[ExI] MBTI, and what a difference a letter makes...

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/5/2010 11:54 AM, Max More wrote:

> The comparison to astrological descriptions is not unreasonable, though
> the MBTI tying seem more specific and predictive.

That's not the salient distinction, though, Max. It's that MBTI captures 
your own assessment of *how you are and how you function*--while 
astrology bogusly claims to extrapolate all those data from your sun 
sign and planetary configurations at birth (not even at conception). 
It's barely possible that babies of a certain genetically-controlled, or 
developmentally-shaped, constitution will be born during a certain 
season, or somehow be sensitive to some cosmic condition that triggers 
hormones that provoke labor at a certain time of night, or plus or minus 
N days, but that's madly speculative and far too general in any case. 
The fact that MBTI gets almost everything right about me and my wife is 
obviously due to the fact that it does capture what we regard as the 
crucial elements of our attitudes, drives, behavior, and feeds that back 
to us in a neat summary, together with purportedly empirical information 
on how people of our type will get on with other kinds of humans. 
Astrological systems could probably do that too, if you were allowed to 
browse through the descriptors and choose what "sign" you are, with the 
actual constellations etc entirely irrelevant (as they almost certainly 
are, except for the seasonal aspect mentioned above).

Damien Broderick