Re:Why I don't want to do anything with my life
by lmm on Tuesday April 19, 2016 @07:14AM
(#11526136)
> The claim "you have one of 16 personality types" is not falsifiable. Why does it have to be one of those types?
We define there to be those types when we're measuring - that's like saying the claim "an object has a temperature that's a number" is not falsifiable. We can test the same object multiple times with multiple thermometers and get the same results (while getting different results for different objects). That's the part that's falsifiable - test-retest reliability. If we have that then we can be confident that our measure measures something. (Then the next step is seeing whether the measure is useful by seeing if it correlates with other things).
We define there to be those types when we're measuring - that's like saying the claim "an object has a temperature that's a number" is not falsifiable. We can test the same object multiple times with multiple thermometers and get the same results (while getting different results for different objects). That's the part that's falsifiable - test-retest reliability. If we have that then we can be confident that our measure measures something. (Then the next step is seeing whether the measure is useful by seeing if it correlates with other things).