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Check the math in the article. (the correlation tables especially, both against the "Big 5" and for repeatability) If Myers-Briggs is not science, then the "Big
by souprock 6y ago
Check the math in the article. (the correlation tables especially, both against the "Big 5" and for repeatability) If Myers-Briggs is not science, then the "Big 5" personality traits are also not science. They are tied together, each strongly predictive of the other. Results are repeatable, especially if not rounded to boolean values.
- Quekid5 6y agoI'm going to suggest a hypothetical. Let's ignore any personality test specifics just to generalize. Ok, so I have a candidate for a position, who shows +5% to "conscientiousness". What does that mean, practically, for me as an employer? It means exactly nothing, because that trait is so vague as to be ... meaningless. (That's just the start of the problems with these tests.) Even if it M-B (or whatever) is a repeatable effect it has no value as a predictor of performance of a single individual. In aggregate, maybe... (but also no, see the wiki). It's just people playing Management Consultant extracting money from Management.
- ncmncm 6y agoFor somebody who admits having no idea what it's for, you seem awfully confident of your opinion.
- Quekid5 6y ago> For somebody who admits having no idea what it's for I'm sorry, what? I did ask that as a rhetorical flourish in a different thread (as a response to you, in fact), but c'mon. You specifically said > It's not science, or science-adjacent, or anything to do with science. It doesn't pretend to be. That's not what it's for. I note that you didn't answer my other question: how do you justify its use if it's not 'science'. EDIT: Btw, my allusion was to a comment by Stephen Fry in a debate. (Specifics are no doubt going to lead to more contention, so I'll omit them.)
- ncmncm 6y agoSome people insist science=good, therefore not-science=not-good. But the world is bigger than that. Your responsibility as a human is to discover value in things you encounter. Failing to find it is just failing, and says more about you than about things.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack in HN threads. It's not what this site is for, and wrecks what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ncmncm 6y agoI am not attacking anyone, personally or otherwise. What I wrote applies to anybody, myself included.
- Quekid5 6y agoAh, yes. Not answering any of my questions and just putting out vague platitudes.
- dang 6y agoPlease stop.
- erhk 6y agoScience is a method not a political ideology. Rejecting science is rejecting ration. You can attack the validity of the data or you can point out flaws in conclusions but to claim science as a concept is flawed is to reject evidence based conclusions. At which point there can be no faithful discussion.
- at_a_remove 6y agoImagine you have a job that is highly detail-oriented. Perhaps data must be perfect or a number of steps must be followed but checking the employee's work might be cumbersome. You have two applicants, roughly equal. One scores higher on conscientiousness ...
- sosborn 6y agoDo you believe that measurement is actually accurate?
- at_a_remove 6y agoWell, we were discussing the utility of such a test. I would assume that by the time we got to the point of utility, we would have agreed that the thing itself was valid. There's no point in discussing the utility of a thing that didn't work.