Will I agree with alittlebitofpersonality.com's facial typing of me? [subjective]
8
170
190
resolved Jan 3
Resolved
N/A

I ordered a facial typing from alittlebitofpersonality.com today. I did not give alittlebitofpersonality.com any information about me other than pictures of my face.

Once I receive my facial typing from them, will I agree with the results? Will I think they are accurate and valuable. Resolves YES if I think like the results are accurate and valuable. Resolves NO if I think the results aren't accurate or are just meaningless vagueposting that could apply to anyone.

I will not bet on this market.

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predicted NO

resolves

@jacksonpolack they still haven't given me the typing

@jacksonpolack If they haven't given the typing by the end of the year, I think I will N/A these markets.

predicted NO

Question about this market and the others related to the facial typing test: Will you resolve the market if they don't respond at all?

@EMcNeill they will be extended indefinitely until they respond

@EMcNeil if I forget to extend it at some point and it closes, I will resolve it N/A.

predicted NO

@ZZZZZZ My nightmare now is that they use Google Analytics and see all these markets, lol.

@EMcNeill Doesn't appear they use Google Analytics from doing a view source or network view of their site, but it is still possible I guess.

@EMcNeill Another possibility is someone will buy a bunch of YES and then contact them to tell them about these markets and they will give me the type I wanted to get as a result.

@EMcNeill @jacksonpolack I made a new market: Does facial typing work? [objective, p-value = 0.984]. I will resolve to YES if they give me the result of ENTJ(ip) which has only 1.5625% if it is random.

bought Ṁ20 of NO

The posts on the site read to me as “strongly unreliable”. I’m not sure if your judgement will align with mine though.

@EMcNeill Just because truth isn't their focus doesn't mean their site is inaccurate. Can you give me an example of why you find it "strongly unreliable"?

bought Ṁ10 of NO

doesn't it mean that though? "truth isn't their focus" means "their focus is saying meaningless but convincing things to get users", and for their test to be reliable anyway, in an area that's gonna be somewhat difficult to get right at best, would require a lot of intelligence and work on their part that doesn't seem likely. If they were packaging an existing test (like 5-factor-personality.io copying an existing 5-factor personality test) that might explain the accuracy, but what does here?

@jacksonpolack I mean I think truth is one of their core values but their focus is on helping people grow. So, assuming that assumption is correct, they may say things that are a bit wishy washy but when it comes down to it, they will respect the truth more than what sounds good.

predicted NO

@ZZZZZZ

ALBOP.com just triggers a bunch of red flags for me. Extremely bold and confident claims about a personality typing system (which I know from experience are easy to obsess over). Lots of references to internet arguments about typing of fictional characters, which they claim to settle objectively. An entire article (ALBOP is not MBTI) that serves as a ready-made excuse in case their system doesn’t match the more commonly-used types.

I don’t especially mean to persuade you here or litigate specifics; I’m just saying that I get real bad vibes. If God descended from the heavens, logged into Manifold, and created a “is ALBOP true” market, I’d bet very heavily against.

predicted NO

The "Alhambra Board of Pharmacy" at ALBOP.com seems quite credible.

the personality type website, otoh, is clearly incoherent babble. if anyone remembers geoff anders' connection theory thing, this seems to make some of the same mistakes, but much worse. It's quite interesting in the "wow, it's possible to be that wrong?" sense (sorry about the domain it's hosted at), but not otherwise. I don't think it's primarily an intentional scam, it's probably more of a combination of genuine believers and unscrupulous people, but idk.

predicted NO

example:

Extraverts, whether Judgers or Perceivers, begin the thought process with their eyes wide open, taking in information from the outside world.  For EJs, the process starts with evaluating what Actions lead to which Consequences, watching how results follow choices.  For EPs, the process starts with Observing individuals in order to understand Motivations, watching what reactions demonstrate about a person’s character.

Introverts, whether Judgers or Perceivers, begin this thought process inside their heads.  For IJs, the process starts with grasping Principles, which is information as it is universally applicable.  For IPs the process starts with contemplating gathered Data and Details, which is information as it is applicable to specific situations.

try to apply this to a particular thing. One "thought process", not to reify that, might be about ... idk ... "what will eat for lunch today". An introvert would ... uh ... look inside ... their head for that? Whereas an extrovert starts with ... information in the outside world? Is it possible to not do either of those? Having thinking not relate to one's head ... or having it not be about things in the outside world ... seems difficutl. And does this have anything to do with the 'do you like hanging out with people' meaning?

... the entire thing is like that. comically strong claims that basically don't mean anything.

predicted NO

lol they make [$344/mo](https://www.patreon.com/aLittleBitofPersonality) on patreon

@EMcNeill I was thinking about it and I think that the characteristics themselves have validity but not as a sharp line. Like let's take for example one characteristic (J/P). According to them, Js act first to get things done faster expecting the details to iron themselves out while Ps first figure out what the best plan of attack is so they don't waste time doing things unproductively. I think you could test this through an experiment. What if you gave people a task to complete and then you saw how much time they spent planning and how much time they spent doing the task (maybe you could just measure the delay in starting the task from experiment start for consistency and easy data)? If you repeated this experiment across multiple different tasks and kinds of tasks (to confidence in that kind of task), you could classify people into J/P based on how much their delay is in starting tasks on average, and obviously there would be some people in between. And I think you could do the same for the other letters and you would get similar results though maybe you'd have to think of a more elaborate experiment. I'm not sure about aLboP's claim that everyone fits into one box or the other. Anyway, their claim that they could figure those things out based on someone's face intrigued me so that's why I decided to order their typing package. I am curious whether it is just total bs or not, but I think that at least the characteristics are real things with real definitions. I haven't through all the letters though so feel free to disagree with me.

@ZZZZZZ * I meant to say control for confidence in that kind of task

predicted NO

According to them, Js act first to get things done faster expecting the details to iron themselves out while Ps first figure out what the best plan of attack is so they don't waste time doing things unproductively

why does there have to be any such distinction? A person might 'act first' in contexts they're familiar with, while 'figuring things out first' in unfamiliar contexts. I don't see why these are necessarily 'types of people'.

@jacksonpolack Presumably there must be some difference in how long it takes a person to get comfortable with a new thing whether genetic or otherwise, unless we were all clones.

@jacksonpolack even if the difference is small in which case I guess you could argue it is a scam.

predicted NO

@ZZZZZZ You certainly could run that kind of test and create a J/P score. It's even possible that the score would be stable across time and different tasks. But you could do the same for basically any trait you could imagine. I could say "the H/P axis is based on whether you prefer Hamburgers or Pizza, while the V/B axis is based on your preference for Videogames or Books. All people can be categorized as one of 4 types: HV, PV, HB, and PB". And I wouldn't be wrong! But I also wouldn't be presenting anything very valuable.

I think you're right that their types are "real things with real definitions". But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're adding anything of value (especially relative to the existing MBTI system).

I'm not sure about aLboP's claim that everyone fits into one box or the other.

I am very, very skeptical of that claim, for reasons touched on in @jacksonpolack's comments.

Anyway, their claim that they could figure those things out based on someone's face intrigued me so that's why I decided to order their typing package. I am curious whether it is just total bs or not

I am also curious! But I am also, again, very very skeptical. To be honest, I'm at <1% confidence that their facial typing system works, but probably ~25% that you'll agree with their typing. Your psychology is by far the dominant factor in my bets here.

@EMcNeill @jacksonpolack The MBTI system is widely criticized for combining different things that aren't necessarily correlated into one attribute so I think if they are providing "real things with real definitions" that is something that they add in terms of value. In terms of relevance, I have no clue. Maybe I'm just a sucker for wanting random information about myself, like I bought a ring to measure my blood oxygen level and heart rate, and I've done other personality tests with scientific validity like narcissism and psychopathy. I guess that means I'm an E under their system since I tend to look outside myself for information (even when I'm looking for information about myself). I also think the fact that I posted this without really remembering that aLboP is a bit different from the MBTI suggests that I am a J since I acted first before considering the implications of what I was posting. So, you can see these things have real impacts on how I'm perceived by other people, at least I would say more than the hamburger/pizza axis.

And knowing evolution I would think if it is something that impacts how people perceive you, it would be an evolutionarily good strategy to honestly convey what people can expect from you just by looking at your face, like how gender impacts many more things than it would have to strictly speaking because it is evolutionarily advantageous to convey attributes of yourself honestly to avoid wasting other people's time. It seemed pretty convincing when they said that they discovered it by accident after finding patterns between their studies of people's way of thinking and their faces. Of course, they could be lying or they could just find patterns everywhere even and keep believing them through confirmation bias. Anyway, since there are only sixteen types, assuming they picked randomly, there is a 6% chance that they would guess I'm an ENTJ correctly. Of course, if I could figure out my subtype as well, then there is only a 1.5% chance that they would get my type correct if they randomly picked which is getting pretty close to the 0.99 p value is used in psychology.

predicted NO

@ZZZZZZ It's probably outside the scope of this market to complain about the details of the aLBoP typing system, let alone any relative merits of the MBTI. I'll limit myself to this:
- A complete shut-in who is obsessed with getting their information from surveillance cameras, prediction markets, and other external devices, but who never talks to other people, would be classified as an Extravert.
- In their system, a J is someone who prefers to act first (like in your example), but also someone who prefers to plan meticulously, but also someone who likes to alternate acting and then evaluating. Whereas a P is someone who prefers to collect options first, but also someone who can respond fluidly in the moment.

Re: the evolution bit, I'm once again really really skeptical, but I really should stop typing here and go back to work, lol.

They claimed that they discovered the facial patterns by accident. They also claim that it took them a long time to get it working right, and they had a lot of embarrassing failures along the way. And now that they've got it working, they have a whole page for explaining why their results might not match your MBTI type, plus another page for handling people's reactions when they don't get the results they expected. Can their test be falsified? If their test returns "ENTJ", how do you know if they're right or wrong, given that it's not the same thing as your MBTI type?

@EMcNeill

  1. I think they are free to define terms however they want. If they want to define E in terms of whether they focus on outside information rather than inside reasoning, I think they are free to do that even if it is different from how the MBTI defines E. I don't think we should penalize them for their choice of naming if it's a good idea under the surface.

  2. The difference between Ps and Js is how much they like planning. Ps like planning more than Js. That's why Js make meticulous plans when they have all the information: to avoid having to make plans later. That contrasts to Ps which don't mind planning so they generally don't act until they've come up with a good plan but once they have all the information there is little need to make a plan since they know they will be able to quickly make a plan later when needed. (See image)

As for the aLboP type vs MBTI type issue, I worked my type using their system and I also concluded ENTJ is my aLboP type. So, at least for the moment, I am planning to consider their facial typing useless if it doesn't give me the result of ENTJ. That said, if you don't like the subjectivity of this market, you can bet directly on what they will tell me here. If you think their facial typing is baloney, then bet on the ones that the market is giving low probability but which are very common among people on their site like ENTP or INFJ for example.

@jacksonpolack I was reading the LW article about Connection Theory and I agree that it seems a bit absurd. I think they tried to "discover" too much. In contrast, I don't see alittlebitofpersonality.com trying to make any unqualified assertions, except perhaps exaggerating the sharp line diving the dichotomies. All they did was take a bunch of attributes which are similar to what is in the MBTI and combine them into a bunch of dichotomies, and then see what logically follows. Of course, the facial typing totally be a scam, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, I don't see why it is possible that they were able to find consistent patterns between the way people think and their face.

@jacksonpolack * "I don't see why it isn't possible that they were able to find consistent patterns between the way people think and their face."