Minor is giving yourself too much credit. It's a major point. As it's simplest understanding: There's a reason why you can't generalize whatever information you get out of a person, BACK on to themselves. It's circular and introduces bias. Such as those inherent in momentary time sampling.
Minor, tiny, small, he wailed, begged with repetition,
(please stop picking on me for this, please, please, please, can't you see it's so small that you should ignore, ignore it please, for the love of god)
Are you threatened by other's knowledge? That's not very ENTP of you. Oh wait, that might be a 'generalization' on my part.
I don't agree that you can't generalize information about a person back onto himself. If I tell you that I like chocolate cake, chocolate cookies, and chocolate brownies, can you reasonably infer that I probably like chocolate eclair?
Sure; you might be wrong, but most people would find this suggestive of the idea that I probably like other foods containing chocolate.
You are right that some confirmation bias can cause problems...hence the imperfection of the system. But if MBTI didn't have some kind of repeatable use in terms of observations about the behavior of others, why would any of us be here on this forum discussing it? Why would we be interested in it at all? Why aren't we all
also posting on a bunch of astrology forums?
I'm not threatened by your knowledge, and I see now that you're trying to bait an emotional reaction out of me. I am actually reading through that wiki article at the moment, for my edification.
I still don't think "the concept you're describing, valid though it may be, isn't technically called a generalization in formal statistical theory" is all that important, here. I mean, thanks for pointing it out and all, but it sounds as if you're more concerned with needling me over this minor discrepancy than with responding conceptually, because you think I'm so deathly terrified of being wrong that it will bring my entire view on this concept crashing down in flames. (And/or produce an amusing emotional reaction for you to laugh at.)
Well, here you go, if it's what you wanted:
Apparently I was wrong about the technical definition of a generalization. My apologies.