Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

As an INFP persona who has worked remotely and solo for many years, I'd like to break the stigma that "alone = bad". I find it incredibly energising a lot of the time, but then there are the odd times when I crave a little human social engagement.

Traditional social media channels have devolved into a cesspit of noisy pollution, but I tend to occasionally post right here on HN, guitar forums, or even on obscure Reddit threads just to hear the rare "Thanks", or "Wow, that was something useful".

I guess while I don't find loneliness a depressing thing, I just want to feel as if I am heard or making a difference to the world every now and then.

View on HN

Tangentially, since you mention INFP.

It seems to me that the Myers-Briggs test is becoming mainstream. I see people mention these personality codes more and more.

But the test seems to have no scientific validity: http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/Articles/develop/mbti.pdf

I don't think it's becoming more prevalent in the last 10 years, at least no more than mentioning your birth sign... But anyway (take with a grain of salt) the last time I looked at M-B it seemed that although there's no reason to take it very seriously scientifically, nevertheless it correlates surprisingly well with one of the psychology crown jewels, the Big 5, and misses out only on testing for neuroticism.

My personal problems with M-B are

1) I have trouble understanding the significance all of the axes except for introversion/extroversion. For example, what is the concrete difference between INFP and INFJ?

2) The results of MBTI tests seem to vary wildly (at least for me), both between different tests at the same time, or within the same test when I take it at different times. I don't know if I have any consistent MBTI value other than that I lean towards introversion most of the time.

But if someone can link me to a good explanation of the different axes and/or recommend an MBTI test that isn't bullshit, I'd be grateful.

Found some references again.. INFP and INFJ would mostly differ in Conscientiousness (the J being more so). Extraversion-Introversion correlates with Big 5 Extraversion (on the E pole), Thinking-Feeling with Agreeableness (F pole), Sensing-iNtuition with Openness to Experience (N pole), Judging-Perceiving with Conscientiousness (J pole). (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.555...)

If you're on a boundary you might get more insight from breaking the Big 5 into the 10 aspects (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17983306), e.g. Conscientiousness can be split into Orderliness and Industriousness. You also might benefit from having someone close you think models you well (if available, this is the loneliness thread...) answer the test questions for you to see what they get, or perhaps as effective you answer for yourself and also for someone else you think you have a good model of to help highlight differences in degree.

Lastly since MBTI tests are still sketchy, go for a Big 5 test, read about the Big 5 (my first link has some useful descriptors), and forget about MB. For free, http://www.personal.psu.edu/%7Ej5j/IPIP/ exists and is the longest one I've seen. I've read that https://work.coach/assessment is useful. The only paid one I've heard about recently is the rather steep https://www.understandmyself.com/personality-assessment but I suspect like IQ tests paid might give the most utility... (I'm not part of the JBP fanclub but do listen in on him sometimes, so again grain of salt...)

1) http://personalityjunkie.com note that the axis form a 2x4 grid, rather than being 4 independent axis. He info and info are actually very different due to sharing now cognitive functions. INTJ is the closest type to INFJ (as they share a dominant function). Think of the 4-letter codes as a weird encoding of the actual type.

2) The tests are all junk. The only accurate methid we have at the moment is teaching people the theory, and then helping them to self-assess

Forget about what the letters mean. Just think of the test as a clustering of personalities. That's how people are finding the test useful.

I think this is because no-one has articulated the hypothesis correctly yet. That and the official assessment is wildly innacurate. Interestingly, it seems that many people are independently discovering parts of the Jungian Type Theory. For example, Daniel Kahneman's Fast and Slow thinking (also system 1/system 2 thinking) seem to almost exactly match the P/J dichotomy from MB.

I'm writing a book on this...

I think there's a difference betweek being alone and being lonely. The latter implies that you're wanting for company, the former less so.

A quote from Michael Mann's Heat:

"I'm alone, I am not lonely."

I agree, being alone is not bad at all. Feeling lonely is the problem.

That being sad, I really like the app. Good work :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com