# Socionics Is The Wrong Approach



## LibertyPrime (Dec 17, 2010)

Elyasis said:


> Yeah, I never agreed with that. I believe you can work it out with most all of the people who self-identify as various types. Probably even the ones you are supposedly in "conflict" with. I think because it got so much positive response from people who lined up as being with their duals that now it's considered ideal when it's probably just another option.
> 
> Okay, I need two people of each type, I guess four would be better to account for gender preferences, to form a speed dating thing with which we will see, in a blind test, which type really likes which other type the best.
> 
> ...


Sample size too small, results would be irrelevant. Needs larger sample size. You could gather a few thousand couples and evaluate the types through dichotomies, do a relationship satisfaction survey and corelate the results. My estimation would be that relationship satisfaction would be at random due to other variables that contribute to relationship sucess apart from type. The data would point out what the tendency is any way.


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## Chesire Tower (Jan 19, 2013)

Your Results 

Closed-Minded Open to New Experiences 
Disorganized Conscientious 
Introverted Extraverted 
Disagreeable Agreeable 
Calm / Relaxed Nervous / High-Strung 

Link to your results!
Email your results to a friend!
What aspects of personality does this tell me about? 
There has been much research on how people describe others, and five major dimensions of human personality have been found. They are often referred to as the OCEAN model of personality, because of the acronym from the names of the five dimensions. 

Openness to Experience/Intellect

High scorers tend to be original, creative, curious, complex; Low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative. 
You enjoy having novel experiences and seeing things in new ways. (Your percentile: 95) 

Conscientiousness

High scorers tend to be reliable, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful; Low scorers tend to be disorganized, undependable, negligent. 
You probably have a messy desk! (Your percentile: 10) 

Extraversion

High scorers tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative; Low scorers tend to be introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet. 
You are neither particularly social or reserved. (Your percentile: 48) 

Agreeableness

High scorers tend to be good natured, sympathetic, forgiving, courteous; Low scorers tend to be critical, rude, harsh, callous. 
You are neither extremely forgiving nor irritable. (Your percentile: 44) 

Neuroticism

High scorers tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying; Low scorers tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, hardy. 
You are generally relaxed. (Your percentile: 27) 


What do the scores tell me?

In order to provide you with a meaningful comparison, the scores you received have been converted to "percentile scores." This means that your personality score can be directly compared to another group of people who have also taken this personality test.
The percentile scores show you where you score on the five personality dimensions relative to the comparison sample of other people who have taken this test on-line. In other words, your percentile scores indicate the percentage of people who score less than you on each dimension. For example, your Extraversion percentile score is 48, which means that about 48 percent of the people in our comparison sample are less extraverted than you -- in other words, you are neither introverted or extroverted. Keep in mind that these percentile scores are relative to our particular sample of people. Thus, your percentile scores may differ if you were compared to another sample (e.g., elderly British people).


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

I think one of the great benefits of Big 5 results is how intuitively one can predict interactions between people with different scores. One of the things that I personally believe _really stands out_ is any model which can give a _*"granularity"*_ of truth, instead of just "true/false." This is one of the greatest achievements of the Big 5 in comparison to "discreet" models.

Instead of telling you "you are X" we have a system that says "you are X to exactly Y degree." This makes it easier to get a ball-park idea of what to expect. It is like using a scale of 1-to-10 to rate pains. Sure, it is not entirely accurate, but it gives a vague notion of what to expect, which is better than just "pain/no-pain." You see?

Now, with the results of your Big 5 scores, you can do your own speculation after learning what it is that these dimensions are measuring.

If, for instance, one scores dramatically low on something like Extraversion, we can abstract a vague prediction of how that person might interact with someone who has a dramatically high score on the same dimension. And this is quite intuitive, and not hard to do at all. It's quite familiar to most of us - you have a quiet and reserved person who prefers a low-energy environment which is not "invasive" and allows for privacy as well as minimal interaction with others. It is not particularly important how this person decides to justify themselves in this respect - perhaps they see this attitude as a matter of simple mutual respect between people to give others their distance.

Now take the counter-example - a person who is quite extraverted. This individual enjoys lively interactions with others and is usually curious about the affairs of others, wanting to become involved with others and wanting others to become involved with themselves. They want to include everyone in their own business and want to be included. They like high energy environments where many things are happening that they can get involved in. Again, it isn't particularly important how this person tends to justify their attitude. Perhaps they also see it as a sign of respect to be allowed to participate, and to allow others to participate in their affairs. You see, people will always tend to develop a value system that subjectively validates their behavior, especially behaviors which come naturally to them.

You can do this kind of open speculation with each of the dimensions and draw some rather reliable predictions by visualizing how people with various scores might interact with each other. I find it to be quite a lot easier, in fact, to do this with the Big 5 dimensions than I do with cognitive function preferences, or the 16 MBTI types, or even Enneagram. I think it is actually one of the strongest virtues of the Big 5 that it does not focus on the inner cognitive processes of a person. Instead of trying to predict behavior based on theoretically impossible to prove so-called "cognitive functions" the Big 5 looks at what we can actually observe and study with our very eyes - behavior. And from behavior we can speculate all we want about the inner life of the individual.

However, therein lies the essential beauty of this approach - ultimately, we don't even necessarily need to do this. We can allow people the privacy of their own minds. Perhaps this is a bit of my own biases speaking right now, as someone who scores a little lower than average on Extraversion, but I would say, I almost find the aggressive approach of MBTI, cognitive functions, and Socionics as _offensive and rude_ in the way it quite _arrogantly_ attempts to tell me how the very deepest parts of my own mind operates. Am I making a little bit of sense here?

I am not trying to be unfair, but this is just how it feels to me personally, and maybe there are a few people who would agree with that sentiment. I do not mind being told _that_ my mind operates, or even why it does - I'm quite convinced that is the result of processes in my brain, of course. Indeed, I am even willing to make the concession that science can tell us how _some_ aspects of my mind operate. But there is a line I draw somewhere when it comes to my very _identity._ To me, that is like a person trying to take away something from me that nobody has any right to take.

Big 5 is respectful. It can describe my behavior, which, outwardly, is more than enough to define all that needs to be defined in order to describe who I am within the context of the external world of physical events and physical results. What more is needed than that? We do not need to be greedy. With just that, everything under the sun that could ever be of any _*material*_ value and importance is understood and defined. And yet, I am still allowed the privacy of my internal world where I get to define my own mind however I wish. I am allowed the independence and the freedom to formulate my own opinion, subjectively, about my world. And at the same time, I have all the self-understanding that I ought to have to know who I am from the outside.

It seems to me, and again this is merely my own speculative opinion, that those who feel as if they really need some kind of an external system or model to tell them who they are on the _inside_ are, perhaps, struggling with a kind of fear that they do not really understand. I believe they are trying to compensate for something they feel that they lack. It is easy to answer this by saying, "well sure, I lack self-knowledge." But I believe it goes much deeper than this. I am tempted to confront these people and ask, "and what would you do with that self-knowledge if you had it? What then?" And almost certainly I feel I know the answer. They would "know what to do." But there might also be a second kind of person, a person who actually does know themselves and who they are very well. Instead, this person does not understand _other_ people. They want to know _why_ people do what they do. I am afraid my question remains the same, "what would you do with that knowledge of others?" And of course, the answer would be the same. "I would know what to do."

To know "what to do" in life, is not something that one can learn from psychology. This is entirely the wrong way to be using this science, and it is one of the biggest concerns facing the entire discipline. People are abusing psychology in this way. Perhaps they do not realize it, but studying psychology simply for the insight it gives into human nature so that they can, essentially, get what they want, is not the appropriate use of psychology. It is manipulative, and worse, it is ignorant.

People like this are attempting to _justify_ their own unconscious subjective values using facts about the human psyche. They are ultimately insecure about themselves and about other people, and they simply want to feel as if their actions have a purpose and a meaning. But rather than simply face that angst and confront it directly, and admit that they ought to be examining this aspect of themselves, they are instead unconscious of this feeling, and it continues to motivate them to study and study and argue and argue, and it turns into a vicious and never-ending cycle in which they drive away others, and build a castle of conviction out of sand. I have seen it happen all over these forums - in this very thread. I have seen myself do it to others. I have seen others do it to me. I know how it feels both ways, and it has to stop.

It ends by accepting that science is not meant to tell you who you ought to be, or even who you are. That comes from philosophy, and it comes from experience. It will _never_ be a matter of fact that you are _any_ "type" of person. So don't listen to anyone who tells you that you have a "type." Or if they do, ask them, "how much am I that type?" Don't believe in any model, no matter how "scientific" it claims to be or anyone tells you it is, if that model attempts to give you a discreet, black and white "type." Nothing in the universe is black and white - not even black and white. Nothing exists with EM frequency of zero or infinity - not even singularities are that. And certainly not human beings, or anything about them. If there is any one real "truth" it is this - truth exists in _degrees._ To the extent that "type" could be called "useful" it would be insofar as it allows us to know that X is not Y, and Y is not X. But that is not as useful as something that tells us precisely _how much_ X is not Y, and Y is not X, because that "scale" of truth is how the universe really is. X is not just "not Y." It is "not Y" _to some extent._ And that _extent_ also tells us how much X _IS_ like Y, along with how much it is not.

That is the beauty of granular truth. And that is the beauty of the Big 5.

And that is all I have left to say in this thread, or any other on this topic.


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## Chesire Tower (Jan 19, 2013)

@Abraxas, I don't regard any personality test as set in stone by any means; to me, they all have the potential to function as useful learning tools. The major problem I see in any personality test; is when people over identify with a "type" and assume certain aspects solely based on that type: for example, thinkers are necessarily bad at relating or empathising with others; feelers are incapable of logical reasoning; sensors can't think outside the box; intuitives have their heads in the clouds and on and on . . .

It's a silly type predjudice that happens, when people interpret these tests too literally but they are useful; so long a they are taken with an appropriate grain of salt.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

TreasureTower said:


> @_Abraxas_, I don't regard any personality test as set in stone by any means; to me, they all have the potential to function as useful learning tools. The major problem I see in any personality test; is when people over identify with a "type" and assume certain aspects solely based on that type: for example, thinkers are necessarily bad at relating or empathising with others; feelers are incapable of logical reasoning; sensors can't think outside the box; intuitives have their heads in the clouds and on and on . . .
> 
> It's a silly type predjudice that happens, when people interpret these tests too literally but they are useful; so long a they are taken with an appropriate grain of salt.



I wish there were more people like you.

:happy:


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## Chesire Tower (Jan 19, 2013)

Abraxas said:


> I wish there were more people like you.
> 
> :happy:


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## Zero11 (Feb 7, 2010)

Abraxas said:


> You can do this kind of open speculation with each of the dimensions and draw some rather reliable predictions by visualizing how people with various scores might interact with each other. I find it to be quite a lot easier, in fact, to do this with the Big 5 dimensions than I do with cognitive function preferences, or the 16 MBTI types, or even Enneagram. I think it is actually one of the strongest virtues of the Big 5 that it does not focus on the inner cognitive processes of a person. Instead of trying to predict behavior based on theoretically impossible to prove so-called "cognitive functions" the Big 5 looks at what we can actually observe and study with our very eyes - behavior. And from behavior we can speculate all we want about the inner life of the individual.


You find it easier and now you wanna tell us what to do? WTF? Nice PoLR fight.



> However, therein lies the essential beauty of this approach - ultimately, we don't even necessarily need to do this. We can allow people the privacy of their own minds. Perhaps this is a bit of my own biases speaking right now, as someone who scores a little lower than average on Extraversion, but I would say, I almost find the aggressive approach of MBTI, cognitive functions, and Socionics as _offensive and rude_ in the way it quite _arrogantly_ attempts to tell me how the very deepest parts of my own mind operates. Am I making a little bit of sense here?


No you don´t not in the slightest.



> I am not trying to be unfair, but this is just how it feels to me personally, and maybe there are a few people who would agree with that sentiment. I do not mind being told _that_ my mind operates, or even why it does - I'm quite convinced that is the result of processes in my brain, of course. Indeed, I am even willing to make the concession that science can tell us how _some_ aspects of my mind operate. But there is a line I draw somewhere when it comes to my very _identity._ To me, that is like a person trying to take away something from me that nobody has any right to take.


I don´t value Fe so I´m not personifying anything and wasn´t there insecure written down here?



> Big 5 is respectful. It can describe my behavior, which, outwardly, is more than enough to define all that needs to be defined in order to describe who I am within the context of the external world of physical events and physical results. What more is needed than that? We do not need to be greedy. With just that, everything under the sun that could ever be of any _*material*_ value and importance is understood and defined. And yet, I am still allowed the privacy of my internal world where I get to define my own mind however I wish. I am allowed the independence and the freedom to formulate my own opinion, subjectively, about my world. And at the same time, I have all the self-understanding that I ought to have to know who I am from the outside.


Respectful lol thats just another word for useless, how can it be effective if it doesn´t tries to make an impact?



> It seems to me, and again this is merely my own speculative opinion, that those who feel as if they really need some kind of an *external system* or model to tell them who they are on the _inside_ are, perhaps, struggling with a kind of fear that they do not really understand. I believe they are trying to compensate for something they feel that they lack. It is easy to answer this by saying, "well sure, I lack self-knowledge." But I believe it goes much deeper than this. I am tempted to confront these people and ask, "and what would you do with that self-knowledge if you had it? What then?" And almost certainly I feel I know the answer. They would "know what to do." But there might also be a second kind of person, a person who actually does know themselves and who they are very well. Instead, this person does not understand _other_ people. They want to know _why_ people do what they do. I am afraid my question remains the same, "what would you do with that knowledge of others?" And of course, the answer would be the same. "I would know what to do."


-need- not sure if this is the right word but Enneagram Type 6 seeks for confirmation and recognition.



> To know "what to do" in life, is not something that one can learn from psychology. This is entirely the wrong way to be using this science, and it is one of the biggest concerns facing the entire discipline. People are abusing psychology in this way. Perhaps they do not realize it, but studying psychology simply for the insight it gives into human nature so that they can, essentially, get what they want, is not the appropriate use of psychology. It is manipulative, and worse, it is ignorant.


Knowledge specifically Extraverted Logic is manipulative, and worse it is ignorant. Thanks for your Insight.



> People like this are attempting to _justify_ their own unconscious subjective values using facts about the human psyche. They are *ultimately insecure* about themselves and about other people, and they simply want to feel as if their actions have a purpose and a meaning. But rather than simply face that angst and confront it directly, and admit that they ought to be examining this aspect of themselves, they are instead unconscious of this feeling, and it continues to motivate them to study and study and argue and argue, and it turns into a vicious and never-ending cycle in which they drive away others, and build a castle of conviction out of sand. I have seen it happen all over these forums - in this very thread. I have seen myself do it to others. I have seen others do it to me. I know how it feels both ways, and it has to stop.


How cruel  like your judgment about some certain People which isn´t even written as an Assumption. Btw. attacking some effects isn´t leading anywhere.



> It ends by accepting that science is not meant to tell you who you ought to be, or even who you are. That comes from philosophy, and it comes from experience. It will _never_ be a matter of fact that you are _any_ "type" of person. So don't listen to anyone who tells you that you have a "type." Or if they do, ask them, "how much am I that type?" Don't believe in any model, no matter how "scientific" it claims to be or anyone tells you it is, if that model attempts to give you a discreet, black and white "type."


Totally failed understanding of the Topic at Hand.



> Nothing in the universe is black and white - not even black and white. Nothing exists with EM frequency of zero or infinity - not even singularities are that. And certainly not human beings, or anything about them. If there is any one real "truth" it is this - truth exists in _degrees._ To the extent that "type" could be called "useful" it would be insofar as it allows us to know that X is not Y, and Y is not X. But that is not as useful as something that tells us precisely _how much_ X is not Y, and Y is not X, because that "scale" of truth is how the universe really is. X is not just "not Y." It is "not Y" _to some extent._ And that _extent_ also tells us how much X _IS_ like Y, along with how much it is not.


Sure because there is no Diversity inside the "Types" and it is surely not overlapping. :laughing:



> That is the beauty of granular truth. And that is the beauty of the Big 5.


Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.


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## gwho (Jul 11, 2013)

judging from the level of stupidity, misrepresentation, arrogance, and dishonesty you've shown here, OP, you're truly an idiot. You're welcome for pointing out your inconsistencies. My loss for having thrown pearls to swine. Delude yourself if you like; I don't care. You're now out of my world.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

Not sure what all the hostility is about coming from you two.

Your emotionally biased and close-minded arguments are based on sentiment rather than clear reasoning, and don't seem to be conducive to either a respectful discussion or a hard debate.

Thus far this thread has been a focus on what I feel and believe are the negative aspects of cognitive function models, and where I think other models (such as Big 5) are preferable in those respects. This has served to inflame and enrage people who have taken it upon themselves to personally insult and belittle me directly.

We can choose to be agreeable instead and make concessions to each other, which demonstrates open-mindedness on both sides and thus makes progress possible towards a solution that works for everyone.

For instance, ask me which aspects of Socionics I think get it right.

I do not think Socionics is all bad. There are many principals of it that I think are the right approach. I just think it is the wrong approach in general.


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## sinigang (May 5, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> Not sure what all the hostility is about coming from you two.
> 
> *Your emotionally biased and close-minded arguments are based on sentiment rather than clear reasoning, and don't seem to be conducive to either a respectful discussion or a hard debate.*
> 
> ...


Fi vs Fe

You can thank socionics.


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## Zero11 (Feb 7, 2010)

Abraxas said:


> Not sure what all the hostility is about coming from you two.


take a look at the next Quote, sure Big 5 is helping you RESPECTFUL to understand it.



> Your emotionally biased and close-minded arguments are based on sentiment rather than clear reasoning, and don't seem to be conducive to either a respectful discussion or a hard debate.





> We can choose to be agreeable instead and make concessions to each other, which demonstrates open-mindedness on both sides and thus makes progress possible towards a solution that works for everyone.


How would that look like?



> For instance, ask me which aspects of Socionics I think get it right.


Thats not the Point you´ve gone to far for reaching such a approach now.


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

Mmm, @Abraxas, I realize that this post of yours is long and contains several ideas, including many with which I find myself in agreement, the characterization of the Big 5 as being simply about behavior strikes me as ... well, not quite right.

I get that you are contrasting the Big 5 with Socionics which pretends to dictate the elements of a person's cognition. At this point in humanity's understanding of the mind, anyone who claims to understand what cognition is, let alone breaking it down into fundamental parts, is seriously deceiving themselves or others. Amateur internet "neuro-scientists", please. So, in the sense that the Big 5 is not a theory about what cognition is or how it happens or what constitutes its parts (if cognition could even reasonably said to have parts), but part of a theory that attempts to explain variations in personality and temperament, then yes, Big 5 is 'less about cognition', but I don't think that's really telling the story.

The 5 factors that make up the Big 5 are 5 basic tendencies that guide a person's choices and decisions, but they are not the only influence on a person's behavior, nor are they behavior itself, nor are they synonymous with a person's self-image.



This image shows the larger system within which the Big 5 are situated. As you can see, from McCrae and Costa's perspective, these 5 factors are primarily biological and serve as the fundamental baseline upon which other aspects of personality, self, and behavior are built and influenced. To say that they are describing "just behavior" is, well, not a very representative statement, I'd say.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

@_Teybo_,

Wow, thanks for that graphic!

Essentially, from what I understand (also looking at that image you posted) it is like saying that these Big 5 tendencies are what really _define_ a personality, (not necessarily cognition itself) and we infer the existence of these personality traits from all these other sources of information - biology, behavior, external influences, characteristic adaptations, self-concept, etc. Almost all of those sources are observable, and many of them are actually very concrete and not open to the same kinds of biases that plague self-determined preference testing.

I apologize, as I didn't mean to say that Big 5 was _only_ about behavior and just describing behavior. Rather, that whatever inferences it makes about personality traits are based on the observation of things like behavior and biology rather than cognition. It infers the existence of the 5 tendencies that define personality, so it takes a kind of "outside-in" approach to defining personality. Insofar as this is the case I find it to be a major advantage over less scientific models that attempt to quantify cognition into discreet processes and infer discreet personality types from such an analysis. That's more or less what I have been trying to say this entire thread, apart from my other sentiments.


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> @_Teybo_,
> 
> Wow, thanks for that graphic!
> 
> ...


Right. Well, I guess I'd say that it's not even so much "outside in" as it is based on more objective evidence. Socionics and other function models often are _even more_ "behavior based" than the MBTI or Big 5, given how they define the functions. For example, you never hear someone say "How do you use F to make things better in group situations?" but it's very common to hear "How do you use Fe to make things better in group situations?" or things of that nature. So long as people think you "use functions", they will be investing in a much more behavior-based model than the MBTI or Big 5.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

Teybo said:


> Right. Well, I guess I'd say that it's not even so much "outside in" as it is based on more objective evidence. Socionics and other function models often are _even more_ "behavior based" than the MBTI or Big 5, given how they define the functions. For example, you never hear someone say "How do you use F to make things better in group situations?" but it's very common to hear "How do you use Fe to make things better in group situations?" or things of that nature. So long as people think you "use functions", they will be investing in a much more behavior-based model than the MBTI or Big 5.


That would seem to contradict the sentiment and beliefs of most people who adhere to cognitive function models though, including MBTI/JCF/Socionics experts, wouldn't it? My understanding was that they adamantly demand that cognitive functions do not describe behavior, rather, behavior is inferred - and since MBTI is (supposedly) based on cognitive function dynamics...


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> That would seem to contradict the sentiment and beliefs of most people who adhere to cognitive function models though, including MBTI/JCF/Socionics experts, wouldn't it? My understanding was that they adamantly demand that cognitive functions do not describe behavior, rather, behavior is inferred - and since MBTI is (supposedly) based on cognitive function dynamics...


If you're saying that it's possible for someone to claim to be doing one thing while actually doing the opposite, I would say that I agree. I'd also say that it's not surprising that some behaviors are good indicators of someone's deeply held tendencies. It would be more surprising to me if someone's core tendencies had little correlation with their outward behaviors and actions.

Also, Jung described introversion, extraversion and the types through a mix of both behavioral signs and internal "explanations" for those signs.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

Teybo said:


> If you're saying that it's possible for someone to claim to be doing one thing while actually doing the opposite, I would say that I agree. I'd also say that it's not surprising that some behaviors are good indicators of someone's deeply held tendencies. It would be more surprising to me if someone's core tendencies had little correlation with their outward behaviors and actions.
> 
> Also, Jung described introversion, extraversion and the types through a mix of both behavioral signs and internal "explanations" for those signs.


Yes I know, and I agree. I've actually argued exactly what you're saying right now in the past and been met with resistance almost universally by everyone who claims to have even a modicum of understanding of the subject, and it's been frustrating for me.

Personally, I've always beat that drum and tried to say that MBTI/JCF absolutely does include behavior in any form of analysis of type, but again, everywhere you look and everything you might read on the subject tries to bang away on the idea that this stuff has zilch to do with behavior, and is _strictly_ theorizing and predicting cognitive processes, from which we can only speculate about behavior.

That's essentially where I say I think Big 5 is based on behavior _more than_ these other models, if merely in principal. In reality I would say that it isn't really necessarily any more so than MBTI or Socionics, but that's just my opinion. These other systems almost seem to have a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, outright denying anything having to do with predicting behavior and then blatantly asking questions that are specifically about behavior on the official Form M, or Form Q.

Socionics is guilty of the same thing. I even posted a test developed by Filatova provided in her book and one of the questions is asking which foot you step over a puddle with first. I can't even imagine what that behavior would have to do with personality, or what the reliable scientific basis for that question would be, but there it is.


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## Chesire Tower (Jan 19, 2013)

Abraxas said:


> .Socionics is guilty of the same thing. I even posted a test developed by Filatova provided in her book and one of the questions is asking *which foot you step over a puddle with first*. I can't even imagine what that behavior would have to do with personality, or what the reliable scientific basis for that question would be, but there it is.


Wow, _seriously_? I know whether or not, I'm right handed or ambidextrous but I would have absolutely no clue how to answer a question like this.

:laughing:


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

TreasureTower said:


> Wow, _seriously_? I know whether or not, I'm right handed or ambidextrous but I would have absolutely no clue how to answer a question like this.
> 
> :laughing:


Lol, I know right? Well, you can find the test and a link to the book I got it from here:

http://personalitycafe.com/whats-my-socionics-type/156900-filatova-socionics-dichotomy-test.html

Filatova is considered a major contributor to Socionics and one of the top experts on it too.


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## Chesire Tower (Jan 19, 2013)

Abraxas said:


> Lol, I know right? Well, you can find the test and a link to the book I got it from here:
> 
> http://personalitycafe.com/whats-my-socionics-type/156900-filatova-socionics-dichotomy-test.html
> 
> Filatova is considered a major contributor to Socionics and one of the top experts on it too.


Actually, except for that and a couple of other stupid questions; this may be one of the best tests, that I've even taken on Soionics or MBTI, for that matter.

I didn't know how to set it up the way that you descried; so I just put in the numbers. I still have no idea what my score is.

:blushed:


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

(This post is directed at no-one in particular, I am just continuing the discussion.)

I found a video on youtube. This is an introductory psychology course (PSY 110) taught at Yale University by Paul Bloom. The video I am linking is lecture 13, which is on the psychological differences between people. The subject matter of this lecture is central to the topic of this thread and brings up a lot of the controversy that explains many of the issues I have with Socionics.

The lecture focuses on the two major aspects on which we differ, which are personality and intelligence, and it talks about the two biggest concerns with methods for defining these two aspects, which are reliability and validity. There is also a brief discussion on the Big 5, it's merits, and why it is the psychological standard. This is pretty basic stuff, but it is critical to understand these ideas because they give good reasons to strongly object to Socionics (and cognitive functions) as the right approach to defining personality.

Unless, of course, anyone disagrees with the academic standards of Yale University.



* *


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## Elyasis (Jan 4, 2012)

TreasureTower said:


> Wow, _seriously_? I know whether or not, I'm right handed or ambidextrous but I would have absolutely no clue how to answer a question like this.
> 
> :laughing:


Obviously left foot. It's my lead foot as can be seen by my slightly higher hip. It's weird because I am right handed but left footed.

The question may be trying to get at that two sides of the brain theory. Except in a less known way so you won't try to "rig" the answer.


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## ParetoCaretheStare (Jan 18, 2012)

"Socionics is the wrong approach". 

Well so is lack of foreplay, but people still seem to make wrong decisions on a daily basis. 

I found it to be helpful. The explanations are mostly positive, and encourage me to get things done in my work environment. 

Then there's MBTI, where the vagueness creates such a broad understanding, and there really are no objective points reached.

Maybe the topic is freedom. Socionics creates a lack of freedom because it is more detailed in the analyses?


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

ParetoCaretheStare said:


> "Socionics is the wrong approach".
> 
> Well so is lack of foreplay, but people still seem to make wrong decisions on a daily basis.
> 
> ...



Not only is there no evidence for the existence of cognitive functions, there is actually mountains of evidence to suggest that cognition is not made up discreet processes, but rather it is multi-dimensional and made up of various overlapping traits. This is why I comfortably venture that not a single psychology professor at any college anywhere in the world teaches Socionics. If they teach anything at all about personality (which they probably do) they teach the Big 5, because it is widely accepted and has tremendous evidence to support it. Socionics takes the wrong approach because it is based on, and fails to prove, a hypothesis that runs counter to what psychologists already know with strong certainty. It is a fringe theory that almost no professional psychologists take seriously, which is why it is not taught to students.

My experience has been that those who think Socionics is "useful" in the sense of being valid are doing so under the false pretense that just because a model can reliably predict something about a person the model is therefore necessarily valid. But this is simply not the case. Reliability does not equate to validity. Another way to say this is _"correlation does not imply causation."_ It is not that the predictions Socionics makes are false. Many of the predictions about personality that Socionics states are true, are true. It is that they do not follow for the reasons provided by the model, because the premises of the model are false. The model is therefore invalid.

I could even go a step further and frame my objection using an analogy to the "usefulness" of religion. I could, for instance, agree to the notion that some people find a use and a need in their lives for superstitious beliefs in the supernatural. But this does not mean that superstitious beliefs in the supernatural actually are useful. It only means that these people _believe_ their beliefs are useful to them. It also does not mean that anything supernatural actually exists. Their belief that their beliefs are useful is itself open to question, let alone that their beliefs in the supernatural are actually justified to begin with.


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## ParetoCaretheStare (Jan 18, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> Not only is there no evidence for the existence of cognitive functions, there is actually mountains of evidence to suggest that cognition is not made up discreet processes, but rather it is multi-dimensional and made up of various overlapping traits. This is why I comfortably venture that not a single psychology professor at any college anywhere in the world teaches Socionics. If they teach anything at all about personality (which they probably do) they teach the Big 5, because it is widely accepted and has tremendous evidence to support it. Socionics takes the wrong approach because it is based on, and fails to prove, a hypothesis that runs counter to what psychologists already know with strong certainty. It is a fringe theory that almost no professional psychologists take seriously, which is why it is not taught to students.
> 
> My experience has been that those who think Socionics is "useful" in the sense of being valid are doing so under the false pretense that just because a model can reliably predict something about a person the model is therefore necessarily valid. But this is simply not the case. Reliability does not equate to validity. Another way to say this is _"correlation does not imply causation."_ It is not that the predictions Socionics makes are false. Many of the predictions about personality that Socionics states are true, are true. It is that they do not follow for the reasons provided by the model, because the premises of the model are false. The model is therefore invalid.
> 
> I could even go a step further and frame my objection using an analogy to the "usefulness" of religion. I could, for instance, agree to the notion that some people find a use and a need in their lives for superstitious beliefs in the supernatural. But this does not mean that superstitious beliefs in the supernatural actually are useful. It only means that these people _believe_ their beliefs are useful to them. It also does not mean that anything supernatural actually exists. Their belief that their beliefs are useful is itself open to question, let alone that their beliefs in the supernatural are actually justified to begin with.


So you're saying that you personally rely more on the Big 5 because it is used more by psychologists? Perhaps it does have a lot of evidence to support it; maybe even much more than Socionics, but then how do either of those theories relate to the idea of supernatural existence? Are you saying that any theory is closely linked to the analysis of existential understandings, but the one that is valid is theory a from the topic of your argument simply because of its popularity and confirmed officialism?


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## ParetoCaretheStare (Jan 18, 2012)

I'm putting your opinion into consideration, although contrasting results are endless depending on both the tester and the tested. Popular vote seems to win due to power in the end, anyway.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

ParetoCaretheStare said:


> So you're saying that you personally rely more on the Big 5 because it is used more by psychologists? Perhaps it does have a lot of evidence to support it; maybe even much more than Socionics, but then how do either of those theories relate to the idea of supernatural existence? Are you saying that any theory is closely linked to the analysis of existential understandings, but the one that is valid is theory a from the topic of your argument simply because of its popularity and confirmed officialism?


Validity isn't based on popularity or authority. To say a model is valid is simply to say that whatever the given conclusion or prediction of the model is, it is true because the premises upon which the model is based are also true. If the conclusion/prediction is true but the premises are false, then the model is invalid because the conclusion/prediction does not follow from the premises the model is based on. If the logic of a model is invalid then it is not rational to believe in it.

Socionics does not, or cannot, provide proof of the existence of discreet cognitive processes called "functions" which are the basis for its predictions/conclusions about personality. Therefore, it is wrong. It is useless as a model for personality because it does not actually model personality. It claims to, but it has not substantiated this claim. Not only that, but there is also strong evidence to suggest that cognition is not made up of discreet processes, which is the basis of Socionics. Therefore, there is strong evidence against Socionics. Not only has Socionics failed to demonstrate its validity since its inception, there is reason to believe that it never will because fundamentally it _can't._


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## ParetoCaretheStare (Jan 18, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> Validity isn't based on popularity or authority. To say a model is valid is simply to say that whatever the given conclusion or prediction of the model is, it is true because the premises upon which the model is based are also true. If the conclusion/prediction is true but the premises are false, then the model is invalid because the conclusion/prediction does not follow from the premises the model is based on. If the logic of a model is invalid then it is not rational to believe in it.
> 
> Socionics does not, or cannot, provide proof of the existence of discreet cognitive processes called "functions" which are the basis for its predictions/conclusions about personality. Therefore, it is wrong. It is useless as a model for personality because it does not actually model personality. It claims to, but it has not substantiated this claim. Not only that, but there is also strong evidence to suggest that cognition is not made up of discreet processes, which is the basis of Socionics. Therefore, there is strong evidence against Socionics. Not only has Socionics failed to demonstrate its validity since its inception, there is reason to believe that it never will because fundamentally it _can't._


so it's just illogical


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

ParetoCaretheStare said:


> so it's just illogical


TL;DR - Yeah, basically.

I really recommend doing a youtube search or a google search for "introduction to psychology and personality" and seeing if you can find a free lecture provided by a reputable college or university. It will prepare you for delving into this subject so that you don't get misled by people who believe in cognitive functions.

A lot of people are going to say things to you like, "you are using Fe" or "I see a lot of Ti in your post" or something like that. They are trying to tell you that you are showing a preference for a certain cognitive function. The thing is, cognitive functions probably don't exist in the first place. So who knows what they are really trying to say, you see? They're actually failing to say anything meaningful or useful. If they had instead just described what you said like a normal person would, you might have learned something useful about what you said that would help you figure out your personality.

Also, another big thing to watch out for is called the "fundamental attribution error." This is a strong cognitive bias in all human beings. We tend to attribute people's behavior to something deep inside them instead of taking into account the circumstances and the context for their behavior. So if Mary gets into an argument with someone five minutes before she meets you, and you have no idea she got into an argument five minutes ago, and then she reacts to something you say in a negative way, you might make the mistake of assuming Mary is just a hostile person, when the fact is, she's just in a bad mood because of the argument she just had that you don't know about.

You are going to run into people on these forums who actually believe that they can tell with certainty what your personality is just from reading one of your posts at random, ignoring context and circumstance. For instance, you might strongly feel and believe something, and someone might contradict that belief, and so you get upset due to having to face cognitive dissonance (nobody likes to be wrong), and so people will assume this tells something about your personality instead of realizing that _anybody_ would get upset in that circumstance because it is totally normal behavior for anyone.


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## RoSoDude (Apr 3, 2012)

Reading these posts on either side of the debate has essentially shown me that I don't actually care about psychology. I'm largely interested in Socionics and Enneagram theory for the systematic and mechanical aspects of the theory. There's a lot of cool math inherent to it and interesting frameworks that allow the pieces come together. I'd never bother to seriously argue with anyone that "cognitive functions" or whatever exist. I find the topic totally boring and I have no strong feelings either way. It's true that the more scientific position is definitely that there's no good reason to believe in it without evidence, and I totally respect that. Same goes for big 5. It seems to be nice and testable and it presents a pretty sound hypothesis, but it's really hard for me to scrape together any interest in it.

I mainly use Socionics as an a priori model to give me some insight into that which I would otherwise have no bearing to understand. It describes a system of opposites (the many dichotomies) and mathematically creates a framework for understanding how certain things necessarily must be when other conditions hold. For example, lead Ti necessitates role Fi, suggestive Fe, and ignoring Te. This is cool because knowing how one values a single element allows one to extrapolate on the person's evaluation of three others. The obvious and very reasonable argument to this is "what if none of these even freaking exist?" I'd agree they probably don't. Personality is likely far more complex than can be quantized into some number of discrete opposites. But that doesn't mean the systematic aspect of these insights isn't interesting and sometimes useful. I find that my Socionics type happens to explain certain things about me very well. I'd never claim these things are empirically accurate, but they give me some personal insight on why I have trouble relating to certain others based on a conflicting valuation of different types of information. It is true that I look for logical consistency above many things (you can tell this just from what I've been saying, I think), and Ti happens to fit that. My annoyance with information relating to personal/emotional connections fits with Fi, and so on. Regardless of whether this insight can be said to describe any absolute truth, it sure does help me, and I find it horrendously fun to read and talk about. Plus, without it, I'd be likely to write off people with different perspectives and ways of looking at things as silly or even aggravating. Socionics and other personality theory allows me to see that there may be certain mechanisms that I can understand in their behavior, so even if I can't relate, I can have greater sympathy for alternate viewpoints.

This may be one of the first times I can actually relate with people who are religious. Granted, I would never claim my view has any bearing on reality, and so I despise the idea that a religious institution should have any say on what's taught in schools or passed into law, but I do respect the spiritual and subjective aspect to it. After all, no human being is inherently rational and we all are plagued by magical thinking and all sorts of stupid biases. So I try to make sure the stupid crap that I half-believe is _interesting _​stupid crap.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

@_RoSoDude_,

I actually really admire and respect everything you had to say. I really appreciate you sharing that perspective.I probably didn't convey myself well in this regard, but I actually really enjoy studying this stuff myself - otherwise, I probably wouldn't be here. :tongue: In fact, my favorite subject is philosophy (specifically existentialism), not anything scientific at all.


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## gwho (Jul 11, 2013)

sinigang said:


> Fi vs Fe
> 
> You can thank socionics.


just really bugs a lot me when people are arrogant about really bad logic, which i've pointed out in detail.

i openly admit i sad things emotionally charged here. i'm always open to correction on logic.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

@_itsme45_, this is a response to the quote you posted in my thread on Filatova's test. I thought it would be more suited to post in this thread because it brings up many more points I'd like to address with Socionics.


There are numerous problems with cognitive functions, but I don't have the time to get into all of them. What I'm about to say might sound a bit condescending, but I don't mean to sound offensive. I just have the tendency to sound rather blunt, and if at any time I sound rude, please forgive me.

I'm going to assume, as I do about the majority of posters here on these forums, that you've never taken a college intro course on psychology or sociology. As such, I'm going to assume that your knowledge of the forces that shape people consists of only your personal experience and not centuries of scientific inquiry. Let me see if I can do my best just to give you an idea of the vast iceberg you've bumped your ship into, and why there is absolutely no reason to take Socionics very seriously at all.

There are a tremendous number and _variety_ of forces at work that decide who we are. To try and reduce them all down into eight discreet cognitive processes, and then say that these eight "functions" exist are useful for describing personality (or even useful for anything), is almost delusional. For one thing, it completely ignores any kind of sociological perspective, and I'm going to talk a bit about that right now, because very few people even know what sociology is and why it needs to be included in any analysis of people as individuals.

People and their personalities do not exist in a vacuum. Who you are is largely not up to you, nor does your heredity or neurology, or whatever cognitive biases you have matter much. The choices available for you to make in life are more limited than you might think. The extent of your agency as sentient creature is mostly directed by and under the influence of social powers and the inertia of historical movements. Regardless of whatever psychological traits and potential you were born with, however that manifests itself depends more upon the pressures and attitudes of the culture and society you belong to than it does to something driving you individually from within. Individually, you barely even exist. That is because you are not just an individual - you are also part of a group, and you play a role within that group whether you are aware of it or not, and whether you believe it or not, and whether you want to or not.

You do not even get to decide what right and wrong is. Society decides that for you, and if you don't agree with me then go become a criminal and see what happens. You do not get to decide what truth is. If you don't agree with that, go make up whatever answers you want on your college exams and see if you graduate. Unless you are a senator or an important politician, you do not get to decide how money ought to be distributed, or what rights women ought to have. If you are poor, you have very few freedoms at all. Your choice of diet, transportation, shelter - these are all extremely limited for you. Your opinion will probably never matter or change anything in this world - not even your family or the people you call your friends - because your family and friends are also part of society and have their own responsibilities and may not have the luxury of being a rebel even if you choose to be.

If that all sounds bleak, it's meant to, but it's also meant to be realistic. It's brutally real about who people really are, and to what extent they have a say in anything. But it goes even deeper than just your freedom to choose what car you want to drive, or where you want to live. Even your fundamental beliefs, your moral convictions, your logical opinions, your manner of speech, your manner of dress, the music you like, your way of expressing yourself to others - all of those are influenced by society as well. Indeed, there simply is no boundary, no hard line where you end and the world begins. Society is as completely penetrating as it is all-encompassing.

Every single idea that exists with which to define your personality is a contrivance of society and the native language you've been taught. The very words that get used to label personality traits themselves reflect biases within the society of which you are a member. They are subtly tied into the opinions and feelings of your native culture, which themselves are the result of historical movements that have been evolving for hundreds of years, some even thousands.

If the circumstances of your world were different - if you were born into a different time and place, but biologically you were exactly the same as you are right now, your personality type would be vastly different and you'd be a very different person as a point of fact. Regardless of whatever your heredity or genetics or family history is, how you came to be who you are is much more strongly shaped by and influenced by those historical social movements than by your individual circumstances, because your individual circumstances themselves only exist _because of_ those movements, and are given a context by those movements in the first place.

To use an analogy, imagine personality as being a like a painting. Imagine your heredity and genetics as being the painter in this analogy, the device that creates the painting. Society, then, is the paint. Society is the canvas. Society is the methods you will use to paint with. Society are the tools you will paint with. Society is what will judge your painting and decide if it is art - indeed, society will decide if your painting is even a painting. So what, then, is the painting - what is your personality - if you take away the paint, the methods, the tools, the canvas, and the standard? The answer really is, nothing.

So then, perhaps you can see how deep this rabbit hole goes now, and why this notion of cognitive functions - if they even existed - having anything much to do with personality, is rather laughable. Again, your personal experiences, how well you individually identify with what you read about cognitive functions, matters very little. The reason why you identify with them is not really because they exist. You might identify with them because deep down inside, you just want to. And you want to because unconsciously, unknown to you, you are under pressure to do so by your peers.

If you think I'm wrong, then hang out for awhile. See if, after you spend enough time around these forums, you don't find your belief in all of this stuff having some reality reinforced ten-fold by the convictions of others. I can promise you right now what is going to happen. You'll find no short supply of people posting here who don't know any better and are going to convince you that this stuff is useful. And you're going to agree with them, not because they are right, but because you think they are - and you think they are because you _want them to be_ because that makes _you_ right, and nobody wants to be wrong. And you will befriend these people as they befriend you, you will fall into a clique, find your niche, and probably live happily ever after.


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

I think it's true cognitive functions have very little to explain inherently about personality by themselves since what they even are is ambiguous, and that's mostly attributing things to things like cognitive functions which don't depend exclusively on cognitive functions. It's almost too clear. 

As to what is useful, of course I'm the last person who'll comment yay or nay on such things. 

I think that indirect allusion to philosophy up there by Abraxas gets at the heart of my stance, which is that I tend to explain things philosophically -- I'm articulating an insight I know is there through some philosophical means I have access to, although layers get added which clarify where this insight applies whether to me or to a more objective realm, only with time.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> ...this is a response to the quote you posted in my thread on Filatova's test. I thought it would be more suited to post in this thread because it brings up many more points I'd like to address with Socionics.


Thanks for the response! 

Oh eh. So much wrong with your assumptions. I don't even understand how you ended up at these statements by reading my original post. But that's not a problem, I'm intrigued now.  So I don't mind discussing stuff with you.  OK, where do I start? Let's see.




> There are numerous problems with cognitive functions, but I don't have the time to get into all of them. What I'm about to say might sound a bit condescending, but I don't mean to sound offensive. I just have the tendency to sound rather blunt, and if at any time I sound rude, please forgive me.


No worries  I'm never really bothered by blunt style, I myself am very blunt in debates and even outside debates. And yeah, my intention is also not to offend you, do forgive me etc etc. 




> I'm going to assume, as I do about the majority of posters here on these forums, that you've never taken a college intro course on psychology or sociology. As such, I'm going to assume that your knowledge of the forces that shape people consists of only your personal experience and not centuries of scientific inquiry. Let me see if I can do my best just to give you an idea of the vast iceberg you've bumped your ship into, and why there is absolutely no reason to take Socionics very seriously at all.


Wrong assumption. I've taken quite more than one single basic course in psychology at university. In my socionics typing thread had lots of fun talking with aestrivex about this stuff as he's studied neuroscience, which IMO is really interesting. (I see he got banned since then, what? )

So let's forget about phrases like "vast iceberg" in my case.

I will give one thing to you, I didn't really bother with sociology. It's just not my thing.


Otoh, it's not news to me that socionics is not meant to be taken very seriously. I believe my original post was pretty clear about that. Was it not?

Let me quote the relevant parts from my post, did you just miss them or what? I even explicitly mentioned how I have a worldview with which socionics theory "as is" is inconsistent. And these parts belong to this thread anyway. 

Part 1: _"As for being able to pick my preferred IE's/functions without a real problem, that may be because properties of the functions are also characteristic enough. Even if it doesn't mean that these functions exist "as is". *(They pretty much don't.)*"_

(See the bolded especially.)

Part 2: _"I don't believe in the model anyway not only because of inconsistencies with other frameworks I use for my worldview but also because it lacks sufficient depth of explanation, that is I don't view it as having enough reasoning to prove its conclusions from its own assumptions even on a strictly theoretical level._"


Btw let me correct you on one thing... centuries of scientific inquiry? Psychology is a very young discipline.  Also, not much is clear in psychology, not much is proven and there's a lot of different views and thoughts within psychology from psychonanalysis stuff to cognitive psychology.




> There are a tremendous number and _variety_ of forces at work that decide who we are. To try and reduce them all down into eight discreet cognitive processes, and then say that these eight "functions" exist are useful for describing personality (or even useful for anything), is almost delusional.


I agree. You see, this is one of the things I alluded to when I said I have (unresolvable) issues with the logic in the theory. Basically, the IEs are defined by several characteristics. Some of it cognitive, some of it behavioural correlations. Even if we stick to just the cognitive elements, it's still just a set of traits etc., and there is absolutely nothing mentioned about how there would be any direct causal link between them to be able to group them under one specific IE or function. And if we look at the behavioural correlations, the picture is even sadder. This, among other things, means that if you type someone to have X base function and then type someone else to have the same base function, it will *not* follow that these two people will share that much in common, even in thinking but especially in behaviour. They may or they may not. Fun, isn't it?




> For one thing, it completely ignores any kind of sociological perspective, and I'm going to talk a bit about that right now, because very few people even know what sociology is and why it needs to be included in any analysis of people as individuals.


I almost went to major in sociology before quickly finding out that it was not my thing. Psychology was much more my thing, though certainly not all of psychology, just mostly cognitive psychology and anything biology related.

I don't disagree though that sociology is a good perspective to include in these analyses, however I do heavily disagree about the idea that this approach should be used as the main perspective.




> People and their personalities do not exist in a vacuum. Who you are is largely not up to you, nor does your heredity or neurology, or whatever cognitive biases you have matter much.


Wrong. Of course we don't exist in a vacuum but we are also *not* tabula rasa. Personality is pretty well based in genetic/biological differences. Obviously then the first few years of your life (including the months before birth) will also affect you heavily. The rest of your life will still shape you in a significant way but less determining compared to the first part of your life and genes.




> The choices available for you to make in life are more limited than you might think. The extent of your agency as sentient creature is mostly directed by and under the influence of social powers and the inertia of historical movements. Regardless of whatever psychological traits and potential you were born with, however that manifests itself depends more upon the pressures and attitudes of the culture and society you belong to than it does to something driving you individually from within. Individually, you barely even exist. That is because you are not just an individual - you are also part of a group, and you play a role within that group whether you are aware of it or not, and whether you believe it or not, and whether you want to or not.


I suppose "you" is a general you here but I'll say anyway, this doesn't apply to everyone the same. E.g. I don't really belong to any group. (Not saying I would not like to though.) So I'm not really playing roles. But sure, it does matter a lot that I was born into this age and not into an earlier age.




> You do not even get to decide what right and wrong is. Society decides that for you, and if you don't agree with me then go become a criminal and see what happens. You do not get to decide what truth is. If you don't agree with that, go make up whatever answers you want on your college exams and see if you graduate. Unless you are a senator or an important politician, you do not get to decide how money ought to be distributed, or what rights women ought to have. If you are poor, you have very few freedoms at all. Your choice of diet, transportation, shelter - these are all extremely limited for you. Your opinion will probably never matter or change anything in this world - not even your family or the people you call your friends - because your family and friends are also part of society and have their own responsibilities and may not have the luxury of being a rebel even if you choose to be.


*Yawn*.

I disagree.

I'll take your example of exams vs truth. Just because the material I study at university reflects certain opinions, it does not mean it's absolute truth. Just because I'm to take tests and want to score well on them, it does not mean that I need to believe that I've studied the absolute truth. No one forbids you to question the truth of the study material. And that's exactly what scientific research is for. That's what you use to question the current truth and develop another one (hopefully it's truly a better model of reality), not university exams. Exams are there to be passed, not to debate some imaginary teacher (you only have the paper in front of you so that's why I said imaginary). Before you question the current truth, you better know what it is anyway.

As for your other examples, I could argue against those too in a concrete way but basically my point is that I don't see this as you do, I don't see it being so restricted. You can go a long way if you want something.




> If that all sounds bleak, it's meant to, but it's also meant to be realistic. It's brutally real about who people really are, and to what extent they have a say in anything. But it goes even deeper than just your freedom to choose what car you want to drive, or where you want to live. Even your fundamental beliefs, your moral convictions, your logical opinions, your manner of speech, your manner of dress, the music you like, your way of expressing yourself to others - all of those are influenced by society as well. Indeed, there simply is no boundary, no hard line where you end and the world begins. Society is as completely penetrating as it is all-encompassing.


Bleak? Are you kinda... depressed?

Yes I agree there is no hard line, I always view myself as being part of the world, being in interaction with it. 

And sure, stuff is influenced by society. Though there's one thing you're wrong about, why I like the music I like is *not* influenced by society. Oh well I am just this special example, you managed to pick out the wrong person eh 




> Every single idea that exists with which to define your personality is a contrivance of society and the native language you've been taught.


Well my main point here, there's many different ideas and views going around even just inside one type of society. How do you pick one for yourself? You certainly don't pick all of them. What does your choice depend on then? Well, it depends on *you* too.




> The very words that get used to label personality traits themselves reflect biases within the society of which you are a member. They are subtly tied into the opinions and feelings of your native culture, which themselves are the result of historical movements that have been evolving for hundreds of years, some even thousands.


Oh, sure that could be *part* of it. Not all.




> If the circumstances of your world were different - if you were born into a different time and place, but biologically you were exactly the same as you are right now, your personality type would be vastly different and you'd be a very different person as a point of fact. Regardless of whatever your heredity or genetics or family history is, how you came to be who you are is much more strongly shaped by and influenced by those historical social movements than by your individual circumstances, because your individual circumstances themselves only exist _because of_ those movements, and are given a context by those movements in the first place.


I'm not so sure that my type would be vastly different. Might or might not be but I'm going by "somewhat different person" with the same biological basis. So we can agree to a point, different person yes, but how can you prove the statement that it would definitely be a "vastly different type" too? You said that was a "point of fact"?




> To use an analogy, imagine personality as being a like a painting. Imagine your heredity and genetics as being the painter in this analogy, the device that creates the painting. Society, then, is the paint. Society is the canvas. Society is the methods you will use to paint with. Society are the tools you will paint with. Society is what will judge your painting and decide if it is art - indeed, society will decide if your painting is even a painting. So what, then, is the painting - what is your personality - if you take away the paint, the methods, the tools, the canvas, and the standard? The answer really is, nothing.


Where's the painter's thoughts in all this? The painting tools are not the only components, a big component is the painter's vision that he wants to paint about - that you forgot to include here. It's not just some standard.




> So then, perhaps you can see how deep this rabbit hole goes now, and why this notion of cognitive functions - if they even existed - having anything much to do with personality, is rather laughable.


Not sure how this sociology perspective has anything to do with this conclusion. It does not follow for me. I'm missing several logical steps here to the conclusion.

E.g., why does it even matter where personality or type comes from, biological or sociological? Type is type, personality is personality, origins of it is another issue.

Another thing is, nothing you said goes against the idea that people are different. Did you try to prove somehow that everyone's the same or something? I'm not clear on this, whether you think so or what.

Otoh I do see a point to the idea that our cognitive functioning (I don't necessarily even mean functions) is only part of what we are.




> Again, your personal experiences, how well you individually identify with what you read about cognitive functions, matters very little.


I disagree. I find that my own experiences do matter and my brain's way of functioning does matter more than just "very little".




> The reason why you identify with them is not really because they exist. You might identify with them because deep down inside, you just want to. And you want to because unconsciously, unknown to you, you are under pressure to do so by your peers.


Nah, I'm not under peer pressure. (Tbh even in my teens I didn't have much peer pressure. Y'know, "outcast".)




> If you think I'm wrong, then hang out for awhile. See if, after you spend enough time around these forums, you don't find your belief in all of this stuff having some reality reinforced ten-fold by the convictions of others. I can promise you right now what is going to happen. You'll find no short supply of people posting here who don't know any better and are going to convince you that this stuff is useful. And you're going to agree with them, not because they are right, but because you think they are - and you think they are because you _want them to be_ because that makes _you_ right, and nobody wants to be wrong. And you will befriend these people as they befriend you, you will fall into a clique, find your niche, and probably live happily ever after.


Nope, wrong prediction. I cannot be convinced about something just because other people claim it's true blahblah. Nope, I need to process things for myself and decide its truth for myself. I make my own observations and make my own analysis. That's just how I am and how I've always been. I do like to try and convince others though. So do you. Nothing wrong with that 

True I don't like to think I'm wrong but that's nothing to do with peer pressure. And about cliques, I doubt I'd fall into one here or elsewhere. Though who knows, I wouldn't mind getting a group together about whatever  Your last few words are cute.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

bearotter said:


> I think it's true cognitive functions have very little to explain inherently about personality by themselves since what they even are is ambiguous, and that's mostly *attributing things *to things like cognitive functions *which don't depend exclusively on cognitive functions*. It's almost too clear.


I like the bolded. Good point there.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

itsme45 said:


> Otoh, it's not news to me that socionics is not meant to be taken very seriously. I believe my original post was pretty clear about that. Was it not?
> 
> Let me quote the relevant parts from my post, did you just miss them or what? I even explicitly mentioned how I have a worldview with which socionics theory "as is" is inconsistent. And these parts belong to this thread anyway.
> 
> ...


I must've missed your post, yes. I didn't see it.




itsme45 said:


> Btw let me correct you on one thing... centuries of scientific inquiry? Psychology is a very young discipline.  Also, not much is clear in psychology, not much is proven and there's a lot of different views and thoughts within psychology from psychonanalysis stuff to cognitive psychology.


I was referring to sociology and somewhat to psychology. I believe psychology formally began with Wundt in the early 1800's did it not? That would be almost a couple centuries now, but perhaps not quite. I did exaggerate a bit for effect. On the other hand, Sociology has been around since the Enlightenment and emerged post French revolution in the very late 1700's if I recall correctly. So my statement was not really wrong, was it?





itsme45 said:


> Wrong. Of course we don't exist in a vacuum but we are also *not* tabula rasa. Personality is pretty well based in genetic/biological differences. Obviously then the first few years of your life (including the months before birth) will also affect you heavily. The rest of your life will still shape you in a significant way but less determining compared to the first part of your life and genes.


We'll have to agree to disagree here then. In my education I've come to understand that genetic biases and heredity does play a part, but environment plays _at least_ an equal, if not greater role in the development of personality. Before you cite twin studies and such, I'm fully aware of the objective facts about genetic predispositions, and I'm afraid you are exaggerating their influence on personality. I would be an idiot to say that they don't play a part when obviously they play a major role, but they really are not the main attraction.

Also, I did not intend nor did I state outright that we are "tabula rasa." You'll notice I put a heavy emphasis on my perspective, a sociological one, and so I did stress the influence of one's environment on personality development. Perhaps I was a bit too extreme. I'm willing to concede that it is not all there is too it, but again, in my worldview and preferred perspective, I've come to agree with the opinion that it does play a larger role than genetics, even if genetics plays a large role.






itsme45 said:


> *Yawn*.
> 
> I disagree.
> 
> ...



I think you're arguing against a straw man here. I wasn't really talking about "absolute truth" as you put it. That's something for philosophers to argue about. I was talking about the kind of common sense and _facts_ that people call truth _until_ those facts get changed through scientific research and people come to accept something different. In the meantime, however, you will fail a test if you just put in parenthesis, "this is actually true, please update your test." The "true" answer for the test is whatever the test is asking for. It is in this sense that you don't really have a say in whatever truth is, not unless you are actually doing something to shape truth yourself by your own actions.

This actually brings up the very heart of the issue I am trying to point out. Here, I will be a little bit philosophical and digress for just a moment.

To what extent can we say that a person really has a distinct "personality" if they are little more than merely the echo of what others have to say and think and do? Jung talks about this when he presents his ideas about personas, and the humanistic psychological perspective also goes into this quite in-depth. If all I do is just adopt some kind of persona and underneath that mask there is just nothing else, then who am I? In that sense, I am just a puppet and my strings are tied to the thoughts and voice and deeds of others.

But when, instead, you recognize the forces that shape the world that are man-made, you can recognize the stream and which way the water is flowing. Then, and only then, you can decide which way you want to go and assert your own individuality. Ignorance does not lead to self-actualization, only recognition and acceptance.

But enough of existentialism, lol. Sorry, I am a bit passionate for it even though it is a bit passe these days. 







itsme45 said:


> Bleak? Are you kinda... depressed?


Lol, no. I'm quite fine. I was just trying to look out for your feelings and keep my bases covered. I couldn't say how you would react, but I imagine if it was the first time I had heard any of the stuff I was saying it might come across to some people as bleak, don't you? Perhaps even a bit fatalistic. Maybe that is why you dislike sociology? I find it fascinating.




itsme45 said:


> And sure, stuff is influenced by society. Though there's one thing you're wrong about, why I like the music I like is *not* influenced by society. Oh well I am just this special example, you managed to pick out the wrong person eh


I'm very skeptic of this. But I don't want to tit-for-tat and dispute you on every point, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say "okay." If you say so. :wink:



itsme45 said:


> I'm not so sure that my type would be vastly different. Might or might not be but I'm going by "somewhat different person" with the same biological basis. So we can agree to a point, different person yes, but how can you prove the statement that it would definitely be a "vastly different type" too? You said that was a "point of fact"?


Haha, you got me there! I should've left out "point of fact." That was just bad exposition on my part and I let myself get too involved in what I was saying. I suppose I am ahead of myself in anticipating the advent of time machines soon so we can go back and do a rigorous longitudinal study of Doctor Who and the rest of the Gallifreyans. :laughing:




itsme45 said:


> Where's the painter's thoughts in all this? The painting tools are not the only components, a big component is the painter's vision that he wants to paint about - that you forgot to include here. It's not just some standard.


I think this just echos our prior point of disagreement. While on the one hand I have seen studies showing that even infants possess an aesthetic sense, thus suggesting that an appreciation of beauty is actually biological and we are born with a certain way of recognizing something as "art" - nevertheless, this ability to appreciate things as symbolic in an expressive way develops into an enormous and complicated set of artistic values that are almost completely acquired from the cultures of this Earth. Carl Jung actually touches upon this with his study of the archetypes and the collective unconscious.





itsme45 said:


> Not sure how this sociology perspective has anything to do with this conclusion. It does not follow for me. I'm missing several logical steps here to the conclusion.
> 
> E.g., why does it even matter where personality or type comes from, biological or sociological? Type is type, personality is personality, origins of it is another issue.
> 
> Another thing is, nothing you said goes against the idea that people are different. Did you try to prove somehow that everyone's the same or something? I'm not clear on this, whether you think so or what.


Because I don't think you can begin to say that someone has a "type" which really belongs to them until you can find some way to distinguish "them" from "others." And for this, a person necessarily needs to be aware of just how much of their own identity is something which is mimicking and shadowing the social identity of the groups to which they belong. People have to separate themselves from others in a fundamental way in order to recognize anything within themselves which actually belongs to them, something they can "own" and say, "this is what distinguishes me." This is why I have no problem with _trait based_ personality models, but I strongly dispute the notion of _discreet types._

I'm not saying there are not "types" of people, but if we want to start stereotyping, there are better and more empirical ways to do it than so-called "cognitive functions."




itsme45 said:


> Nope, wrong prediction. I cannot be convinced about something just because other people claim it's true blahblah. Nope, I need to process things for myself and decide its truth for myself. I make my own observations and make my own analysis. That's just how I am and how I've always been. I do like to try and convince others though. So do you. Nothing wrong with that


Nothing wrong indeed. This part wasn't meant for you, apparently. But there are many people on these forums to which it applies. Many people in life, in fact. Not just here, but wherever you go. I applaud and encourage you to challenge intellectual foundations and to rebel against group values whenever and however you feel is needed. I do the same myself, as you noticed and pointed out as well. 




itsme45 said:


> True I don't like to think I'm wrong but that's nothing to do with peer pressure. And about cliques, I doubt I'd fall into one here or elsewhere. Though who knows, I wouldn't mind getting a group together about whatever  Your last few words are cute.


Lol, thanks. :blushed:


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> I must've missed your post, yes. I didn't see it.


Oh it makes sense then.




> I was referring to sociology and somewhat to psychology. I believe psychology formally began with Wundt in the early 1800's did it not? That would be almost a couple centuries now, but perhaps not quite. I did exaggerate a bit for effect. On the other hand, Sociology has been around since the Enlightenment and emerged post French revolution in the very late 1700's if I recall correctly. So my statement was not really wrong, was it?


1879. And okay about sociology 




> We'll have to agree to disagree here then. In my education I've come to understand that genetic biases and heredity does play a part, but environment plays _at least_ an equal, if not greater role in the development of personality. Before you cite twin studies and such, I'm fully aware of the objective facts about genetic predispositions, and I'm afraid you are exaggerating their influence on personality. I would be an idiot to say that they don't play a part when obviously they play a major role, but they really are not the main attraction.


Yes it could be for example 50-50 easily (nature vs nurture), I actually I don't think it's a much bigger part than equal role. Hard to measure these things... just this is how the information I currently know and interpreted about this topic makes sense to me. I'm sure there's more than one way to interpret the data but I find it highly unlikely that heredity only plays a "very little" part. 




> I think you're arguing against a straw man here. I wasn't really talking about "absolute truth" as you put it. That's something for philosophers to argue about. I was talking about the kind of common sense and _facts_ that people call truth _until_ those facts get changed through scientific research and people come to accept something different. In the meantime, however, you will fail a test if you just put in parenthesis, "this is actually true, please update your test." The "true" answer for the test is whatever the test is asking for. It is in this sense that you don't really have a say in whatever truth is, not unless you are actually doing something to shape truth yourself by your own actions.


My point was simply that an exam is not the place where you need to start proving why you think the studied material is not true.

I do get the idea that you think many people will never think beyond what they were taught though, right? It's still not the same as not having any say in what is considered as truth. (Ok now we could right away skip to self-actualization etc. that you mention later)

I used the expression "absolute truth" not in the philosophical sense, it just sounded like you meant the current truth is being forced on people making it an absolute truth. I don't see it that way.




> This actually brings up the very heart of the issue I am trying to point out. Here, I will be a little bit philosophical and digress for just a moment.
> 
> To what extent can we say that a person really has a distinct "personality" if they are little more than merely the echo of what others have to say and think and do? Jung talks about this when he presents his ideas about personas, and the humanistic psychological perspective also goes into this quite in-depth. If all I do is just adopt some kind of persona and underneath that mask there is just nothing else, then who am I? In that sense, I am just a puppet and my strings are tied to the thoughts and voice and deeds of others.
> 
> ...


Interesting. I feel I'm more than an echo though, yes I of course heard about the concept of persona but I'm pretty sure I have more to myself than just that (not even much of a persona tbh - hey I try, I just don't try hard enough  ). So perhaps I'm wrong in assuming that I'm not the only one who has more than that and the issue of people just having personas is actually more widespread than I'd have thought. My impression is that there's more than that to most people though. I kind of see every person I meet as different in some way (it's just often hard for me to describe these differences verbally so good categories, scales and systems of those can help a lot there). 





> Lol, no. I'm quite fine. I was just trying to look out for your feelings and keep my bases covered. I couldn't say how you would react, but I imagine if it was the first time I had heard any of the stuff I was saying it might come across to some people as bleak, don't you? Perhaps even a bit fatalistic. Maybe that is why you dislike sociology? I find it fascinating.


Yeah the fatalistic part is very different from how I think. It's not bleak, just simply not how I see the world. So no worries about my feelings 

No, my problem with sociology is not that. I'm simply just not interested enough in that high level of analysis of functioning of people to spend years of study on it. I'm much more of a "low level guy". Some things can still be interesting about it of course.




> I'm very skeptic of this. But I don't want to tit-for-tat and dispute you on every point, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say "okay." If you say so. :wink:


Yeah it's natural you'd be skeptical about that as I know taste in music is something that's very typically influenced by peers.  It's actually an interesting topic about how it could be possible to not be influenced there (I'm pretty sure I'm right in thinking so), that's too OT here though. Maybe it can be discussed elsewhere.




> Haha, you got me there! I should've left out "point of fact." That was just bad exposition on my part and I let myself get too involved in what I was saying. I suppose I am ahead of myself in anticipating the advent of time machines soon so we can go back and do a rigorous longitudinal study of Doctor Who and the rest of the Gallifreyans. :laughing:


Well, one day, haha.




> I think this just echos our prior point of disagreement. While on the one hand I have seen studies showing that even infants possess an aesthetic sense, thus suggesting that an appreciation of beauty is actually biological and we are born with a certain way of recognizing something as "art" - nevertheless, this ability to appreciate things as symbolic in an expressive way develops into an enormous and complicated set of artistic values that are almost completely acquired from the cultures of this Earth. Carl Jung actually touches upon this with his study of the archetypes and the collective unconscious.


Yes, true that culture affects taste in arts but I still think that the painter can have his own thoughts. Perhaps we need to define what's meant by "your own thoughts". For me, it's a product of your own analysis or other processing done in your own brain and not simply a copy of other people's values/preferences/tastes etc. It's obvious that "no man is an island", I just debate the degree of the reliance of our brains' contents on others. Part of it will be from just other people/culture, part of it will be from your own experiences and part will be from your own mind's processing being done on all that.




> Because I don't think you can begin to say that someone has a "type" which really belongs to them until you can find some way to distinguish "them" from "others." And for this, a person necessarily needs to be aware of just how much of their own identity is something which is mimicking and shadowing the social identity of the groups to which they belong. People have to separate themselves from others in a fundamental way in order to recognize anything within themselves which actually belongs to them, something they can "own" and say, "this is what distinguishes me." This is why I have no problem with _trait based_ personality models, but I strongly dispute the notion of _discreet types._
> 
> I'm not saying there are not "types" of people, but if we want to start stereotyping, there are better and more empirical ways to do it than so-called "cognitive functions."


Ok, can you talk a bit more about how trait based models are compatible but types are not compatible with effects of heavy social influence, in your opinion?

Btw I'm actually not into all this for stereotyping. By type I just mean people with certain characteristics by certain definitions. That's pretty vague compared to a concrete stereotype, right?




> Nothing wrong indeed. This part wasn't meant for you, apparently. But there are many people on these forums to which it applies. Many people in life, in fact. Not just here, but wherever you go. I applaud and encourage you to challenge intellectual foundations and to rebel against group values whenever and however you feel is needed. I do the same myself, as you noticed and pointed out as well.


Yeah I know it can apply to some people. Thanks for the nice words


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

itsme45 said:


> Ok, can you talk a bit more about how trait based models are compatible but types are not compatible with effects of heavy social influence, in your opinion?
> 
> Btw I'm actually not into all this for stereotyping. By type I just mean people with certain characteristics by certain definitions. That's pretty vague compared to a concrete stereotype, right?


I think trait-based models are more compatible with social influence because they distinguish the differences between people even within the same cultures or groups. Because they aren't assigning a discreet type to people, just a handful of traits, you can still measure the traits regardless of social context and just take social context into account. But for a model that uses discreet types, you're just X type or Y type, and so there's no way to really account for social influence. So, for example, in a certain social context you might have a huge number of people that are a certain type (like in America for instance, where Jung believed extraverts were a vast majority), and so the vast majority will test as extraverted. Because it's just X or Y, they might actually be an introvert by the standards of another society - if they lived there.

Although, this is actually not impossible to account for and solve, I just think it's a bigger can of worms for a model that uses discreet types and more easily addressed by a model that just assigns traits on a scale. It's more in particular a gripe I have with MBTI and Socionics. I do think that perhaps it is possible for these models to be adjusted to take a cultural perspective into consideration, it just seems like, as far as I know, they haven't done this. It also seems like it would be really difficult to do and still have a useful model by the end of it. I mean, we can just do that already with the Big 5 or even the MMPI. MBTI and Socionics really needs to catch up to these other models.

Oh, and on the side, I actually don't mind stereotypes or stereotyping people as long as the stereotypes aren't harmful and they are based in reality. In fact, I think stereotypes are rather useful and I couldn't imagine life without them. But on the other hand, a lot of stereotypes tend to get distorted eventually and come to represent something untrue, or are just used to discriminate unfairly and lead to prejudice and elitism. I think this is unfortunate, so I am very careful with stereotypes and always try to make sure that it doesn't come to that. I'm not saying that MBTI or Socionics is this way, but at least potentially it could turn into that, and it already has here on these forums somewhat. There are a lot of people here who will read what you have to say, and then instead of addressing what it is that you said like a normal person, they'll say something dismissive like "that's Ti for you," or, "typical Fe versus Fi."


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## tangosthenes (Oct 29, 2011)

Abraxas said:


> @_itsme45_, this is a response to the quote you posted in my thread on Filatova's test. I thought it would be more suited to post in this thread because it brings up many more points I'd like to address with Socionics.
> 
> 
> There are numerous problems with cognitive functions, but I don't have the time to get into all of them. What I'm about to say might sound a bit condescending, but I don't mean to sound offensive. I just have the tendency to sound rather blunt, and if at any time I sound rude, please forgive me.
> ...



I agreed with most of this, but you are assigning WAY too much objective value to the concept of historical movements. They are not an entity as such and lacking coherence, cannot evolve as a firm substance. Do not make the mistake of jumping from one false god to the next.

Also, I used that painting analogy to describe personality a few weeks ago. Funny. However I'd say again, you are creating a false entity from "society" here(because here you are using society to mean the product of your tangible historical movements). Society is decentralized and the individual's actions are so diverse that a clear pattern of rational ideological activity is unlikely to take shape on any practical level. This is very important, because any patterns in the shape of a historical movement will not be applicable. They will be completely circular and useless tools when trying to divy out the operation of society. Each of the current pings within society are vastly more important than the ones of the past.

Until education has made everyone perfect and unassailable in their judgment, there are no historical movements.


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## gwho (Jul 11, 2013)

Abraxas said:


> What's a strawman about it? You just keep repeating yourself. "You don't know the theory."
> 
> You, and those who keep saying that, are not really contributing anything to the discussion.


already explained in detail, unlike OP in regards to my post faults.



> OH, and by the way,
> 
> I guess you changed your mind.


uhh no? learn to read?


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## phoenixpinion (Dec 27, 2012)

@OP

I can give you one thing, people take MBTI and socionics way too serious and literal. There should be more room for inconsistencies and anomalies, because these definately do occur frequently. If you don't fit into a single personality box, people will say "try that box or that box instead", they very rarely will admit that maybe that person cannot be defined within a single box, because admitting that is effectively disproving the typing system on which so many have invested so much faith.

However, I am primarily interested in the 8 cognitive functions, which I wholeheartedly agree with (you can clearly see them in action). So my problem (and probably yours aswell) solely with the traditional "pie system" by slicing personalities up into 16 pieces (8x2) (both socionics and mbti). It offers no room for further expansion and encourages stereotyping, because it defines types with clear borders (16 borders to be exact). This lies in the nature of the human mind (which seeks to define everything absolutely), an example lies in the separation of countries through borders. We all accept borders exist but in reality they do not exist. You can draw a line and say "this is my country" and "this is yours", but the soil on to which the countries are built does not suddenly/radically change once you cross the border. Nature doesn't recognize the border. Everything is interconnected in nature's reality. Borders, boxes, limitations, definitions... do not exist there. This principle is totally ignored when it comes to personality typing. The very idea of personality "typing" is an attempt at doing to people's personalities what we have done to nature (artificially separating them), a pathetic one at that. 

The best alternative I have found lies in simply learning what your leading and following functions are and leave it at that. Example: Instead of saying, "I am ENTJ", say "I primarily perceive the world through the lense of extraversion and thinking, followed closely by intuition. This is my ego/personality which I have developped. My shadow/weakness therefore lies in sensing but most importantly, introversion and feeling." The typing itself is useless in understanding yourself and others, but knowing what functions you use and don't use (and those of others) is very useful though!! Actually, now that I think about it, it's also wrong to split up the 4 actual functions (F/S/N/T) into 8 ones (Fi/Fe/Si/Se/Ne/Ni/Ti/Te) because introverted and extraverted counterparts of the same function aren't different functions, they are simply the same function pushed in one direction or the other. Hence, I just can't accept that your secondary function is oriented in the opposite way as your primary. Why not? Well, if you're an extravert, you can't have your secondary function pushing you introvert, otherwise you would end up an ambivert, and no longer an extravert. Sure, your secondary will always be less extraverted than your primary (and less introverted if your primary is introverted), but it just can't be orientated in a completely different direction. I'm sorry, it just can't. Logic dictates that only your tertiary and inferior (which I already view as the shadow) should be introverted if you're an extravert and vice versa.

I'm also pretty sure the tertiary and inferior do not add to your dominant and auxiliary functions at all, they diminish them, because they are diametrically opposed to them. They don't strengthen your personality, they weaken it (operating in the shadow apparantly causes stress, because it weakens your actual personality...) Whether this is a good or a bad thing I won't comment. I don't think it's healthy to abandon your shadow, I also don't think it's healthy to abandon your ego/personality. Big personalities are good, but too big personalities are bad, if you know what I mean... Small personalities suck too.

All in all, MBTI/socionics has succeeded in making very simple, flexible things incredibly complex and inflexible. It has become a spider caught in its own web, haha!


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

If I'm not mis-reading, I think I agree with the "best alternative" wholeheartedly. As to the tertiary/inferior, I think actually they are to be reconciled with, because they don't oppose _you_ they only are opposite to the points of view you've adopt as your primary conscious perspectives, but unless one is all-knowing or all-powerful or something, what we adopt as our focus usually is a matter of habit (do this more than that, since they're distinct points of focus and without focus nothing moves forward) more so than a real calling or enlightened decision. After all, intuitive perception is not unlinked to sensory. It's just that focusing intuitively tends to move one away from the sensory, and this can be a necessary evil, but there comes a point where this only causes problems when one doesn't reconcile.


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

As to the shadow, definitely you don't (in my understanding) have to "adopt the shadow functions" -- there's no reason to force oneself (if that's even possible?) to Fi if you are clearly built Ti-Fe. But anyway mostly this stuff is supposed to be your blind spot although blind spots can probably be detected by some kind of inference (but how one would consciously rationalize whatever needed to be rationalized would be Ti-Fe pretty consistently once one finds that resonates).


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## phoenixpinion (Dec 27, 2012)

bearotter said:


> If I'm not mis-reading, I think I agree with the "best alternative" wholeheartedly. As to the tertiary/inferior, I think actually they are to be reconciled with, because they don't oppose _you_ they only are opposite to the points of view you've adopt as your primary conscious perspectives


I too think they should be reconciled with, they are there to keep your ego in check, that's about it imo. I think you become a narcissist who can only see from his/her own perspective if you deny/abandon your shadow/inferior functions. You often see this with many sensors who become superficial and begin to loose all ability of abstract thought (N), but ofcouse the opposite can also happen whereby intuitives/thinkers cannot get outside their heads anymore and loose the ability to just go with the flow. I've found that meditation helps with getting outside your head...



> After all, intuitive perception is not unlinked to sensory. It's just that focusing intuitively tends to move one away from the sensory, and this can be a necessary evil, but there comes a point where this only causes problems when one doesn't reconcile.


Well, I see this mathematically. The stronger intuition (N+) becomes, the weaker sensing (S-) becomes and vice versa. The stronger feeling becomes (F+), the weaker T becomes (T-). People say, "oh no, that's not right, because Fi is linked with Te, Ne with Si, etc." Wrong, another unquestioned notion taken for granted. To me it's simple: if you have Fi, your Te is your subconscious. If you have Si, your Ne is subconscious. They are not complementary, they are diametrically opposed, from conscious (ego) to subconscious (shadow), from positive to negative, from plus to minus. Your inferior function represents your subconsciousness. INFP's can't consciously use or develop Te, unless they are operating in their shadow, which is not recommended. 

Yet the reason why NF's such as INFP are still fairly good at rational thought is not because the ENFP/INFJ have tertiary T, but because all NF's still have N. T is to F as N is to S. N is the perceiving counterpart to T, hence why only NT's and not ST's are listed as the rationals, because NT's are the only ones who have both the thinking and the abstract function, while ST's have only the thinking function. ST's in rational ability are more on par with NF's than NT's, whereas the least rational would be the SF's (no judgement here, we need you too ).


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

Well T is to F as N is to S definitely has some socionics analogue I think. Abstract v. Involved dichotomy or something, I think. Rational functions are T, F and irrational S, N as usual in the strict sense.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

phoenixpinion said:


> I can give you one thing, people take MBTI and socionics way too serious and literal. There should be more room for inconsistencies and anomalies, because these definately do occur frequently.


Good point. I do agree with some other things too, I will only comment on the ones where I don't.

Btw I don't think it should be "room for inconsistencies", it would simply instead be explained by things other than MBTI/socionics. There's more to the mind/psyche and psychology than just MBTI/socionics/enneagram...




> The best alternative I have found lies in simply learning what your leading and following functions are and leave it at that. Example: Instead of saying, "I am ENTJ", say "I primarily perceive the world through the lense of extraversion and thinking, followed closely by intuition. This is my ego/personality which I have developped. My shadow/weakness therefore lies in sensing but most importantly, introversion and feeling."


How does that have to be different from simply using the abbreviation ENTJ or LIE or something like that?
(Rhetorical question. IMO, it does not have to be different.)




> Actually, now that I think about it, it's also wrong to split up the 4 actual functions (F/S/N/T) into 8 ones (Fi/Fe/Si/Se/Ne/Ni/Ti/Te) because introverted and extraverted counterparts of the same function aren't different functions, they are simply the same function pushed in one direction or the other. Hence, I just can't accept that your secondary function is oriented in the opposite way as your primary. Why not? Well, if you're an extravert, you can't have your secondary function pushing you introvert, otherwise you would end up an ambivert, and no longer an extravert. Sure, your secondary will always be less extraverted than your primary (and less introverted if your primary is introverted), but it just can't be orientated in a completely different direction. I'm sorry, it just can't. Logic dictates that only your tertiary and inferior (which I already view as the shadow) should be introverted if you're an extravert and vice versa.


Why can you not be an ambivert? Actually most people are ambiverts or close to being ambiverts, according to tests. So I don't see any logic in the idea that the aux. can't be introverted for an extraverted dominant function. I'll give my own example, by far the strongest three functions for me in function tests are Ti, Se, Te (in this order usually). There's an introverted function in there, huh? 




> I'm also pretty sure the tertiary and inferior do not add to your dominant and auxiliary functions at all, they diminish them, because they are diametrically opposed to them. They don't strengthen your personality, they weaken it (operating in the shadow apparantly causes stress, because it weakens your actual personality...)


I would say, it might be the opposite way, you may operate in your shadow *because of* stress. (Though I think stress response is a lot more complex than what MBTI can say about it)




> All in all, MBTI/socionics has succeeded in making very simple, flexible things incredibly complex and inflexible. It has become a spider caught in its own web, haha!


Warning. You are complicating things yourself in several parts in your own posts here. You seem to be getting caught up in your own web too. I don't think it's a great feeling ultimately.




phoenixpinion said:


> Well, I see this mathematically. The stronger intuition (N+) becomes, the weaker sensing (S-) becomes and vice versa. The stronger feeling becomes (F+), the weaker T becomes (T-). People say, "oh no, that's not right, because Fi is linked with Te, Ne with Si, etc." Wrong, another unquestioned notion taken for granted. To me it's simple: if you have Fi, your Te is your subconscious. If you have Si, your Ne is subconscious. They are not complementary, they are diametrically opposed, from conscious (ego) to subconscious (shadow), from positive to negative, from plus to minus. Your inferior function represents your subconsciousness. INFP's can't consciously use or develop Te, unless they are operating in their shadow, which is not recommended.


I don't know if they are fully complementary or fully opposed. Maybe in-between? Seems like sometimes they work together and sometimes not. I wouldn't know what that depends on.




> Yet the reason why NF's such as INFP are still fairly good at rational thought is not because the ENFP/INFJ have tertiary T, but because all NF's still have N. T is to F as N is to S. N is the perceiving counterpart to T, hence why only NT's and not ST's are listed as the rationals, because NT's are the only ones who have both the thinking and the abstract function, while ST's have only the thinking function. ST's in rational ability are more on par with NF's than NT's, whereas the least rational would be the SF's (no judgement here, we need you too ).


Sorry for criticism but; You're clearly adding to the overcomplicating of these theories here (too). 

I declare this about NT vs ST as plain bullshit. You are now truly putting people in distinct and rigid boxes. Isn't this what you complained about initially in your post?

Abstract thinking isn't N, you are mixing up things here.

As for INFP's ability for rational thinking, that may just simply be the ability everyone with some intelligence will have anyway. But you didnt even define "rational thinking" so who knows what you meant there. What do you define it as?

Then about ST's vs NT's, I'll give you only one example: consider requirements for doing proper research in science. That fits an ST just as well as an NT.


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## phoenixpinion (Dec 27, 2012)

itsme45 said:


> Btw I don't think it should be "room for inconsistencies", it would simply instead be explained by things other than MBTI/socionics. There's more to the mind/psyche and psychology than just MBTI/socionics/enneagram...


Well, if you're going to define people's minds you better make sure there is room to connect them with other areas of psychology... Your mentality is exactly the problem.



> How does that have to be different from simply using the abbreviation ENTJ or LIE or something like that?
> (Rhetorical question. IMO, it does not have to be different.)


It's incredibly different because it offers more room for flexibility. The letter code is incredibly defined and limited, e.g., ENTJ: Te -> Ni -> Fe -> Si, like it's a fact of life or something. Whereas just saying that you consciously lead with extraversion, thinking and intuition doesn't define you at all. I don't think the brain works like the former. The brain is an interconnected web, not a machine whereby one cog is bigger than the other. I would bet all my money on the fact that an ENTJ doesn't always use his brain in a Te -> Ni -> Fe -> Si manner. It's such a machinized way of thinking about people. Overly logical. Not everything has to be logical and "fitting", logic is only one part of the picture here, 1/4th to be exact... This is exactly the failings of mbti and socionics. It tries to define the whole of human personality through the subjective lense of T, which is ironic considering T is only one of 4 functions. Mathematics and people is a no go, yet this is exactly how socionics (especially) approaches the psychology of personalities. This is imo the main reason why qualified psychologists all avoid typology, because they have personally found out that the human mind is too complex and adaptable to be mathematically defined. Mathematics implies absolution, absolution stands directly opposed to relativity. More relativity needs to be thrown in these typing systems, maybe then it will start getting some scientific credibility...





> Why can you not be an ambivert? Actually most people are ambiverts or close to being ambiverts, according to tests. So I don't see any logic in the idea that the aux. can't be introverted for an extraverted dominant function. I'll give my own example, by far the strongest three functions for me in function tests are Ti, Se, Te (in this order usually). There's an introverted function in there, huh?


Sure, you can be an ambivert, but you'll have a small personality to go with this, since personalities are based on extremes. The more extreme your function orientation, the stronger your personality. Nothing can be gained without loosing anything. See, you are so sure that because MBTI defined you as "ISTP" that you actually have Se. What if you simply have introversion, thinking and sensing? What makes you so sure you do not have Si? Considering you're an introvert, why would your sensing function suddenly be totally extraverted? "Because it makes sense that if your primary is I, then your secondary will be E" Well, does it really makes sense? NO, it's just a stupid rationalization. Sure, your sensing may be oriented towards the external world, but then again, did it never occur to you that ALL SENSING would perhaps be oriented to the external world, because you know, it's SENSATION?




> I would say, it might be the opposite way, you may operate in your shadow *because of* stress. (Though I think stress response is a lot more complex than what MBTI can say about it)


Another example of the lineair human mind. I never said the opposite can't happen. I just said that operation in the shadow causes stress, where does this imply that stress cannot be the cause of operation in the shadow?



> Warning. You are complicating things yourself in several parts in your own posts here. You seem to be getting caught up in your own web too. I don't think it's a great feeling ultimately.


"Warning", really? Does my individual thinking frighten you? Do I get a bad feeling, or do you get a bad feeling?



> I don't know if they are fully complementary or fully opposed. Maybe in-between? Seems like sometimes they work together and sometimes not. I wouldn't know what that depends on.


Jung defined the functions. Jung created the function through dualistic thinking. T <-> F , N <-> S . T exists because it is the opposite of F, S exists because it is the opposite of N. Why do you think your inferior function is always diametrically opposed to your primary?




> Sorry for criticism but; You're clearly adding to the overcomplicating of these theories here (too).


No, I'm not, it just doesn't match with your mbti belief system... I'd imagine an MBTI novice would have no problem grasping my theories, whereas "experts" like you are no longer capable of computing it because it requires that you question yourself, but more importantly, it requires that you question AUTHORITY. E.g. authority which says that ISTP: Ti -> Se -> Ni -> Fe.



> I declare this about NT vs ST as plain bullshit. You are now truly putting people in distinct and rigid boxes. Isn't this what you complained about initially in your post?
> 
> Abstract thinking isn't N, you are mixing up things here.
> 
> ...


Bias, bias, bias. You're just too chicken to see the truth. N is most definately abstraction. Whereas T is lineair abstraction (logic), N is creative/dynamic abstraction (intuition). Both S and F on the other hand are not abstract, but physical. Ofcourse if you're an NF or ST, things are more intermixed.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

phoenixpinion said:


> Well, if you're going to define people's minds you better make sure there is room to connect them with other areas of psychology... Your mentality is exactly the problem.


I have no idea what you tried to criticize there.




> It's incredibly different because it offers more room for flexibility. The letter code is incredibly defined and limited, e.g., ENTJ: Te -> Ni -> Fe -> Si, like it's a fact of life or something. Whereas just saying that you consciously lead with extraversion, thinking and intuition doesn't define you at all.


Alright, I meant that we could just refer to this with the letters, after all "ENTJ" can just mean exactly this, Extraverted, Thinking and Intuitive - ok and there's the J, so a better notation would be just "TeN", or something like this but my point is that abbreviations on their own are not an issue.




> I don't think the brain works like the former. The brain is an interconnected web, not a machine whereby one cog is bigger than the other. I would bet all my money on the fact that an ENTJ doesn't always use his brain in a Te -> Ni -> Fe -> Si manner.


Do you mean socionics theory of ring of conscious functions with this Te->Ni->Fe->Si? (JCF theory says ENTJ has Se/Fi, Fe/Si is more deep into shadow.) 

But yeah, I never believed that part in the typology theories. Especially not in socionics. Especially *not* if they attempt to justify it with really unrelated analogies of energy metabolism.




> It's such a machinized way of thinking about people. Overly logical. Not everything has to be logical and "fitting", logic is only one part of the picture here, 1/4th to be exact... This is exactly the failings of mbti and socionics. It tries to define the whole of human personality through the subjective lense of T, which is ironic considering T is only one of 4 functions.


I thought Myers was some F type?  I think it's up to the individual which lenses to use to view this theory.




> Mathematics and people is a no go


Well that's not quite right; statistics can be quite useful in psychology research. And other areas of mathematical thinking can also be very useful.

It's fine if you prefer to view psychology without any mathematical tools but your preference doesn't invalidate the different approaches of other people.




> yet this is exactly how socionics (especially) approaches the psychology of personalities. This is imo the main reason why qualified psychologists all avoid typology, because they have personally found out that the human mind is too complex and adaptable to be mathematically defined. Mathematics implies absolution, absolution stands directly opposed to relativity. More relativity needs to be thrown in these typing systems, maybe then it will start getting some scientific credibility...


No.




> Sure, you can be an ambivert, but you'll have a small personality to go with this, since personalities are based on extremes.


No. Well, your own theory and I don't believe in this theory.




> The more extreme your function orientation, the stronger your personality. Nothing can be gained without loosing anything. See, you are so sure that because MBTI defined you as "ISTP" that you actually have Se. What if you simply have introversion, thinking and sensing? What makes you so sure you do not have Si? Considering you're an introvert, why would your sensing function suddenly be totally extraverted? "Because it makes sense that if your primary is I, then your secondary will be E" Well, does it really makes sense? NO, it's just a stupid rationalization. Sure, your sensing may be oriented towards the external world, but then again, did it never occur to you that ALL SENSING would perhaps be oriented to the external world, because you know, it's SENSATION?


Where did I say I was ISTP?  Though I could certainly be but it seems like I prefer Se just a bit more than Ti... hard to say really. Ambivert works for me but I believe I'm more of an extravert than an introvert. 

As for Si, because you asked, I'll tell you, I never related to any definition of Si (jungian, MBTI or socionics). Si isn't oriented to the external world like Se is, it just doesn't take things "as is".

I do not have a problem with I vs E, it makes sense for me that sometimes I can be deep in my head and sometimes I can be totally focused outwards. This is just how I am.

So, your guess at how I think didn't work out, I don't rationalize like that and I don't blindly follow the idea of "MBTI defined me as whatever".




> Another example of the lineair human mind. I never said the opposite can't happen. I just said that operation in the shadow causes stress, where does this imply that stress cannot be the cause of operation in the shadow?


That was simply a comment from my part. 




> "Warning", really? Does my individual thinking frighten you? Do I get a bad feeling, or do you get a bad feeling?


I'm getting tired of your assumptions, they don't tend to work. :/

The warning part was about how I don't think it ultimately leads anywhere trying to theorize without checking for reality. I mean when I was stressed out, I got into that myself and it wasn't a great feeling in the end. It was just too pointless... Yes I know INxx's are more into this by default but I think a balance between theory and reality is good even for INxx's 




> Why do you think your inferior function is always diametrically opposed to your primary?


? I didn't say that... Maybe you misread my post there.




> No, I'm not, it just doesn't match with your mbti belief system... I'd imagine an MBTI novice would have no problem grasping my theories, whereas "experts" like you are no longer capable of computing it because it requires that you question yourself, but more importantly, it requires that you question AUTHORITY. E.g. authority which says that ISTP: Ti -> Se -> Ni -> Fe.


Stop assuming things about me and my way of thinking.

I don't care about authority btw. The rest of the quote from you here is also nonsense like that.




> Bias, bias, bias. You're just too chicken to see the truth. N is most definately abstraction. Whereas T is lineair abstraction (logic), N is creative/dynamic abstraction (intuition). Both S and F on the other hand are not abstract, but physical. Ofcourse if you're an NF or ST, things are more intermixed.


No, nothing to do with being a chick  (though I am female  )

Anyway, no, abstraction isn't equal to intuition. I believe F can be pretty abstract too. Introversion as well. Jung talks about Abstract Sensation if we want to bring S into the picture lolol. (That's not the same thing I admit... but the name fits here  ) And other things about human thinking are also to do with abstraction that are totally unrelated to MBTI/socionics functions.

And as for bias, you are no less free of bias than anyone else. *yawn* And, I'm not interested in continuing with this sort of "argument". You're free to think whatever, I was simply pointing out the BS.


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## phoenixpinion (Dec 27, 2012)

@itsme45

Ok, perhaps I was making too many assumptions. I appreciate your input. Let's leave it at this, ok?


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

phoenixpinion said:


> @_itsme45_
> 
> Ok, perhaps I was making too many assumptions. I appreciate your input. Let's leave it at this, ok?


Yes, ok, I said the same .


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

gwho said:


> uhh no? learn to read?


Lol.

I always love the irony of someone _writing_ "learn to read" to someone.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

phoenixpinion said:


> @OP
> 
> I can give you one thing, people take MBTI and socionics way too serious and literal. There should be more room for inconsistencies and anomalies, because these definately do occur frequently. If you don't fit into a single personality box, people will say "try that box or that box instead", they very rarely will admit that maybe that person cannot be defined within a single box, because admitting that is effectively disproving the typing system on which so many have invested so much faith.
> 
> ...


I mostly agree with you actually. I think you're on the right track with rejecting the 16 types on the basis that there is little reason to believe they exist, and instead you are essentially just looking at the proposed traits (cognitive functions) that make up those 16 types.

You made a good call recognizing the inconsistency with viewing the auxiliary function in an opposite attitude from the principal function, as a matter of fact. Check out this diagram, taken from Jung's own "Collected Works" published decades after his famous _Psychological Types_:











He is clearly showing that the auxiliary function would share the same attitude as the dominant function. This alone seems to invalidate the basic assumptions of the MBTI and Socionics models based on his theory.

Jung also believed that most people would not have necessarily differentiated a dominant attitude (introverted or extraverted). Rather, he believed most people would fall somewhere in the middle as ambiverts (though he did not use that term himself).

What I've really done myself is to disagree with the notion that these traits are binary and discreet in the sense that they diminish each other. I think Jung is just explaining the strong conceptual differences between each function but not at all implying that these functions necessarily are discreet in the way that most people experience them. I think it makes more sense to assume that there is no implicit bias at all in most people, and thus most people actually do not even have a type at all in the sense of having differentiated a principal and an auxiliary function that distinguishes them from anyone else. Rather, I believe these differences are more subtle than overt in the way most pop psychology enthusiasts on these forums assume.

I think _some_ people may have a clear Jungian type, but this ought to be taken as an out-of-the-ordinary case. Consider that Jung himself was mainly a clinical psychologist, so most of his qualitative research into personality upon which he bases his theory was from the observation of people who were his clients as a professional therapist. Of course, not all of them were, but most of them. He does try to tie his theory into observations he makes about society back in those days, and into historical movements and even into philosophy, but this is mostly speculative on his behalf and only meant to give more depth to his hypothesis, not substantiate it quantitatively.

I find Jung's work on cognitive functions extremely insightful and personally, very useful for understanding the ways in which people differ. He gives a very simple explanation for personality, and elegantly so. His writing was also very artistic, and a joy for me to read. I was so inspired by it I even purchased a copy of his now recently posthumously published Liber Novus (The Red Book) for 130 dollars off Amazon. Worth every penny. It was Jung's work that really pushed me off the deep end to investigate personality psychology as far as I have over the last 5 years.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Sol_ said:


> Examples of apparent effectivenes of Jung's types: 1) there are almost non of feeling types among people with high technical achievements (famous mathematicians, physicists, inventors), 2) clear minority of intuitive types among weight lifting champions, etc. If you know a type, than you may predict some things with probability significantly higher than randomness - this is the sense of Jungian typology.


And with this paragraph I really think you missed the point of Jung's system. You draw conclusions but where are the fact to support them? It would be like saying that only Ti types can do maths on a higher level because the way Ti operates works well with maths, but I don't think that's how it works. It's a simplifcation of society. An intuitive type could well be a weight lifter. There is zero correlation here between what people do and how they think. You are saying that one shouldn't draw such relationships between type and external output but this is exactly what you are doing. I utterly fail to see why a weight lifter also cannot be an intuitive. Bruce Lee is generally agreed upon to be an IEI and he's a renowned martial artist. An LIE friend of mine loves counting calories when he is working out and setting up his diet. He finds the system incredibly interesting in order to maximize the results. 

Just because it's a physical activity it doesn't mean it only involves physicality and therefore it would only speak to sensors. It would be like saying that professional esports players all must be intuitives since computer games are not real.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

phoenixpinion said:


> @OP
> 
> I can give you one thing, people take MBTI and socionics way too serious and literal. There should be more room for inconsistencies and anomalies, because these definately do occur frequently. If you don't fit into a single personality box, people will say "try that box or that box instead", they very rarely will admit that maybe that person cannot be defined within a single box, because admitting that is effectively disproving the typing system on which so many have invested so much faith.
> 
> ...


Or what if it is your perspective that the borders are so clear that is the problem? When I think of type, I think of some general traits that fits a specific definition that is already outlined based on how I understand the type, which is the very essence of type, what truly defines it at its core. When I therefore look at people and how they operate when it comes to type, what I am looking at isn't how much or well they fit into the system but how well they fit my understanding of the system. I have yet thus far to find someone who I find to be completely untypeable beyond small children. Most adults have developed an ego neurosis that is fitting the core of a type. The more I learn and understand about types, the more I actually find them to be very real about people. It does not limit you, it does not inhibit you, it does not try to put you into neat boxes. All it does is that describes something that you happened to be, just like all other categories we are surrounded with in society. 

I find that the most ironic part when it comes to type is that people become incredibly resistant when it comes to type labels as if the labels try to describe everything they are and who they ever will be, yet they happily prance around with other labels that define them as much such as that Mars sign under your avatar. There is a lot of social meaning ascribed to that sign and by using the sign one must at some level be inherently aware of its collective value. Types are no different than calling oneself a hipster in this regard. It's something we can choose to identify as, or not identify as. Yet you don't think about how much identifying as male limits you in your daily life, in fact, you might actually take its status for granted. Yet the only thing that sign does is that it describes the physical nature of your body -- were you born with a penis or a vagina? 

Type only gives some characteristics found in humans a name. These characteristics were there before you knew about type. It's another false assumption many make that type somehow shapes who they are. No, you were that type before you knew what it was. Now you actually know what to call it, just like you know what to call that between your legs and how it relates to gender.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> I mostly agree with you actually. I think you're on the right track with rejecting the 16 types on the basis that there is little reason to believe they exist, and instead you are essentially just looking at the proposed traits (cognitive functions) that make up those 16 types.
> 
> You made a good call recognizing the inconsistency with viewing the auxiliary function in an opposite attitude from the principal function, as a matter of fact. Check out this diagram, taken from Jung's own "Collected Works" published decades after his famous _Psychological Types_:
> 
> ...


I personally do not agree with Jung when it comes to his more strict definition of type in this regard. There are a few individuals around me who I would definitely consider having an actual Jungian type (a Te type and an Ne type, possibly an Fi type) and I do not agree with his model when it comes to the auxiliary because in actuality, even studying the people who seem to have developed an actual Jungian type, I do not see my understanding matching with what he was seeing. 

I find that the Te type neatly falls into the ENTJ or LIE category, and in socionics he would be an LIE-Te, and the Ne type is definitely an ENFP with a preference towards Fi over Fe, no doubt about that, and she too would be an IEE-Ne, and the Fi type I am not sure about her auxiliary yet, but I lean some preference towards intuition. 

So I think socionics is right in what it is doing, because the patterns are already there, even in people who would, according to Jung, be type-less. And the only reason they are type-less is because they simply haven't developed enough of an ego neurosis. 

It's important to remember that Jung treated patients with mental illnesses and he was thus only concerned with individuals who appeared dysfunctional or experienced themselves as such. Type is a dysfunction in Jung's writings, but if we consider it more of an everyday occurrence just like with all psychology, everyone is egoistic to a degree but it is only when it's taken too far we might consider someone a narcissist, then socionics makes as much sense.


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> I think _some people may have a clear Jungian type, but this ought to be taken as an out-of-the-ordinary case. Consider that Jung himself was mainly a clinical psychologist, so most of his qualitative research into personality upon which he bases his theory was from the observation of people who were his clients as a professional therapist.
> 
> 
> _


Yeah main bit of perspective which is forgotten continually. I'd wager that a lot of his Pi-doms were probably ridiculously MBTI "P" rather than J (and part of that is that, while irrational dominance is not the same as P, in an extreme manifestation, as in his patients likely, pretty likely to take on a P flavor if I had to guess), yet I see example after example of best-fit Pi types who are _clearly and ridiculously NOT_ MBTI P's. As in, they over-do exactly the things a strong J preference would have one over-do, and this leads to both problems and strengths.


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## phoenixpinion (Dec 27, 2012)

ephemereality said:


> Or what if it is your perspective that the borders are so clear that is the problem? When I think of type, I think of some general traits that fits a specific definition that is already outlined based on how I understand the type, which is the very essence of type, what truly defines it at its core. When I therefore look at people and how they operate when it comes to type, what I am looking at isn't how much or well they fit into the system but how well they fit my understanding of the system. I have yet thus far to find someone who I find to be completely untypeable beyond small children. Most adults have developed an ego neurosis that is fitting the core of a type. The more I learn and understand about types, the more I actually find them to be very real about people. It does not limit you, it does not inhibit you, it does not try to put you into neat boxes. All it does is that describes something that you happened to be, just like all other categories we are surrounded with in society.


Your reaction is quite typical of the average mbti enthousiast. All in all, it is irrelevant how you or I perceive the borders (fixed or fluid). If in reality the borders do not exist they should never have been defined through typology. Yet we are all witnesses to the fact that they did exactly this quite absolutely. This tells me that MBTI/socionics was created by minds who viewed personalities as fixed instead of fluid. (Hell, socionics is even convinced that types are genetically inherited, and they are now on a mission to prove their flawed materialist bias.) Jung did not even attempt to do this. This tell me that Jung viewed personalities as fluid instead of fixed, liquid instead of solid.


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## phoenixpinion (Dec 27, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> What I've really done myself is to disagree with the notion that these traits are binary and discreet in the sense that they diminish each other. I think Jung is just explaining the strong conceptual differences between each function but not at all implying that these functions necessarily are discreet in the way that most people experience them. I think it makes more sense to assume that there is no implicit bias at all in most people, and thus most people actually do not even have a type at all in the sense of having differentiated a principal and an auxiliary function that distinguishes them from anyone else. Rather, I believe these differences are more subtle than overt in the way most pop psychology enthusiasts on these forums assume.


You make an excellent point which everyone seems to take for granted: the assumption that type is the default position. People seem to assume that as a child you only have access to your dominant function, then your secondary develops, then your tertiary and so on... Then they also assume that a mature person has developped all functions in some degree (balanced type).

What if, just if, CHILDREN ACTUALLY DON'T YET HAVE A CLEAR TYPE? WHAT IF THEY HAVEN'T DEVELOPPED A DOMINANT FUNCTION YET? What if the default position is NO PERSONALITY, NO DIFFERENTIATION? What if it requires conscious effort to differentiate yourself into an mbti-type? What if the balanced type/ambivert is actually the default position as opposed to the developped position?? What if alot of people do not actually have a personality type at all, yet when forced to take an mbti test, they test as sensors, while not actually being actual differentiated sensors? because no matter how weak, balanced or overlapping your functions are, tests inevitably label you, which is its inherint goal. The outcome "undifferentiated personality" has not been programmed into these tests, because the theory assumes that type is inborn instead of a conscious development. There has also been no attempt at addressing the "strength" concern, such as requiring a certain minimum percentage of your dominant function before you can be called this or that type, instead of just determining your most used function (since this is vague, e.q. if your Ne is only 5% stronger than the rest of your functions, can you still be called a ENxP?) as is the case now. Probably because of the "everyone needs to have a type right?"?

Very good point, Abraxas. (Are you a gnostic?)


Why do animals of the same species all act the same? Why do they all act according to their same shared instinct and hence all appear to have the same personalities as opposed to the human species? Because they have no individual personality to speak of which is capable of overriding the shared collective genetically programmed personality (instinct). They don't yet have sufficient self-consciousness to develop a sense of "I" aka ego aka personality type which can outwill instinct. It can be said that children act more on instinct than adults, hence I would assume that they, like animals, do not start out with a dominant function, but with no function at all.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

phoenixpinion said:


> What if, just if, CHILDREN ACTUALLY DON'T YET HAVE A CLEAR TYPE? WHAT IF THEY HAVEN'T DEVELOPPED A DOMINANT FUNCTION YET? What if the default position is NO PERSONALITY, NO DIFFERENTIATION?


Yeah um, Jung said the same, about the "no differentiation" part at least. 




> What if alot of people do not actually have a personality type at all, yet when forced to take an mbti test, they test as sensors, while not actually being actual differentiated sensors? because no matter how weak, balanced or overlapping your functions are, tests inevitably label you, which is its inherint goal.


Was it an accident you used the example of testing as a "sensor" and it could've been "intuitive" instead?

By the way, people do actually have personalities. Just e.g. maybe not by cognitive functions. Even babies are different from each other.




> Why do animals of the same species all act the same? Why do they all act according to their same shared instinct and hence all appear to have the same personalities as opposed to the human species? Because they have no individual personality to speak of which is capable of overriding the shared collective genetically programmed personality (instinct). They don't yet have sufficient self-consciousness to develop a sense of "I" aka ego aka personality type which can outwill instinct. It can be said that children act more on instinct than adults, hence I would assume that they, like animals, do not start out with a dominant function, but with no function at all.


Have you ever had any pets? Certain animals do have some kind of personality too, I mean, one cat may be cuddly and another cat may be distant.

Your argument doesn't really seem make sense to me anyway, personality is not something that's in opposition with instincts. Unless you mean personality must be defined in jungian terms and that the unconscious equals instinct. I disagree with both premises.


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