Hi David,

Thank you for your input. I would encourage you here and across Medium to trust that people will take you seriously even if you don’t resort to leveling personal criticisms. This isn’t Twitter — people here tend to be very thoughtful.

I certainly do care to spell Myers-Briggs correctly and appreciate you correcting me.

I wonder though if you were so focused on telling me that I didn’t know anything that you left out the most interesting thing you have to offer, which is why you prefer Myers-Briggs over Big Five, or even simply why and when you are a fan of Myers-Briggs. The reason I wonder that is because otherwise I can’t tell why you took the time to tell me I was not informed.

Other than spelling and the word “test” which was clearly used colloquially (and appropriately), what exactly did you read that you didn’t agree with? Your expertise is in Organizational Psychology and I went out of my way to avoid covering that ground — so I don’t see what else you would have tripped over.

This phrase?

“If you’ve taken Myers Briggs and came out as an introvert, you might think there’s an introversion structure in your brain. And that’s not quite right.”

With a phrase as weak as “you might think,” it seems like it would be impossible to argue against. Clearly someone, somewhere thinks that. However, I did write that phrase based on personal experience. Quite a few people do think that and then resist taking the test seriously.

We ended up changing our editorial style guide to include something we call “demonstrated expertise” which isn’t to say that the writer is always the world’s expert. Rather the new intention is for the pieces we publish to always include the source of expertise that is informing the author’s advice. In this case, I was writing from the perspective of having run a personal development group through a series of personality tests (yes, tests, that’s colloquially what people would call them). This is a long time ago, but my memory is that the group numbered about 200 people. I can’t find anything in the piece that isn’t either extremely basic info or insight drawn from the experience of that group

I think then that you calling this piece pontificating reflects a flaw in our old editorial standards. In any case, it sounds like you have a lot to offer and I encourage you to just offer it.

Regards,

Tony