MBTI
To understand me and my mindset, it helps to understand I'm very much like an 'INTP' type from MBTI. A misconception with INTPs is that we are all geniuses or at least think of ourselves as such, but this is not the case and I do not think of myself as more intelligent than the average person (I wouldn't be suprised if I were less so). Being people that are in constant thought we may sometimes come to conclusions and ways of thinking that others don't, but plenty of unintelligent people can be INTPs, and the personality type often hinders success in achieveing anything in STEM fields. For example, INTPs are prone to the following issues:
- Thinking about completely irrelevant and silly theoretical situations that are just a waste of time
- Day-dreaming and drifting away innappropriately
- Being unintentionally neglectful and lazy in the world around them because their focus is internal
- Being pedantic or overly-honest, which insults or angers people even if well intentioned
- Taking too long to make decisions, sometimes never making a decision on something at all
- A tendency to keep to themselves, but also ramble incoherently when feeling confident and/or passionate enough to voice their thoughts
On the plus side though, I rarely get bored (always curious to learn more things), and I'm not as hindered by a need to fit in or have an active social life like extroverts and ambiverts are.
Criticisms of MBTI
'MBTI? Pfft, don't you know that's a PSUEDO-science!?'
I know the mere mention of MBTI makes a lot of people angry or roll their eyes, but the idea that everything has to follow by modern scientific standards is short-sighted, and even when applied to 'hard science' the scientific method is not infallible. MBTI is convinient and insightful enough as a rough overview of a person's inclinations, and a precise neurological test would have to be broken down and simplified in order for laypeople to make sense of anyway.
'Self-reported tests are inherently untrustworthy'
This is a fair criticsm, as everyone has a degree of bias and lack of self-awareness. I don't think that makes it completely useless though, as most people will at least try to be honest (otherwise what would be the point in taking the test?), and most questions aren't phrased in such a way as to make certain answers biased by a person's ego/self-esteem.
'INTP just sounds like another word for autism'
When it comes to strong introversion and getting overly absorbed within interests, there is definitely overlap, but the similarities pretty much end there. Autistic people have other traits than INTPs don't usually have, such as hypersensitivity, uncontrolable fits of anger or emotions, and often an incapability to understand certain social cues and etiquette which are common sense to most other people. Being highly introverted, INTPs are usually socially inexperienced and more likely to make mistakes socially than most people, but unlike autistic people, it's not an inpassable barrier and INTPs can understand where and how they went wrong.
INTP Memes
If nothing else, MBTI is still good for the relatable memes:
