doesn't have to be complicated. Every scientist from Chomksy to Bohm knows this.

You do get the point. It is the function of making communicable and increasing integration-potential the data to higher cognitive modes of thought (Folk Thought). The simpler your model, the greater the difficulty of exposing its rules to the audience. Generally, it's about "constructivistic myth-building". I'm not claiming Jung is the Law, and systems always stand in need of refactor (Quine's talk on the Ship of Theseus).

High Extraversion Programmer versus Low Openness Programmer. High Extraversion Hacker versus Low Agreeableness Architect, etc. Reductionism abounds.

You have a valid point regarding complexity as such. However, I don't think the model itself is useful at all. It is hardly more than a deck of tarot cards. People take the test, which of course has poor test-retest reliability, then they start applying the predictions to themselves getting caught up in a wave of confirmation bias.

I don't think it is useful to teach people that personality is a set of labels. We all have a intuitive understanding of personality, which is much deeper and gives a more nuanced picture.

I generally agree with your criticisms and understandings on these matters.

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