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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

People are always imagining they have "debunked" Myers-Briggs. All they demonstrate is that they didn't understand what it's for.

What it's good for is to help you understand how people who think differently than you do are often not wrong. Other people are super great at things you can't hardly do at all, for reasons. Putting people good at X doing Y instead is a formula for dissatisfaction for those putting and those put. People naturally try to sort themselves into work that they are good at, where how they think works best.

Great actors, pilots, artists, surgeons, musicians and engineers would mostly do one another's jobs very, very badly.

That is not to say there aren't hucksters peddling it for what it is useless for, but that is on the hucksters and their pigeons.

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it's a non-predictive meaningless classification that varies in time and has significant error bars. it is a horoscope applied by poorly trained, biased corporate managers. the only people that find it seemingly useful are inexperienced or incompetent managers

In other words, you don't understand it either. That is not surprising: you would need to learn something. That would involve work, so is understandably unpopular.

Saying "You just don't get it" isn't really an argument. The only times I've seen Myers-Briggs used are either as harmless entertainment ("Look at this meme. I'm such a INFP, tee hee.") or in Brazil-esque corporate settings where it could actually affect your employment ("Sorry, we were hoping for a XSTX person"). Sure, my experience is purely anecdotal much like most people here, but you could've shown us a counterexample, instead of wasting time implying that another user is a lazy moron.

You mention that hucksters peddle it for things that it's isn't useful for, but in what context is it useful? The realization that people have different ways of thinking, abilities and interest, which in turn means they are good at different kinds of work isn't the invention of the MBTI. Why does a 4-axis test help with this? Why should people take it seriously, especially considering it's highly commercialized?

Indeed, they undermine their own argument that it has utility: "People naturally try to sort themselves into work that they are good at, where how they think works best." So why then would an employer need to know your allegedly accurate MBTI, when your application for the job and presumably effort in developing and maintaining the necessary skills already indicates that you're applying to the work you're good at?

Who said it was a thing for employers? You only prove my point.

The linked article is about the use of Myers-Briggs in a workplace context, and the staggering lack of evidence of its efficacy for making useful predictions in that context. If Myers-Briggs is useful in your marriage, or your local PTA meetings or whatever, maybe there is evidence for its usefulness in that context, I don't know. As "a thing for employers," which is what this thread is about, there is no evidence that MBTI rises above the level of phrenology or other pseudo-scientific claptrap.

Anyways, you're just missing my point. You just don't get what my point is for. You don't understand it either.

Myers-Briggs did not discover the idea that people have different personalities and different strengths and weaknesses. Nobody is questioning this.

Like Astrology, Meyers-Briggs is a specific system of categorizing personality types with a lot of lore about how the types interacts. There is no evidence that MB is any better than astrology or the theory of humors or any other arbitrary categorization for this purpose.

Btw is your comment implying that only certain MBTI types are able to become musicians or pilots or engineers? Because that at lease a falsifiable statement which is quite interesting.

> Nobody is questioning this

Yet, when somebody puts in work to systematize that understanding, you do. If you know a better way to organize the knowledge, publish that.

> evidence that MB is any better than astrology or the theory of humors

Better at what? Invariably whoever imagined they are debunking it shows how little predictive value it has about behavior, proving only that they have no conception of what it is for.

People have often imagined they were debunking astrology by showing that sun signs have no predictive value, and completely missing that the signs are purely a randomization device: if they had any predictive value, they would be a failure.

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