Nerd Industries: Stuart Robinson's blog

I recently came across a pretty entertaining blog post by Ted Dziuba about NLP in which he recounts some bad experiences and concludes that NLP isn't for everyone: "If you are considering NLP as the answer to a real problem, it's virtually certain that you're overthinking it." I think in many cases he's right, and it reminds me of Alexander Pop's famous couplet from An Essay on Criticism: "A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."

But my favorite part comes at the end of his blog post, where he begrudgingly acknowledges that NLP does have some merits, at least for those who know what they're doing:

"That being said, NLP does have its place: making the best fucking Wikipedia search engine there ever was with technology licensed from Xerox and then selling yourself to Microsoft."

I think that's a compliment. Thanks, Ted.

I vaguely recall taking a test in high school to determine my "personality type". It must have been the Myers-Brigg test because the result was a four-letter code. (I want to say that the result was INFJ, but it's been a long time and my memory may be off.) Inspired by a blog post by Bob Carpenter about personality typing blogs, I re-took the test (here). This time the result was INTP, which is described on the Myers-Brigg web site as follows:

"Seek to develop logical explanations for everything that interests them. Theoretical and abstract, interested more in ideas than in social interaction. Quiet, contained, flexible, and adaptable. Have unusual ability to focus in depth to solve problems in their area of interest. Skeptical, sometimes critical, always analytical."

That sounds mostly right (except for the middle part about being quiet and contained). I looked elsewhere and found another description of INTPs, which turned out to be creepily accurate:

"Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, this fine discrimination ability gives INTPs so inclined a natural advantage as, for example, grammarians and linguists."

Yikes. Maybe there is something to this stuff, after all. Now I should figure out my blog's personality type...