Ask HN: Can we get a good theory of categorical personality types?

Re:Ask HN: Can we get a good theory of categorical personali... by gshdg on Sunday May 12, 2019 @08:12AM (#19891424)

No, because human personalities don’t fit neatly into boxes and because we currently know very little about our own psychology. And putting people into boxes can be very destructive.

Even something like introversion/extraversion, which we have strong evidence and measures for, is a continuous scale rather than a binary, with most people landing somewhere near the middle.

Most personality measurement systems (such as the MBTI) are pseudoscience; and we know this because the same person will not reliably get consistent results when testing again a few weeks after an initial test.

Sure, if we knew a lot more about psychology than we currently do, you could probably come up with a way to place a person’s personality in a continuous N-dimensional space, where N > 1000... but what good would that do you?

But anyway, that’s not the part of your message that’s most interesting. What about you do you think needs “fixing”; and how would such a theory help you?

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Re:Ask HN: Can we get a good theory of categorical personali... by ErotemeObelus on Sunday May 12, 2019 @01:22PM (#19893167)

> What about you do you think needs “fixing”; and how would such a theory help you?

My mind broke. And yes, it's my mind and not a neuropsychiatric problem. What happened is that my mind had a segmentation fault and now I'm trapped in the same psychological space that elsagate videos exist (search youtube to get an idea of what I'm talking about) in. As a consequence of this I have strange paraphilias that I cannot get rid of.

No existing method of therapy works.

And don't say I'm trolling just because this is outside your quotidian experience. Remember that you inquired into the matter and I am giving you the whole truth.

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Re:Ask HN: Can we get a good theory of categorical personali... by gshdg on Sunday May 12, 2019 @01:26PM (#19893192)

Why do you think that’s a “personality” issue? And why do you feel compelled to “fix” it yourself instead of seeing a therapist?

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Re:Ask HN: Can we get a good theory of categorical personali... by ErotemeObelus on Sunday May 12, 2019 @01:49PM (#19893325)

Personality type is kind of like God's OS that he gave you. You don't approach a problem in an Amiga the same way you would approach a problem in Mac OS 9.

I don't know any therapy that is appropriate for this. CBT is for depression and anxiety and I don't have THOSE problems.

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Re:Ask HN: Can we get a good theory of categorical personali... by gshdg on Sunday May 12, 2019 @01:55PM (#19893369)

Psychology is far more than just personality. And CBT is effective for many issues besides depression and anxiety. I’d still suggest speaking with a therapist.

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Re:Ask HN: Can we get a good theory of categorical personali... by ErotemeObelus on Sunday May 12, 2019 @02:38PM (#19893634)

Okay I will take your advice!

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