There are many different ways we could represent a personality (to varying degrees of accuracy.) I have not found a widely-accepted format, but I think we can each make our own for now. Whenever you wonder why someone acted a certain way, think about what the relevant parameters might have been and write them down. If several people work on this and share their results, perhaps one or more standardized personality representation formats will emerge.
The parameters collected by online user profiles such as those maintained by Facebook, Google Plus, or OkCupid might provide some inspiration.
If we had a good dataset of people and their personality attributes along with some performance measures, we could use machine learning to do neat things like predict relationship compatibility between two people. Imagine a rationalist dating service that used personality data to suggest matches!
Schema.org defines a "Person" model but it focuses primarily on circumstantial attributes rather than mental state.
(copied and edited from my post in the Facebook LW group)
I suspect that it would be obvious to most rationalists that the way people judge other people is flawed. Typically for a heuristic approach, it's correct to a degree, but with many faults. And it's wasting a big amount of information and a potential for a more planned approach where you can ask questions that assess certain qualities and exchange information about people's personalities by giving their "parameters".
I needn't think of it in this way, it was natural for me to take this approach as soon as I learnt my first measurable parameter and its implications (it was IQ). Then I explored more of them and researched them some more.
So far, I know about IQ, rationality (Keith Stanovich's), Big Five personality traits, executive functions, intuition for social situations and a few more things. However, I can't seem to find any literature that helps describe them (how do I detect them in people and what are their implications?) and their implications (how *exactly* is someone with a higher IQ different from someone with a lower IQ?). Also, I can't find literature on other traits.
Any literature on any of that would be greatly appreciated. I wonder if there is a book that deals with the whole issue. Also, I need literature about IQ and Big Five, but anything else would still be useful.
Is that sort of thing popular on LessWrong?