(repost from 2016) (You can learn a great deal from reading this)

  1. I am an INTP, In five factor I have very high agreeableness, average dominance, some introversion, action oriented (tad impulsive), very orderly, extremely high openness to experience, and high neuroticism (worry). Note the difference between the positive positioning of the INTP and the negative positioning of the 5Factor.

  2. The criticisms of MBTI come from the diagnostic community and they’re largely nonsense. Why?

The five factor model is derived empirically from observed and reported phenomenon, and does not provide a theory of causality. It’s insufficient and it tells us almost nothing about children, which pretty much falsifies it. It’s also very hard to survey, focuses on ‘failings’ and is of little or no general use to the public.

MBTI was developed from observation and a theory proposed. The theory is incorrect, but at least there is a theory/

More importantly MBTI Is as precise and correspondent as is useful for people in ordinary life because it’s as complex as people can manage to use. And it’s demonstrated to be useful in assisting people in cooperating, because it assists them in understanding one another. IT is both a positive and useful measure. With practice, ordinary people can use it in daily life.

  1. The problem with any such test is the number of questions necessary to survey any dimension of a personality with any sufficiency. These surveys must generally be in the 100+ question range per personality dimension, plus they must include about 20% error checking, in order to return reasonably reliable results across variations in mood and context. However, 100 questions seems to be the limit of tolerance. So most survey (testing) organizations tolerate greater variation in results in exchange for greater adoption and necessity of interpretation.

  2. The MBTI is an OPTIMISTIC survey seeking to assist people in cooperating(Negotiating), and the 5 factor (like all Freudian thought) is a DIAGNOSTIC (pessimistic) totalitarian one for the purpose of determining variation from an artificial ideal.

  3. The underlying two-cause model of MBTI is false – the five factor is probably also false. However there is extremely high correlation between these tests on two factors given high weight in both, and lower correspondence between the Pessimistic Diagnostic model, and the Optimistic Negotiation model. To illustrate complex mental phenomenon just as we illustrate complex spatial phenomenon (Hawking’s slices of bread), we can instead take six paper-towel tubes and stack them vertically next to each other in a ring. We can then imagine a plane dividing the standing tubes horizontally. Or we can bisect this ‘ring’ all sorts of ways, creating a ring of tubes of various heights. This is analogous to how 5Factor of personality vs MBTI ‘weighs’ the amplitude of personality traits. The set of traits and the values attached to them are different but so is the purpose of the diagnostic vs the negotiator model.

  4. The underlying model of the mind is information processing not subjective experience, and while 5/6 Factor models do correspond to what we think we understand as brain structures, our understanding of those models are a REWARD system for processing information in a DISTRIBUTION, so that humans SPECIALIZE even within families, is problematic for the Diagnostic and Totalitarian thinkers (equality), and explanatory and useful for the Negotiation and Cooperative thinkers (inequality). So if we say that variations in personality reflect the necessity of using the same physical mental structure for the purpose of distributing information processing, then we describe man correctly, and we describe our industrial era norms as FALSE and DESTRUCTIVE.

  5. Given my present understanding, a reframing of personality as reward system for information processing:

a) Dominance(male) vs Submission (female) spectrum provides insight but it’s also so obvious that we all but ignore it. Whereas it’s contrasting dominance and submission with the other traits that provides explanatory power in why we act and feel as we do.

b) Impulsivity vs patience related to patience-worry in that we can worry but not act, or worry and act, and the correlation between impulsivity and neuroticism are predictive. Why? Because it appears that neuroticism (patience/worry/obsession), is the cause of creativity.

c) Conscientiousness should be reframed as reward for completing opportunities and reward for discovering new opportunities. d)Agreeableness should be desire to adapt to others vs desire to preserve context (individualism).

e) Openness to Experience should be reframed as desire for adapting to information vs stress from adapting to information.

f) Neuroticism should be reframed as acceptance(watching) vs worrying(excitement) vs obsession(chasing prey), where worrying is itself a time preference (living in the certain moment experiences vs projecting an uncertain future conditions, vs in pursuit of prey or idea),

g) the autistic(male)-solipsistic(female) spectrum provides greater insight than all except intelligence and extroversion, and we are just beginning to understand it, and almost no one interprets it as a problem of processing information in a group of males and females with different reproductive demands.

h) Intelligence is as important as extroversion in personality traits, in no small part because it appears that the limit of our minds to exhaust opportunities across these personality traits determines out resulting behavior (this is profoundly explanatory).

Now, I placed the properties in that list in a particular order. That order is informative. It means that very few causal properties are involved, and we are not quite achieving our goal of understanding them.

CAUSALITY

a) Rate of Sexual Maturity

b) Depth of Sexual Maturity

c) Gender Differences

d) Gender Dimorphic Differences

e) Status (biological/reproductive), Demonstrated/Observed, Self Percieved

f) Sense of Safety / Security

g) Intelligence

h) Culture

h) Education and discipline

ALTERNATIVES

I find that if we have:

– personality survey

– Intelligence test

– Moral Survey (Moral Foundations)

– Cultural Survey (cultural biases)

– Preference Survey (‘likes’)

we have a pretty complete and predictive profile of an individual

CLOSING

If we change how people are diagnosed and understood as deviation from an arbitrary (freudian, industrialist, socialist, feminist) ideal, then we can help them be happy and successful in life.