News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by jfoutz on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:35AM (#12684719)
That is a completely reasonable approach. Like astrology or tarot cards. Getting people thinking about big questions in a non threatening way can spark interesting conversations. There are a lot of cultural norms that prevent people from talking about themselves in that kind of way. A little hocus pocus can help cut through that.

In that same spirit alcohol is a pretty great social lubricant. A little bit of booze lowers people's inhibitions enough to have fun conversations.

Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by triplesec on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:52AM (#12684910)
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
Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by jfoutz on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @12:03PM (#12685652)
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'

Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by 0xdeadbeefbabe on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @11:33AM (#12685321)
> 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.

Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by raverbashing on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @11:46AM (#12685461)
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)

Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by eastbayjake on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @12:50PM (#12686116)
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.
Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by jfoutz on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @12:06PM (#12685683)
That's such a J thing to say.
Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by xkcd-sucks on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @11:59AM (#12685610)
Astrology is correlated to seasonal climate change etc. which can plausibly affect life outcomes, though
Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by arde on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:54PM (#12690132)
Considering the planet has two hemispheres, no, it's not correlated.
Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by Simon321 on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @12:12PM (#12685750)
It's much more than 'astrology or tarot cards'. MBTI correlates with the big five personality traits. Which are backed up scientifically.
Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by dragonwriter on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @12:22PM (#12685845)
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.
Re:The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless by arde on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:56PM (#12690139)
Indeed. But that doesn't mean MBTI is really meaningless, only that there are better models.