[dbspin]

I'm surprised to see such woo in a top comment on hacker news. The accuracy or theoretical underpinning of these 'frameworks' aren't contentious, they're non existent.

There are solidly researched and evidenced personality theories developed and validated through quantitative research in academic psychology. These include the 'Big Five' trait approaches like MMPI and social learning theory.

Astrology, Myers–Briggs and other forms of pseudo-psychological theories are not theoretically grounded and do not show experimental validation. Myers–Briggs wasn't created by psychologists or sociologists and in fact wasn't based on any theoretical framework at all. Its a scientism based approach routed in a reading of Jungian theory. It has no predictive utility for human behaviour.

You're welcome to 'believe' anything you like of course. But it's a category error to put such theories into the same epistemic category as psychological theories. They're precisely equivalent to any other projective theory - from kabala to tarot the i ching. If cold reading yourself or others provides you with meaning - great. But these ideas should absolutely never be used in hiring or any other official capacity. They don't have a foothold in objective reality.

[Gormo]

IIRC, there was some analysis done a while back that demonstrated that MBTI categories were strongly correlated to particular combinations of Big Five traits. If that is true, then MBTI piggybacks on whatever scientific validity has been established w/r/t Big Five.

It should also be pointed out that heuristics developed from ground-level experience can still be useful regardless of whether they are anchored in any formal theoretical framework. Most of us navigate the world most of the time by applying informal knowledge, intuition and insights obtained from local experience -- empiricism at the micro level -- rather than making inferences on the basis of theoretical frameworks. Formal models can certainly help us refine our knowledge and correct errors, but are not in themselves necessary to construct a sufficiently workable understanding of reality.

[knallfrosch]

Then you should rely on your intuition directly instead of distrorting it through pseudoscience such as MBTI

> The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a pseudoscientific self-report questionnaire that claims to indicate differing "psychological types" (often commonly called "personality types").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

[Gormo]

Where did pseudoscience come into the conversation? Depending on your approach, MBTI is either a reasonable heuristic for concepts that have been validated scientifically (i.e. correlation to Big Five), or is not attempting to be a scientific model at all.

[amanaplanacanal]

I believe I-E is pretty strongly correlated, the rest not so much. And there is nothing like Neuroticism in MBTI.

[sandspar]

16Personalities, a Myers Briggs website, includes neuroticism on their test. They refer to it as Turbulence and Assertiveness, as in high neuroticism and low neuroticism.

[popalchemist]

You, like most people, are unfamiliar with the metaphysical underpinnings and historical origins of astrology, so you have no real place to stand on the question of the validity of its claims. The only way you could is if you were intimately familiar with the topic.

Anyway, even if you take the metaphysical claims out of the equation entirely, as Carl Jung did, you can still derive great value from a system of thought-organization like Astrology. In Carl Jung's work he found that regardless of the claims about causation and personality, the symbological mappings of the zodiac represents something close to a map of cardinal archetypes, or you might think of them as psycho-social behavior blueprints that are intrinsic due to our evolutionary history and ALSO, as a secondary layer, culturally conditioned.

Point being... taking the stance you take, of accepting things only if they can be empirically proven, would prevent a person like you from ever gaining that insight / wisdom.

Your strength of intelligence is the greatest barrier to the growth of your wisdom.

[dbspin]

This is simply a variation of the no true Scotsman argument. In other words a classic fallacy. For someone to dispute the claims of <THEORY> they must be intimately familiar with <THEORY>. Were they familiar with it they would obviously not discount it. If they discount it, they must not be familiar with it.

As previously stated - you can believe anything you like, and it may even be useful to do so. For example there's solid research that religious belief has positive health outcomes. However that has no impact on the truth value of any religious or other metaphysical belief.

Again, theress a strong academic quantitate (and parallel quantitative) tradition of cross cultural psychology. Tacking such questions from a more rigorous point of view - including comparison of epistemic and ontological traditions. I'd recommend Mac McLaughin's text 'Culture and Health' as a good starting point.

https://www.google.ie/books/edition/Culture_and_Health/VAbbA...

[chrisweekly]

100% this.

See also Dr Ben Hardy's "Personality Isn't Permanent".

[rel_ic]

The absence of scientific proof is not a scientific proof of a negative result.

> They don't have a foothold in objective reality.

Even when some scientists have made a claim about objective reality, we have to remember that they make their claims in the face of social pressures. It's only after enough scientists seem to believe a fact that parts of the general population starts to accept it as "science." And if even science boils down to "many people are saying it," we probably shouldn't make any bold claims about "objective reality" with condescension and closed minds.