Amarna Forum

The nature of personality discourse online is of interest to me. Astrology, MBTI, enneagram, etc. These are scattered across various spheres of the internet, where you may have encountered them at some point. There are arguably worthwhile insights to be gained from a more esoteric consideration of any of these theories, which you are free to discuss. Here my intent is mostly to draw attention to this as a means of examining what I believe is a much more general pattern.

MBTI is the most popular on 4mex. You can take the test if you are interested in knowing your "type."



There are also some fairly active and thriving communities dedicated to this. If you don't want to read 300 pages of debate about whether Makima uses Extraverted Feeling or Introverted Intuition, a quick glance around may suffice to give you an idea of what is going on in these places.



Despite the apparent complexity of the lexicon, this of course bears very close resemblances to the kind of discourse that takes place in many other online spheres. Overall a common thread seems to be the desire to frame life with uncritical words and categories. There is no way to verify that these terms do in fact refer to things. But they do logically determine something, and have meaning in relation to each other, one may even live through them as a "dialectic" and have their entire experience of reality refracted through them accordingly. But the more seriously that such concepts are taken, the deeper one is drawn into the unreality that they delineate. An unreality that consists primarily of neurotic habits and social rituals.

The ostensible purpose of such personality psychoanalysis is to facilitate individuation, or a wider understanding of one's nature and ability to relate to others. But you only need to take a cursory glance around these places to see that this is not what is happening. People aren't being led into some flourishing of personal taste or creativity or curiosity about the world. They are learning how to more fully consummate their observations of the world with meme formats. The hope is that this will perhaps lead them to the promised land of having of a normal one, or at least make their affected schizo eccentricity more credible, because now they can label it and "gatekeep" others.

As such, through all of this, the true matrix of behavior (what leads one to fixation with something like personality typology in the first place) remains unexamined. Thus, what could rightfully be described as a genuine change of character or personality never actually seems to occur for these people. This is clearly attested to by the reality of what these communities are generally like (not very different from anywhere else).

Which brings me to the other point. If e.g. women actually do have deep ambivalence about desires to draw boys cutting each other up with knives, or sexual fascination with objecthead characters etc., these are clearly-enough articulated manifestations of cultural phenomena that one can examine their exact genealogy in media or other areas of life. Pointing us away from abstract meme dialectics and toward concrete causes and conditions of social life as it exists. We now have a starting point for inquiry and at least a rough idea of the nature of the issue in question.

Lastly, part of the reason that I bring this up is because of its direct relevance to the "psychology" polemic that keeps resurfacing. Namely the question of whether psychology is "real" or has any use. My feeling is that the actual issue does not concern psychology as such, but this much more universal and deeply-rooted tendency. The lack of desire or capacity for critical thought lends itself naturally to memeification or other forms of social stupidity. Of course this manner of thought also avails itself as a means of simply reframing (they're compensating/projecting, etc.) rather than trying to understand the thoughts, feelings or actions of others, and imagining that you're doing psychology. But it is still possible to seriously think about these things.

turnip Wrote:The ostensible purpose of such personality psychoanalysis is to facilitate individuation, or a wider understanding of one's nature and ability to relate to others. But you only need to take a cursory glance around these places to see that this is not what is happening. People aren't being led into some flourishing of personal taste or creativity or curiosity about the world. They are learning how to more fully consummate their observations of the world with meme formats. The hope is that this will perhaps lead them to the promised land of having of a normal one, or at least make their affected schizo eccentricity more credible, because now they can label it and "gatekeep" others.

This is the problem I have had with these as well. I would say in general, the line between where personality types, astrology signs and so forth becomes a prescription rather than a description is not clear. As such there is necessary skepticism that must be exercised. Even moreso when you meet people who are proponents of these systems. They are as much a tool to learn about themselves as they are a tool to control and steer others in favorable or predictable directions.

As far as accuracy goes, it all seems to largely be nonsense and a substitute for actually understanding another person. The only system which seems to have predictive or descriptive power in my personal experience has been the sun sign. I think the more complex it gets, the more it becomes malleable in addition to introducing confounding variables which throw off the "calculation" in significant ways without being aware of it.

I don't often encounter this stuff (if at all) but I have done the linked MBTI test a couple of times in the past. Just repeating it now I received the same category (and subcategory) as the last time I did it which leads me to trust the test as a means of categorisation, the foundation to this is at least semi-solid. 

Previous, 22nd of August 2022:



Current, 26th of March 2024:



The only part that has really changed is the Introversion-Extroversion scale as I have found normal people and academia to be even less interesting than I previously thought.

I've never bothered to read much into the characteristics of these personality types and I am wholly unread on the Zodiac, as said I've never really been interested in this stuff since most of it is low brow. I do also believe that you better understand people by interfacing with them yourself, as in with your existing knowledge without the hard filter of a test or matrix like the MBTI, a test where the people involved or invested in it are so for a degree of control over themselves and others (think "media literacy").

Now there's an unspoken bit of HBD in here (what makes you or predisposes you to a personality type?) and with most of the language around this I gather that most don't want to consider this too deeply and have in ways pre-empted it by seeing (or constructing) each personality type to be an equal spread of good, neutral and bad like a level 1 RPG character.

To continue this thread I do think it'd be interesting if everyone posted their results to this test. Critiquing and examining the results would help to show how relevant or accurate they may seem to each of us personally and then possibly as a group.

This is an excellent topic. Something I could genuinely write tens of thousands of words on - but, I may try to avoid this for now for lack of tiem.

Since MBTI and Astrology have been mentioned, it is worth calling attention to a few other similar things:

DSM-5 Diagnoses, Personality Disorder Clusters. (As undersctood by non-psychologists)
D&D Alignment
Hogwart's Houses
Political Alignment Squares
Alpha/Sigma/Beta/Omega

I'm going to advance five theses, entirely without argument/explanation --- perhaps as prompts for others to contend with/unravel. At the very least, all of them hold for Astrology, MBTI, and DSM-5 clusters. 

1.) All of these things are spiritually 'right wing' and male-coded. (...but isn't astrology a past-time of LW lesbians?)

2.) All such things are syncretic, and they exist only to be overcome.

3.) They hold little to no value for self-introspection. They may even hold negative value there (why?) - but they serve elementary social contextualization.

4.) Their primary function is not psychological but something mythological in the purest sense.

5.) They have both a mundane and esoteric utility. (...the esoteric utility is most easily seen with astrology: what is it that I speak of?)

Zed Wrote:4.) Their primary function is not psychological but something mythological in the purest sense.

I think this is the "trick" with sun signs and why they seem to work. It's something that alleges to connect to constellations, which are both physical and mythical. So it's information about what self-narratives you can most easily or convincingly embody. I think a lot of people find the information relatable because it connects something measurable about their person to myths (and there is some beyond-material "truth" to those connections).

Zed Wrote:1.) All of these things are spiritually 'right wing' and male-coded.

I'm guessing you said this because personality typologies encourage us to believe that each person is innately different from one another, but that's too simplistic. While celebrating difference, these models never admit that one person might be superior, and actually erase natural hierarchies by only focusing on differences that inhibit value judgements. We already have a wealth of common language to describe virtue and disposition, these new tools only confuse matters. Also, note that in addition to being mostly promoted by women, MBTI was created by two women.

I don't feel like re-hashing arguments over astrology, but MBTI itself also isn't completely arbitrary and at least measures something about one's personality. I have wondered about which variables in MBTI and other personality systems have predictive validity and what underlying effects they might more closely correspond to. For instance, we can confidently say that some people appear to be more extroverted than others, but maybe that's not necessarily an innate trait and it could instead be a familiar social role that's acted out. It doesn't seem like sensing, intuition, judging, perceiving, are real concepts, but they might be related to intelligence or gender somehow. Thinking/feeling is probably touching on something real, maybe related to Apollonian/Dionysian even though it doesn't fit perfectly. Again, I don't think designing a popular typology that would carry out the social function of MBTI would be useful, but it might be interesting to actually use models of personality to help understand how others behave (as OP points out, most MBTI enthusiasts are not really doing this).

Another thing to keep in mind is that these typologies are made less trustworthy due to their reliance on questionnaires. Many people are severely lacking in self-knowledge: "I am an empath." You can't trust the boxes they tick. This is also part of the reason why any online quiz has to focus on personality differences within a wholesome chungus framing in order for it to have any semblance of validity. If a quiz included some component of objective merit, respondents suddenly have an incentive to get a good score, and it would become like online IQ tests that are derided because you can easily game them or lie about your results. People even game online vocabulary or typing speed tests.

Zed Wrote:Alpha/Sigma/Beta/Omega

icycalm Wrote:340. Betas follow rules. Alphas make the rules. Sigmas laugh at rules. It is clear which group the philosopher belongs in, and in which he'd like to belong.

Only the male personality types and IQ tests are spiritually RW or Male, because they establish a clear hierarchy, they have innate value judgment embedded.

Whereas with the other stuff, even the most botched individual might end up being flattered by the results, I got INTP-A from the test, well, am I supposed to feel happy or upset at that result? Who am I superior to by getting that result? Well, you are superior to none, because every single character there is in the world, is valid. This is a ridiculous statement to me.

I need a test, an Aristotelian test that will demand information from me, the people around me and will deduce near absolute truths about me, I want the test to end with "You are a lazy, cowardly and envious individual, the rest of your character is pathetic too." Then I might feel something, then the test may hold some weight. A test with innate value judgments, a devotion to honesty.

Evaluation of an individual's character being left to the results of a test, a test that solely relies on information provided by that individual, is bound to be wrong, because it is impossible for one to have a perfect knowledge of oneself. Therefore a step in the correct direction would be a test that not only takes information from you but also from your friends and family too.

But the issue is people are kind to themselves, and even when they desire being deprecated they want themselves to be the ones doing it. However a completely logical test wherein the winner and the loser are apparent, deters people, this is the reason for the hostility against iq tests.

Even I, an individual who received praise for his intelligence since childhood, was afraid of taking it, because I knew that if I were to take it, I would be placed on the ladder of intelligence somewhere, where there are people above me. But despite resisting the urge for a while, I decided to take it on a day where I felt terrible and angry, and something had to be inflicted upon me, a powerful emotional(the result) and intellectual(the test) thing. So I took the test, and got a score of 129 IQ. This made me seethe so greatly that, I could do nothing but wander around the home with great steps. For one I was 10 IQ below icycalm(the only philosopher alive today), and the unwarranted belief, me being a genius, that I held, received a cannonball. This test really did hurt me, because it was honest, and there was no cope I could muster up against it, I went up against something that many people went up against and I was given a number. Brutally honest and straightforward.

icycalm Wrote:869. I've only taken one IQ test in my life, online, out of sheer curiosity to see what it's like, and what kind of score I would get. I got 139, in a test that defined a score of 140+ as "Genius". And yes, the irony wasn't lost on me.But to speak a serious word on the matter, the idea that these tests measure real intelligence is laughable. A huge part of intelligence is empathy, without which one cannot understand other lifeforms, i.e. psychology, i.e. all the coolest and deepest and most complex interactions in the universe. The only type of intelligence measured in IQ tests is the computational/mechanistic one that computers excel at, and the only thing proved by a score of 150 or 160 is that the person in question functions very similarly to a computer, i.e. that he's autistic, i.e. the exact opposite of intelligent: so stupid, that he requires drugs and institutionalization merely to survive everyday life (just as computers require practically everything they do to have been programmed).So empathy, inventiveness, courage, nobility, wisdom, magnanimity, audacity: none of these qualities are measured in IQ tests, all of which are absolutely necessary, and to an extreme degree, at the REAL heights of intelligence and genius, since for example a very intelligent man who is a coward is an impossibility.That is not to say that IQ tests are useless. They are great at measuring the basic computational power of a brain, without which real intelligence is also impossible, and my score of 139 was a good indication that my brain functions way above the average in this regard, as befits a true philosopher's (and note that that was my first time taking such a test, and I had no idea what to expect. I have no doubt that with a little practice I could improve it greatly; I just can't be bothered to do it, because there'd be no point to it. It's just a test after all, whose only function is to prove something, and I have no one left to prove anything to at this point, not even to myself, really.)

This above icycalm quote and my paragraph on intelligence might shed some light on why I picked the name 'Virtue'.(If I am lacking in computational power that is mostly genetic, I might improve virtue(manliness), which has been stifled by my environment)

So let me post my actual test results. List of things I have felt in my life.
A great joy after Anthony praised me.
Stendhal syndrome while listening to Tannhäuser Overture.
Tactile hallucinations while listening to rest of Wagner.
Crying while reading Grimm's tweets.
How can I feel, am I supposed to be taught how and what to feel? If I feel little am I inferior? Did Chat-GPT and other assortment of AI made me obsolete? After all we both are deceivers, imitators of humans. Am I simply an emotionally dull person, but if so why did I feel the greatest pleasure from a piece of music?

And the final question should I change, to become something else? None of these questions are rhetorical, I do not know the answer to them. Pure Reason.

a system is failing Wrote:I think this is the "trick" with sun signs and why they seem to work. It's something that alleges to connect to constellations, which are both physical and mythical. So it's information about what self-narratives you can most easily or convincingly embody. I think a lot of people find the information relatable because it connects something measurable about their person to myths (and there is some beyond-material "truth" to those connections).

Depth psychology is interesting. The ideas of men like Jung, Gebser, et al. The notion that modern consciousness (this would only make sense in relation to the West; this kind of psychoanalysis doesn't work on the Japanese, for reasons that warrant their own thread) has become excessively one-sided (rationalistic, mechanistic, etc.) and divorced from primordial magical and mythical strata of the psyche. Astrology is a very ancient practice and I'm interested to listen to anyone who believes they can make real use of it, though I am relatively unfamiliar with it myself. I welcome anyone to weigh in with their experiences.

This also ties into MBTI, since Jung was the source theory for it, and astrology was one of his areas of interest in looking for ways to transcend the "type problem" of modernity, via an expanded consciousness of the mythical/archetypal forms that he believed to permeate the world. I have my own issues with Jung, which mostly boil down to his lack of philosophical sophistication (which certainly bled over into MBTI and other derivatives of his ideas), but I don't completely hate this type of thing.

FrenziedFish Wrote:I don't often encounter this stuff (if at all) but I have done the linked MBTI test a couple of times in the past. Just repeating it now I received the same category (and subcategory) as the last time I did it which leads me to trust the test as a means of categorisation, the foundation to this is at least semi-solid. 

I will use this as an opportunity to further expound some points I didn't get to in the OP. Statistical constructs can still be built around bad categories. Yes, we can conceptualize and identify patterns of thought or behavior as being aggregated together. But once our categories are established, it still needs to be explained why and how these particular patterns are in fact aggregated together. Such inquiries only lead somewhere real if they can complete their own critique. Without this we are stuck in ungrounded reasoning and can argue for 200 pages about whether Venti uses auxiliary Feeling or Thinking.
 
When trying to ground things, the problem of vague concepts becomes apparent. Anything can be thought in them, so very little is thought through them. We could try to go the HBD route with MBTI, or try to establish some corresponding physiognomy of personality types, but does it enable us to engage in such lateral thinking?

Just to expand the scope of this a bit more, another example could perhaps be seen with e.g. generational theory. There's nothing wrong with saying that we hate millennials, as long as one recognizes that the real problem does not necessarily lie between the generations, but in the fact that generational cohorts can be linked to such unpleasant psychological profiles. There is no inherent reason for them to be so retarded. It shouldn't be the case that people are simply automatized products of history, even if that is what most in fact are. In this way we can avoid a picture of reality where the typology itself is some prime mover of history according its own logic.

Returning to the point I made earlier. There is a whole matrix of social thought and values which go unexamined from within the framework of these typologies, since they are what sustain the discourse in the first place. The whole normal-one-having/schizo psychologizing neurotic mode of thought. They have no way to self-critique, to exit the discourse. It should be no surprise, then, that there is no synthesis, and that enthusiasts generally do not experience any personal transformation.

Quote:To continue this thread I do think it'd be interesting if everyone posted their results to this test. Critiquing and examining the results would help to show how relevant or accurate they may seem to each of us personally and then possibly as a group.

I am INTJ or INFJ. I would guess that most members of this forum would get some variety of INxx, with some ENxx possibly (certainly all "intuitives"), and I could probably guess some posters' exact type. Here are global results from the official survey, if you are curious. 

Mason Hall-McCullough Wrote:Thinking/feeling is probably touching on something real,

Yes, and clearly it makes sense to use words like "thinking" and "feeling." Within MBTI they are posited as dialectical categories that psychologically exclude one another, hence why they characterize distinct types of personality. That could be the case, or it could be a category error; can't thinking and feeling mutually reinforce one another? Or is it actually specific manifestations of thought and feeling that are opposed?

Quote:1.) All of these things are spiritually 'right wing' and male-coded. (...but isn't astrology a past-time of LW lesbians?)
3.) They hold little to no value for self-introspection. They may even hold negative value there (why?) - but they serve elementary social contextualization.
4.) Their primary function is not psychological but something mythological in the purest sense.

My answer to (1) is more or less rooted in the idea that these systems classify and stratify social differences, not necessarily in a hierarchal way (but often weakly hierarchal). They are essentially good first approximations that can be taught to autists as a way to understand different kinds of people. The latter is also the reason that I say they are 'male coded' - but I could just as easily have said 'autist'-coded, and the essence of the claim would remain the same. It is a specific kind of male autist, often between the ages of 15 and 25 that develops the strongest fixation with these models.

Point of example, I've been in all-male spaces where I've seen people use "INFP posting..." as a kind of insult. This is typically a high midwit phenomena, but a rather common one

My answer to (4) is that these stratifications are used (in practice) not so much as to analyze trait concentrations and yield insightful deep psychological models - but to implicitly associate the (claimed) strengths with certain kinds of lives, modes of social interaction, and potential career paths. Note that, as commonly presented, these models try to minimize the weaknesses associated with trait concentrations. Each class is conceived as having an equal but mildly disjoint social value. Put another way, the conventional understanding of these models is one universally inclusive and reaffirming. In the case of the major MBTI websites, they goes so far as to suggest the careers that certain types excel in.

You can argue this is less true of DSM-5 personality clusters --- but how many nerdshit zoomers are proud of their self-perceived schizo traits (schizotypy being understood as a measure of their creativity). How many internet edgelords see narcissism and ASPD as positive empowering (perhaps aristocratic) traits? Same with BPD and Bipolar. I've even met women (cis and trans) that see dependent personality disorder as romantic. I could go on --- but I presume everyone here has seen this shit.

My claim is that this mythological function - the creation of archetypes of personalities and behaviors. That is, these yield a sterile set of generic castes/classes that people can fit themselves into to socially contextualize themselves. Could we take the Greek pantheon and create a personality tend that determines which deity they are most aligned with? Did the Greeks actually do a very similar thing in their usage of their pantheon as metaphors?

(Most people here would want to be [Lawful Evil] INTP Dark Triad ASPD-Slytherin Apollos, but will actually parse as  [Neutral Evil] INFJ Cyclothymic-Depressive-Slytherin Hermes)

Me personally? I'm totally an [Chaotic Neutral] ENFP Bipolar-Schizoid Ravenclaw Dionysus.

Hopefully you can see the function of myth I'm invoking - the capacity for us to graft ourselves onto an archetype, creating a vision of our most fully actualized potentialities. This is the hyperstitional game played, it is why people do these tests and also why they are implicitly a social exercise. We do them to share the results with others, to build collective visions how we fit into the lived social contexts. Yet this is also why these are largely games for children, or the developmentally stunted.

My answer (3) is almost entirely implicit in all of this - except for one point: The reason these things are negative for introspection is that introspection tends towards a process of differentiation, bifurcation, and division. It is the process of analyzing our nuances, and moving towards a self-understanding more intricate and fine. These constructions summarize and archetype, which is form of intellectual analysis running in the opposite direction. The latter serves for statistical analysis, but not the minutia of probing our internalized psyche.

Anyways, I hope someone here engages with the other claims:

Quote:2.) All such things are syncretic, and they exist only to be overcome.
5.) They have both a mundane and esoteric utility. (...the esoteric utility is most easily seen with astrology: what is it that I speak of?)

The nature of the esoteric utility is probably the most fun to consider. A hint: The esoteric (or even occult) utility requires both a subject and an interpreter, and that is why is best associated with astrology.

This is not right wing. This is a tool to delude yourself into thinking you know something new about yourself. Everything these tests tell you, you could with an honest eye tell more accurately yourself. So it is not a tool for introspection.

Niether is it a tool for understanding others, really, since it is not personal or individual and niether a real group. It falls back into the same discourse "which fruit am I?" bullshit that we've been trying to get away from. Yes it's a way to catogorize people into groups, like other rw thought is, but so is the endless gay alphabet+++ labels you can find.

It feeds on assumptions and is replicated as characters - memeing yourself into being a vampire because you got INTJ and the "INTJ stare" is funny until it's serious and some confused one makes it their gay little "identity". Whatever truths may hold, like being shy or outgoing, etc. can be observed easily without some silly system. The real benefits are of course everything that big five brought onto the table (being usable at work, therapy, etc.), but nobody wants that because it doesn't give you a type. It can be put into a bio, like pronouns and flags. It only has use for us as but a meme.

synesth Wrote:This is not right wing. This is a tool to delude yourself into thinking you know something new about yourself. Everything these tests tell you, you could with an honest eye tell more accurately yourself. So it is not a tool for introspection.

Niether is it a tool for understanding others, really, since it is not personal or individual and niether a real group. It falls back into the same discourse "which fruit am I?" bullshit that we've been trying to get away from. Yes it's a way to catogorize people into groups, like other rw thought is, but so is the endless gay alphabet+++ labels you can find.

It feeds on assumptions and is replicated as characters - memeing yourself into being a vampire because you got INTJ and the "INTJ stare" is funny until it's serious and some confused one makes it their gay little "identity". Whatever truths may hold, like being shy or outgoing, etc. can be observed easily without some silly system. The real benefits are of course everything that big five brought onto the table (being usable at work, therapy, etc.), but nobody wants that because it doesn't give you a type. It can be put into a bio, like pronouns and flags. It only has use for us as but a meme.

Should clarify --- I'm expressing how people use it, what they are looking for, not a claim to the value of the utility provided.

(03-27-2024, 11:55 AM)Zed Wrote: [ -> ]Anyways, I hope someone here engages with the other claims:

Quote:2.) All such things are syncretic, and they exist only to be overcome.
5.) They have both a mundane and esoteric utility. (...the esoteric utility is most easily seen with astrology: what is it that I speak of?)

The nature of the esoteric utility is probably the most fun to consider. A hint: The esoteric (or even occult) utility requires both a subject and an interpreter, and that is why is best associated with astrology.

Is it that the interpreter can easily manipulate the stupid subject of theirs who actually believes it? In any case, such utility doesn't impress me. Someone who would believe in something that Cicero debunked twenty one centuries ago isn't even worth my while. I can do better than that.

It’s interesting that Koreans are completely obsessed with this too. It seems like it has entered their mass consciousness in a way that it hasn’t yet in white countries. Except they use kpop idols as avatars for the types. It would be too easy to mass-program gooks with memes if anyone wanted too.

Aizen Wrote:Mankind has a low tendency to make analogies for everything. The idea of "we live in a simulation" is merely an analogy of our universe to a computer system and a modern analogy for Newtonian determinism. It shouldn't be surprising that, in a world where tech nerdoids try to create intelligence (a brain) through a series of ON and OFF states, this binary analogy would be also applied to psychology--especially considering that modern science does not recognize the possibility of consciousness arising from somewhere besides the brain.

Hegel is probably relevant here. Specifically in relation to the development of logic itself, and this being closely bound up with the evolution of Western consciousness. Surely this is part of what makes Westerners so odd, and their neuroses so distinct. Not just thinking in dualisms, but treating something like "personality" as if it were an object with specific determinations at a given point in time. Of course browns (and Koreans) also love meme babble and identity speak, but they also seem to experience it very differently, like a kind of village superstition where the words denote these vague, impersonal forces at work. Also regarding Hegel, I think that Whites have a unique potential for freedom of thought and conscious command of discourse, but if it isn't cultivated you still end up with things like this.

I don't think the issue is digital vs analog thinking, however, but the way that thought becomes an uncritical and ungrounded proxy for communal rituals. MBTI provides a vocabulary to talk about schizos vs normies, men vs women, incels vs sex havers, etc. within its dialectic. As such, it falls into the familiar templates (I'm sure astrology or DSM discourse is even more facile).
"Sensor normies will never understand the pain of being an intuitive INFJ schizo burdened with prophetic /x/ visions."
"But INFJ, sensors are good at things too, and all you do is sit in your room all day. You have to integrate your inferior Sensing so you can Self Actualize by going outside and Touching Grass."

If you understand that that whole matrix of values and distinctions is already retarded, this is an idiotic discussion. But how will they ever reach this conclusion on their own? The discourse is interminable even if there is never real progress. The other thing is that people do often try to argue the superiority of their "type," but there is of course no way to establish real superiority with bad concepts. Now to Zed's point:

Zed Wrote:My claim is that this mythological function - the creation of archetypes of personalities and behaviors. That is, these yield a sterile set of generic castes/classes that people can fit themselves into to socially contextualize themselves. Could we take the Greek pantheon and create a personality tend that determines which deity they are most aligned with? Did the Greeks actually do a very similar thing in their usage of their pantheon as metaphors?

5.) They have both a mundane and esoteric utility. (...the esoteric utility is most easily seen with astrology: what is it that I speak of?)

The nature of the esoteric utility is probably the most fun to consider. A hint: The esoteric (or even occult) utility requires both a subject and an interpreter, and that is why is best associated with astrology.

I think something very different is going on with paganism, as there the gods don't quite correspond to persons but to something like aesthetic or intensive states. I don't know that a real vital mythology could be created deliberately in such a way. As for popular typologies, they obviously have an appeal in providing a personality template for people, but in that way they are just grafted onto existing neuroses.

But this isn't wholly unrelated - symbols and names can have immense psychological power, and there is a perhaps a shamanic quality to the manner in which they can be used to guide a person to some kind of altered consciousness of their place in the world. Particular symbols seem to be interwoven with nearly inexhaustible unconscious meaning. There's mandalas:



And Land's numogram, more recently. 



It's something that has long interested people. If you e.g. draw or insert images of your life onto these, they often seem to take on a numinous quality. There are different ways to think about what's going on with that. Maybe it is all self-delusion (you'd need to be in the right frame of mind, of course). The "hyperstitional" interpretation, that they assemble (at the moment of revelation) an alien order of time is at least interesting. But it isn't clear how one should make use of any of this. I am not convinced that anything interesting could come of this unless the subject already knows how to think for themselves, either.

Zed Wrote:My claim is that this mythological function - the creation of archetypes of personalities and behaviors. That is, these yield a sterile set of generic castes/classes that people can fit themselves into to socially contextualize themselves. Could we take the Greek pantheon and create a personality tend that determines which deity they are most aligned with? Did the Greeks actually do a very similar thing in their usage of their pantheon as metaphors?

Greek gods were not metaphors.

obscurefish Wrote:Greek gods were not metaphors.

I don't think Zed is saying that. He's saying that Greek Gods may have been used as metaphors. There's an interesting discussion here about the original meaning or purpose of the gods and how that had been lost after centuries of degeneration and cultural/racial mixing, similar to how relatively recent concepts become polluted through the lens of the masses. Quantum mechanics is a good example. A term used to describe the discreteness of fundamental forces and particles is used by the masses as a catch-all for esoteric or cutting-edge science. In the context of this thread, its likely that DSM-5, MBTI, etc. are similarly used in a completely different way than they were intended, as Zed alludes to here:

Zed Wrote:DSM-5 Diagnoses, Personality Disorder Clusters. (As undersctood by non-psychologists)

Aizen Wrote:If you've taken a computer programming course, you probably know what I'm getting at already--that this is a "logical" way of classification, in that computer logic is based on 1s and 0s, ON and OFF, this or that. The human brain, sociosexual systems, etc., however, are not based off of digital logic, but rather are complex analog systems based off of "signal strength". Thus it can be correctly stated that these systems are pseudological means of classification (male-coded) and of a development of hierarchy (right-wing).

Effectively that is the heart of it, yeah. The only other point is the higher ends of leftist social/philosophical thought has been consistently and strongly opposed to rigid systems of classification as jointly repressive and authoritarian. Worth noting that Foucault himself was opposed to any attempt to classify individuals as gay or homosexual. A great deal of Deleuze and Guattari was similarly an attack upon the very need for psychological classifications. 

turnip Wrote:I think something very different is going on with paganism, as there the gods don't quite correspond to persons but to something like aesthetic or intensive states. I don't know that a real vital mythology could be created deliberately in such a way. As for popular typologies, they obviously have an appeal in providing a personality template for people, but in that way they are just grafted onto existing neuroses.

But this isn't wholly unrelated - symbols and names can have immense psychological power, and there is a perhaps a shamanic quality to the manner in which they can be used to guide a person to some kind of altered consciousness of their place in the world. Particular symbols seem to be interwoven with nearly inexhaustible unconscious meaning. There's mandalas:

It's something that has long interested people. If you e.g. draw or insert images of your life onto these, they often seem to take on a numinous quality. There are different ways to think about what's going on with that. Maybe it is all self-delusion (you'd need to be in the right frame of mind, of course). The "hyperstitional" interpretation, that they assemble (at the moment of revelation) an alien order of time is at least interesting. But it isn't clear how one should make use of any of this. I am not convinced that anything interesting could come of this unless the subject already knows how to think for themselves, either.

august Wrote:Is it that the interpreter can easily manipulate the stupid subject of theirs who actually believes it? In any case, such utility doesn't impress me. Someone who would believe in something that Cicero debunked twenty one centuries ago isn't even worth my while. I can do better than that.

Both of these are the good angles, and they both emerge when strong overloaded semantics are applied to coarse/primitive ideas. Hyperstition is more probably profitable though: PUA/Redpill culture introduced the simple 'alpha/beta' dichotomy to describe culture as it existed, but subsequently this dichotomy proceeded to shape and overwrite culture itself. In practice, this happens naturally when any idea or notion becomes so widely used and overloaded that it is forced to reify itself as a series of more finely defined terms. Beta, once impregnated, semantically expanded to encompass the whole domain of incel terminology - same story with alpha, maybe more so. In practice this is inevitable: All attempts at classification are overloaded by default, tending towards an inevitable bifurcation, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization as specificality erodes generality. 'Knowledge' always lies between the monadic ultra-generality of Everything (the universe, 'gnon') and the infinitesimal and localized singular of the Specific. Both extremes constitute non-knowledge, but the Landian perspective suggests that we're the trajectory is universally towards specialization.

Anyways, other examples of overloaded or impregnated ideas/memes: dimwit/midwit/topwit, gender stuff, etc.

Also, the interpretation/divination process august outlined is a specific example of how semantic overloading occurs - but it highlights the esoteric duality from another angle. These classification systems have a bidirectional relationship with their subjects, at once prescriptive and descriptive. The magic of someone of like Raniere comes in his ability to quickly produce a raw intuitive read of the subject, subsequently framing it into a diverse set of frameworks - selectively muting anything that did not serve his agenda. After that, the projection of hidden/arcane/esoteric knowledge (and the perceived power differential between practitioner and subject) allows the practitioner to recast the subjects identity on the resulting form, conditional only on the subject's perception of the power-differential.

Zed Wrote:Both of these are the good angles, and they both emerge when strong overloaded semantics are applied to coarse/primitive ideas. Hyperstition is more probably profitable though: PUA/Redpill culture introduced the simple 'alpha/beta' dichotomy to describe culture as it existed, but subsequently this dichotomy proceeded to shape and overwrite culture itself. In practice, this happens naturally when any idea or notion becomes so widely used and overloaded that it is forced to reify itself as a series of more finely defined terms. Beta, once impregnated, semantically expanded to encompass the whole domain of incel terminology - same story with alpha, maybe more so. In practice this is inevitable: All attempts at classification are overloaded by default, tending towards an inevitable bifurcation, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization as specificality erodes generality. 'Knowledge' always lies between the monadic ultra-generality of Everything (the universe, 'gnon') and the infinitesimal and localized singular of the Specific. Both extremes constitute non-knowledge, but the Landian perspective suggests that we're the trajectory is universally towards specialization.

This is good enough for an understanding of how memes or fiction become reality. If people are conscious enough of them, the personality "types" begin to take on a different kind of reality. As noted, this is similar to what happens with other kinds of discourse, e.g. memes about video games turning into how games are actually made. 

My question is whether this leads us anywhere good. Nick Land thinks this leads us to a fragmenting schizo hyperfuture. Once you accept that death and visible decay are some kind of generative vital force by themselves, pretty much anything goes. But it looks to me like things really just become more homogenized and retarded, and no one knows what they're doing because the underlying genealogy of the process is not being understood.



This is like a kind of conceptual trojan horse that just reinforces commonly-held delusions. "Autist" INTPs are missing out on the mythical zogworld "normal" life experience because they think and fantasize too much. This is attributed to dominant introverted thinking and repressed extraverted feeling. But in reality these people scarcely know how to think for themselves, and one doesn't need to speculate why, after a lifetime of roastie public education and immersion in nursing home niggercommunist culture, people start to believe that they are incapable of genuine human feeling. We can observe and specify how this happens. Science should be trying to grasp the universal within the particular, but before any of that, one needs to be looking at reality clearly.

For what it's worth: Myers Briggs, Socionics etc are misreadings and misapplications of original Jungian typology. They get the "stacks" wrong. Myers Briggs is not to be conflated with original Jungian typology itself. This was simply the first of many contemporary personality systems to misunderstand and fundamentally alter the work first presented in Jung's book "Psychological Types". Those systems (which Jung decried) are syncretized and generalized in the popular imagination of today.

One of the fundamental misunderstandings of Myers Brings was in changing the "stack" orientations to IEIE or EIEI. Akhromant (the only living authority on personality typology, whose blog you may want to look into for a deeper dive on this) talks about this at length. In a proper Jungian understanding the faculties are instead represented as: IIEE if one is a cognitive introvert or EEII if one is a cognitive extravert. The reason for this is that the first two letters are one's conscious side and the second two letters are the unconscious side. In the Myers Briggs misunderstanding of the system, a person's conscious and unconscious sides are both simultaneously introverted and extraverted. In Jung this is impossible and to suggest it is possible is to vandalize Jung's work. This is one of the fundamental reasons that virtually everyone is mistyped and fails to understand Jung's profiles.


It would be one thing to take Jung’s original ideas of personality types and say, “based on my understanding of myself, Jung would have been most likely to type me as this-or-that personality type”. Some people think they do this by taking one or two pages from his book that have been posted online, while ignoring his complete book. They think these brief descriptions by Jung of his pure types are "cognitive functions", a concept and term Jung never used. The reason they think this is that they are projecting Myers Briggs (or one of the other bastardized systems) back onto Jung's notes. Jung did not invent “cognitive functions” as pop psychology conceives of them. He never even used the phrase in "Psychological Types". Instead, he abstracted pure archetypal personality profiles. For instance, in proper Jungian typology a person would not be an "ESTP". Rather, they would be an "Extraverted Sensing type" which is an extraverted oriented perceiver most characterized by sensing and who most suppresses intuition. It could then be determined whether their sensing experience is most augmented by thinking or feeling.

Mbti adherents essentially think that our mental faculties are discrete physical entities that all affect us of their own volition based on their strength level. This is how the false category of "cognitive functions" is conceived of. But to his credit Jung never proposed anything like that. “Oh you have tertiary extroverted sensing but it is the strongest and is in a loop with your primary thinking”. This is not proper personality typology. For Jung a person is a total “senser”, or what have you, of some orientation [i or e] and the other faculties all support that disposition while subordinated to it. In other words, it is not a matter of “your sensing does this, your feeling is this strong” etc. It is: you are an extroverted senser. So your thinking, feeling and intuition are in service to extroverted sensing.


For the record, if the people in this thread who have typed as "INTP" feel that their answers were at all fundamentally meaningful on the test, then it is more likely that you are either an "INTJ" (Ti-Ni-Se-Fe) or "ISTJ" (Ti-Si-Ne-Fe). The reason for that is that "Introverted Thinking" is a "Judging function" in Jung. Myers Briggs mixed this up. The "Judging" ("rational") functions are the Thinking and Feeling functions and so if you are one of those you put a J at the end of your letters.

If you have any questions about this I would refer you to Akhromant's blog. I do not come here often and so will not likely see any replies to this post.