The enneagram is a diagram which embodies a personality theory. The diagram is a 9-pointed figure, and the origins are wrapped in vague and mysterious beginnings - discussion of Eastern European mystics, the Sufis, number theories, etc., is common.
The basic idea is that there are 9 types of people, who are related to each other by the position on the diagram. The two types beside your type, your "wings", are similar and you can tend towards one of them. There are also two other types which you relate to when under stress, or in security, which are across the figure from you. In other words, your main type + the two wings + plus the two "stress/security" points describe you - or 5/9th of the diagram potentially describes you, and the types that "describe you" cover all aspects of the personality space. As you can see the enneagram is not a sharp tool.
The 9 types can be chunked into 3 groups of three - and your wings and stress/security points ensure that your personality spans then entire space of personality as you are related to each of these groups, e.g. the enneagram does not actually seem to discriminate you into a type that is distinct and informative. These three goups describe how information/emotions are processed by your type - head/fear, heart/grief, body/anger. A generous reading is that the enneagram captures your stance towards objective, social, and objective reality - but reading books/webpages about the enneagram does not have this insight leaping out. In terms of labeling and understanding people, the enneagram seems too complex for what it does - 9 types? But you can be close to the wing? Or under stress and thus across the diagram, or perhaps you are secure and thus across in a different direction? Oh yeah - in some of the literature they point out that stress doesn't mean what we normally mean by stress, so maybe you are at your stress point when you are not stressed. Huh? Where are the clear and sharp distinctions that one would look for in order to justify the number of labels?
At best it seems that the 3 groups of three - head/fear, heart/grief, body/anger - offers some insight, and a reduced version of the enneagram (e.g. 3 main types of personality) could be useful. But at this point why even attempt to salvage the enneagram? The big 5 is an emprical description of personality that is on solid, if limited, footing. Why not simply find your big 5 properties, and then think about subjective, social, and objective reality as the environment that you are embedded in and which you must learn to live in in order to thrive? For that matter, if the 9 types actually were clear distinct types they should correspond to clusters of big 5 properties - if we looked at the 5-d space with points for each person who took the test we should see clusters of the points: to be precise, we should see 9 distinct clusters, one for each type. To my knowlege this has not been observed, pretty strong evidence that the "enneagram theory" is false.
You can take an enneagram test for fun - after first hearing of this theory I googled and took 3 different ones, from 3 different web pages which sold enneagram related products, and had three different results - not surprising since the theory does not seem to make sharply distinct categories. Even worse, some of the test show the "points" you have on each personality type and my score was fairly evenly spread over a huge subset (~3/4) of the personally types. Basically I could pick any personality type that sounded nice to me and claim it as "capturing me". To me it seems clear: the enneagram is pseudo-science that offers no insight or constructive means to understand yourself and others. Disturbing, as apparently this model is used by some counsellors and therapists, as a google and amazon search reveals, and since it appears to have no sharp and incisive properties that would justify such use it would be better to say the model is misused by some counsellors and therapists.
Pseudo-science is not inert, and can cause a lot of pain and damage. Any placebo value of the enneagram should exist with any other treatment plan, so I cannot see any value brought to the table. Folk psychology and traditions have the potential have capture interesting truths, but as far as I can tell the enneagram contains no such interesting aspects. In fact, it does not even seem to be a legitamate folk theory - with the "mysterious roots", with vague references to Sufis or other groups, likely being made up in order to give the false sense that the method is an ancient tradition (no evidence is given, and inconsistent stories exist, both of which suggest the "ancient system" claim is false). The story seems to be thus: the enneagram theory was made up in the 20th century, with false historical pedigree, and its claims to sort people into meaningful categories which help you understand yourself and others and grow falls apart under even the weakest examination.
Lowdown
- The enneagram lives up to its name (pronounced "any-a-gram": yes, you too can pick any of the grams/personality types you want to pick to describe yourself), but does not appear to live up to any of its claims.
Showing posts with label big 5. Show all posts
Showing posts with label big 5. Show all posts
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Poverty - a social view
What is poverty? In western societies we often define poverty as lack of financial resources - if you make < $X a year you are, defacto, poor.
Is this an accurate definition? On the face of things, yes, but dig deeper and things look a bit differently. Consider some poor person who wins the lotto. We all expect them to go back to being poor fairly soon. Or look at many NFL players, they go broke shortly after retiring, despite having an almost sick amount of money. Poverty obviously relates to skills, an ability to manage ones life.
Consider this definition: poverty is a lack of healthy social networks. "The Rich" help each other, give each other advice, train their children. Some ethnic groups help each other, give each other advice, train their children. The groups we see as rich, the ones that persist, that consistently create wealth and value, that are happy and have plenty are ones that are rich in connections, bonds, duty. They have healthy social networks.
Now look to the poor - they do not help each other, they espouse victimhood, they are critical of "The Rich" (including, say, Jews who are one of the ethnic groups with meaningful social networks), they do not give meaningful advice to each other, they do not work hard to create value but instead consume value. If one is from this "group" (defined mainly as a lack of group cohesion) and hones ones skills and creates value and wealth, well, one is in trouble: without finding a cohesive group to join the value and wealth created may soon disappear.
The poor are those who are poor in relationships. A given poor person has parents, friends, siblings, and spouses who have overall negative and unconnected personalities. Whining, victimology, passivity, complaint, justification, selfishness: we reconize this in "the poor". The social environment the poor live in is sparse, unhealthy, negative. How could anyone thrive in such a corrosive environment?
Under this view we can see how better to become rich - not only must we hone particular skills that allow us to create wealth, but we must hone social networks that are positive and productive. We must become gardeners of our social environment - watering, fertilializing, finding "plants" that work together, creating beauty. We must also do something that is difficult: pulling weeds. This can be painful, but if we wish a bountiful garden we must till, pull weeds, and protect against invasion. If you are starting to change your life, you may find that you have to cut ties with your parents and some former friends. Invite them with you, but do not tie yourself to them. Our relationships are a choice, and a most important one.
Learning how to make money at some task is not sufficient (though it is necessary) to become wealthy; learning how to be a valuable friend, someone people want to know and be with, and finding others to join with in the struggle of life is needed. And here lies true wealth - the financial aspect is but one part.
University students may eat noodles, live in run down and sparsly furnished apartments, make very little money (and actually usually have significant negative money (debt)), and have a lack of financial resources - but they are not poor. They are forming deep connections with others, they are learning skills to create wealth, they are engaging ideas and life and people, and they most often come from caring families. Our great grandparents were not poor either (at least not all of them), despite lacking almost everything we take as granted in terms of material wealth.
Poverty is not measured by how much money you make per year. Poverty is measured by a lack of meaningful social networks . A social pauper necessarily finds he is a financial pauper, if not now, then soon. If you want to be "rich" forget the money, and consider people: how to connect, how to bring value to others? Even if you do not find the finances you want, you will find what we wish to buy with the finances - a happier and more meaningful life.
First things first - people. Find others who care about life, themselves, and others. Create value with them. Actually live. That is wealth.
Is this an accurate definition? On the face of things, yes, but dig deeper and things look a bit differently. Consider some poor person who wins the lotto. We all expect them to go back to being poor fairly soon. Or look at many NFL players, they go broke shortly after retiring, despite having an almost sick amount of money. Poverty obviously relates to skills, an ability to manage ones life.
Consider this definition: poverty is a lack of healthy social networks. "The Rich" help each other, give each other advice, train their children. Some ethnic groups help each other, give each other advice, train their children. The groups we see as rich, the ones that persist, that consistently create wealth and value, that are happy and have plenty are ones that are rich in connections, bonds, duty. They have healthy social networks.
Now look to the poor - they do not help each other, they espouse victimhood, they are critical of "The Rich" (including, say, Jews who are one of the ethnic groups with meaningful social networks), they do not give meaningful advice to each other, they do not work hard to create value but instead consume value. If one is from this "group" (defined mainly as a lack of group cohesion) and hones ones skills and creates value and wealth, well, one is in trouble: without finding a cohesive group to join the value and wealth created may soon disappear.
The poor are those who are poor in relationships. A given poor person has parents, friends, siblings, and spouses who have overall negative and unconnected personalities. Whining, victimology, passivity, complaint, justification, selfishness: we reconize this in "the poor". The social environment the poor live in is sparse, unhealthy, negative. How could anyone thrive in such a corrosive environment?
Under this view we can see how better to become rich - not only must we hone particular skills that allow us to create wealth, but we must hone social networks that are positive and productive. We must become gardeners of our social environment - watering, fertilializing, finding "plants" that work together, creating beauty. We must also do something that is difficult: pulling weeds. This can be painful, but if we wish a bountiful garden we must till, pull weeds, and protect against invasion. If you are starting to change your life, you may find that you have to cut ties with your parents and some former friends. Invite them with you, but do not tie yourself to them. Our relationships are a choice, and a most important one.
Learning how to make money at some task is not sufficient (though it is necessary) to become wealthy; learning how to be a valuable friend, someone people want to know and be with, and finding others to join with in the struggle of life is needed. And here lies true wealth - the financial aspect is but one part.
University students may eat noodles, live in run down and sparsly furnished apartments, make very little money (and actually usually have significant negative money (debt)), and have a lack of financial resources - but they are not poor. They are forming deep connections with others, they are learning skills to create wealth, they are engaging ideas and life and people, and they most often come from caring families. Our great grandparents were not poor either (at least not all of them), despite lacking almost everything we take as granted in terms of material wealth.
Poverty is not measured by how much money you make per year. Poverty is measured by a lack of meaningful social networks . A social pauper necessarily finds he is a financial pauper, if not now, then soon. If you want to be "rich" forget the money, and consider people: how to connect, how to bring value to others? Even if you do not find the finances you want, you will find what we wish to buy with the finances - a happier and more meaningful life.
First things first - people. Find others who care about life, themselves, and others. Create value with them. Actually live. That is wealth.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Stack verus Queue: Your Brain & Things
In planning tasks take note of two different ways of placing items on a waiting list: stacking or queuing them.
We are all familiar with both. We go to the grocery store, and wait in a line (queue) to pay for our items. We have a pile of paper work on our desk, when we get something new we place it on top.
The order of clearing stacks and queues are opposite: in a queue it is first in, first out. In a stack it is first in, last out. In queues things flow through, in stacks they pile up and we have to dig down to the bottom.
So here is the important thing - our brains tend to act as stacks: the latest idea we have goes on top of prior things. This can be quite bad, since our memories are faulty it is similar to having a bunch of "to do" notes in a messy pile with disappearing ink on them. If we stack too much on there, by the time we dig back down the note is useless to us. Opportunity lost. Our brains stack projects and ideas that are written in disappearing ink leading to loss opportunities - we must find tools to help prevent loss of good ideas, losing focus and dropping what should be high priority tasks, and act on what is important now while saving good projects to think about for the future.
The classic approach to confronting this reality is to make a schedule in a calendar, ensuring we queue the important things and get them done. This is helpful. But how about all those "neat" ideas, stuff we want to do, projects to stew on? We need to store those, get them out of our mind so we don't forget them, and so we don't waste resources thinking about them without progressing them forward. You can have an "idea box", a note book, etc. to collect them - but this is far from ideal, now you have two separate processes to help manage your ideas.
I have found a nice tool that seems to take our brains "stack and lose" problem into account in a clean and easy to use manner: "things". The idea is simple: sticky notes, that can be tagged (for searching and ordering), placed in project folders, and have "to do on/by" stamps on them. Basically you take what your brain normally does - a bunch of ideas & thoughts - and you digitally capture them, allowing the computer to sort, slice, dice, put into a time sequence, store once done for documentation, rank by priority, etc. etc. Things is your brain, without the loss of persistence.
I'm currently using the free trial, and I am loving it. I have always had issues with retaining ideas and scheduling actions. Things seems to help, and is much more natural for me than just using a calendar. I get ideas and future projects put down, I get things done that need to be done. I'm still getting into the swing of things, and learning to use things better as I go, but I am highly impressed. My desk is a mess, my mind is worse - Things helps.
There are two problems with things: (1) it is only for the Mac, and (2) it costs $$$. The value for the money is very high though: I will most likely be shelling out the cash, things is a valuable tool for me - I'm going to be spending my coffee/beer money on this. If you are on PC you are currently out of luck; but now that this tool is out I'm sure there will be knock offs, so look around.
Lowdown:
- View your brain's storage of ideas as a stack of notes written in disappearing ink: this is a simple analogy and will help you figure out how to best deal with this.
- Things is a tool that addresses this by digitizing ideas in notes, allowing tagging, sorting, scheduling, binning, etc. Things is natural as it follows our natural brain process, and addressed the problems we have by using the strengths of digital storage. Consider Things, or something similar, for yourself. It just might be just the thing you were looking for...
We are all familiar with both. We go to the grocery store, and wait in a line (queue) to pay for our items. We have a pile of paper work on our desk, when we get something new we place it on top.
The order of clearing stacks and queues are opposite: in a queue it is first in, first out. In a stack it is first in, last out. In queues things flow through, in stacks they pile up and we have to dig down to the bottom.
So here is the important thing - our brains tend to act as stacks: the latest idea we have goes on top of prior things. This can be quite bad, since our memories are faulty it is similar to having a bunch of "to do" notes in a messy pile with disappearing ink on them. If we stack too much on there, by the time we dig back down the note is useless to us. Opportunity lost. Our brains stack projects and ideas that are written in disappearing ink leading to loss opportunities - we must find tools to help prevent loss of good ideas, losing focus and dropping what should be high priority tasks, and act on what is important now while saving good projects to think about for the future.
The classic approach to confronting this reality is to make a schedule in a calendar, ensuring we queue the important things and get them done. This is helpful. But how about all those "neat" ideas, stuff we want to do, projects to stew on? We need to store those, get them out of our mind so we don't forget them, and so we don't waste resources thinking about them without progressing them forward. You can have an "idea box", a note book, etc. to collect them - but this is far from ideal, now you have two separate processes to help manage your ideas.
I have found a nice tool that seems to take our brains "stack and lose" problem into account in a clean and easy to use manner: "things". The idea is simple: sticky notes, that can be tagged (for searching and ordering), placed in project folders, and have "to do on/by" stamps on them. Basically you take what your brain normally does - a bunch of ideas & thoughts - and you digitally capture them, allowing the computer to sort, slice, dice, put into a time sequence, store once done for documentation, rank by priority, etc. etc. Things is your brain, without the loss of persistence.
I'm currently using the free trial, and I am loving it. I have always had issues with retaining ideas and scheduling actions. Things seems to help, and is much more natural for me than just using a calendar. I get ideas and future projects put down, I get things done that need to be done. I'm still getting into the swing of things, and learning to use things better as I go, but I am highly impressed. My desk is a mess, my mind is worse - Things helps.
There are two problems with things: (1) it is only for the Mac, and (2) it costs $$$. The value for the money is very high though: I will most likely be shelling out the cash, things is a valuable tool for me - I'm going to be spending my coffee/beer money on this. If you are on PC you are currently out of luck; but now that this tool is out I'm sure there will be knock offs, so look around.
Lowdown:
- View your brain's storage of ideas as a stack of notes written in disappearing ink: this is a simple analogy and will help you figure out how to best deal with this.
- Things is a tool that addresses this by digitizing ideas in notes, allowing tagging, sorting, scheduling, binning, etc. Things is natural as it follows our natural brain process, and addressed the problems we have by using the strengths of digital storage. Consider Things, or something similar, for yourself. It just might be just the thing you were looking for...
Thursday, July 23, 2009
The big 5
The benchmark in personality is "the big 5". Nerds everywhere will be happy to know that this framework is from lexical analysis - e.g. data mining. The essential features are thus: empirical ("from the field") and reflective of our current society (allowing a comparative study of you versus others). The weaknesses follow from these essential features: no conceptual underpinnings, based on "averages" (persistent and consistent patterns in self reporting and writing), based on self view (if you ever spoke to a jerk, you know they would rate themselves rosy while everyone else would not - so this weakness can be huge) - so if you have higher or more realistic standards and self view than others, you will rate lower in various measures.
The lowdown of the big 5 is this: data analysis reveals clusters of traits that indicate 5 "basis vectors" which build up personality space. e.g. take all the adjectives we can use to describe ourselves, and we can project them into 5 different dimensions that capture how people tend to describe themselves. Simply by taking a test you can see how your personality is described in this 5-d space, which is bound in size in practice by the simple fact that we are finite creatures sharply bounded by time, capacity, and our social environment.
We float on an OCEAN [openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism] with others, and can quickly see how we "measure up" against others. As a simple rule, it seems like we would do well to "max out" on these measures in order to be a successful and happy person (for neuroticism, you want to max out on the low end...).
In short, the big 5 is a fairly flawed system - but one that is quick to determine for oneself, and will give you an impression of both our society and how you are positioned in the personality space of our times. Using your score you can see how others will tend percieve you, how you stand in relations with other, and thus what you may want to focus on in improvement (as we are social creatures our success often depends on the help, or at least not hinderance, of others). As far as personality tests go, this is a decent one and one that is the benchmark. Each dimension gives you a particular area of focus for self improvement, and an actual way of measuring - yes, far from perfect, but a somewhat objective measuring stick to see your progress, weak points, strengths, etc.
The lowdown of the big 5 is this: data analysis reveals clusters of traits that indicate 5 "basis vectors" which build up personality space. e.g. take all the adjectives we can use to describe ourselves, and we can project them into 5 different dimensions that capture how people tend to describe themselves. Simply by taking a test you can see how your personality is described in this 5-d space, which is bound in size in practice by the simple fact that we are finite creatures sharply bounded by time, capacity, and our social environment.
We float on an OCEAN [openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism] with others, and can quickly see how we "measure up" against others. As a simple rule, it seems like we would do well to "max out" on these measures in order to be a successful and happy person (for neuroticism, you want to max out on the low end...).
In short, the big 5 is a fairly flawed system - but one that is quick to determine for oneself, and will give you an impression of both our society and how you are positioned in the personality space of our times. Using your score you can see how others will tend percieve you, how you stand in relations with other, and thus what you may want to focus on in improvement (as we are social creatures our success often depends on the help, or at least not hinderance, of others). As far as personality tests go, this is a decent one and one that is the benchmark. Each dimension gives you a particular area of focus for self improvement, and an actual way of measuring - yes, far from perfect, but a somewhat objective measuring stick to see your progress, weak points, strengths, etc.
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