Personality and statism.

[Michael Fisher]

Here's one thing working against us.

The percentage of the population with strong statist tendencies according to personality is:

ISTJ
M - 16.4%
F - 6.9%
T - 11.6%

ISFJ
M - 8.1%
F - 19.4%
T - 13.8%

ESTJ
M - 11.2%
F - 6.3%
T - 8.7%

ESFJ
M - 7.5%
F - 16.9%
T - 12.3%

Total: 46.4%

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The percentage of the population with strong independent-minded tendencies according to personality is:

ISTP
M - 8.5%
F - 2.4%
T - 5.4%

ESTP
M - 5.6%
F - 3.0%
T - 4.3%

ISFP
M - 7.6%
F - 9.9%
T - 8.8%

INTP
M - 4.8%
F - 1.8%
T - 3.3%

INFJ
M - 1.3%
F - 1.6%
T - 1.46%

Total: 23.26%

Independent-minded personalities are outnumbered 2-to-1 among the average population. 

[Michael Fisher]

I'm still unsure about the other personalities though. More research is necessary.

[Michael Fisher]

I'm still unsure about the other personalities though. More research is necessary.

At this point, it appears that the other personalities have no strong leanings in either direction.

[eques]

I usually feel that if a conclusion bothers me, either the premises of that conclusion are incorrect or my premises are incorrect.

Empirically speaking, I've observed people who so closely identify with a personality test result that they begin to obsess over what types other people are, usually attributing their "opposite" type to people they don't like, whether or not that person actually is of that type.  One person even said something to the effect of "guilty until proven innocent."  What boggled my mind is that if this person then discovered that this other individual was not the type they initially assumed, but some other type instead, that that knowledge would somehow suddenly change their opinion of that person?

It's the whole "group association" thing again, and it gives me the heebie jeebies.  I don't like it when people start labeling others with the stereotypes of a group.  It's like people who think that the world is divided into Republicans versus Democrats.  If you're not one, you're the other, right?  I know people (both Democrats and Republicans) who can't begin to imagine that it would be possible to have a relationship with somebody of "the other side."

There was one post on one forum in particular that brought this to light especially.  I wrote a simple script that changed all instances of a MBTI type to a randomly selected ethnicity.  I personally think that it helps to bring to light the absurdity of using the MBTI (or any other such typing/grouping scheme) for serious application, such as what you seem to be trying to do.

The Dangers of Over-Typing -- written by me.

[Michael Fisher]

I usually feel that if a conclusion bothers me, either the premises of that conclusion are incorrect or my premises are incorrect.

...

It's the whole "group association" thing again, and it gives me the heebie jeebies.  I don't like it when people start labeling others with the stereotypes of a group.

Intuitive feelings are great, but "bothersome" or "heebie-jeebie" feelings do not refute science. Science is falsifiable and inexact inasmuch as it applies to reality, but it is still usefully accurate for many applications.

I understand the dangers of typing people. Most people seem to understand the dangers. If you cannot control yourself from becoming biased toward certain personalities, or if you see me doing it, then by all means, ignore the science. But if you are offended by the mere act of being "typed" as an INFP, or seeing others harmlessly "typed" with a personality, then you're too sensitive and need to get over it and focus on logical, scientific refutation. I'm a libertarian type of person; so what?

Genetic influence on personality is sometimes quite substantial and cumulatively influential as one matures (McCartney, Harris, & Bernieri, 1990; Sherman et al., 1997). It is a basic human trait which defines natural tendencies that may vary widely depending on the individual.

Experience, however, and especially pain, has a very large impact on the individual?probably much moreso than personality in certain circumstances. This is true because the core memory of a psychic trauma, for example, is exact, detailed, and extremely persistent (Figley, 1985). This is also true because the cultural experiences of one's upbringing are a very powerful influence on the individual (von Mises 1949, 877).

It is my conclusion that people are individuals shaped only by experience and personality. This is why it is feasible to use personality as a method of discovering people who are somewhat more likely to join the liberty movement, though it will be inexact and falsifiable.

Which people have had the experiences which make them more likely to be pro-liberty or independent-minded? Victims of government? Which people have personalities which make them more likely to be independent-minded? Prisoners and other rebels? More research needs to be done. Dismissing the entire science of personality based on feelings is not an option.


References:

Figley, C. R. (1985). Trauma and its wake. UK: Psychology Press.

McCartney, K., Harris, M. J., & Bernieri, F. (1990). Growing up and growing apart: a developmental meta-analysis of twin studies. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 11.

Sherman, S. L., DeFries, J. C., Gottesman, I. I., Loehlin, J. C., Meyer, J. M., Pelias, M. Z., et al. (1997). Behavioral Genetics '97: ASHG State. American Journal of Human Genetics, 60, 10.

von Mises, L. (1949). Human action; a treatise on economics. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press.

[Michael Fisher]

I just experienced a personality conflict with an SJ and it helped me figure out more about how they work. An SJ tends to dismiss even the possibility of a different theoretical reality than the one in which they live. The world and the government are the way they are. Radical theoretical alternatives are irrelevant. SJs tend to live harmoniously within whatever societal framework exists, and they tend to accept it the way it is.

In other words, an SJ's individual culture tends to be defined by whatever social framework exists. If government exists, then an SJ will live by the law. If no government exists, then an SJ will live by the majority's cultural standards wherever they live.

This could help to explain a free society to someone with an SJ personality.

[Michael Fisher]

Many nurses are SFJs, and that's probably why so many support the state. (Refer to those who run "Operation Politically Homeless" stands who have discovered this strange pattern.)

If my research is correct, then most people in jail are ISTP, ESTP, ISFP, INTP, or INFJ. If this theoretical prediction is true, then the case for recruiting existing outlaws is made even stronger.

There's only one way to find out.

[Michael Fisher]

Britain to ban disobedient personalities?

This story is from the economist, yet parts of it seem uncredible.  ???

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The Economist: Liberalism and neurology - Free to choose?
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8453850

Dec 19th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Modern neuroscience is eroding the idea of free will

IN THE late 1990s a previously blameless American began collecting child pornography and propositioning children. On the day before he was due to be sentenced to prison for his crimes, he had his brain scanned. He had a tumour. When it had been removed, his paedophilic tendencies went away. When it started growing back, they returned. When the regrowth was removed, they vanished again. Who then was the child abuser?

His case dramatically illustrates the challenge that modern neuroscience is beginning to pose to the idea of free will. The instinct of the reasonable observer is that organic changes of this sort somehow absolve the sufferer of the responsibility that would accrue to a child abuser whose paedophilia was congenital. But why? The chances are that the latter tendency is just as traceable to brain mechanics as the former; it is merely that no one has yet looked. Scientists have looked at anger and violence, though, and discovered genetic variations, expressed as concentrations of a particular messenger molecule in the brain, that are both congenital and predisposing to a violent temper. Where is free will in this case?

Free will is one of the trickiest concepts in philosophy, but also one of the most important. Without it, the idea of responsibility for one's actions flies out of the window, along with much of the glue that holds a free society (and even an unfree one) together. If businessmen were no longer responsible for their contracts, criminals no longer responsible for their crimes and parents no longer responsible for their children, even though contract, crime and conception were ?freely? entered into, then social relations would be very different.

We, the willing
For millennia the question of free will was the province of philosophers and theologians, but it actually turns on how the brain works. Only in the past decade and a half, however, has it been possible to watch the living human brain in action in a way that begins to show in detail what happens while it is happening (see survey). This ability is doing more than merely adding to science's knowledge of the brain's mechanism. It is also emphasising to a wider public that the brain really is just a mechanism, rather than a magician's box that is somehow outside the normal laws of cause and effect.

Science is not yet threatening free will's existence: for the moment there seems little prospect of anybody being able to answer definitively the question of whether it really exists or not. But science will shrink the space in which free will can operate by slowly exposing the mechanism of decision making.

At that point, the old French proverb ?to understand all is to forgive all? will start to have a new resonance, though forgiveness may not always be the consequence. Indeed, that may already be happening. At the moment, the criminal law?in the West, at least?is based on the idea that the criminal exercised a choice: no choice, no criminal. The British government, though, is seeking to change the law in order to lock up people with personality disorders that are thought to make them likely to commit crimes, before any crime is committed.

The coming battle
Such disorders are serious pathologies. But the National DNA Database being built up by the British government (which includes material from many innocent people), would already allow the identification of those with milder predispositions to anger and violence. How soon before those people are subject to special surveillance? And if the state chose to carry out such surveillance, recognising that the people in question may pose particular risks merely because of their biology, it could hardly then argue that they were wholly responsible for any crime that they did go on to commit.

Nor is it only the criminal law where free will matters. Markets also depend on the idea that personal choice is free choice. Mostly, that is not a problem. Even if choice is guided by unconscious instinct, that instinct will usually have been honed by natural selection to do the right thing. But not always. Fatty, sugary foods subvert evolved instincts, as do addictive drugs such as nicotine, alcohol and cocaine. Pornography does as well. Liberals say that individuals should be free to consume these, or not. Erode free will, and you erode that argument.

In fact, you begin to erode all freedom. Without a belief in free will, an ideology of freedom is bizarre. Though it will not happen quickly, shrinking the space in which free will can operate could have some uncomfortable repercussions.

[error]

Any excuse for more power is good enough for a government.

[KBCraig]

The Matrix. Revisited.

It still sucks.

[Tom Sawyer]

Some examples: (personalitypage.com)

Went to the site you listed and see that the same folks have this website

http://www.chartplanet.com/

I was interested in this personality testing stuff, but I've a feeling it is not much above Astrology.

I have a couple of friends that are into the Myers-Briggs... I've always wondered if it is valid.

[error]

Eh, I get a different result every time.

[Tom Sawyer]

Eh, I get a different result every time.

Well you are obviously a psycho.