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Comment by sabellito | Hacker News Reader

Given the long list of well-knwown scientific criticism towards MBTI, how can you categorically say things like: "He was a good example of an ENTP or 'debater'", and then derive such decisive conclusions from it: "he was very much bound by those limitations"?

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AFAIK the criticism comes down to the notion the 4 traits need to be viewed on a scale, not as a binary.

I am under the impression the 4 traits do map fairly well to the 'big 5' [0] and there is little debate about that foundation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

> I am under the impression the 4 traits do map fairly well to the 'big 5'

Of the four axes of types on MBTI, and ignoring weak correlations, two each have a strong correlation to a Big-5 axis, one has a moderate correlation to an Big-5 axes, and the other has moderate correlations (one somewhat stronger) to two Big-5 axes (the weaker of which is one of the ones another MBTI axes has a strong correlation with.)

While it's true that the theory talks about a spectrum, would you agree that's not how people (like the original comment) use it, given that everything is reduced to 4 letters, with no nuance?

Whatever 4 letter combination becomes a "class", like "debater", and somehow it becomes appropriate to draw conclusions about a person based on that.

The big 5 has also been criticized quite a bit. The wikipedia article has a good section on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Cr...

The big 5 is often considered simplistic, given the complex nature of human personality. It was called the “psychology of the stranger”.

Something doesn't have to have scientific validity to be helpful. I don't agree with MBTI trying to make claims in the way that Big 5 does because it's rooted in more rigorous research. But it's also wrong to throw out models for this reason.

Is there scientific criticism towards things like tarot, astrology, crystals, and so on? Sure. But does that make it invalid if it's a personal framework that helps you? You can be interested in something and get something out of an area of interest without believing in it. For example if I do a tarot reading you may start to judge that activity and say, "This isn't real, this isn't science based, this isn't telling the future, you're wasting your time." But I'm not you and you're making assumptions about the reason I'd be doing it. I don't have to believe in any kind of inherent "mystical" properties of tarot in order to use it as a form of introspection to help my creative process. And that's something that's personal and of value to me.

I have trouble with social stuff because I'm autistic. MBTI gives me a framework to generalize interactions between people and a way for me to predict human behavior in a way that works for me. Is it perfect? No. I'm not claiming that. But there are patterns, and there are stereotypes, and by using it I've been able to predict social interactions and people's intentions/goals slightly better and it gives me comfort to use it.

This is a good example of a video that matches my views on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ea8SainI2o The person who has this channel understands the limitations of MBTI and has expanded the framework further to work on its weaknesses.

You posed your question assuming he agrees with "scientific criticism towards MBTI".

I do agree with the scientific criticism towards MBTI. But I never claimed to be using it that way. It's possible to find value for yourself or use in things personally that aren't rooted in scientific trials or rigor and it's possible for one to engage with these things and be well aware of that fact. It's black and white thinking to assume that "X is into MBTI/tarot/etc, therefore they are not a scientifically minded individual". We can apply dialectical thinking to this, and challenge yourself and wonder if there can exist someone who is using these non science based things while at the same time is fully aware of the fact that they're not science based. Maybe it's more rare because many people try to prop themselves up and defend whatever they're interested in due to ego issues but that's not the case here. Do I personally see value in religion, and is religion science based? No on both of these counts. But there are people who derive personal value from their faith and that's not something I can argue with. Now when people double down and try to claim that X is real and actually happened and this and that, that's a problem, but there do exist religious people just like me who are able to be in both worlds. See my other comment.

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