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There is a couple more cases which add to the mix. 1) Devils advocate. People that interject with an opposing view, even one they don't believe. I often do thi

by rjd 15y ago

There is a couple more cases which add to the mix. 1) Devils advocate. People that interject with an opposing view, even one they don't believe. I often do this one myself cause another poster to go into deeper description. Often just asking for an deeper response will be ignored, but opposing a view will always bring out an argument. 2) Denial and Righteousness. Essentially nasty fan boys. People who have brought into a belief and refuse to acknowledge any second point of view at all. I had this explained at a trolling seminar at a hacking conference quite well and they picked on the audience themselves to explain how to manipulate IT people. With most IT people they have the myers-briggs archetype finishing with --TJ. This means they are thinkers and judgmental. They will look at a problem, find the evidence, evaluate it, and make a judgmental decision on what is correct. The facts don't lie. However the facts can be like quantum variables, you chang angles and then entire structure changes. Making judgmental calls leads to obvious one set of true factual analysis being completely wrong in another setting. Challenging a judgmental person is challenging there core makeup. Saying they are wrong undermines there very basic personality, drawing on the opposing variable to "thinking" on the myers-briggs scale "feeling". So intelligent people do not react with intelligence first. Instead of reacting with an "oh ok I didn't realize that was the case in your area" they respond with a protective "I don't think so Tim" and things go down hill from there, especially if the second person is also judgmental. 3) Tribalism. This is the us vs them mentality. Either you are with us or against us. A non ordained view/comment against a group of people who maybe self validating can be seen as a extremely contrasting. Becomes the group has created a false sense of security it can draw out primal responses (like feeling over thinking mentioned above) when that sense of security is threatened. Many groups become polarising and when confronted with opposing views become more and more fundamental, close ranks. This often forms tight knit groups but also leads to a side effect of making everyone an enemy, including people with in the group who aren't are right as they should be, or people with neutral opinions. There was an article I read a week or two go about how to talk skeptically to people. If I can find it I'll post it. It addresses how to oppose a view and avoid the bottom two responses.

3pt14159 15y ago
Sort of meta-related (in that I'm disagreeing with your facts, and therefore the judgement changes): I disagree that most hackers are --TJ types. They are more likely to be -NT- with a bend towards INT-. The N is _the_ trait that tends to abstractionism, so it would make little sense for a hacker to be -S-- at all. If you look at the polls here it comes out in spades: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722 The reason that we argue is that as Rationalists, the truth is more important than anything except for the fact that there is a truth. It is why Rationalists are likely to pick up an Aristotelian view of the word (though that might be a tautology since I think it is an axiom of that worldview). There is a reason why people are not usually grouped in the --TJ category (the broad categories being -NT-, -NF-, -S-J, -S-P). The reason is that the most important variable, the one that correlates to income, happiness, intelligence is the second letter. It fundamentally effects how you approach the world.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  Meyers-Briggs is not a respected test of personality in psychometrics circles; it was invented based on an amateur's reading of Jung's theories of personality. Insofar as people say a pop personality test describes them, it's likely due to the Forer Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect).
  - 3pt14159 15y ago
    I've heard this plenty of times, and I know this anecdotal, but it does predict things. Every developer at FreshBooks when I was there was the same type. Every one of my girlfriends (that I got to take the test long after we broke up) is the same type. There are correlations with IQ, with employment, with other accepted tests. The primary weakness of MB is that results are normally distributed across each letter, so a majority of the population is not strongly correlated with each letter. Just look at the hacker news response. I know it is self reported, but I don't buy that the two of the least populous types self reported themselves by a factor of 1000.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
> 1) Devils advocate. People that interject with an opposing view, even one they don't believe. I often do this one myself cause another poster to go into deeper description. Often just asking for an deeper response will be ignored, but opposing a view will always bring out an argument. I find this useful as a means of provoking discussion, but preferably labeled as such if you don't genuinely hold the position you advocate. > 2) Denial and Righteousness Many rational people have a low tolerance for irrationality, particularly when they have to deal with it often. Particularly when participating on a technical medium or technical topic, rational people expect rationality, and sometimes react poorly when they don't get it. Rational people should not react badly to corrections supported by evidence. However, rational people react quite badly to irrational "corrections", and I can hardly blame them. Personally, I react to irrationality through detachment: if I can't correct it, I write it off and try to make it have as little impact as possible; fortunately, I rarely encounter situations where I have no choice but to deal with irrationality. However, if you don't include the second half of that (giving up when not worth it), you fall into XKCD's "wrong on the internet" problem (https://www.xkcd.com/386/ https://www.xkcd.com/386/), and that quickly gets out of hand.
simoncpu 15y ago
INTJ == Physics INTP == Math Ergo, INTP > INTJ. LOLOLOL. p.s.: The vast majority of trolls are NPs.

by rjd 15y ago

3pt14159 15y ago

Sort of meta-related (in that I'm disagreeing with your facts, and therefore the judgement changes): I disagree that most hackers are --TJ types. They are more likely to be -NT- with a bend towards INT-. The N is _the_ trait that tends to abstractionism, so it would make little sense for a hacker to be -S-- at all. If you look at the polls here it comes out in spades: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722 The reason that we argue is that as Rationalists, the truth is more important than anything except for the fact that there is a truth. It is why Rationalists are likely to pick up an Aristotelian view of the word (though that might be a tautology since I think it is an axiom of that worldview). There is a reason why people are not usually grouped in the --TJ category (the broad categories being -NT-, -NF-, -S-J, -S-P). The reason is that the most important variable, the one that correlates to income, happiness, intelligence is the second letter. It fundamentally effects how you approach the world.

jacques_chester 15y ago
Meyers-Briggs is not a respected test of personality in psychometrics circles; it was invented based on an amateur's reading of Jung's theories of personality. Insofar as people say a pop personality test describes them, it's likely due to the Forer Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect).
- 3pt14159 15y ago
  I've heard this plenty of times, and I know this anecdotal, but it does predict things. Every developer at FreshBooks when I was there was the same type. Every one of my girlfriends (that I got to take the test long after we broke up) is the same type. There are correlations with IQ, with employment, with other accepted tests. The primary weakness of MB is that results are normally distributed across each letter, so a majority of the population is not strongly correlated with each letter. Just look at the hacker news response. I know it is self reported, but I don't buy that the two of the least populous types self reported themselves by a factor of 1000.

JoshTriplett 15y ago

> 1) Devils advocate. People that interject with an opposing view, even one they don't believe. I often do this one myself cause another poster to go into deeper description. Often just asking for an deeper response will be ignored, but opposing a view will always bring out an argument. I find this useful as a means of provoking discussion, but preferably labeled as such if you don't genuinely hold the position you advocate. > 2) Denial and Righteousness Many rational people have a low tolerance for irrationality, particularly when they have to deal with it often. Particularly when participating on a technical medium or technical topic, rational people expect rationality, and sometimes react poorly when they don't get it. Rational people should not react badly to corrections supported by evidence. However, rational people react quite badly to irrational "corrections", and I can hardly blame them. Personally, I react to irrationality through detachment: if I can't correct it, I write it off and try to make it have as little impact as possible; fortunately, I rarely encounter situations where I have no choice but to deal with irrationality. However, if you don't include the second half of that (giving up when not worth it), you fall into XKCD's "wrong on the internet" problem (https://www.xkcd.com/386/ https://www.xkcd.com/386/), and that quickly gets out of hand.

simoncpu 15y ago

INTJ == Physics INTP == Math Ergo, INTP > INTJ. LOLOLOL. p.s.: The vast majority of trolls are NPs.