It's impossible to describe personalities without implying value judgments.
I randomly took the first Google link found under 'Myers Briggs' and ended up here:
https://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality
'Ironically, it is often best for them to remain where they are comfortable – out of the spotlight...'
https://www.16personalities.com/infp-strengths-and-weaknesse...
'Too Idealistic – INFPs often take their idealism too far, setting themselves up for disappointment as, again and again, evil things happen in the world.'
MBTI is basically this: You have a set of observed traits, and from that set we can tell you other traits you likely have based on observing many others that share the same traits.
Or in other words... -Observe trait A -Observe trait B -Observe trait C -Extrapolate trait D -Extrapolate trait E
What those sites are doing is... -Observe trait A -Extrapolate traits C, M, Q, X, Z
I interpreted 'prescriptive' as making 'should' rather than 'is' statements.
Misuse of a tool does not invalidate the tool.
No one's disputing that a useless tool can be misused. They're questioning the use of useless tools at all. They give the illusion of understanding to those not interested in evidence.
False.
> and MBTI has as much scientific validity and predictive value.
As it can be mapped directly to the big 5, this is also false.
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personalit...
Oh dear, there seems to be an epidemic of people's comparators not working. You might want to start small: try comparing two oranges, then an orange and an apple. Before long you'll be comparing supernovas to salamanders!
(Or perhaps you meant the rather less categorical "I think they're very different". I harp on this because I find "not remotely comparable" excessively dismissive. It's fine to disagree, just don't act like there's no possible way the other person might have a valid point)
If you disregard the people who claim astrology is prescriptive, and pay attention to only those aspects of it that describe tendencies - all the most convincing astrology nuts I've met do this - it can be quite... warming.
It's not clear to me how that's different.
Sure, you can choose your type by responding differently to the questions, or finding a "practitioner" who assigns a type you prefer, but the same applies to astrology: shop around until you hear what you want to here.
False. It's exactly the opposite, the label doesn't assign the traits, rather the traits create the label; if your traits change so does the label, it's nothing more than a description of who you are now according to your own answers to those traits questions. And it aids greatly in think about yourself and others and how people differ and exactly in what ways they can differ.
> It's not clear to me how that's different.
Then learn more.
I don't put faith in or know much about astrology, but I do know there are many different types and areas of astrology and not all of them have to do with telling you how to pick your lotto numbers tomorrow.
A lot of people talk about signs and astrology in terms of being able to read people and determine personality traits of others.
> don't put faith in or know much about astrology
You're right, you don't, so perhaps don't sit here and defend this pseudo-scientific nonsense that you know nothing about.