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Comment by niels | Hacker News Reader

I didn't answer the poll because I don't believe in Myers-Briggs Type Indicators.

Does seeing the results affect your belief?

If you take as a given that the HN population is not representative of the population at large, then it is clear that Myers-Briggs measures something, as it correctly identified that.

If you'd asked me for a hypothesis before the survey, I would have predicted a significant overrepresentation of NT-types. That would seem to give the test some predictive value, unless you attribute the full significance of the findings to selection bias in who chose to answer (in which case Myers-Briggs would be an outstanding predictor of who will answer surveys).

It's limited to sixteen personality types and most have trouble picking just one so I think it's fairly useless.

I can be extremely charming, I like being outgoing in large groups, and a friend of mine said I was probably the most popular person in high school. I also dislike most people so I spend a lot of time online. I can be extremely rational and I have little problems programming computers, but I often make irrational decisions on a whim because I trust my subconscious way to much.

So, I don't know am I an introvert or an extrovert, rational or irrational? I honestly don't know and I don't think picking one is important because they don't tell me something I don't already know.

OK, I may have overstated my opinion on this. You can probably say something about people using Myers-Briggs. However I feel weird beeing categorized like that. I am beeing typed as an introvert but I don't see myself as beeing introverted at all. This stuff is too vague and subjective for me to have any meaning (I guess you are gonna type me based on this??).

Don't you find it at least interesting that HN readers are 7 times over represented in the "NT" or "Rationals" class? This is far beyond any self selection bias.

My point is this: Just because you don't buy into the whole M-B system, can't you appreciate that it is at least good at indicating what type of group answered it? IE - Hackers vs Painters vs Philosophers.

Maybe NT types are 7 times more likely to take M-B personality tests when offered them. I didn't take the test either.

This is far beyond any self selection bias.

That remains to be demonstrated with respect to "HN readers," because the group of people who responded to the online poll are very likely not a representative subset of HN readers in general.

Response groups can number in the millions and still be biased by self-selection. There are well known historical examples taught in any good elementary statistics class.

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta...

http://aurora.wells.edu/~srs/Math151-Fall02/Litdigest.htm

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/

Even IF the response was just self selection bias, it would still show that NT types that hang out at Hacker News are more likely to take online polls. If the types were completely meaningless, then this wouldn't have happened.

Would you care to explain the massive discrepancies?

If they are meaningless then I'd have expected randomness...

Self-selection?

This is actually in line with the Myers-Briggs philosophy though. The idea is that people are their "own best judge" of their personality.

If people are self-selecting into groups then those groups must have meaning to the people that select into them, mustn't they?

If people are self-selecting into groups then those groups must have meaning to the people that select into them, mustn't they?

People are responding to individual items, one item at a time, in an unvalidated test. Then they see a group characteristic description and the Forer effect (the fallacy of personal validation) leaves them convinced their answers to the unvalidated questions led to new information, which is the issue that still needs to be demonstrated by a validation study.

Except that, for instance, anything labelling me as F rather then T is clearly nonsense.

There are a couple that I could interpret as "somewhat like me" and several that are clearly not me at all.

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