It might be worth considering what answers you give now that might be different than ones you gave 7 years ago. I know I took one of these back in college, and probably every 5 years or so I've revisited it, each time never recalling my previous result (what does THAT say about my personality?). 

But it struck me this time that some answers I gave this time would have been different 5 years ago. Enough that I probably would have been rated a different alphabet. 

For the record: ENFP   (slight, distinct, moderate, slight).

Like the sun over course of the day, our luminousity and spectrum change over time, from the blue tints of dawn to the harsh light of day, and again the blues towards dusk if I recall correctly, followed by gruesome darkness. 

Anyway forgive my lyricism, but you catch my drift (although some claim that people never 'fundamentally' change, I disagree).

I wonder if there's a way to measure how an individual is trending over the years, probably by comparing a series of tests over the years (although I think the act of taking thr tests repeatedly would tend to increase introspection, in the manner of observation effecting the outcome).

Really, I think someone in the Dept of Transportation is just evil.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" :P

I agree strongly with everything in the above paragraph, especially the end. And so should you. Greens 4 life!

What would the corresponding female rationalist be like? I don't know. I can't say. Some woman has to pursue her art as far as I've pursued mine, far enough that the art she learned from others fails her, so that she must remake her shattered art in her own image and in the image of her own task. And then tell the rest of us about it.

I sometimes think of myself as being like the protagonist in a classic SF labyrinth story, wandering further and further into some alien artifact, trying to call into a radio my description of the bizarre things I'm seeing, so that I can be followed. But what I'm finding is not just the Way, the thing that lies at the center of the labyrinth; it is also my Way, the path that I would take to come closer to the center, from whatever place I started out.

When I first stumbled upon LessWrong, this is exactly what I expected it to become. I do not think it is there yet, but I do imagine this place as the place that the aspiring female rationalist can tell the rest of us about it. To use the SF labyrinth analogy, I see all of us wandering around in the same maze. Some of us are on connected paths and others are in completely different areas. But radioing our descriptions of these bizarre things back into a depository makes me feel like the journey is worth something more than simply finding a path and plodding along waiting for it to end. Personally, it makes me feel as if the path, my path, is valuable enough to actually look at and analyze and study.

As feel-goody as that sounds, it provides precious ammunition against the some of the horridly long hallways where everything starts looking the same and the feelings of traveling in circles is wearing me down. I will never see the entire maze. I find it highly unlikely that I will even find the end of the path I am on. (Does the end of this path reach the ultimate goal? Is it a dead-end?) I have come to realize that not seeing where this path leads is okay. My life is not about finding the end of the maze. My life is about studying the maze itself and the journey of documenting this particular path is valuable.

Is this ego-centric? Yes. But I think that this is pragmatically inevitable. I do not think it is realistically possible for me to eliminate all personal bias and all effects placed on me during my travels. I started at a gate labeled "male" and "American" and "middle-class." The gate holds hundreds (infinite?) of other labels that define the beginning of my life (I am white; my name is Adam). Some of these factors will effect me the rest of my life and this is okay. It is impossible to cheat this. Even if I were somehow able to possess the ability to perfectly understand a woman's perspective, there are impossible perspectives to encompass. Two rather blunt examples: my gate also held the labels "human" and "born in 1984."

I built my art out of myself, and it became tied into every part of myself, and it happens to be a fact that I'm male. And if a woman were to pursue her art far enough, and tie it into every part of herself, she would, I think, find that her art came to resemble herself more and more, tied into her own motives and preferences; so that her art was, among other things, female

Does this mean that my art, my path, is now tainted by "male, American, middle-class, white, named Adam, human, born in 1984"? I think, in a nit-picky and causal sense, the answer is yes. The key phrase in the quote above is that this art becomes "tied into every part" of ourselves. But if our paths are nothing more than the lives we lead, what is the point of radioing it back to the rest of us? What about our observations and analysis is valuable? What we learn about our own paths is valuable because we share a common goal.

I say all this because I want to convey this important idea, that there is the Way and my Way, the pure (or perhaps shared) thing at the center, and the many paths we take there from wherever we started out.

Our paths converge. Our ways will cross and bump into each other and we will have the opportunity to walk each other's paths. When I reach a section of my life that aligns itself with Eliezer's path I can tune into his radio and listen. I know that his goal is my goal and that I happen to share this path.

The labyrinth is an analogy and I think this is where the analogy begins to break down. A more apt analogy would be one where I have more than one marble in the same labyrinth. I am controlling all of these marbles and am moving them simultaneously along the various turns and alleys. The path that each marble takes represents one aspect of my life or one way of thought or one belief I hold. These marbles are extremely difficult to maintain and control all at the same time. If I focus on one particular marble for too long the others may stray from the path I wanted them to follow. The laziest of all approaches is to simply let go of the controls and let the labyrinth itself guide the marbles. To beat the labyrinth, however, I cannot do that. To win I must learn how to control as many marbles as I can and to guide them the best I can.

Say that in my attempts at this, one marble touches a path that one of Eliezer's has and Eliezer radioed the right information back to me. I can set that marble on Eliezer's path and this allows me to move that portion of my life in a safer manner. The effort required to do this is significantly less than if I were to redo all of Eliezer's experience on this same path. Even more so, once I have followed Eliezer's path and know it to work, I can start asking about other paths that may be very near to where my other marbles are. I can guide those marbles toward other paths traveled by Eliezer. But I can never replicate Eliezer's entire life. My way is not his way. I can never get all of my marbles lined up with his so as to essentially let him guide my every action and choice. There are some marbles that belong to me that are on a path so unique it will likely never see another marble's history. This is what defines my path and my way. This is what I radio back for the person entering from a gate near my own gate who may have a marble on a path that I managed to conquer.

In this analogy, my way is not a singular path through the labyrinth. My way is the collective paths of each facet of my life as it progresses toward the common object we are trying to find. Even if we find it there is still the great task of getting all of our marbles into the proper little holes. Ideally, this will get easier the more people we have communicating in the maze. Ideally, this is what I see in LessWrong's future.

Even so, you should be aware that I have radioed back my description of the single central shape and the path I took to get closer. If there are parts that are visibly male, then there are probably other parts - perhaps harder to identify - that are tightly bound to growing up with Orthodox Jewish parents, or (cough) certain other unusual features of my life.

I think there will not be a proper Art until many people have progressed to the point of remaking the Art in their own image, and then radioed back to describe their paths.

Initial quick fix: downvote limit = 4x karma.

As I understood this post, there is an argument that: - posters who want to signal will use formality - only persuaders want to signal - the reader should be suspicious of anyone who writes formally

In general, IAWYC, but I think that we may be ignoring the fact that signal-recognition has legitimate uses. Standard example: if I read Eliezer's blog, I know in advance that he is a legitimate source of rational, logical arguments. If I read xxyy's blog (assuming this is not peer-reviewed, etc), I have no idea - given the volume of data published online - whether what I'm reading is in any way factual. Yes, I should analyze content, read reviews, and track down references, and such. But, this is very time consuming. It is reasonable to have some pre-selection mechanism.

If this pre-selection mechanism happens to be something as silly formal word-choice, the "right" font, or using some keyword within the first few paragraphs of a paper, then so be it. To clarify: signal-recognition is weak evidence that the paper is worth reading.

I think some of the comments act as though only things written by name-brand authors can be trusted. This is false: new science is done by new scientists every day. But, the presence of new scientists implies that there must be a signaling mechanism, and that this signaling mechanism cannot be morally wrong.

We shouldn't conclude that because someone uses signaling ("formality"/"expert style"/"eloquence"/etc) that they are attempting to persuade readers of their message. They may simply be trying to pass the first gate to readership.

Is it possible that (counter-intuitively) by attempting to disband recognized signals, we are simply being elitist?

I'm not sure how ironic I should find it that my procrastination site is now actively discussing anti-procrastination methods. -rela

What? Clothing lipstick fingernails haircut tan waxing liposuction diet aerobics...

Most of this is part of some silly game which women play amongst themselves: some of it may be male-directed, but it's definitely a minor portion. Overall, F2M seduction and "focused self-improvement" are still woefully underexplored.

Perhaps you never intended for me specifically to change anything

My memory informs me of no instances in which you've said anything that tripped my "gah sexism" switch.