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by xnx 497 days ago
NPS, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and Astrology are all things that seem scientific, get a lot of attention, and are junk.
5 comments

As an INTP Virgo who's unlikely to recommend products to your friends or colleagues, you would say that.
The problem with MBTI is that reduces a continuum to a binary for each of the letters. IIRC, the basis for what each pair of letters means isn't any worse than any other personality test.

Astrology isn't about stars. It's about cold reading if done in person, and about the art of writing descriptions that sound specific but actually apply to pretty much everyone.

NPS is a way to reduce a histogram to a scalar.

Astrology has some validity if you dig deep enough:

* when should we plant this crop?

* how do I generate a random number if literally any human bias is worse than a random choice?

* were you the oldest (or youngest) in your class at school?

I like to call MBTI "corporate astrology" and then my colleagues retort with "that's exactly what an ESTJ will say".
At least astrology has some interesting historical background.

That is the only redeeming quality of any of them, however.

MBTI gives young people who are feeling lost a reassuring sense of self-discovery. Sometimes you just need a tidy four-letter label with a generic description to pretend to understand the chaos of your own existence.