What Does Your Myers-Briggs Score Say About You?

(from http://careerassessmentsite.com/mbti-personality-types-socioeconomic-infographic/)

On today's episode of Let's Ruin Something You Thought Was Fun and Interesting, we examine the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI. Doubtless you've seen these four-letter acronyms flying around, and perhaps you've even taken a version of the test to find out all about yourself. Is it really, useful, though? For anything? Well, yes and no. Mostly no.

The MBTI was developed by a mother-daughter team, Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, over several decades in the early twentieth century. It was originally the brainchild of Katherine Briggs, who was inspired to build on and refine the "psychological types" theory of famous psychologist Carl Jung. The pair's tireless efforts culminated in the introduction of a formal version of the MBTI test in 1962.

The method behind the four-letter type indicators is largely an extension of Jung's theory of introversion vs. extroversion and how that distinction manifests itself in personality preferences. It splits an individual's personality into four dichotomies: Introvert-Extrovert, Sensing-Intuition, Thinking-Feeling, and Judging-Perceiving. The theory supposes that everyone displays a dominant preference in each dichotomy, indicated by one's corresponding four-letter score: ENTJ, ISFP, ESTP, et cetera.

The MBTI has enjoyed uninterrupted success and popularity for decades, mostly because it's a fun test to take, and people love being able to label themselves as something. (Buzzfeed is subsisting almost entirely on this idea.) We humans insist on forcing discontinuity onto our categorically continuous reality, so the idea that every individual can be classified as one of 16 personality types is fantastically appealing. Modern versions of the test even have a heroic-sounding label for each type, like "The Showman" (ESFP) and "The Confidant" (INFJ). (Click here to see which superhero you are!) One wonders how popular the test would be if it labeled people by their stereotypical negative character traits instead, like "The Insufferable Elitist" (INTJ) and "The Oblivious Materialist" (ESTP). Actually, has anybody done that? Let's do that.

Not so excited to add "ENTJ" to your dating profile anymore, are you?

As fun as the MBTI is, there are serious and numerous problems with it. The two women who developed it, for all their enthusiasm and tireless effort, were not psychologists. Neither of them had any formal training in psychology or in any science whatsoever, so the development of the test was patently unscientific. Even though the test has been administered for decades, many psychologists continually question the validity of the MBTI, and for good reasons.

First of all, the test relies on the honest input of the test-taker. Anyone not answering the questions honestly for whatever reason will obtain an "inaccurate" result. Secondly, there's no way to argue with anyone's result, because the test is unfalsifiable. It's impossible to demonstrate that someone isn't an ENFP, for example. Anyone who takes the test is free to agree or disagree with the result, and nobody could possibly argue.

Another reason that experts openly question the validity of the test is its alarmingly high rate of test-retest unreliability. People who take the test and then take it again several weeks later have a significant chance of getting a different score. This is because the test relies heavily on arbitrarily-defined dichotomies, pushing people to one side of the spectrum or another, when most of us are somewhere in the middle. Someone who displays an even mix of introversion and extroversion in different situations is likely to receive different results on retests. For example, two individuals who have nearly identical personalities could receive polar opposite MBTI scores if each one skews just slightly to the ETSJ (totally extroverted) or INFP (totally introverted) side of the line, indicating falsely that these people couldn't be more different.

This is the problem with a test predicated on dichotomies in general: there is no such thing as an introvert or an extrovert. Statistical models of all four indicators consistently demonstrate that the general population fits a bell curve between the two extremes, not a bi-modal (the opposite of a bell curve) distribution. Only a small percentage of people are mainly extroverted or mainly introverted; the majority of people fall in between somewhere, and the MBTI is blind to this reality. Nobody is an INTJ, or an ENFP, or an ISTP. These people do not exist. Every individual is a different mix of EI, SN, TF, JP, and nearly nobody skews heavily to one side of each of those.

There is also no significant data showing that these MBTI scores correlate with vocational performance. The official exam even openly states that the test only measures preferences, not aptitude, so even though one personality type might prefer a certain vocation, there is no guarantee of success or competence in practice. (This is probably why the official test also explicitly states that the MBTI should not be used to screen job applicants.) There is also no significant correlation between MBTI and industry: every vocational field has a more-or-less random sampling of MBTI types. Most actors are not ESTPs, for example, nor are most CEOs ENTJs.

(from http://careerassessmentsite.com/mbti-personality-types-socioeconomic-infographic/)

So, what does your MBTI say about you? Well, certainly nothing that you didn't already know about yourself. The test really only needs to be four questions long:

1. Are you more extroverted or introverted? (I/E)
2. Do you primarily gather information via your senses or your intuition? (S/N)
3. Do you make decisions more by thinking or feeling? (T/F)
4. Which is more important to you, #2 above or #3? (P/J)

If you find some or all of these questions difficult to answer definitively, congratulations! You're a normal person who can't be easily classified by the MBTI. If you have a clear preference in each, then you can easily identify your "type," and most likely so can anybody who's known you for longer than 10 minutes.

The only thing that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator result shows definitively is... that you've taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. Any conclusions drawn beyond that should be taken with a football stadium full of salt.

"With God All Things Are Possible"

Across the street from the office where I work is a little restaurant called the Bonfire Cafe. I went there once for lunch with coworkers, unaware of the fact that it's an overtly Christian establishment which wears its beliefs proudly on its sleeve. Anyway, the experience didn't scar or revile me or anything - I think I had a reasonably priced, if unremarkable, sandwich and a coffee - but I do generally walk past this place every day (it's between my office and Starbucks) and see things like the above propped up outside the entrance. 

Now, I have no problem with the fact that a nominally Christian (or Hindu, or Muslim, or Buddhist...) cafe exists, or with this sign proudly and prominently displayed from it. I'm actually rather glad to be reminded of Bible verses like this; for me, what is surely intended to be merely an inspirational exhortation to passers-by becomes the impetus for profound, meandering philosophical rumination about the core doctrines of Christianity, the nature of God, and the value of telling each other comforting lies.

The first thing I think about is the context of this verse, because I often hear it recited by well-meaning believers as a pithy platitude intended to offer comfort or encouragement to someone in a difficult situation. One rarely ever hears of the verses immediately preceding or following it, and one wonders how many Christians are even aware of the context in which this famous verse appears. Here is Matthew chapter 19, verses 16-29:

19:16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
19:17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
19:18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
19:19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
19:20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
19:21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
19:22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
19:23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
19:24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
19:25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?
19:26 But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
19:27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?
19:28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

There's so much good stuff in here. In verse 17, Jesus objects to being called good, because only God is good. This is one of the many verses in which Jesus clearly demonstrates that he and God are separate. (This is probably copied from Mark 10:18 and also appears in Luke 18:19) Not only does he not call himself God, he refers to God as entirely different from himself. Then, when a child asks Jesus which commandments he should follow (verses 18-19), Jesus only mentions a few of them - incidentally the reasonable ones - and leaves out the nonsensical proscriptions like not worshiping other Gods, making graven images, keeping the sabbath holy, and coveting stuff. Excited that he's been doing all those things all along, the child asks what else he needs to do to have eternal life but is totally bummed when Jesus tells him to sell all his stuff and give to the poor (verse 21). Jesus then takes this opportunity to reiterate how screwed rich people are, including the rather famous verse 24. Then Peter's like "ok we've done all that stuff, and we sold all our shit and have been following you around for a while, so we're good yeah?" (verse 27) Jesus affirms that they are indeed good, as is everyone else... who keeps the commandments and sells his house and leaves his family behind to follow Jesus. All Christians do that, right?

Perhaps I should back up a bit and paint a fuller contextual picture. The phrase "with God all things are possible" comes from the New Testament, specifically the book of Matthew, chapter 19, verse 26, in the midst of a conversation between Jesus and some of his disciples who just want some clarification on how to get to heaven. Specifically Jesus is drawing the distinction between earthly and heavenly salvation: nobody on Earth can save you, but God can. Even this is contingent, though; God can't save you directly - you need to go through his intermediary Jesus, and abandon your family and home in the process. The standard caveats apply when dealing with the NT gospels: Matthew was written sometime in the late 1st century CE several decades after Jesus' death by nobody knows who, and whoever wrote it never met Jesus, so there's no good reason to believe that Jesus even said this. Even if we ignore all of that and just accept that he did say "with God all things are possible," he wasn't uttering it in the same all-encompassing way that Christians do when they say it to each other, and he said it in the same breath as "sell all your stuff and forsake your family for me."

But, since many people who know this verse aren't at all aware of its context, let's just pretend that we aren't aware of it either, and treat it as if it were a single profound utterance, devoid of context: "With God, All Things Are Possible." Just for fun, let's take the easy road first and declare this statement nonsense because it's inherently contradictory. Omnipotence is impossible. If you say "all things" and literally mean it, then you've ceased to make any sense. The standard sardonic retort to God's omnipotence is the subversive question "can God make a boulder so heavy that he can't lift it?" or, as I've also heard it, "can God microwave a burrito so hot that he can't eat it?" It's a silly question, but it serves a serious purpose, namely to illustrate that the idea of omnipotence is logically incoherent.

The same problem applies to the statement "with God, all things are possible." With God's help, could I microwave a burrito so hot that I couldn't eat it? Ok so I wouldn't actually need God's help for that part. But what if I both wanted to microwave a burrito so hot that I couldn't eat it and then I also wanted to eat it? If I accomplish the latter, then I've failed at the former; even God can't get me out of this one. This probably all seems like a silly rhetorical exercise, but that's the point - to demonstrate that a phrase like "all things are possible" in any context is a silly thing to say.

But let's ignore that too. Let's pretend that the idea that "with God, all things are possible" is literally true and not inherently contradictory. Let's proceed with the assumptions that God exists and is literally capable of doing all things. There is still a glaring difficulty staring us in the face: it is clear from our experience that a great many things are simply not possible. 

There is a massive disconnect between the idea that God can do anything and the actual world we observe, in which there are serious and numerous limitations. It would not be difficult for anyone to come up with a long list of things which we can safely assume, based on our experience in the world, are simply impossible. They might range from the ridiculous to the mundane: it's impossible for people to fly without the aid of technology, impossible for a severed human limb to regenerate spontaneously.

If one would like to argue seriously that it is possible for a human being to fly without the aid of technology, or that it is possible for human beings to regenerate severed limbs without the aid of science or medicine, then one ought to consider and attempt to explain why these things have never happened. (Anyone who doubts the impossibility of unassisted human flight is welcome to jump out a window.) There are numerous species capable of regeneration of entire limbs, but for some reason homo sapiens isn't among them. Does God love lizards more than he loves us? Is it really more important that a lizard grow an arm back than a human? If a human being loses an arm or a leg, why does nobody ever expect it to grow back on its own? Even if you seriously believe in the power of prayer, would you be at all surprised if a billion people all prayed for one severed limb to grow back, and it didn't? Are there any Christians willing to volunteer to have a limb hacked off just to give God a great chance to prove me wrong? ...No? No takers on that?

It should be clear by now that the phrase "with God, all things are possible" is an incomplete statement at best. Even if it is factually true, the reality is that, even if God can do literally anything, the simple truth is that in reality he seems entirely unwilling to do a great many things, especially those things which we would consider impossible in the physical world. The second part of that statement renders the first part irrelevant. Perhaps there are those who somehow manage to take comfort in the idea of a God who is omnipotent in theory only. I am not among their number.

So, for the sake of intellectual honesty, I propose we edit Matthew 19:26 so that it conforms a little more closely to reality:

5 Ugliest Cars On Sale Today

Automotive design is a tricky thing. Apart from being a completely subjective matter, the design of a new car's exterior has to consider many different factors, from efficiency to beauty to simplicity to brand awareness. Very few people would buy a car which they did not believe was at least acceptably attractive to look at, if not absolutely stunning. 
Not every manufacturer gets it right though; sometimes car design goes horribly, horribly wrong. Here are the five ugliest cars you can buy in the US right now.

5 - The Nissan Juke

I prefer to call it the "Joke," because I feel like it was designed as a total goof somewhere in the Nissan design department, but somehow it was accidentally put into production. I suppose in the inundated "crossover" market it's difficult to make your product stand out, but there has to be a better way than making it look like this mongrel. For as little as $19,990, you too can drive around in a vehicle which is not spacious, fast, impressively efficient, or attractive.

4 - The Cadillac CTS Coupe

For some reason Cadillac decided that they weren't content with Florida pensioners being the only ones even slightly interested in purchasing their vehicles, so they asked their design department to get rid of any instrument capable of producing anything but a straight line. Now Cadillacs are hip, totally cool cars that everyone wants! Actually now they're just pointy messes instead of huge floaty boats. The worst offender is this, the CTS Coupe, mostly because the back half of it looks like they haven't finished designing it. I don't think I've ever seen a rear quarter-panel that big on any motor vehicle. If your favorite geometric figure is the rectangle, $38,715 will grant you the ability to drive around in one.

3 - The Hyundai Veloster

This really is a shame, because Hyundai seems to be on the right track with a lot of their cars these days. The Genesis is fairly impressive, for example. This though, this thing is simply inexcusable. It wouldn't be so bad if you never walked around the back of it. The picture doesn't really even do it justice; you need to see one of these mutations in person to take in just how staggeringly inelegant the rear half of this machine is. I think they've also reached bold new heights in terrible hatchback design; not only is the rear window about 8 inches high, but the whole hatch itself doesn't even begin until about 3 feet off the ground. There's also the name, "Veloster," shamelessly borrowing the completely faddish "-ster" suffix which you might remember from other such successful ventures as Napster, Friendster, and Netflix' ground-breaking Qwikster service. At just $17,300, you can't afford not to show people how much you don't value beauty in the world.

2 - The Porsche Panamera

I expect better than this from the Germans, really. First of all, I completely fail to understand the need for a 911 that holds 5 people, so really this car should not even exist. I would be much less angry about its existence if it didn't look like a distorted, diseased version of Porsche's iconic sports car. It is massively long - 16 feet - and just unbalanced and awkward from every possible angle. Just like the Cayenne SUV models, they've desperately tried to make it look like a 911, which is doesn't. Aston Martin have proven with their Rapide that it's possible to make a beautiful 4-door sports car. Porsche have proven that they don't really know how to design a car with more than two doors. It would be perfectly fine if they stopped trying. It'll cost you $75,850 to cruise around in this vomit-inducing gargoyle.

1 - The Toyota Prius 

 

The Prius is probably my least favorite car in the entire world, I happily confess. Everything about it infuriates me. It has the sex appeal of a rotting skunk carcass. It's the farthest thing from a driver's car that money can buy. It was conceived and designed by incredibly boring people and is bought and driven by even more boring people. Wonky and offensive from every angle, it puts efficiency ahead of style. Of course it fails at being everything it wants to be; there are smaller cars which get better mileage, electric cars which use no petroleum at all, and almost everything is more green to build and recycle than these abominations with their high tech batteries. Perhaps some of that could be forgiven if it just looked like a normal car. Not even a pretty car. Just something that wasn't doodled by a 5 year old. The Prius tries to save the Earth while being a horrible scourge upon it. If you're an incredibly uninteresting person with $24,000 and no concept of style or taste, run to your nearest Toyota dealer.