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17 Reasons That Joseph Stromberg’s Critique of the MBTI Is Uninformed

By Sigurd Arild, Ryan Smith, and Eva Gregersen Regular readers know the drill by now: We have no affiliation with the MBTI; we just don’t like seeing lazy and uninformed critiques misguiding the public. The latest example of such a critique is the journalist Joseph Stromberg’s article: Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless, as featured in[…] Continue Reading

Discussion of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Type

By Guilherme Varela and Ryan Smith Disclaimer: This article relies on a methodology that we usually caution our readers against, namely confounding mental processes (functions) with mental contents (specific positions and beliefs). Therefore, if someone were to protest the method employed here, we would immediately have to grant them the point. Nevertheless, in the absence[…] Continue Reading

Freud & Empedocles, Part 2

In Part 1 of this essay, we looked into some of the philosophical reasons why Freud might have found himself attracted to Empedocles. Here in Part 2, we will focus on the psychological reasons instead. 3: Personal Attraction Freud felt a sense of personal admiration for Empedocles. In my opinion, Freud’s admiration for Empedocles was not just a[…] Continue Reading

8 Things That Are Wrong with Online Typology

List written by David Austin, edited and used with permission. Commentary by Ryan Smith. The scores and scores of fake Ni types. (“I sometimes know things. Therefore INTJ.”) Armchair “experts” who peddle wild home-grown definitions about their type and functions while having no real knowledge. (“Ni is very objective.”) The extreme pushback from aforementioned “experts” when[…] Continue Reading

An Aristotelian View of Personality Types

By Ryan Smith I once knew an INTJ. He was amongst the five best people I’ve ever known when it comes to determining other people’s types. For the most part, we were in complete agreement as to people’s types, but once in a while, in complex or atypical cases, we disagreed on how to operationalize or[…] Continue Reading

Drake Baer’s Lazy Critique of the MBTI

By Ryan Smith and Eva Gregersen Business Insider seems to be developing a penchant for publishing poorly researched articles about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Last September it was Professor Adam Grant’s critique of the MBTI which quoted unfaithfully from one of the scientific studies that it used as the basis of its argument. Now it is reporter Drake Baer who[…] Continue Reading

INTP and Kant’s Dialectics of Restraint

By Ryan Smith “[I] will assure to reason its lawful claims, and dismiss all groundless pretensions, not by despotic decrees, but in accordance with its own eternal and unalterable laws. This tribunal is no other than the critique of pure reason. … [I will critique] the faculty of reason in general … its extent, and its[…] Continue Reading

INTJ and Hegel’s Dialectics of Empowerment

By Ryan Smith “The true and positive meaning of the antinomies in Kant is this: That every actual thing involves a co-existence of opposed elements. Consequently to know, or in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unitary of opposed determinations.” – Hegel: Encyclopaedia of the[…] Continue Reading

Freud and Empedocles, Part 1

By Ryan Smith “No one can foresee in what guise the nucleus of truth contained in the theory of Empedocles will present itself to later understanding.” – Freud: Analysis Terminable and Interminable §6 Empedocles (ca. 490-430 BCE) is the earliest Western thinker to whom Freud ever referred.[1] Just as Heraclitus was Jung’s favorite pre-Socratic, so[…] Continue Reading

Criticism of Pauli’s Proposition…

By Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. It was intriguing to read about Pauli’s relationship with Jung and his ideas about using Jung in physics. I’m not sure it works very well, which of course is Pauli’s problem, not that of the admins. Yet I have some criticisms: When you say: “As long as nobody’s looking, observing,[…] Continue Reading