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[Jungian Cognitive Functions] Amateur Type "Experts" Causing Damage

highlander

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I thought this was a kind of interesting video. He talks about
- uniformed opinion and misinformation on type and how much of it is out there on the Internet
- ramping mistyping
- the role of real type experts vs. the amateur ones that don't know what they are talking about


What he says is correct. There is a lot of bad information. However, I've always viewed the Internet as sort of self-correcting in a way. The garbage becomes less popular and the correct information tends to bubble to the surface. I guess there is the issue of crowd opinion though, which is not necessarily correct. People used to think the world is round right?

I am not sure how to solve that problem really. It helps when people who do know what they are talking about express themselves.
 

527468

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There are four preferences per individual. You read the proper descriptions and figure out which four are preferred. It's not rocket science to be an expert at this.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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There are four preferences per individual. You read the proper descriptions and figure out which four are preferred. It's not rocket science to be an expert at this.

That's one approach.

Yes, I agree it isn't rocket science.

Somewhat off topic but what the hell is that man's wallpaper in OP video? It looks like he pasted Thomas Kinkade paintings everywhere. Why does the video look like it was filmed in 1989? I can't even concentrate on what is coming out of his mouth because of the obnoxious dentist waiting room music. Here, read a seven year old Better Homes and Gardens or Popular Mechanics with half the pages stuck together while you wait for your appointment with Dr. Sherprotsky.

Otherwise, he makes several good points

It rubbed me a little bit the wrong way when he basically discarded Keirsey's temperament theory. "Dumb and dumbah" whattafuckingtoolbag. I'm not a huge Keirsey fan but I wouldn't be claiming MBTI as a solid, kosher science, then casually shit on another similar system. Temperament theory has more or less existed for thousands of years, Keirsey merely merged it with aspects of Myers-Briggs. Just because he largely ignores the Jungian functions and instead focuses on what traits are outwardly observable in individuals does not mean we should ignore it. It does have its merits as a system. MBTI itself is not a perfect system, and many would argue that it is a corruption of Jung's original ideas.

When he takes a stab at youtube chat show hosts, is he referring to people like Dr. Mike (NF Geeks)? Some of those chat show hosts are themselves certified MBTI practitioners. Many are not, and yes, I agree they do perpetuate false stereotypes.
 
G

garbage

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Yeah, how does one define an expert? I personally would love to see someone with a Ph.D. in Cognitive/Personality Psychology create the ultimate "y'all not real experts, I am" video.

I do like the derision combined with the soothing music. Takes the edge off :popc1:
 

DiscoBiscuit

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Amateurs in all fields cause damage...

From The Federalist:

The Death of Expertise

I am (or at least think I am) an expert. Not on everything, but in a particular area of human knowledge, specifically social science and public policy. When I say something on those subjects, I expect that my opinion holds more weight than that of most other people.

I never thought those were particularly controversial statements. As it turns out, they’re plenty controversial. Today, any assertion of expertise produces an explosion of anger from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy.

But democracy, as I wrote in an essay about C.S. Lewis and the Snowden affair, denotes a system of government, not an actual state of equality. It means that we enjoy equal rights versus the government, and in relation to each other. Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge. It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.
What’s going on here?

I fear we are witnessing the “death of expertise”: a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers – in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all. By this, I do not mean the death of actual expertise, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other specialists in various fields. Rather, what I fear has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live.

This is a very bad thing. Yes, it’s true that experts can make mistakes, as disasters from thalidomide to the Challenger explosion tragically remind us. But mostly, experts have a pretty good batting average compared to laymen: doctors, whatever their errors, seem to do better with most illnesses than faith healers or your Aunt Ginny and her special chicken gut poultice. To reject the notion of expertise, and to replace it with a sanctimonious insistence that every person has a right to his or her own opinion, is silly.

Worse, it’s dangerous. The death of expertise is a rejection not only of knowledge, but of the ways in which we gain knowledge and learn about things. Fundamentally, it’s a rejection of science and rationality, which are the foundations of Western civilization itself. Yes, I said “Western civilization”: that paternalistic, racist, ethnocentric approach to knowledge that created the nuclear bomb, the Edsel, and New Coke, but which also keeps diabetics alive, lands mammoth airliners in the dark, and writes documents like the Charter of the United Nations.

This isn’t just about politics, which would be bad enough. No, it’s worse than that: the perverse effect of the death of expertise is that without real experts, everyone is an expert on everything. To take but one horrifying example, we live today in an advanced post-industrial country that is now fighting a resurgence of whooping cough — a scourge nearly eliminated a century ago — merely because otherwise intelligent people have been second-guessing their doctors and refusing to vaccinate their kids after reading stuff written by people who know exactly zip about medicine. (Yes, I mean people like Jenny McCarthy.

In politics, too, the problem has reached ridiculous proportions. People in political debates no longer distinguish the phrase “you’re wrong” from the phrase “you’re stupid.” To disagree is to insult. To correct another is to be a hater. And to refuse to acknowledge alternative views, no matter how fantastic or inane, is to be closed-minded.
How conversation became exhausting

Critics might dismiss all this by saying that everyone has a right to participate in the public sphere. That’s true. But every discussion must take place within limits and above a certain baseline of competence. And competence is sorely lacking in the public arena. People with strong views on going to war in other countries can barely find their own nation on a map; people who want to punish Congress for this or that law can’t name their own member of the House.

None of this ignorance stops people from arguing as though they are research scientists. Tackle a complex policy issue with a layman today, and you will get snippy and sophistic demands to show ever increasing amounts of “proof” or “evidence” for your case, even though the ordinary interlocutor in such debates isn’t really equipped to decide what constitutes “evidence” or to know it when it’s presented. The use of evidence is a specialized form of knowledge that takes a long time to learn, which is why articles and books are subjected to “peer review” and not to “everyone review,” but don’t tell that to someone hectoring you about the how things really work in Moscow or Beijing or Washington.

This subverts any real hope of a conversation, because it is simply exhausting — at least speaking from my perspective as the policy expert in most of these discussions — to have to start from the very beginning of every argument and establish the merest baseline of knowledge, and then constantly to have to negotiate the rules of logical argument. (Most people I encounter, for example, have no idea what a non-sequitur is, or when they’re using one; nor do they understand the difference between generalizations and stereotypes.) Most people are already huffy and offended before ever encountering the substance of the issue at hand.
Once upon a time — way back in the Dark Ages before the 2000s — people seemed to understand, in a general way, the difference between experts and laymen. There was a clear demarcation in political food fights, as objections and dissent among experts came from their peers — that is, from people equipped with similar knowledge. The public, largely, were spectators.

This was both good and bad. While it strained out the kook factor in discussions (editors controlled their letters pages, which today would be called “moderating”), it also meant that sometimes public policy debate was too esoteric, conducted less for public enlightenment and more as just so much dueling jargon between experts.

No one — not me, anyway — wants to return to those days. I like the 21st century, and I like the democratization of knowledge and the wider circle of public participation. That greater participation, however, is endangered by the utterly illogical insistence that every opinion should have equal weight, because people like me, sooner or later, are forced to tune out people who insist that we’re all starting from intellectual scratch. (Spoiler: We’re not.) And if that happens, experts will go back to only talking to each other. And that’s bad for democracy.
The downside of no gatekeepers

How did this peevishness about expertise come about, and how can it have gotten so immensely foolish?

Some of it is purely due to the globalization of communication. There are no longer any gatekeepers: the journals and op-ed pages that were once strictly edited have been drowned under the weight of self-publishable blogs. There was once a time when participation in public debate, even in the pages of the local newspaper, required submission of a letter or an article, and that submission had to be written intelligently, pass editorial review, and stand with the author’s name attached. Even then, it was a big deal to get a letter in a major newspaper.

Now, anyone can bum rush the comments section of any major publication. Sometimes, that results in a free-for-all that spurs better thinking. Most of the time, however, it means that anyone can post anything they want, under any anonymous cover, and never have to defend their views or get called out for being wrong......
 

Lily Bart

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It's a real problem, but I'm not sure what the damage is, other than our limitless capacity for self-delusion! I like to see MBTI as providing insight into personality, so the fact that it can't in many instances is worth thinking about. I've never taken the real test, but the tests I've taken tend not to produce accurate conclusions. Although I'm not a fan of Keirsey in general, his descriptions pointed me in the right direction for finding my own type.

A good friend of my husband's, who is having some serious, serious problems right now, recently took an MBTI test of some sort that identified him as INTJ. Anyone who knows him and has some knowledge of type can easily see that he's INTP. I've told this story to several people who are into type and they all sadly shake their heads -- but I'm not sure what the negative outcome actually could be -- just more self-delusion? Not that this isn't a real problem, but how much would knowing that he's an INTP change things?
 

Forever_Jung

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The thing is, beyond the books that everyone has access to, there's not a whole lot else to have dominion over as an expert. It doesn't require a rigorous mind, really. Jung wrote a book about it and moved on. He wasn't particularly obsessed with developing his typology beyond its practical use in therapy. All these supposed experts just turned his typology into pop psychology. I don't think Jung was particularly impressed by MBTI (not that he necessarily hated it).

Edit: I actually just watched the video, and see his point. I just watched my friends on Facebook discover Keirsey, and almost all of them tested INFJ. Although I will say, were it not for Keirsey, I probably never would have taken an interest in any of this stuff. I apparently took the MBTI all the time on various forums (I like to look back on my old posts sometimes), before I knew what it was, and I always typed right before I knew anything. I had no idea what INFP meant, but I kept scoring as an INFP.. Then when I started to learn a little bit, I started typing as INFJ, ENTP, INTP, ENFP, etc, etc. It took me a while to work through that, and would have just been easier, if I had paid for a professional to type me before I knew anything about it.
 

Lily Bart

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So I've thought about this a little more and I'm in a better mood today since the sun's finally out again! What's liberating about type is the recognition that we don't all have to live up to the same expectations personality-wise -- things like we'd all be happier and healthier if we were extroverts or try to emulate SJ-like standards of responsibility or whatever (sorry if I've offended anyone -- the whole concept really is offensive!) So learning that people have different strengths that we have to respect, even if they're not things we particularly value in ourselves is the primary value of MBTI. It also works the other way, especially in the case of minority types (the 1- or 2% of the population types) . They have to learn to respect and value thiemselves for the strengths they naturally have rather than for what other people tell them is to be valued. So if an INTP with lots of issues is mistyped as an INTJ, then he's packed into yet another mold that forces him to conform to values and standards that don't fit him or serve him well and he's yet again not free to value himself as he is and develop the truly valuable functions that come to him naturally.
(Sorry -- I usually don't have the patience to watch videos, so if I'm just repeating something that's already been said, just ignore me!)
 

Mal12345

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A personality test that only gives one answer, as with the MBTI, is wrong on the face of it.
 

Werebudgie

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So I've thought about this a little more and I'm in a better mood today since the sun's finally out again! What's liberating about type is the recognition that we don't all have to live up to the same expectations personality-wise -- things like we'd all be happier and healthier if we were extroverts or try to emulate SJ-like standards of responsibility or whatever (sorry if I've offended anyone -- the whole concept really is offensive!) So learning that people have different strengths that we have to respect, even if they're not things we particularly value in ourselves is the primary value of MBTI.

I experienced a version of this myself. Given how we each move (I think partly from an intersection of strongly opinionated Fi-dom versus Ni-dom/Fe-aux, in MBTI speak), my INFP partner and I had somehow implicitly placed her ways of processing information as more acceptable/central than mine. Finding out that "no, actually, other INFJs process information similarly" and being able to map some of my processing to things like introverted intuition as a perceiving function, really helped me and us see that for some things, it's not just me being weird or different from some implicit human norm .... it's actually another valid way of processing.
 

TaylorS

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A big mistake people make is that they think Jungian type is about personality type, it is not. It is about one's PSYCHOLOGICAL type. 2 people with the same psychological type can score very differently on the Big 5 personality inventory because of differences in upbringing and life experience. For example, Here in the Upper-Midwestern US, the land of Minnesota Nice, people are much more likely to score high in agreeableness. Indeed, there was a study a few years ago that had North Dakota and Minnesota and #1 and #2 when it comes to Agreeableness, that doesn't mean the vast majority of Minnesotans and North Dakotans are Feelers. a T and an F can both score high or low on agreeableness. Indeed, I suspect that Fi-Doms can often be very low in agreeableness because of their very strong and unshakable system of values that makes them not do the whole "live and let live" thing.
 

Retmeishka

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I think a lot of damage is being done by the system itself, not just by amateurs. The rules themselves lead to wrong results, even when followed correctly. My brain will fry if I try to remember how it works, but there's some crap about 'If your first function is sensing, then, actually, that means your SECOND function is sensing,' or something of that sort. So, you follow that rule, reverse everything and change it to its opposite, and, voila! You get thrown into your opposing socionics quadra with people who hate you! This particular broken rule in the system bothers me greatly, and I view it as far more damaging than amateurs mistyping people.
 

Retmeishka

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To make official experts in personality typing, it would have to be like other licensed professions (which, by the way, can still do things horribly wrong for an extremely long time, like modern medicine). Someone would not be allowed to practice the profession at all, or get thrown in jail, unless they had a license. A licensing authority would distribute the licenses, for a very large fee. You would have to be extremely profitable in your profession to be able to afford the exorbitant licensing costs and the insurance and the other regulations.

So, personality typing would have to be extremely profitable somehow - perhaps a monopolized government job. The government could type people and then put them into their mandatory life professions or something. Typing people accurately wouldn't matter - all that would matter is that you had your license and you went to the right school and paid the right fees and worked for the right employer. So what if you made horrible mistakes and people got thrown into the wrong mandatory life professions - you're covered by the authorities backing you up.

You would not be allowed to use the words 'personality' or 'typing' when you advertised your products and services, or get thrown in jail (as people are not allowed to use the word 'cure' when advertising health-related products or services).

Mistyped people who got thrown into the wrong life professions would have to file a plea with the government to be put into a different profession. We would be forbidden to change our own type, and would have to request (and pay for) the services of a licensed professional typist to prove that we needed to have a different type.
 

Mal12345

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So I've thought about this a little more and I'm in a better mood today since the sun's finally out again! What's liberating about type is the recognition that we don't all have to live up to the same expectations personality-wise -- things like we'd all be happier and healthier if we were extroverts or try to emulate SJ-like standards of responsibility or whatever (sorry if I've offended anyone -- the whole concept really is offensive!) So learning that people have different strengths that we have to respect, even if they're not things we particularly value in ourselves is the primary value of MBTI. It also works the other way, especially in the case of minority types (the 1- or 2% of the population types) . They have to learn to respect and value thiemselves for the strengths they naturally have rather than for what other people tell them is to be valued. So if an INTP with lots of issues is mistyped as an INTJ, then he's packed into yet another mold that forces him to conform to values and standards that don't fit him or serve him well and he's yet again not free to value himself as he is and develop the truly valuable functions that come to him naturally.
(Sorry -- I usually don't have the patience to watch videos, so if I'm just repeating something that's already been said, just ignore me!)

The video was just a slap to the face of amateur typologists with a side-swipe at Kiersey. In other words, it was standard stuff. The "professional" in the video said nothing about socionics, his only other professional target was Kiersey. All he said was that to be a professional typologist means erecting a shingle outside his front door and doing it for a living. He also asserted that typology (aka "psyche-type" which is pronounced "sayk-type") is a serious profession. However, professional astrologers and palm-readers also take their professions very seriously, so seen in the light of that context his assertion is rendered meaningless.

The sub-heading (or whatever it's called) in the video also stated that the "self" is equivalent with your "spiritual essence" (3:25). However, a truly spiritual approach has always required the denial of the self in order to discover one's spiritual essence (q.v., every religion that ever existed).

I agree with [MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION] that the truth may eventually bubble to the surface. But from the video he posted, it doesn't appear that "psyche-type" will be the one.
 
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