Shameless self-promotion
Yeah, that's why I say it should be used like BMI. But IQ is big business. There's the same problem with "personality" tests.
Oh bollocks to personality tests. I'm not even convinced most of those can give you statistically useful info, never mind individually useful info.
But don't you see that as a Libra Type 5, you are best suited for career paths in engineering, finance, and poodle-washing?
But my blood type says I'm...
Ok, what the heck is up with that? I've seen my hubby's translation Resume, and honest to god, it includes a photo and his blood type. huh?
The blood type diet is the manifestation in the US and Europe. It seems that if you don't attach a personality test to it, you attach a diet to it.
Blood type isn't ancient or mysterious, so we can't blame mystical ancient knowledge for it; something else has to have generated the woo around it. The simple act of creating categories seems to be what unites them, from blood type, to star signs, to "I have Type XX personality".
I've taken myers-brigs, and i'm convinced intelligent people just over think these things. Neither my husband and I can ever answer them, cause we are always asking things like "well, it's not really A or B, but someone in betwee, and further, teh question is loaded, because it requires an awareness of our thought process that only comes after teh fact" or some such. Also, I answer the way I want to answer in any given mood.
I am not "introverted", i have introverted moments. I am not a thinking vs. felling, I approach things trying my best to use both - but some situations are more feelings and some are more thinking.
Have you all taken an officall (vs. some site on the internet) IQ test? I never have. Maybe too scared to know. hehehe
I think someone wrote on my talk page once that MBTI is the thinking man's astrology. I-E is the only scale with any sort of validity. But I've always found this profile kind of spookily accurate. Never took an IQ test, though.
I get bored with IQ tests. But I see what you mean with "thinking man's astrology", but in the end it's just trying to put neat little rings around complicated clusters and saying "ABRACADABRA!! This is now a Real Thing!!" Hence why you're stuck unable to answer "yes" or "no" to all these questions because you're kinda both. I always feel wrong answering "I feel introverted and uncomfortable around strangers" AND "I feel like being the centre of the party" to these things, because they're blatantly contradictory, but it's true.
The Mill quote in Gould's review is timely: "The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own, and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something particularly abstruse and mysterious."