Subject:
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Re: Personality test vs. Religion
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 3 Nov 2004 16:53:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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2722 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
> > Regardless, the test *is* seriously impaired by its shortcomings. I will
> > summarize a few of them here for clarity:
> >
> > 1. The test is non-falsifiable. This cannot be disputed, because the owners
> > of the test assert it outright. Versions of the test that *are* falsifiable
> > are not what I'm discussing.
>
> If someone is rated as ISFJ by the test and as ENTP independantly by 100
> psychologists, I'd call that pretty falsified as far as the test procedure
> itself.
That would be true ONLY if the test did not allow for tweaking. Because it
allows for post hoc manipulation, your objection does not apply to this
shortcoming.
> > 2. The test is not clearly correlated to what it purports to test: At
> > least, the answers yielded by MBTI have not been independently verified to
> > correlate with the characteristics they seek to describe. Personal
> > testimonial is not sufficient when discussing a purportedly scientific
> > instrument; if I say that a barometer is correct but provide no other
> > evidence, do you believe me? Why on Earth would you?
>
> I'd say personal testimonial exists to that conclusion. But you seem not to want
> to accept that as even slight evidence.
In the absence of other evidence, personal testimony is not sufficient to
support this sort of claim.
> If personal testimony is insufficient as evidence, then do you similarly
> dismiss the entirety of psychology/psychiatry as bunk?
Not the entirety. Psychoanalysis is bunk. Jungian psychology is mostly bunk.
Dream analysis is bunk. Pretty much any aspect of psychology that depends
wholly on the psychologist's subjective, non-verifiable interpretation of
testimony is bunk.
Observational and inferential treatments are, at their heart, interpretive and
must be recognized for their limitations.
> Is there no such thing as "despression"? Is Prozac useless because it
> similarly makes money off of people doing something that it can't prove that
> it does?
A drug that has been clinically shown to have a direct effect on the chemistry
of the brain is fundamentally different from an abstract tool that purports to
measure abstract principles. As such, comparisons between MBTI and Prozac are
not valid. A better comparison would be between MBTI and Rorshach tests, the
latter of which are recognized to be basically useless.
Certainly depression exists in many forms, and in some cases the use of drugs
can be beneficial.
If you took Prozac and it didn't help your depression, would you force a smile
onto your face and claim that, because you smiled, Prozac therefore worked?
Probably not, but that's what you're doing with the MBTI; you're changing the
results of the test to match your expectation of it.
The MBTI isn't useless because its owners profit from it. It is useless because
it does not make verifiable, falsifiable claims, and the results cannot with any
objectivity be precisely correlated to what it purports to test. You repeatedly
dispute this, but I maintain that you are wrong to do so; the test allows
after-the-fact manipulation of data, so the test is invalid as a predictive
instrument. If you cannot accept this as a fatal flaw of the test, then there's
really nothing further to discuss about it.
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Personality test vs. Religion
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| (...) But it only allows for manipulation by the testee, which is why I changed the example. In this case the testee might have initially TESTED as an INFP, and changed their mind to ISFJ, only to be contradicted by the 100 psychologists. Plus, (...) (20 years ago, 3-Nov-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Personality test vs. Religion
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| (...) If someone is rated as ISFJ by the test and as ENTP independantly by 100 psychologists, I'd call that pretty falsified as far as the test procedure itself. The categories themselves on the other hand, that's indeed another issue, and not (...) (20 years ago, 3-Nov-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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