Swedish human rights activist Anna Ardin is glad Julian Assange is free.
But the claims she has made about him suggest she would have every reason not to wish him well.
Ardin is fiercely proud of Assange’s work for WikiLeaks, and insists that it should never have landed him behind bars.
“We have the right to know about the wars that are fought in our name,” she says.
Speaking to Ardin over Zoom in Stockholm, it quickly becomes clear that she has no problem keeping what she sees as the two Assanges apart in her head - the visionary activist and the man who she says does not treat women well.
She is at pains to describe him neither as a hero nor a monster, but a complicated man.
Well naturally, I think that’s the entire point of such tests, is it not? Entertain me for a minute, please:
First of all, you would agree that you can aggregate clusters of people based on how each answer a variety of probing questions, right?
Naturally, one must say, “yes, of course.”
To which the next question is, “So once you’ve arranged clusters of similar responses under banners, how can you interpret those results?”
Well once you actually pool a group of people into these boxes and see where these subsets are, you can then analyze these population subsets further, right? To which most would say, “of course. Scientists do this all the time.”
… And if those subsets are analyzed and their commonalities generalized, what would be the problem with that?
… To which any reasonable person would say, “Nothing, really, except for how that may impact edge-cases,” which is fair.
Now those clusters coalesce and find community with each other and reflect, “Hey wow, yeah I can totally relate to that, too!” It’s kind of remarkable to see.
The only substantive arguments that I’ve seen made – and the only “debunking” aspects to this test revolve around veracity and validity – which is understandably concerning. But let’s unpack that: Do the results bear repeatability, and do what the results say reflect the reality of who that person is?
Edit: I should say there is legitimate concern that the overlap can lead to crossover into other categories quite easily.
This is of course difficult because a lot of people get some things wrong about said tests: These tests are not immutable. People are fluid; they can change. Moreover if you take the test when not at your emotional and cognitive baseline with average sleep, average temperament, and no major life events influencing this, then of course that will change from when these are not accounted for. Similarly, some people struggle to take the test honestly: They respond with whom they want to be as opposed to who they are. In this case, sometimes it’s good to take the test side-by-side with a loved-one who knows you intimately and can see you from the outside-looking-in. Some answer candidly but get results they don’t like. Reality contradicts who they want to be. So they get upset.
All of these are of course suggestive that it’s not a one-size-fits-all test and should be taken with a grain of salt but the vast majority of criticism resides under user error and a misunderstanding of the test’s objectives.
At this point I can only speak for myself, but it’s a harmless test that impacts nobody else and it was deeply, emotionally revealing for me. I’ve truly never felt more understood in my whole life and my wife looked at it confirmed every piece of it while her own test reflected her to a T.
Now I’m a non-religious trained Engineer who pushes away superstition and things like astrology, balks at homeopathy and pseudoscience and broscience alike but I’m telling you, there’s something worthwhile here, even if science hasn’t sufficiently shined a light onto what.
Now if I missed anything, please, by all means.
I’m not going to replay an ontological debate that has been happening in the fields of sociology and psychology for decades with an engineer on the internet, who claims his own rationality a bit too hard. MBTI is considered pseudoscience because of its weakness against proper scientific validation processes, as well as its lack of support among both practitioners, theorists and researchers in the academic circles.
But to be clear, just because knowledge isn’t scientific doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value, there are tons of example like that that we use every day. The main issue I have with MBTI is that it takes the appearance of scientific knowledge, which I find deceitful and thus suspicious.
I’m aware i’m cherry picking here.
They do, with strict guidelines about how they can strictly control the context to eliminate bias and gaming (as much as they can anyway).
I could very well be reading this incorrectly but are you saying that veracity and validity are known concerns and then follow that up with “Can we verify? Are the results useful?”
I wouldn’t consider restating the questions that represent the known concerns as unpacking said concerns.
Genuine question, what would you consider to be the test’s objectives ?
Thanks for the fair comment. Would you mind elaborating on “control the context to eliminate bias and gaming” under this situation?
To your second point, yeah I could’ve made that more clear. At that point in my comment I was still unpacking what veracity and validity could mean in the context of a personality test. For example, it’s hard to discuss repeatability in the context of personality that can change under life circumstances. If you take the most reputable personality tests out there (and they’re all with a grain of salt), they will of course be impacted if you take it, for example, the day after your mother dies. Or you are exhausted from an 18 hour shift. Or you just had a newborn child, etc. These are more extreme examples just to convey the idea. Naturally one can say, “well of course if you choose the same answers and your personality is consistent, then yes the test itself will be repeatable.”
For the same reason people will say, “But (scientific) polls of elections aren’t accurate!” it’s because they view them as predictive and immutable when they, like personality tests, are explicit snapshots in time.
The more substantive question to me is: do the questions asked by this test sufficiently cover most aspects of one’s personality? That’s hard to say. Obviously the more questions asked, the more granular the results can become, so I’ll grant that.
This relates to your final point: What would I consider to be the test’s objectives? For me, it’s an exercise in gleaning insight into one’s own personality; to help with reflection and introspection. To identify your strengths and weaknesses. In some sense, to provide some identity. I can’t tell you how I felt understood. I actually teared up while reading the analysis for the first time. As something of an outsider for much of my life it was like it filled in the missing pieces I long suspected and yet always doubted. Like I said I can’t speak for what others got out of the test, but it was the best therapy I ever received. (And for context, I read every other generalized group to make sure it wasn’t generalized astrological bullshit where every description could match every person, for which nothing came close).
For those who wish to try to get something out of these tests, I advise:
Take the test multiple times over weeks, months, years; see if you find a pattern or what comes up at your most neutral, baseline, normal, average state of mind on an average day in your life.
Ask yourself if it feels like this test is you, but also:
Ask close friends, loved-ones if they believe this is you (better yet, give them a control, then give them the actual results for you). Alternatively do it alongside your partner so you get external feedback.
Sure, apologies if you already know any of this.
As with other scientific fields, there are guidelines and processes in place to evaluate the structure and approach for research.
iirc you don’t technically have to adhere to them, but it will certainly be a point of industry and peer criticism if you don’t, sometimes leading to papers not being accepted for journals and other more esoteric consequences.
This is one of the reasons proper peer review is important.
A basic example would be picking from (or narrowing to) an appropriate subset of the population.
If you were trying to perform research with the goal of evaluating the population as a whole, running your experiment exclusively with women between the ages of 18-25 would immediately be picked up as a reason the results can’t be trusted (in terms of the stated goal).
A slightly less obvious example (for certain kinds of experiments) would be sentence structure and unconscious bias through contextual information.
When wording questions and examples it is easy to introduce a bias in the tone and word choice, which can affect the outcome of the research.
A real world example of the unconscious bias aspect is hiring discrimination : https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/the-resume-bias-how-names-and-ethnicity-influence-employment-opportunities
A simplistic summary is that there is a bias (unconscious or otherwise) against people with “ethnic” sounding names on their resume.
There is, of course, more nuance to it than that, but still.
This is much less cut and dry because sometimes the bias is the thing being studied and forms a part of the test, which is why when creating these kinds of experiments the process is carefully evaluated and revised, hopefully by multiple people.
Another one you touched upon already is context, the time of day, life events, general disposition etc.
Good test design will try to account for as much of this as possible (though it’s unlikely to remove it all entirely).
That’s not always strictly true, quality is also important and there are diminishing returns on quantity, the length of a questionnaire can sometimes have it’s own effect on the results for instance.
It sounds like this experience was/is of great use to you. I’ve heard similar things about ADHD and ASD diagnoses.
Finding your tribe/place sounds great.
What i would say is that people who don’t have this level of resonance with the results could well see it less favourably than you.
That isn’t necessarily because they performed the test (or interpreted the result) incorrectly, it could just mean less to them.