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A major problem with humorism was that it did not have any empirical evidence to support it.

Modern personality theory DOES. Personality theory uses a variety of techniques to show that a construct is internally consistent and related to real-world indicators. If independent people can view a video or a person and they reliably rate that entity similarly (inter-rater reliability), we can say with some certainty that there is something there. Relating a construct like this to a variety of real-world outcomes allows us to ascertain its relationship to the world. This evidence is messy and not nearly as solid as what's found in the harder sciences, but your dismissal of the modern statistics of questionnaire-based measurement does a very well-researched field of inquiry a huge disservice.

My analogy to humorism was not to imply that there’s no empirical evidence at all here. Just that the field of psychology has continually struggled to actually develop testable hypotheses that lead to scientific theories.

There’s a giant chasm between “I have a signal” and “here’s what that signal means”. You can’t start out with a data set, pick out some signals and then say what they mean. That’s scientific theory 101. You build a hypothetical model and then design experiments to test those theories. It’s not me doing the field a disservice. The practitioners have consistently and repeatedly done bad science and statistics. I’ll be more supportive once the field actually starts producing falsifiable theories that are supported by evidence and the practitioners are better at calling out their peers.

You seem to be conflating psychology the science vs psychotherapy the practice. The latter approximates engineering and producing real life results takes precedence over proving things from first principles. Just like with medicine, you don't categorically reject medications even though it can't always explain the mechanisms of action fully (yet). Big tech doesn't hold off on making billion dollar business decisions based on the same techniques either. Science has its place but it is not always above real life pragmatism.

> Big tech doesn't hold off on making billion dollar business decisions based on the same techniques either.

I've seen how large companies make ≈$X0 million decisions and probably $X00 million decisions and I suspect $ billion decisions aren't treated fundamentally differently. I wouldn't use that as evidence for how to make decisions well.

My current theory is that companies are successful not because they consistently make specific tactical or even strategic decisions well but because (through design or evolution) they are resilient systems that can weather surprisingly poor decision making at all levels.

It’s remarkable how similar this is to the argument that an acupuncturist will make is. The modern pharmaceutical industry in many instances has the same issues by the way. Lots of drugs that have questionable efficacy at best.

Yes, my dad, a pharmacist, told me a drug just have to be a little bit more efficient than a placebo to pass certification, and he sells homeopathy all day as well (while calling it a scam), because it does relieve people of their pain...

Acupuncture, which is having someone dancing around you while touching you, is like everything: find something cheaper and more efficient to solve the same problems and we wont see it anymore.

Turns out that the big 5 have predictive power. Hard to call it "tea leaves" if it has broad correlates with human behavior that are replicable across cultures and predict forward-looking behavior.

That's the argument usually presented for intelligence testing.

So?

My goodness, is intelligence testing now so taboo that this constitutes an argument?

Nope, just pointing out the commonality.

> Neuroscience has a bit more behind it because it’s actually rooted in quantifiable measurements somewhat and even there it’s difficult.

The problem still remains of how the physical measurements (even assuming we could measure them perfectly, which we definitely can't) relate to the internal experience.

Any real theory of psychology/neuroscience needs to be able to explain that, and currently I'm not aware of any that do.

> Psychology and psychiatry really do struggle to demonstrate statistically meaningful results behind most therapies (CBT is perhaps a notable exception, although even there results can be mixed)

So it's incredibly difficult to do good studies of therapy, because there is no simple placebo. All of the research I've seen suggests that there's huge amount of provider-level variance, which swamps the theoretically meaningful defences. I would suggest that this is because we don't really have a good understanding of how to interrogate our own (or others) psyches, which is definitely not something that neuroscience will help with (given the current state of the field, at least).

Sounds like we're in agreement. What I hear you saying is that the current situation is likely worse than my pessimistic take on it, right? :).

My only disagreement with you was that neuroscience will solve the problem, which it almost certainly won't, at least in my lifetime (hopefully I'm wrong though).