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Comment by snapdaddy | Hacker News Reader

I feel like I am the odd one out in that I don't hate MBTI. I would not use them as a measurement of performance or individual worth, but I do think they might have some value as a team-building exercise.

Imagine everyone on a team does a (free, found online, not 'legitimate') test and then spends an hour or two discussing the results. Everyone learns that the developers are not very agreeable (joking! Lighten up!) and that the sales people are extroverted and that we're all quite different but we can all work together to achieve a common goal, or whatever.

I think it's fine so long as you don't claim it it science and that you don't get caught up in it. And it's better than going on a ropes course . . .

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I think the cognitive function model is fine and useful, which is why Dr. John Beebe's model is so appealing.

My main issue with Meyers-Briggs is the use of a questionnaire to type people - I'm an ESFP, but every time I've taken an MBTI test I've gotten back INTJ or ISTP. I never felt that either of those were completely accurate, or that I was an introvert. It's far, far more accurate to type people based on their preferred styles of interaction and thinking (e.g., as an ESFP I have an informative, initiating, movement-based interaction style and I think in concrete, pragmatic, interest-based terms).

a lot of people seem to feel superior by calling them horoscopes- similar to how some people will confidently tell you that the polygraph is completely useless and not a measurement of anything, just because it's not a magically perfect lie-detector device that should be used in courtrooms

What are you trying to say about the polygraph? Polygraphs are definitely and absolutely a net negative in any situation if the person operating it believes they work, because you get honest people failing them because the operator thinks they're "hiding something" from the basically meaningless output. As far as I'm aware, a lot of the people working with these machines fall into this category.

I guess on the other hand, if the operator did fully know it's complete pseudoscience, then it might be sometimes useful, because it could then function as a useful interrogation prop as long as the person being interrogated beleives it works.

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