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Beauty, the Supernatural and MBTI

heart

heart on fire
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May 19, 2007
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I personally have an interest in it but I don't know anyone else that does IRL.

My experience too. I don't know anyone who even knows what it is.

I do recall one job application where they made me take a personality test as part of the interview process, I am not sure if it was MBTI or not to tell the truth. It was before I was personally interested in it. This was the same place where the interviewer asked me about my hobbies. When I said I liked to read, he made a face and laughed and accused me of lying, saying that no one likes to read for a fun.

I do think it ought to be a personal tool for self-development. I am extremely disturbed by the idea of it being pushed on school children or forced in the workplace.

Edit: I took the MBTI as part of a voluntary career development counseling program my last year at University. It is used by Universities here in the USA.
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
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MBTI has been used, not by Universities, but by the USA military and USA business, for seventy years. So what are they using it for?

Okay, I'm just going to call you out on the vagueness of this:
- What percentage/branches of the USA military?
- What percentage of businesses?
- For what specific purpose(s)?
- With what specific results?

You aren't making any case here.
Are people being kicked out the military?
Being fired from their jobs?
Being excluded from certain jobs or promotions?

Tell us exactly what the indignities here are.
Tell us specifically how the tests are being (ab)used.
Whistleblowers have details to support the allegations.

I'm open to what you're saying, I just don't hear anything that I can go anywhere with.
 

Oaky

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^ Well that was quite random. :mellow:
 
G

Ginkgo

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He's not bad, is he?

If I ever own a cat, I'm going to plaster a hat and a monocle to her and name him Bananatrombones. This will make me happy. Probably not the cat though.

ps- the cat will also be able to extemporaneously change gender.
 

highlander

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Okay, I'm just going to call you out on the vagueness of this:
- What percentage/branches of the USA military?
- What percentage of businesses?
- For what specific purpose(s)?
- With what specific results?

You aren't making any case here.
Are people being kicked out the military?
Being fired from their jobs?
Being excluded from certain jobs or promotions?

Tell us exactly what the indignities here are.
Tell us specifically how the tests are being (ab)used.
Whistleblowers have details to support the allegations.

I'm open to what you're saying, I just don't hear anything that I can go anywhere with.

Another thought on this. Let's take US culture being thrust upon the world through media - it is true. Is MBTI ever mentioned? I don't think I have ever heard reference to it on the TV, movies, news, or anything of the sort. I'm sure it has been somewhere, but it can't be much. The logic could be that we are all corrupted by this MBTI, that it forces us into predictable little "widgets" within the economy and then the actors (or reality show participants) that come across the screen overseas are polluted by the MBTI which has been imposed on them, infecting the masses in other countries turning them into Type robots. The whole story just doesn't seem realistic unless I'm missing something.

Really, since there is no evidence that has been provided, I must surmise that this is all interesting but conjecture. It would seem there are valid points on the influence and impact of the US Military, Corporations, and Media on the rest of the world, though I have not thought deeply enough of those effects. On the surface, I'd be more inclined to think about damage which could be done through cancer causing chemicals, people killed in wars, genetically engineered seeds, the firearms trade, nuclear weapons, and things like that. In these cases, MBTI seems to have little to no impact. Wait - have they made you drink Budweiser down under? That would be a crime.
 
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Munchies

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beauty is very superficial, it is simplicity at it's highest form. but the more you probe deeper into something that was once considered new to you, the more it is realised how something so simple is really made up of something so infinitly complicated. after the simplicity of it is gone, whats left is something dull and old
 

Katsuni

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Both physics and biology show that we don't need more to explain more.

More information usually just leads to more questions after a certain point. It's not NEEDED to explain more, but in having more questions, yeu realize there's more out there that needs to be explained.



Fundamental laws and chance are sufficient.

noone will ever need more than 640k RAM




But very powerful institutions use the supernatural against the vulnerable.

"Very powerful institutions" are only very powerful because they are GIVEN that power by the vulnerable. They don't need to use supernatural to do it either. Governments and other large organizations have done so in the past with secular beliefs. Take a look at chairman mao, worked just fine there.


In the same way that very powerful institutions use MBTI against the vulnerable.

Most powerful institutions don't use MBTI. The few who do rarely use it as a whole. Psychological profiling is a generic tool to try to find good employees though, even if it's often abused or misused. It's not used in the same way as the supernatural at all, however; the supernatural's generally used as a "do as I say or else"; MBTI is used more like "if yeu are not ISTJ we don't want yeu".



In seventy years there has not been one double blind test of MBTI, so it is reasonable to say that MBTI is completely superfluous to understanding personality.

This would likely be due to the fact that MBTI does not actually test yeur actual personality at all; it only tests yeur preferences of whot yeur morals dictate yeur ideal personality to be. There has yet to be a test made which can determine which yeu really 'are'. Due to this, the only one who can say which type yeu are, is YEU. Meaning it's impossible to hold a double blind test because that requires at least two participants and that's impossible if the second participant's results are automatically invalid.


In the same way that the supernatural is superfluous to understanding reality.

Everything's natural. The supernatural is just that which we don't yet understand as we either don't grasp the information we have, or lack the information required to understand it yet. As such, this's also inaccurate as the supernatural, due to the fact that it actually is natural, is absolutely a part of reality and therefore IS required to understand reality. Lightning was 'magic' for the longest time. Gravity was magic. Atomic structure was magic. These are all integral to understanding reality.




But what is most striking is how ugly the supernatural and MBTI are.

Ughly in whot way? In a physical sense? Or ughly in a perceived moral sense? or ughly in just a personal sense?


And what is worse is by following the supernatural and MBTI we become ugly ourselves.

One does not neccesarily become identical to that which they review; there's also the matter that yeu've given no context into how yeu are using the word 'ugly', and I'm relatively sure the quote "That word you keep using... I do not think it means what you think it to mean." applies.



We have found in physics and biology that following beauty is the best way to understand the world and ourselves.

Hardly the case; in many cases 'beauty' is in the eye of the beholder, even on a quantum or biological level. How many people consider a lionfish to be ughly as sin? I know I do, yet I also commend it for doing an excellent job for whot it's designed to do. If yeu get into deep end particle physics, and quantum theory, stuff can get awfully ughly awfully fast, and a real mess made, yet it is required to better understanding the world.

If yeu're just going off the traditional "it looks nice" definition of 'beauty', then I'd furthermore like to point out that looks are often deceiving, and occam's razor isn't always accurate. Often, but not always.

Or we could just say that beauty is only skin deep and rarely holds any true relevance to the reality of function and form.

I dunno, no matter how I look at that phrase, I can't see it being accurate.
 

Katsuni

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Pushing for 8 pages of this nonsense! =D

As for the few people questioning it... yes MBTI *IS* on very rare occasion used in businesses to profile their people.

And yes, of those cases, it is also rarely misused by someone who doesn't really understand it.

There have been cases where someone would be turned down from an application where they didn't meet the "desired personality", because their boss read somewheres in some magazine or newsletter that certain types are more difficult to work with than others.

There's dozens of different personality tests out there, MBTI's only a small sliver of it; enneagram, colours, and a few others are used. I had to actually take a colours evaluation for my college course last quarter... apparantly green = NT and orange = NP, and the E/I is a seperate scale.

In any case, there are businesses that do in fact profile people's personalities, but they're generally very rare, and of the few who do, not all of them will be misusing it; most just use it for teambuilding exercises so people can get along better, rather than forcing them to comply to some misunderstood standard.
 

highlander

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I think perhaps you cannot have it both ways. There is no evidence that MBTI is used by corporations and the military in a significant way to enhance profits. To say there isn't sufficient evidence to support MBTI is not a valid argument to support this. Really, Victor I think perhaps what you have an issue with is cultural or corporate imperialism (is that the right terminology?)and IMHO, the focus on MBTI as a culprit Is misplaced.
 

ajblaise

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But fundamentally I think there is immense value in breaking the spell of MBTI, even if the cost is rather high.

There's a fine line between being the triumphant dispeller of MBTI, and just being a side-show circus act that everyone likes poking with a stick, on a typology forum.

If anything, you're adding to the e-community here.
 

Mole

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The Spell of MBTI

There's a fine line between being the triumphant dispeller of MBTI, and just being a side-show circus act that everyone likes poking with a stick, on a typology forum.

If anything, you're adding to the e-community here.

The fact is that I can't dispel MBTI. So MBTI is a magic pudding - the more I eat the more there is - the more I try to dispel MBTI with evidence and reason, the stronger the spell of MBTI gets.

In fact the only way to dispel MBTI is with a greater spell. And alas evidence and reason cast no spell at all.

So all I can do is act as the Other making the spell of MBTI stronger and stronger.

I am the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
 

Mole

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And there's the paradox.

It is a lovely paradox.

Some of us seek to eradicate paradox.

And some of us are fascinated by paradox.

But paradox leads to cognitive dissonance.

And cognitive dissonance is emotionally painful, so some seek to eradicate it.

But cognitive dissonance leads to the sunny uplands of new ideas.
 
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