3 ms·

That is a completely reasonable approach. Like astrology or tarot cards. Getting people thinking about big questions in a non threatening way can spark interest

• triplesec 10y ago
  When you say 'reasonable', you mean something orthogonal: rather it's 'rhetorically useful', or 'a social hack '. This does not make it scientific, nor based in reason, and more dangerous because it masquerades as reason much more truthily than tarot and other pretence magic
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
    > more truthily than tarot and other pretence magic Depending on where you are from I suppose. Edit: I believe "pretense" was the incantation you were after.
  • jfoutz 10y ago
    I don't mean it's rational, i mean good enough, at least it's in the same ballpark of getting someone drunk. It's not scientific, it's totally based in reason. It's reasonable to deny global warming because winters are getting colder than ever. It's not reasonable to deny climate change because winters are getting colder than ever. There's nothing wrong with someone drawing a conclusion from their personal experience, that's going to be full of emotion, opinion and hopefully some logic. I get your concern, but the same folks who make hiring decisions based on Myers Briggs will tell you angels were watching over them when they narrowly avoided a car crash. Or their relative visited them a month after they passed away. it's mostly benign. When it's not benign, they're unreasonable. Only then is it possibly worth the effort to persuade them to be a bit more rational. But, yes. I mean 'rhetorically useful' or 'a social hack'
• raverbashing 10y ago
  No Because those mentioned deal with random events, where X and Y are uncorrelated (being X a date of birth or card drawn from Tarot and Y is some personality characteristic) MB do ask you questions from which you can predict - to some degree - some outcomes (how do you think a strong Extrovert changes from a strong Introvert)? Just don't do something stupid like "this job requires a INTJ only" or think that the distribution is bimodal or that their behaviour will follow a strict pattern. (It's not like the rest of "behavioral science" can make repeatable predictions and reproduce papers compared to other scientific branches)
  • xkcd-sucks 10y ago
    Astrology is correlated to seasonal climate change etc. which can plausibly affect life outcomes, though
    • arde 10y ago
      Considering the planet has two hemispheres, no, it's not correlated.
  • jfoutz 10y ago
    That's such a J thing to say.
  • eastbayjake 10y ago
    I don't think about M-B or Tarot or astrology as predictive, they are mindfulness prods: interesting frameworks to break up and reframe the narratives we tell ourselves about who we are. A horoscope that tells me "this week will present challenges at work about money" is likely to prod me into mindfulness about work and money than I would be otherwise. Similarly, my ESTJ M-B type is more likely to make me mindful about where I get my energy and the ways in which rigorously analytical thinking may not be the way lots of other humans approach decisions.
• Simon321 10y ago
  It's much more than 'astrology or tarot cards'. MBTI correlates with the big five personality traits. Which are backed up scientifically.
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    It correlates poorly with any of the competing empirically-supportable models; e.g., as I recall, the I-E axis seems to be a blend of the extraversion and neuroticism axes shared by the EPQ (3 factor) and Big Five (5 factor) models. Better to use one of the scientific models directly than MBTI.
    • arde 10y ago
      Indeed. But that doesn't mean MBTI is really meaningless, only that there are better models.