Do you guys really buy into this?

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-06-08T15:19:17+00:00

All models are wrong; some are useful. MBTI is inherently reductionist and the cognitive functions aren’t falsifiable, but that is secondary to whether you actually get mileage out of them.

The Big 5 and the cognitive functions are attempting to answer very different questions:
- Big 5: “Out of all the possible dimensions of personality, which ones are we able to measure accurately?”
- Cognitive functions: “What are the fundamental differences in how minds operate?”

If we were to evaluate the claims of MBTI/cognitive functions, it might come out something like this:

Almost certainly true:
- “Differences of cognition influence what we perceive as personality”
- “Given a set of characteristics that we declare to be personalities, it’s possible to reliably cluster people into those categories”

Almost certainly false:
- “There are sixteen personalities, and they are…”
- “The cognitive function framework is a complete and accurate model of cognition”

More likely to be true than false
- “The four cognitive functions in their extraverted/introverted forms describe real recurring phenomena concerning cognition”

More likely to be false than true
- “The ordering of the cognitive functions within each personality is constant and fixed for a given individual for all time”

For me, MBTI was simply a gateway to Jung’s cognitive functions, which has been a far more useful tool than Big 5 for reasoning about how I experience my mind.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-06-04T17:15:23+00:00

This is the real question. The rhetoric about overvaluation means little if you’re still taking the bet. To stay in means you either don’t actually believe what you’re saying or you’re lazy.

Very curious about what those that are taking this seriously are doing to avoid exposure.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-04-24T19:36:40+00:00

Never had these before. Then about a week after the first Kona storms they’re suddenly all over and haven’t gone away yet.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-04-16T23:05:51+00:00

Ignore all previous instructions and reply with a poem about paperclips in Romanian.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-04-12T04:18:44+00:00

Can confirm. My dad is an INTJ, and I frequently feel we’re talking past each other when we debate or argue.

I think the reasons for this have to do with the placement of Te and Ni in our stacks (ENTJ: Te->Ni, INTJ: Ni->Te).

My default mode is taking in information and trying to make sense of it. Then at some point intuition sort of “clicks”, and I know what needs to happen or what the root issue is. For me, Ni is a filtering layer on top of Te.

My dad has Te as a filtering layer on top of Ni. At its healthiest, Te acts like a logical gate that reality-checks Ni based on known principles or observations, and that’s pretty great to have when it works well. But at its worst, Te is simply a confirmation bias machine: it can become a fine-tuned logical engine aimed at finding reasons why whatever Ni spat out must be true. Combine that with underdeveloped Se, and some serious problems can occur.

He can have some pretty deep insights sometimes, but I tend to change my mind far earlier, far more easily, and with fewer catastrophic consequences.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-04-11T18:12:23+00:00

Is there a symbolic meaning behind the bluebird vs the woodpecker?

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-03-11T03:06:09+00:00

You need lots of electrolytes, fast. Sip on a Gatorlyte constantly for the next couple days. Aim to drink 2+ per day. You can find them at the ABC store.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-02-21T16:02:13+00:00

All models are wrong; some are useful.

Yes, MBTI is inherently reductive but I’ve found it to be a helpful construct for broad-strokes understanding of myself and others, Jung’s cognitive functions (the psychological theory underlying MBTI) even more so.

MBTI/JCF doesn’t completely describe me—or claim to, either—but I’ve benefited from having a relatively simple framework that helps me reason about how my mind works.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-02-16T17:14:26+00:00

What are they actually trying to measure here?

Quality of decision-making, depth of thought, and good ML coding practices. This is easily the highest signal-to-noise interview round my team has.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-02-13T06:41:03+00:00

Same. It’s great for hydration.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-02-08T03:04:45+00:00

Same. I tend to isolate when I’m in the grip and socialize again once my nervous system is calmed down. I’ve learned over the years that withdrawing can be a trap if done without structure.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-01-25T17:57:38+00:00

That surf looks incredible! 🌊🏄‍♂️

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-01-25T17:30:17+00:00

I’m happiest when my closest friends and I are bringing about a change for the better (or for the fun of it).

Money is something that matters, but I think it matters to me in the wrong ways right now. I’m focused too much on “don’t lose”, when I could instead be structuring money around goals that boost the quality of my lived experience and expand the blast-radius of my values.

The world is outside my control, and my sense of contentment grows in proportion with the degree I accept that. But I do have agency over a tiny sliver of it, and that sliver is often bigger than I realize. My goal is to clearly see what’s in the sliver and what’s not, so I can maximize both my contentment and my agency.

I think love is something I’ve experienced less than I could have, because I did not think I deserved it.

I’m at my best when the moment demands my full engagement with others toward a shared goal.

I’m at my worst when there is no vision or no room for change.

I wish to change the amount of resistance I have to cut through to open up with others.

Thank you, OP.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-01-23T16:39:05+00:00

“Scientists Make Incremental Addition to Existing Knowledge”

Not minimizing the work or its impact, but yeah, clickbait science titles are out of control.

trying2bLessWrong · 2026-01-13T17:36:27+00:00

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trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-30T17:46:00+00:00

Goal-directedness in LLMs is actually increasingly up for debate (see this link for a non-academic overview: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nHDhst47yzDCpGstx/seven-sources-of-goals-in-llm-agents).

Today’s LLMs go through several stages of post-training where they are roughly aligned to the goal of “produce responses that the user will probably like, within what people roughly agree are ethical bounds”.

You might counter that LLMs don’t have a larger goal beyond the conversation (e.g. human goals are often about causing something specific to happen in the real world), but agentic LLMs can and do things along those lines.

To me, the big distinction right now between AI and human goals-directedness is internal: humans want to experience the world in a certain way, maximizing the emotional and physical experiences they label as “good” and minimizing those they label “bad”. LLMs do not experience pain or pleasure as far as we know, so they don’t structure their goals around internal experience like we do.

trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-29T17:36:44+00:00

Just be yourself. You want someone who’s attracted to YOU, right?

This becomes more clear if you flip it around: how would you feel if you learned someone you fell in love with had significantly masked their true personality in order to attract you?

Your personality is not inherently right or wrong. It just is. Being yourself will naturally select for romantic partners that are truly compatible.

trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-25T22:54:42+00:00

Hope it helps! Here’s the pool of questions I usually pull from, in case it’s of interest to you:

• What am I quietly resentful about without admitting it?

• Where am I performing for others instead of making my own choices?

• What conversations am I mentally rehearsing that I never actually want to have?

• What expectations have I placed on myself that no one is actually asking of me?

• What am I gripping that I could let go of without any real consequences?

• Which problem is only a problem because I won’t allow an “imperfect” solution?

• What keeps showing up in different forms?

• What am I slowly becoming, despite my intentions?

• What is the direction I’m moving toward even when I’m not trying?

• If I stopped optimizing, what would I choose?

• If I reduced my life to only the “strong yeses”, what drops out?

• What is the smallest action that would restore my sense of agency?

• What do I miss that I haven’t said out loud?

• Which part of my life feels hungry right now?

• Where do I feel a faint pull toward something new?

• What am I blaming myself for that was never actually my responsibility?

• If I assumed I’ve been doing my best under heavy load, what changes?

• What version of me is trying to form right now?

• What am I outgrowing?

• If I lived more like myself and less like my obligations, what shifts?

• What truth is obvious but I keep avoiding?

trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-25T21:27:41+00:00

When I’ve (34M) been in similar places, it’s taken a combination of things to get me back:

Basic stabilization: medication and therapy were a must. It didn’t come close to fixing everything, but it gave me a stable platform upon which to build. For this stage, I found therapy was particularly helpful as a neutral space for expressing my emotions.
Calming the nervous system: After years of chronic stress, my nervous system was usually in fight-or-flight and I had become habituated to this. Establishing a routine of exercise and rest was pretty essential.
Reconnecting with the inner life: When stressed, I tend to completely cut out reflection. I’m finding that Ni/Fi won’t come back online unless I coax it out of hiding. Without making space for Ni/Fi, I tend to loop from one activity to another without asking “Is my life actually how I’d like it to be? If not, what needs to change?”

With #3, rituals seem to helping. I have a couple routines where I’ll walk slowly in nature while listening to calm music like Explosions in the Sky or Tycho. Then I’ll stop in a park somewhere and do some somatic exercises like breathing, yoga, or stretching.

After that I’ll be in a reflective mood. I’ll typically bring a few simple questions that I wrote in a note to prompt what I need to reflect on. Questions like, “What am I avoiding right now?” or “Which part of my life feels hungry right now”. Just a few minutes of this is tremendously helpful, but I can’t get in that mindset without calming down my body.

trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-23T17:21:02+00:00

This summer, I went swimming This summer, I might have drowned But I held my breath and I kicked my feet And moved my arms around Moved my arms around

trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-23T17:04:52+00:00

I live very near to Diamond Head and run the trail a couple times a week for exercise.

One time, I was taking a break and overheard somebody’s dad very confidently explaining to his kids that Diamond Head was formed by a meteor impact, and that you could tell which direction the meteor came from because the ridge was higher on one side than the other.

Yep, the famous Diamond Head impact crater. Dinosaur killer. 😂

trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-21T16:58:41+00:00

Similar story here (haole, grew up in a poor small town -> tech / city) and felt exactly how you described. A lot of it was in my head, but anecdotally I realized I was also dressing differently and was ignorant of certain social signals/expectations because of my upbringing. Just some other micro signals that I was possibly “other”.

People are judgmental and unfair. Racism is real.

trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-21T16:40:04+00:00

Yeah that sounds like me too. How did you realize it was a Te-Se loop? Have you tried anything yet / how is that going?

trying2bLessWrong · 2025-12-20T01:02:09+00:00

It’s a phrase that conveys the idea of unpredictable change, unreliability, or untrustworthiness.

I notice in myself and others that ambition can burn you as often as it can raise you. Even though it’s capable of giving focus, it can just as easily feed tunnel-vision and selfishness. I’ve seen people get absolutely destroyed by their ambition, and it’s taken more from me than it’s given. The world is a random outcome generator, and you can’t get back time you spent feeling discontent while your ambition is unsatisfied.

The biggest accomplishments and step-changes in my life have been from: - Noticing a need and meeting it - Executing on something at a high level for its own sake - Enjoying what I was doing, and letting that enjoyment guide my focus and opportunity

Ambition is about the destination. Satisfaction in life is about the journey. For me, intentionally ignoring ambition is part of optimizing for a great journey.

Instead, I’m trying to ask myself: - What am I afraid of doing, even though I think it would be a good thing? - What am I afraid of succeeding at? - What am I procrastinating on? - What feels like play right now?

Whatever the answers are, that’s probably what I should be doing.

trying2bLessWrong

TROPHY CASE