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Comment by WastingMyTime89 | Hacker News Reader

To be fair to Jung, most of what he wrote is barely coherent garbage with zero experimental backing and an attitude towards intellectual honesty and scientific integrity which I would politely qualify as problematic. Sorry, I think it had to be said.

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Do you fear Jung's ideas? If they are incoherent garbage with no merit, shouldn't they just collapse under their own weight?

History doesn't support this. Bad ideas can be remarkably persistent. Yes I fear Jung's ideas if they give rise to beliefs that are harmful to me, or to society. An example would be biased stereotypes surrounding the introvert / extravert dichotomy.

Disclosure: I'd probably test as an extravert, but would advise against identifying as an introvert in a business setting due to the bias against introverts.

Interesting, I would have considered the idea of pretending to be someone I'm not for extended periods of time to be far more harmful than any potential disadvantages I might experience in a busieness setting for being an introvert.

I don't think any undue stereotypes around the introversion / extraversion dimension come from Jung, but have simply been attached to the concept by ill-informed society. It's hard to fault Jung for this. Introversion / Extraversion is also part of the Big 5 and has more substantial scientific backing than the foundations laid by Jung.

I think the question becomes how you identify. It's one thing to casually mention to your boss that you don't like social gatherings, quite another to have it become part of your official identity or electronic data record, so that people can use it as a sorting key. And of course a sliding scale between those extremes.

There's lots of things about me, that I can reveal to some people and not others. I want to be in control of the narrative.

Collapse? Yes eventually, but in the meantime…

People find his ideas fun. That doesn't mean they're good.

Astrology is much more obviously incoherent, but it isn't going to "collapse under its own weight" any time soon either.

People said the same about Freud at the time, but now look at how his work is regarded. It now has experimental backing, is effective, supported by many health agencies, etc.

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