Well now I’m a little confused. Did I find a point of cognitive dissonance in you? In one breath you defend Assange under fire for sexual assault and to consider nuance, but this is too far?

And since when do we care what Elon Musk has to say? He called someone a pedophile, too, remember? Should we jump on the bandwagon with that just the same?

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.