[hosh]

I remember reading that stuff as a teenager -- and afterwards, I was able to make the MBTI tests say anything I want it to say.

My later experiences with vipassana/insight meditation showed me just how much hot air those personality indicators are. You can switch among them if you know how. These are not as hardwired as people would like to think they are.

Nice try, it's a good framework, but it is fairly limited when it comes to describing the spectrum of human consciousness. Jung is interesting in that, he was a scientist having mystical experiences that he tried to scientifically analyze. Was he successful? I don't know, but I doubt he was able to capture all that he experienced.

[derefr]

Personality factors aren't like IQ, in that they don't try to be measures of extent, but rather tendency. Saying someone is "Thinking-primary" doesn't mean they always think, or never feel; it doesn't even mean they enjoy thinking more than they enjoy feeling. It means they fall back on thinking; or, more precisely, they think of themselves as being the kind of person who falls back on thinking rather than feeling. (Which usually amounts to the same thing; the box you slot yourself into circumscribes the habits you'll form, and then things that become habitual feel more "natural.")

Everyone on HN is pretty familiar with the introvert/extrovert distinction, and also how carefully it has to be explained lest it be confused with "outgoing" vs. "shy." The real distinction, as the 'common wisdom' goes, is about how you "recharge."

I personally think it's clearer to phrase it in terms of the contrapositive: introversion/extroversion is about what you reject when you're out of willpower. Whatever comes more naturally to you—whatever's more habitual—will "cost" less to keep on with.

And, I would say, other "personality factors" can best be described similarly. They're not how people are on average; they're what people tend toward when not awake/aware/energized enough to be engaging both complementary faculties at 100% as needed (as mindfulness meditation, or a zeroed-out sleep debt, can allow.)

And do note that most of the MBTI factors do occur separately in other personality-trait assessments, that were not created by mystics. :)

[hosh]

>It means they fall back on thinking; or, more precisely, they think of themselves as being the kind of person who falls back on thinking rather than feeling.

Yes, and that tendency is mutable too.

> the box you slot yourself into circumscribes the habits you'll form, and then things that become habitual feel more "natural."

You mean they feel more comfortable, and sometimes that will be conflated with feeling "natural". Habits of the mind are just that: ruts and tracks that have deepened over time with repeated actions. They can be changed, like anything else in the phenomenal universe.

> Everyone on HN is pretty familiar with the introvert/extrovert distinction, and also how carefully it has to be explained lest it be confused with "outgoing" vs. "shy." The real distinction, as the 'common wisdom' goes, is about how you "recharge."

That might be the common wisdom, but that was not how Jung or even MBTI defines introversion and extroversion.

> I personally think it's clearer to phrase it in terms of the contrapositive: introversion/extroversion is about what you reject when you're out of willpower. Whatever comes more naturally to you—whatever's more habitual—will "cost" less to keep on with.

I've been talking with my meditation buddies about this on and off for the past year. Some of them are (or were) software engineers and some of them are not. Over the past year, I've been finding that idea of introversion and extroversion is BS, but I have not looked into it deeply enough to find any good insight.

It smells like BS to me because it seems like a truism that hasn't been thoroughly examined.

> And do note that most of the MBTI factors do occur separately in other personality-trait assessments, that were not created by mystics. :)

They appear in other personality-trait assessments because Jung and the mother-daughter team of Meyers and Briggs were credible enough scientists/speakers that people forgot where it came from. I didn't say Jung was a mystic. I said Jung had mystical experiences. He had been trained as a scientist, then out of the blue, he started having experiences for ten years. He went with it and started observing it, making theories about it, much like a cultural anthropologist would when they immerse themselves into a different culture. Where did you think Jung got his ideas of archetypes and collective unconscious from? He observed them directly and called them such. It's really funny to me how "mysticism" has become such a dirty word and used for name calling :-D