• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Video: 7 Reasons Why the MBTI is Bullshit

highlander

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 23, 2009
Messages
26,562
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
6w5
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
  • This is an amusing explanation on why this person thinks Jungian Typology Theory is bullshit
 

cm81

New member
Joined
Oct 27, 2014
Messages
303
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
714
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Nice accompaniment...
 

Eska

New member
Joined
Jan 3, 2015
Messages
34
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
There's a multitude of flawed arguments.
 

Bush

cute lil war dog
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
5,182
Enneagram
3w4
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
Really, it's more.. about 3 good reasons why the MBTI is bullshit, and about 4 good examples of where people tend to use it in bullshit ways.

Pedantic, maybe, but there it is.
 

Passacaglia

New member
Joined
Dec 7, 2014
Messages
645
I give it a 4/10 rant rating. Full of poor arguments, but it lacks flying spittle, table-flippage, or any other hallmark of a quality rant.

 

uumlau

Happy Dancer
Joined
Feb 9, 2010
Messages
5,517
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
953
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
His point one would make all typologies bullshit. It's a misunderstanding of categories. The point of a typology IS to be "laughably broad", so as to find common patterns. I'm reminded of the old Adventure game, where you could be in a "maze of twisty passages, all different." If, in order for a typology to be meaningful it must identify every single combination of human differences, you have no context to figure anything out. Similarly, the Adventure game had a "maze of twisty little passages, all alike." Whether "all different", or "all alike", each contains null information that allows one to navigate the maze. A simple set of categories distinguishes things enough to navigate personalities, in general.

Number 2, oh no, it's Western-White-Culture-centric. That obviously makes it invalid. Never mind that his argument nullifies all culture-centric thought systems. Only universal thought systems allowed. Waitaminute, whatever happened to everyone being different?

Number 3 is a remarkable straw man, that supposedly MBTI implies that thinkers don't have feelings and feelers can't think. It means that he has no understanding of typology, as one of the central points of any book on MBTI is that the dichotomies are preferences, not absolute either-or binary personality traits.

Number 4, there's a THEME that intuition is better than sense. And of course no proponents of typology denounce that theme as nonsense. :dry:

Number 5, on the function order being arbitrary. Answer: it's a typology. All typologies are arbitrary. The question isn't whether its arbitrary, but whether it is usefully descriptive.

Number 6, typology describes a world of fractured and incomplete people? No, typology only describes aspects of 100% complete people.

Number 7, it's not scientific. Perhaps the best argument, except it's a non-argument. Typologies/categories are how people start to understand the world, before science advances to the point that we know WHY things are different. In chemistry, prior to atomic theory, we had types of elements that we could classify by various objective traits (how things mixed together, etc.). It took, much longer to have a theory of protons and neutrons and electrons to fully describe how each atom behaved.

Interestingly, nearly all of this guy's output on YouTube is videos about MBTI and functions that are far more accurate than what he posted here. As near as I can tell, he had some kind of epiphany that typology is meaningless, posted this video, and then posted a "Goodbye YouTube" video.
 

PeaceBaby

reborn
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
Messages
5,950
MBTI Type
N/A
Enneagram
N/A
Hmm. His point #1 made me think of Dunbar's number. Let's say the upper limit of people that we can maintain relationship with and "know" at any time is about 150 people. And historically, before the advent of modern communications, one could spend one's whole life and not meet or know more than that many people anyway. Your town or village would be the epicenter of your existence. So, in that context, it would make perfect sense that people could readily be described by 16 types. Maybe it kind of makes sense that we evolved in this manner and don't actually need more types than that. A group of 100 people would have a percentage of every "kind" of person needed to run the group or community. Doer-type people, nurturers, caretakers, spiritual seekers ... perhaps is even kind of elegant. Maybe things were designed that way!

If we are all but players on a stage, and each type is an archetype unto itself, still how many little plays can unfold with unique result! It's kind of like why I enjoy Survivor - some of the themes are consistent patterns, but still there are deviations depending on the ingredients tossed together. That's where the ennneagram provides the spice!
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
Hmm. His point #1 made me think of Dunbar's number. Let's say the upper limit of people that we can maintain relationship with and "know" at any time is about 150 people. And historically, before the advent of modern communications, one could spend one's whole life and not meet or know more than that many people anyway. Your town or village would be the epicenter of your existence. So, in that context, it would make perfect sense that people could readily be described by 16 types. Maybe it kind of makes sense that we evolved in this manner and don't actually need more types than that. A group of 100 people would have a percentage of every "kind" of person needed to run the group or community. Doer-type people, nurturers, caretakers, spiritual seekers ... perhaps is even kind of elegant. Maybe things were designed that way!

If we are all but players on a stage, and each type is an archetype unto itself, still how many little plays can unfold with unique result! It's kind of like why I enjoy Survivor - some of the themes are consistent patterns, but still there are deviations depending on the ingredients tossed together. That's where the ennneagram provides the spice!

Yes, it takes a village to make sense of mbti. And today we retrieve the village as a status symbol. But the village is dead, along with God, the book, and the individual.
 

Chthonic

New member
Joined
Jun 18, 2014
Messages
683
Was he reading that off his computer screen? What he couldn't even remember why he thought it was bullshit and needed a prompt? But I'll give him points for annoying expression. If this guy was ranting at my workplace everyone would have cleared the kitchen after the first 15secs.
 
Top