Myers-Briggs and Objectivism

[Charles R. Anderson]

If Dagny were to have a problem it would not be due to any lack of mechanical or other ability. It would be due to here mind wandering off to deal with more interesting and challenging issues.

[Judith]

If Dagny were to have a problem it would not be due to any lack of mechanical or other ability. It would be due to here mind wandering off to deal with more interesting and challenging issues.

I certainly acknowledge that the latter could be a problem. But I question whether the former could also be a problem.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Dagny is an NT. Let's assume also for the sake of argument that SPs are the ideal type for railroad engineers.

Dagny might or might not have mechanical talents. For example, I'm an NT. I shoot with a bunch of guys, of varying types. There's an NT, an SP, an SJ, another NT, an NF, etc. Every single one of them is mechanically talented to some degree -- some to a very great degree. I am a mechanical nightmare. Mechanical talent doesn't correspond to type.

There are two axes -- personality type and mechanical talent -- and they don't intersect and they don't run parallel and they aren't in the same plane. They're completely unrelated.

Judith

[Charles R. Anderson]

Judith,

I suppose we have a bit of a problem here, since Dagny is Rand's character and we can only go by her presentation of Dagny. Dagny is presented as a very capable telegrapher, as a pilot, as having some knowledge of bridge design, and generally as very capable of jury-rigged solutions to the increasing breakdowns on the railroad. These things suggest that she was very competent mechanically and with her hands. Perhaps they are not definitive, however. But, one always gets the sense that Dagny can do whatever she sets out to do, which I believe is a message that Rand was trying to convey.

Then, since I love Dagny, I may simply be prejudiced in her favor!

[Judith]

I suppose we have a bit of a problem here, since Dagny is Rand's character and we can only go by her presentation of Dagny. Dagny is presented as a very capable telegrapher, as a pilot, as having some knowledge of bridge design, and generally as very capable of jury-rigged solutions to the increasing breakdowns on the railroad. These things suggest that she was very competent mechanically and with her hands. Perhaps they are not definitive, however. But, one always gets the sense that Dagny can do whatever she sets out to do, which I believe is a message that Rand was trying to convey.

Then, since I love Dagny, I may simply be prejudiced in her favor!

Oh, I adore Dagny too -- she's my very own ideal and my favorite of all Rand's characters, hands down.

And she IS a fictional character, so there's no way to solve the issue.

Perhaps my argument is more with Rand than with you; I don't believe that a character like Francisco, for example, is realistic. He really could do everything without trying -- things that required advanced skills on his first attempt. That simply isn't possible.

I've never doubted that Dagny could do what she did on the railroad. And perhaps her mechanical skills were good enough for her to be a very capable engineer; as I said, the NTs with whom I shoot have very good mechanical skills. Dagny did major in engineering, although that isn't necessarily definitive; I'm very good at what I majored in theoretically, but in everyday hands-on situations I'm not all that great -- I'm simply better at theoretical problem-solving than I am at the nuts-and-bolts practical aspects of living, being an extreme N on the N-S continuum. (Einstein, an INTP like me, was known to walk around the street in his bathrobe because he would forget to get dressed. Rand, who I suspect was also an extreme N, lived in a small, messy apartment and never learned to drive, but wrote brilliant novels.) Not all Ns are extreme Ns.

Judith

Edited February 20, 2007 by Judith

[Danneskjold]

Perhaps my argument is more with Rand than with you; I don't believe that a character like Francisco, for example, is realistic. He really could do everything without trying -- things that required advanced skills on his first attempt. That simply isn't possible.

Your argument is based on one of two things:

1) logic being limited

2) perception of how a thing works being limited.

Something works, I see how, I do necessary things for it to function correctly. Francisco didn't hop into the boat and drive off, he poked around first. Figured out what was what, and then went.

It's basically what I did my first time in a driver's seat. I knew from observation which pedal did what, I figured out the emergency brake, the transmission, and more or less the rest of the car. No one had to explain what was what.

Besides that, I'm proof to the contrary.

[Ellen Stuttle]

(Einstein, an INTP like me, was known to walk around the street in his bathrobe because he would forget to get dressed. Rand, who I suspect was also an extreme N, lived in a small, messy apartment and never learned to drive, but wrote brilliant novels.)

Judith

I wonder where you read or heard the Einstein item. I think it has to be apocryphal. My husband doesn't recall ever reading of such a tale in his extensive studies of Einstein's life; nor has he ever heard that story mentioned by any of the three persons he knows who are major Einstein experts (two former directors of the Einstein Project and the current curator of the Einstein archives at Cal Tech).

A true story is that Einstein did often wear shoes without socks, but not because he forgot to put on socks, because he didn't like to wear them.

Re AR's "small, messy apartment," possibly you were thinking of AR's study, not her apartment as a whole. I don't recall anyone's describing the apartment as a whole like that. Both Barbara and John Hospers have referred to the study as "small," and John said something in his reminiscences of Ayn Rand about the study making him feel hemmed-in (I don't remember his exact wording, long time since I read the piece). He likes spacious rooms.

Ellen

___

[Judith]

Perhaps my argument is more with Rand than with you; I don't believe that a character like Francisco, for example, is realistic. He really could do everything without trying -- things that required advanced skills on his first attempt. That simply isn't possible.

Your argument is based on one of two things:

1) logic being limited

2) perception of how a thing works being limited.

Something works, I see how, I do necessary things for it to function correctly. Francisco didn't hop into the boat and drive off, he poked around first. Figured out what was what, and then went.

It's basically what I did my first time in a driver's seat. I knew from observation which pedal did what, I figured out the emergency brake, the transmission, and more or less the rest of the car. No one had to explain what was what.

Besides that, I'm proof to the contrary.

Francisco may have understood how the boat worked on a purely logical basis, but I very much doubt that a simple understanding of the logic of the mechanics would have given him the fine motor skills to drive it with finesse and grace. That would take practice. So would tennis and all the other things he supposedly did perfectly at his first attempts.

Judith

[Danneskjold]

That really just comes from athleticism. I tried racketball for the first time not so long ago (last summer) and it didn't take much at all to get the hang of it. I could already hit the ball and make it go where I wanted it to go. Control of a person's physical being isn't that hard.

[Laure]

Judith,

Francisco isn't supposed to be "realistic," he's idealized. But a person like him is not impossible - some people really are smart, skilled at business, and good at athletic or physical tasks. If you're going to portray an ideal man, shouldn't he be good at everything?

As for Dagny being able to do many lower-level jobs at the railroad, I've seen this in my career. The former CEO at a software company I worked at was an electrical engineer, a software architect, and could also program circles around me in C++. I have no doubt that he could have competently handled any job at his company. But he happened to have the big-picture skills, the "vision thing," that the rest of us didn't have.

[Judith]

Judith,

Francisco isn't supposed to be "realistic," he's idealized. But a person like him is not impossible - some people really are smart, skilled at business, and good at athletic or physical tasks. If you're going to portray an ideal man, shouldn't he be good at everything?

As for Dagny being able to do many lower-level jobs at the railroad, I've seen this in my career. The former CEO at a software company I worked at was an electrical engineer, a software architect, and could also program circles around me in C++. I have no doubt that he could have competently handled any job at his company. But he happened to have the big-picture skills, the "vision thing," that the rest of us didn't have.

As I said above, I've never doubted anything Dagny did at work. To me, that's completely credible. I would have had a great deal of trouble believing that she was also a black belt martial artist, a fine concert pianist, and a superb child psychologist as well. Not only would it mean that she had TIME to perfect all of those skills, it would mean that she had every talent in the book, and that's extremely unlikely. A novelist can, of course, write anything he/she wants, but at some point the suspension of disbelief in the reader becomes a problem.

Judith

[Brant Gaede]

Perhaps my argument is more with Rand than with you; I don't believe that a character like Francisco, for example, is realistic. He really could do everything without trying -- things that required advanced skills on his first attempt. That simply isn't possible.

Your argument is based on one of two things:

1) logic being limited

2) perception of how a thing works being limited.

Something works, I see how, I do necessary things for it to function correctly. Francisco didn't hop into the boat and drive off, he poked around first. Figured out what was what, and then went.

It's basically what I did my first time in a driver's seat. I knew from observation which pedal did what, I figured out the emergency brake, the transmission, and more or less the rest of the car. No one had to explain what was what.

Besides that, I'm proof to the contrary.

The first time I was in the driver's seat I took off the brake and let it roll, turned the wheel and came to a stop on the opposite side of the street perfectly parked. I put the brake on just as the adults came running out of the house. I was four years old.

--Brant