Asterion
Ruler of the Stars
- Joined
- May 6, 2009
- Messages
- 2,331
- MBTI Type
- INTP
- Enneagram
- 5
- Instinctual Variant
- sp/sx
Is your MBT really as concrete as most people seem to think? I don't think that there's any point in specifying your type when the theory itself is so imprecise. Even jung himself wasn't certain about any of it, and there's never been any solid evidence. You could label yourself as an INTP, but really, you could easily convince yourself that you're something similar. You don't have a specific type, you have something hazily close to that type.
I was told today in physics, that when an electron is diffracted, you can't watch the electron every step of the way. It is fired at the diffraction grating, then 'something' happens, and it ends up on a photographic plate. Even Einstein couldn't comprehend what happens throughout the voyage. The same kind of voyage happens in our minds, we simply can't tell what happens, and it creates uncertainty, like a magical lucky dip. MBT applies to the mind and cognitive behaviour, so it has to be uncertain. We can look at it from a distance and give a probability of a certain behaviour.
... Our thoughts are relate to quantum mechanics? I'm gonna have to think that one over...
Is there anyone here that believes that types are set in stone? We are told that MBTs are based on preferences, and you'd think that a preference could change over time? As we grow, our minds adapt to the outside world, we conciously make decisions based on external events, and the sucess of those decisions might cause us to change the way we make those decisions, effectively changing what we think is our type. It might not be easy to change, but I wouldn't doubt that it can happen.
So, event ---> thinking, deciding (presumably unmeasurable) ---> behaviour.
Now, if we look at just one behaviour, for example, Te, it doesn't have any meaning, it just so happened that in this case, the resulting behaviour was Te. You must look at the probability, or think about which function is used more often to get an idea of what's going on. But, even then, we can use our will (whether conciously or not) to change our behaviours. So I could choose to be an ESFJ if I wished it, and that would be the truth, at least considering the time that I behaved like an ESFJ.
Another possibility is that we have set functions and that the rest are just imitated, or behaviours that you don't use. I'm not so sure that that agrees with reality though... you're not likely to ever see a 'pure' type, someone who has only ever behaved as an INTP should. Then again, life has never been perfect, it's all just an untested hypothesis.
Just thinking thoughts, sharing them in the hope to gain/learn your perspective, or mold my own. I'm not even sure of what I'm on about here, sorry about the electron/physics talk, it just helps me to form my own thoughts by means of analogy. Most brilliant discoveries probably happen using simple analogies, so it's good practice
I was told today in physics, that when an electron is diffracted, you can't watch the electron every step of the way. It is fired at the diffraction grating, then 'something' happens, and it ends up on a photographic plate. Even Einstein couldn't comprehend what happens throughout the voyage. The same kind of voyage happens in our minds, we simply can't tell what happens, and it creates uncertainty, like a magical lucky dip. MBT applies to the mind and cognitive behaviour, so it has to be uncertain. We can look at it from a distance and give a probability of a certain behaviour.
... Our thoughts are relate to quantum mechanics? I'm gonna have to think that one over...
Is there anyone here that believes that types are set in stone? We are told that MBTs are based on preferences, and you'd think that a preference could change over time? As we grow, our minds adapt to the outside world, we conciously make decisions based on external events, and the sucess of those decisions might cause us to change the way we make those decisions, effectively changing what we think is our type. It might not be easy to change, but I wouldn't doubt that it can happen.
So, event ---> thinking, deciding (presumably unmeasurable) ---> behaviour.
Now, if we look at just one behaviour, for example, Te, it doesn't have any meaning, it just so happened that in this case, the resulting behaviour was Te. You must look at the probability, or think about which function is used more often to get an idea of what's going on. But, even then, we can use our will (whether conciously or not) to change our behaviours. So I could choose to be an ESFJ if I wished it, and that would be the truth, at least considering the time that I behaved like an ESFJ.
Another possibility is that we have set functions and that the rest are just imitated, or behaviours that you don't use. I'm not so sure that that agrees with reality though... you're not likely to ever see a 'pure' type, someone who has only ever behaved as an INTP should. Then again, life has never been perfect, it's all just an untested hypothesis.
Just thinking thoughts, sharing them in the hope to gain/learn your perspective, or mold my own. I'm not even sure of what I'm on about here, sorry about the electron/physics talk, it just helps me to form my own thoughts by means of analogy. Most brilliant discoveries probably happen using simple analogies, so it's good practice