Alphanumeric Typing: Intro

Update – April 2, 2015:  I’m adding a needed disclaimer that this article was posted for April Fools’ Day, 2015.  It is an intended parody of the all-too-common pseudoscience found in the field of personality typing.  Though I worked hard to make it dry, I honestly thought everyone would be able to tell it was a joke by how over the top it was, but I think it drives my point home that much harder that *many* people took it seriously.  These are attitudes found throughout psychology.  They’re dangerous, horrendously abusive to individuals’ sense of self-worth, let alone blatantly unscientific.  I’m sorry if my attempt to roll my eyes came far too close to the truth. (But we really are writing the Modular Personalized Typings and Cognition: The Super Simple Version!  That was legit ;)) ~

<3 Calise

Hi everyone!  I’m super excited for what I have to share with you today, even though as we’ve been hard at work on the Modular Personalized Typings (which, as with pretty much everything on aLBoP, are turning out way more in-depth, long and detailed than previously expected ;)), and so I only have time to give you a brief intro to Alphanumeric Typing, which is sure to require many posts in the future!  As you guys know, here on aLBoP we’re always looking for new ways to understand the human mind, as well as listening to you in order to find new ways to help you understand yourself and everyone around you!  Alphanumeric Typing is no different, and I think you’ll appreciate its elegance and simplicity that anyone can understand!

One complaint we hear a lot on aLBoP is that the letters are too confusing.  Though we’ve tried to simplify this problem with posts like What Do All These Letters Mean Anyway?, The Cognition Process in Stick Figures and Cognition: The Super Simple Version (that I am currently writing), there are still issues with reading comprehension or complaints of TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read).  To help this problem, we (my INFJ and I) have come up with an easy Alphanumeric system since, let’s face it, numbers are easier to understand than letters.

Now this part couldn’t be easier; it’s amazing how formulaic the human mind can really be.  Each letter has a simple number value, based solely on its position in the English alphabet, so this method is open to anyone who knows the alphabet!  Imagine the world opened to kindergarteners and adults alike!  In case you hadn’t already guessed, this is based on a straightforward system of A=1, B=2, etc., as follows:

From this we see that ISTP is the best, but honestly, didn’t we already know that?

As this demonstrates, scientifically, in general terms Feelers are of less worth than Thinkers, with the rare exception of ENTJ, who seems to have gotten the short end of the Thinking gene stick, coming even below one of the Feeling types.  But don’t worry, we still need the Feelers for things like taking care of puppies and being walked over like doormats!