Your personality?

[Adrianis]

In other words, you're against the tests and not the terms themselves. The tests merely measure what you're more inclined to do in certain social situations, hence the percentages at the end. What do you consider the percentages to mean?

The terms and percentages are inadequate in the same way - they are both attempts to assign a discrete value to an analogue system. The terms are necessary for us to discuss general themes rather than the specifics, but that's quite common and not really a problem for me.

To say I'm against the tests may be a little strong, too, I don't want you to think I am against research in this area, any progress is progress right? It's just that the test is a tool that can be interesting, but can be misused in the same way that IQ tests have been in the past. The authors of the theory stated ethical guidelines for it's usage, and I have personally observed these guidelines not being followed because the people using the results of the tests did not understand the theory and the ethical considerations.

Continual action implies a pattern, and, obviously, these patterns provide insight and knowledge on human action. We would not be able to provide descriptions on the personality types if these things could not be clearly and continually observed in the first place. Even if the conclusion is merely an assumption, shouldn't it stop being an assumption upon agreement between the observer and the one being observed? Union should lead to full understanding, surely? I wouldn't think that we would forever remain ignorant of our own selves (singular).

I don't believe that a union between the observer and the one being observed would automatically lead to full understanding, because the means of communication between them (and us, as a third party observer to the research) is going to be language, and language is to some degree inherently ambiguous. Something as complex as personality needs something more than that to ensure accuracy. Patterns can give us a glimpse of insight, but again we can only observe certain outward actions, not the thought process running behind it.

Continual action can only be observed through history. From which you'll find many patterns in the way humans interact with each other and the way an individual would act on their own. Would it be any wonder why something like religion would be picked as a prime example for stating obvious human patterns? (Could you not even predict what would happen by merely mentioning the word "religion" in these forums, though i'm not desiring any discussion on religion?)

Patterns can be observed in the way humans interact with each other and the world, yes, but as with my above statement the actual observations we can make are extremely limited even in direct observation of a living person. Consider how reliable our sources actually are in terms of peoples personalities, derived from a loose series of recorded actions from even 100 years ago, let alone 500, 1000 etc. We can make assumptions, but there are few facts to be had.

Whether or not major religions created a series of common interactions, or were created by a series of common interactions is up for debate, but personally I do not see it as a useful subject for exploring personalities in history, only social interaction.

Fully understanding the human mind may touch on areas beyond determining personalities, so i wouldn't be inclined to admit that as a necessity for describing, let alone predicting, human action.

Human actions are observable, the personalities that contribute to the action are not - they must be derived from the action, and I consider this test to be frightfully incapable of doing this, due to the reasons Chronofox refers to.

While it may be true that truth contains no falsehoods, and that two contradicting things cannot be both true at the same time, i wouldn't be so quick as to pass off truth--albeit, doing so in this case may be a red herring. In fact, thinking about it more, i'm inclined to retract my previous statement and say that people do not change at all.

I think your taking it too far here. It is clear that personalities can be radically changed by extremely traumatic events. I appreciate you may mean, changing of their own accord, but I think all changes to personality, emotion etc are always affected by environment, so suggesting that there is no change at all -from birth til death, regardless of events during life - is inaccurate.

There is one thing i've observed across every human being, and that is all humans act logically. As simple and as counter-intuitive as that may sound, i've found it to be consistent. However, this is not to say that what they did at the time was in fact logical, but that to themselves at least it was logical and that every action is driven by desire; even if their response is, "I don't know," when asked, "Why did you do that?" As i see it, all actions to have ever been committed by humans have spawned from this one thing. While it may allow for many possibilities, that is, many actions, it most certainly isn't an infinite amount of possibilities.

Therefore, i would argue all the things that a human is capable of doing has either already been done or is merely trivial in difference.

Fair enough. I can't account for your experiences, but mine do not suggest logic is being used at every step of human action. Logic is a very specific structure which draws a conclusion from a set of premises, but the premises must be complete enough for a final conclusion to be arrived at with absolute certainty. I frequently observe people misusing this structure, as well as people using it accurately, but only during discussions - there may be some internal premises being considered for other physical actions, perhaps subconsciously, but I do not know what they are, so I can't comment on whether the action itself is logical or not. Unfortunately, I don't think you can either.


Edit: Sorry for the wall, guys