pjeby comments on On Enjoying Disagreeable Company - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Alicorn 26 May 2010 01:47AM

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Comment author: pjeby 06 June 2010 10:11:54PM 4 points [-]

I still want to know where the disagreeable LW-ers are. Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Apparently, I'm one: O59-C0-E37-A0-N80 - i.e. I have zero agreeability and conscientiousness.

But, being such a disagreeable person, I'm inclined to dispute the validity of the test. ;-)

After all, it directly asks you about traits, with questions that are pretty obviously correlated with the results. It therefore seems to be a test of your opinions about yourself, rather than being an actual test of yourself.

Comment author: Blueberry 07 June 2010 12:53:50AM 1 point [-]

After all, it directly asks you about traits, with questions that are pretty obviously correlated with the results. It therefore seems to be a test of your opinions about yourself, rather than being an actual test of yourself.

I've yet to see a test that avoids this problem. I really don't understand why tests like this and the Aspergers one, which will obviously vary dramatically with your moods, are considered to have any meaning at all.

Comment author: cupholder 07 June 2010 02:43:55AM *  2 points [-]

Psychologists tend to treat a test as having meaning when it has some form of 'validity', 'validity' being the catch-all name for the different ways a psychologist might assess if a test looks meaningful. For example, some Big Five personality scores correlate with things like job performance, suggesting predictive validity. Whether this kind of validation can prove that a test has meaning will hinge on what you feel it means for a test to have meaning.

Comment author: ata 07 June 2010 04:42:33AM 2 points [-]

Whether this kind of validation can prove that a test has meaning will hinge on what you feel it means for a test to have meaning.

In that case we should probably taboo "meaning" (in this context) and talk directly about whatever it is we want a test to do — make clinically useful predictions, carve reality along its natural joints, etc.

Comment author: realitygrill 17 June 2010 02:01:30AM 0 points [-]

Strangely enough, I'd only considered the 'validity' side - basically are the categories used universal? Somehow missed how biased self-reporting might be.