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Comment by harimau777 | Hacker News Reader

I have a pet theory that things like astrology, tarot, the I Ching, Myers Briggs, etc. are valuable (and therefore stick around) not because they have a supernatural or scientific ability to make correct predictions, but because they provide a useful framework for discussing topics. So for example, even if tarot doesn't give you supernatural insight, the discussion it generates with the card reader may allow you to recognize insights that you otherwise would have missed.

Or perhaps practices like this provide value by prompting people to make changes that they otherwise wouldn't have. For example, suppose someone who normally lacks confidence receives a prediction that they will soon find love, prompted by the prediction they decide to talk to someone they normally wouldn't and end up dating. The fortune telling didn't actually predict anything, but it did provide the motivation for someone to take advantage of an opportunity when it arose by chance.

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You're assuming here that there has to be "real" value at the root. This isn't really true.

Astrology, Tarot, the I Ching, or any other kind of divination all serve the same purpose: To provide certainty where there is none. To measure the unknowable.

People fear the unknown and risk, divination lets them feel like they have some certainty about the future.

Myers Briggs, DISC, and all the other "personality tests" are the same thing, for contemporary times.

They provide no actual measurement of applicants, Myers-Briggs is especially easy to cheat and dubious in science.

The benefit is that managers feel like they're taking less risk when hiring, but that is mere delusion.

The I Ching is very ambiguous and open to interpretation, as Philip K Dock shows in The Man in The High Castle, or you can try for yourself. Whatever else it's doing, it is not providing certainty.

That's the trick. It's about feelings of certainty, not actual measurable reproduceable predictions.

Most long-lived divination methods are very vague. Anything providing concrete predictions is easily proven wrong and discredited, only the vague survives.

But people rarely take ambiguous answers for what they are, and instead interpret them into something more certain.

And this lets divination exploit all kinds of biases. On top of the regular old confirmation bias, whenever the interpretation turns out wrong, people don't write off the divination method, but assume they merely "interpreted it wrong" (and often, the vagueness means they can retcon an interpretation that is true), and worse yet, assume that now they're better at interpreting so next time it's going to be a correct prediction.

Observe how little the personality tests actually say, they're just as ambiguous.

Nitpick: The five-factor scale (extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism) both reproduces and makes good life predictions.

MBTI and most other personality tests unfortunately seem to be astrology for the scientifically oriented.

The biggest issue w/ MBTI and others like it is the desire to put you into a category as an outcome. This is really bad for reliability of the test - take it again and change just a few answers, you may be in a different category altogether! But it's often great for sparking team discussions on norms, behaviors, etc. But the sheen of science and validity can be misleading.

The correlation between MBTI and the Big-5 is surprisingly strong (except for neuroticism, which has no representation in the MBTI):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

I look at personality typologies in general as approximations. If you actually want to get to know a person, get to know them. But when you need to make a snap judgment about how someone might see the world and react to you, on very little information, it's handy to have a general archetype as guidelines. You can fill in all the details later.

It's not unlike Carmack's fast inverse square root, a Bloom filter, or how Google hasn't used PageRank since 2006 (instead substituting a cheaper-to-calculate approximation). Yes, they give wrong answers. But the answers are usually close enough that when you lack the computing power to get a better result, they'll do.

That's reasonable.

As I see it, even assuaging fear of the unknown seems like it could be a valuable benefit. Especially if freedom from fear helps someone to make better decisions based on the information that they have.

I see this as why humans love stories so much. An explanation with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The human condition is facing the unknown.

All of theses old ideas are simply ways to look at yourself from the outside. Any value is the insight it provides to oneself.

The issue with them is that it's not simply "looking at oneself".

If you were using divination for that purposes then it's no issue. Harmless superstition is fine.

But things like personality tests and other pseudoscience see regular use in hiring and promotion. And that's just ridiculous, damaging for both "honest" applicants and the company, as such processes favour dishonest people.

Do personality tests see regular use in hiring and promotion? What are some examples of that? My workplaces have offered those sorts of things as professional development, but not for direct promotion or hiring practices. I would be fascinated to see the outcome of a place that does use those things in that way.

Long ago the first place I worked developed a HyperCard stack for Myers-Briggs evaluations for a specific company. The company used it as tool to improve communications between existing employees. The purpose is to give everyone the same language. Fundamentally one is not in simply one category but can move through all the categories based on their current state and context.

Helping people have language to express this thoughts has value.

Misuse of any tool is a problem.

In my experience yes - At an earlier role, all employees were subjected to a DISC assessment at hire. This was at the headquarter office of a large real estate franchise. Results were kept in your file, and were a big component during reviews.

The biggest flavor-aid drinkers at the company used their assessment results as shorthand to either justify shitty behavior: "oh, person X is a 'High-D', of course that's why they co-opted the meeting, were abrasive, made everyone else feel small and insignificant". If you did not test with a high decisiveness level, it was absolutely brought up in promotion conversations. High-D, High-S etc. all became quick qualifiers to know where someone's career was headed.

Knowing strong dominance was likely an attribute valued by the company, I took the assessment with that in mind, resulting in a high dominance level (I'm probably middle of the road). That it was so easy to game made me loose all respect in their application of these assessments.

These are more like frameworks for imagining & interacting with the complexities of reality. Similar to an interactive Philosophy. Worldviews cannot be avoided & nobody holds a purely objective viewpoint...anyone who claims to hold an purely objective viewpoint is a liar or delusional.

> anyone who claims to hold an purely objective viewpoint is a liar or delusional.

Is this purely objective? Can you think of no exceptions, under any scenarios?

Confusing the subjective for the objective is a widely studied phenomenon. It's called reification and people generally deny doing it. There's a strong ego defense mechanism that raises when it's pointed out that shuts down conversation.

The utterly bizarre things is how so many (I would say, the VAST majority) smart people are unable to overcome it when discussing certain subjects.

Like sure, I can certainly understand the initial incident, heuristics are a bitch...but what is so bizarre is that when people are in this state, there seems to be literally nothing that can draw them out of it. I have done many, many thousands of experiments in this area, it is uncanny.

Heuristics also provide the same benefits, and are the source of the "facts" in your comment.

Rationalism is a lot like astrology in many ways, interestingly.

> They provide no actual measurement of applicants, Myers-Briggs is especially easy to cheat.

Myers briggs aside, I take issue with this specific argument in any context, just because a dishonest party can cheat a test, doesn't mean the test itself is worthless. I can do a math test with a calculator without knowing how to even do math, (oh, put this symbol next to that symbol and hit the = key?) doesn't mean the test is worthless.

I was once skeptical of the usefulness of personality tests, but reading Principles by Ray Dalio convinced me they can be used to build well-oiled organizations.

Meyers Briggs (MBTI) is based on Jungian archetypes. Those were explicitly designed by Jung as a framework for discussing emotions and the unconscious like you are saying, and were never intended to offer any new information on their own.

People misunderstand the MBTI because all it does is locate what you tell it about how you see yourself onto a coordinate system.

From a Jungian perspective, the result of the MBTI is not interesting directly- people already know how they see their own personality!

The point of these archetypes from Jung’s perspective is to figure out which types you don’t identify with- what would be the opposite of your MBTI type, or your “shadow.” This gives you some perspective on exploring the aspects of yourself you have rejected, allowing you to be a more well rounded (integrated) person. This is a painful and difficult process, and the very idea of it is usually upsetting to people when they first hear of it.

It is very simple and straightforward tool, but is mostly misunderstood and misused, which also leads people to expecting it to have some “magical powers” or dismissing it as “pseudoscience.” It was never intended to be “magic” or “science” but to be a system to help people explore themselves in ways they otherwise would not. It is intended to be a set of arbitrary axes- however they are aspects that Jung personally felt were important for people to explore, according to his own values and philosophy.

I do solo tarot card readings all the time as it forces you to think about situations in a different way via the card imagery. I find it helps with decision making. Nothing mythical about it, just a weird form of brain hacking.

Indeed, an old life hack: "If you can't decide, flip a coin. If you're disappointed by the result, follow your heart." Tarot is just this with more bits of entropy.

i pull a card every day and see what connections i can make to my life. or oddly they sometimes serve as kind of reminders: "there's a lack of creative energy" which perhaps reminds me that i've not been playing the guitar in a while. to me they're more like brian eno's oblique strategies [1], than something mystical.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies

I’ve used Co-Star for years only because each day it gives me some vague advice in the morning and I use said advice to spice my day up. I couldn’t care less about the divine origins of astrology but the engine is written in haskell and that’s about as much divinity as I need. If a company is so obsessed with types that they even go hard on them at the code level I can’t help but want them to succeed.

I knew a therapist LOOOONG ago that used Tarot cards in their therapy. They absolutely, at the start of doing that with a patient, said there was nothing mystical or magical about them, but like you said, they provide a way to start opening up about something. To get people out of their shells and talk.

That's not merely your pet theory, theologians come down to the same conclusion with regards to the use of religion in old and modern society versus the lack of religion in our modern society. There is a good reason religion is banned in communist countries; people are supposed to believe in communism.

I've grown up with the Christian moral framework, and I'm happy with it even though I'm atheist (OK, technically agnostic but in practice atheist).

The difference is that Myers Briggs was thought to have a scientific underlying background while it turned out it hasn't. Still, compared to what we used before such as the four temperaments [1] it is an improvement.

Like candiddevmike, Tarot can be used for good by using it simply as an inspiration tool instead of 'the truth'. The same is true for MBTI. Or even the four temperaments or DISC.

Astrology goes a step too far though. Tarot can give you meaningful insight about why things are the way they are or how you could improve. But based on your own interpretation (if you DIY). Astrology takes it a step further by making things up, generalizing it, and publishing such in a magazine, newspaper, or website. But its among a lot of low effort pulp commonly available these days.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_temperaments

> Astrology goes a step too far though.

Astrology takes that step with making it predictive rather than introspective.

In on April 3rd, 2024 there will be a conjunction of Venus and Neptune, followed by two days later Mars and the moon, then the moon will occult Venus followed by a total solar eclipse on the 8th and a conjunction of Saturn and Mars on the 10th...

Because of these events...

And with that, people will be planning for certain events to take place in April not from any introspection - but rather because of stellar arrangements.

It is one thing to say "you should start planting corn on on the first full moon after the bright orange star Arcturus is visible at dusk." It is another to say "because Venus and Mars are in conjunction while in the house of Pieces, a great admiral will be born."

Well said, that is what I meant. Although Tarot can also be used for predictive behavior analysis. The same is true for MBTI and DICE. But with the latter two there is some merit while with the former there is none. Tarot is best described as a game. If you regard it as such, or perhaps inspirational game, it is OK. Whereas if it is abused for e.g. cold reading that is a bad thing.

It’s a good point but it’s not equal.

Myers Briggs is nice a framework. You can just look at the axes of personality and use them to structure a claim about where you land. The test is not the important bit. I think many people have not considered the dimensions of personality that it proposes.

Astrology not so much. You can’t describe yourself as a linear combination of different signs or at least, you’re not meant to and borrowing from traits that are not your supposed sign is antithetical to the whole premise

Myers Briggs seems so arbitrary. Why 4 dimensions instead of 3 or 5? And is there any reliable evidence that using it actually produces better outcomes?

There is no material, accepted claim that you could not make another dimension, or an alternative dimension to describe personalities. Simply that these are 4 distinct and interesting ones.

A descriptive framework is of course going to be arbitrary.

As far as I know the Five Factor Model is a far more scientific measure than MBTI.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

- Repeatability

- Not based on Jungian pseudoscience

- Peer acceptance

Big 5 is accurate but hard to explain. MBTI is fairly easy to explain and honestly it's not like astrology where it is random, an INTP does act very differently than an ENFJ

The important difference is that psych frameworks are a description. And astrology is a predictor.

If you’re not a Taurus, the elements of a Taurus are not supposed to relate to you. that part of the framework is theoretically irrelevant.

If you think you’re an INTP you likely are. If you think you’re a Taurus then… doesn’t matter.

Each letter is binary, whereas personality is not.

If someone is barely extroverted you’re assigning them a full E anyways. That’s a poor predictor.

It's notable that MBTI is fairly correlated with the FFM: https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/13460/what-co...

Few of those r-values are actually notable

> To further examine the universality of the Five-Factor Model, they examined how the MBTI dimensional raw scores related to the FFM/Big5 scores. They showed that FFM-Extroversion was highly correlated to MBTI-Introversion (r = -.74), FFM-Neuroticism was weakly correlated to MBTI-Introversion (r = .16), FFM-Openness was correlated to MBTI-Intuition (r = .72), and to MBTI-Perception (r = .30), FFM-Agreeableness was correlated to MBTI-Feeling (r = .44), FFM-Contentiousness correlated to MBTI-Perception (r = .49).

They’re not supposed to be the same thing. You would not expect them to have super high correlations Even if the tests were perfect.

I was repsonding to this

> It's notable that MBTI is fairly correlated with the FFM

Sounds like we agree this statement is false

Those are honestly pretty high correlations for something like this. High is subjective of course. I feel like the question you want to ask is how well can you predict an MBTI score knowing only someone’s FFM.

Well if a correlation value is .7 (squared to .49) then you would expect to guess correctly about 75% of the time with just the univariate relationship (naively assuming that the underlying distribution is 50/50 to begin with, without which we would need to refer to something like a RoC AUC score…).

The Big Five model was extracted from English language words describing personality (later applied to other languages, where sometimes 6 factors are needed). It has no theory behind it (other than, "I think languages evolve to capture interpersonal dynamics").

As feanaro noted, the 4 dimensions of MBTI is fairly correlated with four of the five factors of the Big 5 (or OCEAN) model. It leaves out neuroticism, which might be helpful in a business context, since you can put a positive spin on both ends of those 4 dimensions. I've seen MBTI extended by adding a Turbulent-Assertive axis to include neuroticism without the pejorative label.

Research has shown that classifying people into the 16 types reduced the statistical predictive power. Nevertheless, the types have value for didactic purposes. It can be easier to understand personality differences by contrasting the extremes rather than the vast muddle of people near the median. Once you can see how extreme differences manifest, it is easier to recognize the more subtle (and statistically more frequent) differences.

> Myers Briggs is nice a framework.

My favorite thing about Meyers-Briggs is when people claim their classification is so rare that it only applies to 6% of people.

Well that’s just people bad at stats.

*because the claim is not noteworthy

The Shang of early China are a good example. The oracle bone divination was highly systematized. They would ask the ancestors questions written on bones and shells, with the supposed answers forming along the cracks through the writing when subjected to intense heat. This role was fundamental to the king's power and authority -- a common question was whether and how to perform human sacrifices.

They were meticulous record keepers about it. Answers were collated and tallied. Ancestors who weren't helpful were punished and not asked as many serious questions; those who were helpful became relied upon. Almost experimental in nature.

Anyway, it may have all worked. In the sense of producing decisions with outcomes better than random chance. Like the common interpretation of how a Ouija board works, sort of. Group subconsciousness subtly pulling in one direction more than another.

Having a vehicle to ponder big questions is needed for development. Each step in development is a new context available for reconsideration. Decision making becomes dogmatic otherwise.

When all else fails one can always fall back to intuition.

Tangentially related to tarot, I wanted to get a deck of tarot playing cards to try out some variants of bridge and whist I'd read about and could not find anything that wasn't trying to lean into the spooky/occult side of tarot "readings".

As far as I can tell, nobody's making "casino style" tarot decks. But, maybe I'm searching for the wrong thing.

I used this exact argument a few years at a corporate team building exercise with one of those Myers Briggs-adjacent personality frameworks.

"Oh, I get it now: it's like astrology! Scientifically meaningless, but it does give us an opportunity to talk about how we have different preferences for how we work and communicate."

The facilitator didn't seem too impressed by that.

Can you imagine using the big five in corporate team building?

Except that's now how people think about it or use it. It needs to be called out for what it is: bullshit and taking advantage of people.

Yeah, it’s the same with religion in general.

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