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Comment by nategri | Hacker News Reader

Since it's an identity thing, I'm guessing people are not going to want to let this one go. Just like they won't let go of their identity as a Meyers-Briggs I-N-T-whatever-the-hell, even though there's zero evidence for it as a meaningful framework.

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I've found that M-B or the like is really useful to give people words to talk about who they think they are (which can be incredibly difficult without some starting point). When you have words to describe something, you can start to talk about it and in this case, how your personality interacts with others. That is, where are there things in the ways others describe themselves that you recognize in yourself or that you find entirely foreign. Then, you can ask how can recognizing these types of differences help you get along better.

I don't see M-B as a scientific readout, but it is helpful in giving tools to help people relate. It's only difficult when folks go off the deep end ("Aw shit, I'm a Hufflepuff!" syndrome) .

Or just as a starting point to realize that people are different and view the world differently. Many users approach software differently than programmers for example.

The problem comes when you start doing things like match people to jobs or tasks based on their MB profiles.

There’s plenty of evidence for it as a meaningful framework, it’s just very, very far from the best test psychometricians can design. All four MBTI components correlate with a Big Five component at an r squared between 0.49 and 0.74. There’s nothing corresponding to neuroticism.

Much better than astrology, much worse than a test designed and validated by psychometricians.

Identity is social... if you make a friend because you're a Pisces or whatever nonsense, regardless, that friendship is entirely real.

If you think MB and learning styles are bad, multiple intelligences is worse. There isn't even a test for that, so it's nothing but self-judging and the definitions are all inspirations coming from the head of one individual (Gardener). That's really one made for the "everyone's good at something" false self-esteem philosophy. The irony is that it turns out mental ability is positively correlated among many areas.

Great point, I would have never considered that myself since I never took the concept personally.

Tell that to Cambridge Analytica!

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