# Personality cafe distance charts



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

How much like certain Personality Cafe users I am, using a 4-d geometric method, with 0 being an identical score and 200 being the maximum possible distance:

Distance from Schwarzinexile:

The Happy Minority: 17.9
Slowriot: 41.1
SurrealBreakfast: 45.0
Snail: 47.0
Moonchild: 47.6
Grish: 47.8
Nightriser: 52.4
StarryNights: 74.4
Leanna: 89.9
McGooglian: 89.9

I'm thinking anyone with a score of 50 or less could count as being roughly the same type using this system. If you want me to figure your out, just ask. :happy:


----------



## cryptonia (Oct 17, 2008)

I'm not too good with my higher dimensional figures (physicist, not mathematician), but I think we fall 40.1 apart (I was 100% I, 84% N, 74% T, 79% P, the last time I took it)

The only problem with it is that these things are supposed to represent _how sure_ you are that the given preference is yours, not _how much_ of one you are. It also glosses over the "which function is extroverted" bit of the theory. I might score really closely to an INTJ, using your method, but there's a tremendous amount more difference between me and an INTJ than there is between me and an ENTP, because the ENTPs functions shift order a bit from mine, but the J not only shifts the function order, but also takes the function of the opposite orientation.

I like the idea... but I think you'd have to turn it into some sort of "conditional" thing. First you'd have to figure out whether having different functions, or mis-oriented ones, causes more difference in people, and by how much. Then, if you decide that there's a decent amount of difference by mis-oriented functions (how much does Fe piss you off, anyway? I know Te irritates me), it would throw off your distances a lot. An ISFJ, with the Si/Fe/Ti/Ne might bear more resemblance to me, a Ti/Ne/Si/Fe, than an INTJ (Ni/Te/Fi/Se) would. I'm not sure if they do, because I've never met one (I don't think), but it'd be worth looking into.

Er, so... I guess all that could be summed up by "if you're going to get mathematically precise about it, what really makes different types different? Is the theory you're modeling in the four-letters, or the eight-cognitive-functions?" I tend to think of it as the latter, but it would be a hell of a lot harder to quantify if you did too :wink:


----------



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

I got 40.1 out of the formula, too, yeah. You got the idea quickly. Which somehow doesn't surprise me.

I actually did the distance thing on here mainly as sort of a toy to play with while I try to figure out some other ideas the concept spawned. If I knew more about the functions, I'd work those into the system (though, online tests don't generally test for the strength of each function, which would make it harder to work with). I could imagine some kind of test that would test the relative strength of each of the eight functions and locate people by those, though I might have to work in eight-space to do that.

Anyway, my thinking was that people would find the idea of a mileage chart sort of interesting (even if it is rather crude and based more on people's subjective evaluations of themselves rather than on any objective exterior criterion) and maybe a good pointer towards people they might identify well with...

I actually am starting to buy into the idea of psychological space being representable mathematically, though I'm assuming it wouldn't be representable by any shape as simple as a hypercube. What's intriguing to me than this is the fact that this set-up represents the mind as a point in a continuum, rather than something discrete. Couple this with my view that the mind isn't a stagnant unit but something fluid and changeable, and it sort of implies that where the mind is could change depending on mood and external circumstances, which in turn implies that instead of a point, the mind could be treated as a particle. This could lead to a sort of physics of the mind, with orbits, velocities, vectors, and the like. I just need to figure out how many psychological dimensions it would take for that sort of a model to be useful.

Anyway, I really appreciate your critique on this. You make a good sounding board. I'll have to tinker with it a bit more and see if I can come up with anything else cool.


----------



## starri (Jan 23, 2009)

ok.. umm.. ur doing this in ur head? can i see the equation?


----------



## kiskadee (Jan 9, 2009)

How exactly is this determined?


----------



## Nightriser (Nov 8, 2008)

I figure it's something along the lines of the distance formula, but in a fourth dimension. 

Unless you're into odd metric spaces, schwarz. Hmmmm?


----------



## Surreal Breakfast (Oct 24, 2008)

Yay, I'm third, even though I don't understand it properly :laughing: but I think I kinda do

It would be cool to know mine if it's not too much hassle


----------



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

Surreal Breakfast said:


> Yay, I'm third, even though I don't understand it properly :laughing: but I think I kinda do
> 
> It would be cool to know mine if it's not too much hassle


The formula is the square root of the sum of the square of the differences between each person's percentages on those my personality badges they have floating around. Basically, like Nightriser said, it's the distance formula, just in four dimensions. It isn't anything particularly fancy. Basic vector stuff.

And at the moment, I don't have my notebook where I wrote everything down, but I can get you your distance chart on Monday, probably, Surreal.


----------



## Surreal Breakfast (Oct 24, 2008)

schwarzinexile said:


> The formula is the square root of the sum of the square of the differences between each person's percentages on those my personality badges they have floating around. Basically, like Nightriser said, it's the distance formula, just in four dimensions. It isn't anything particularly fancy. Basic vector stuff.


Oh, okay, makes more sense now



schwarzinexile said:


> And at the moment, I don't have my notebook where I wrote everything down, but I can get you your distance chart on Monday, probably, Surreal.


That would be cool, thanks


----------



## cryptonia (Oct 17, 2008)

*facepalms* do'h! I think my physicist was showing :tongue:. When I started thinking about how each function would relate, it never even occurred to me to just put it into a higher dimension, lol. Making some kind of linear or quadratic relative strengths between the functions in 8-space would be a good deal simpler than (as I was trying to) somehow mappping the functions into obscenely complicated 4d description. If you wanted, you could probably make a "likely to get along with" graph, turning things like Te into an inverse relationship, because two strong Te people a lot _less_ likely to like each other. You could probably even define a strange psychological coordinate system that normalized everything so other people could read it easier (and not get confused because a difference of 50 in Ti or Fi (since one grows as the other shrinks, theoretically) doesn't make people nearly as "different" as a difference of 50 in Te or Ne)... although I'm pretty sure that would screw up the distance formula, I don't think it would be too hard to rederive, so long as they were all simple (linear) conversions. You could probably do it with more complicated conversions, but I'm not sure how to.


----------



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

cryptonia said:


> *facepalms* do'h! I think my physicist was showing :tongue:. When I started thinking about how each function would relate, it never even occurred to me to just put it into a higher dimension, lol. Making some kind of linear or quadratic relative strengths between the functions in 8-space would be a good deal simpler than (as I was trying to) somehow mappping the functions into obscenely complicated 4d description. If you wanted, you could probably make a "likely to get along with" graph, turning things like Te into an inverse relationship, because two strong Te people a lot _less_ likely to like each other. You could probably even define a strange psychological coordinate system that normalized everything so other people could read it easier (and not get confused because a difference of 50 in Ti or Fi (since one grows as the other shrinks, theoretically) doesn't make people nearly as "different" as a difference of 50 in Te or Ne)... although I'm pretty sure that would screw up the distance formula, I don't think it would be too hard to rederive, so long as they were all simple (linear) conversions. You could probably do it with more complicated conversions, but I'm not sure how to.


Fourspace would get ugly pretty fast doing that.
The "likeliness to get along" thing sounds interesting as well. You could almost do something chemistry-like with it, assigning people positive and negative charges...something like that. So, in general, are the functions that end in "e" stronger than the ones ending in "i"?


----------



## cryptonia (Oct 17, 2008)

Well let's see... the only thing that the charges do in chemistry is stick a negative sign into the formulas, so that it changes the direction of the force when you plug vectors in. It's the 1/(distance) part that makes "close" things have a higher magnitude than "far" ones. So if you tried to "charge" a function, it wouldn't change anything when you ran it through the distance formula. 36 - 36, if both people were identical in some category, is 0... but -36 - -36 is still 0. It would allow you to let _different_ functions grate against each other (although you wouldn't have much flexibility. Ti grates against both Te and Si, but Te and Si fit with each other pretty well. I know there's some system with quarks of using "colors" instead of charges, to allow more flexibility, but I'm not really sure how it works), but doesn't leave room for the possibility that two people of the _same_ function would grate against each other.

and... sorry--what do you mean by "stronger"?


----------



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

cryptonia said:


> Well let's see... the only thing that the charges do in chemistry is stick a negative sign into the formulas, so that it changes the direction of the force when you plug vectors in. It's the 1/(distance) part that makes "close" things have a higher magnitude than "far" ones. So if you tried to "charge" a function, it wouldn't change anything when you ran it through the distance formula. 36 - 36, if both people were identical in some category, is 0... but -36 - -36 is still 0. It would allow you to let _different_ functions grate against each other (although you wouldn't have much flexibility. Ti grates against both Te and Si, but Te and Si fit with each other pretty well. I know there's some system with quarks of using "colors" instead of charges, to allow more flexibility, but I'm not really sure how it works), but doesn't leave room for the possibility that two people of the _same_ function would grate against each other.
> 
> and... sorry--what do you mean by "stronger"?


It seems almost like I might need to make multiple formulas and things to account for all of this. Modeling similarity seems like an easier task than modeling potential attractive and repulsive forces between people. I guess I could make do something involving what the functions imply the person is likely to be compatible with and the way the person would come across to the other person, and measure the distance between those two positions in 8-space. I may need to think this one out further. It seems like some of the formulas would get kinda long.

By stronger, I meant it had a more dominant effect on how the person seems. You said something about some of the functions having more of an effect on how the person seemed. I would model this by tinkering with the distance between the lengths of the sizes of the hypercube (changing it into a hyperrectangle, but that's not especially relevant conceptually).

Anyway, I like the continued feedback you've been giving me on this. It's refining a lot of aspects of this I hadn't given much thought to.


----------



## mcgooglian (Nov 12, 2008)

yay, I'm not at 200, that's all that matters to me.


----------



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

Dysthymania said:


> The formula is something like this then:
> 
> sqrt(X^2 + Y^2 + Z^2 + A^2)
> 
> Max variables being 100 (distance). But how do you figure out the difference for each variables?


The formula is sqrt((X1-X2)^2+(Y1-Y2)^2+(Z1-Z2)^2+(A1-A2)^2), with X1 and X2 being the strengths of I for the two people being measured, Y1 and Y2 being the strengths of N, and so on.

If someone scores 100 for E on the test, they get 0 for I, for example, and they would have a distance of 100 in the I-E dimension from somebody who scored 100 for I. Someone who got a 58 for S would have a 42 for N (100-58=42), and so in the S-N dimension they would be 15 points away from both somebody who scored a 57 for N and somebody who scored a 73 for S.

I hope that's clearer.


----------



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

mcgooglian said:


> yay, I'm not at 200, that's all that matters to me.


I may have to see how one of these distance charts looks from your angle, since you're a pretty unusual type here.


----------



## mcgooglian (Nov 12, 2008)

schwarzinexile said:


> I may have to see how one of these distance charts looks from your angle, since you're a pretty unusual type here.


Yeah, there aren't many ISTPs here and I appear to be the most active one here.


----------



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

mcgooglian said:


> Yeah, there aren't many ISTPs here and I appear to be the most active one here.


I will put you on my list for Monday.


----------



## mcgooglian (Nov 12, 2008)

schwarzinexile said:


> I will put you on my list for Monday.


Aren't I already on the list? I got 89.9


----------



## Schwarz (Nov 10, 2008)

mcgooglian said:


> Aren't I already on the list? I got 89.9


Right, but that's your distance from me. I could find your distances from everybody on my list, which would look totally different than mine.
Even me and Grish, who are relatively close to each other personality-wise, have fairly different-looking distance charts.


----------

