Warp & Woof
Books in the fabric of everyday life

It's Not Theoretically Possible
Originally published Jan. 27, 1998

I've been turned in! Part of the CardinalBook inauguration was an announcement email to 27 friends and family. A good number of people responded with the hoped-for congratulatory kudos. Most retained an easily-rationalized silence. But two people reported me to my ISP for "email abuse" -- sending Unsolicited Commercial Email. Friends indeed!
      "Communication" is a funny thing. No matter who you are, you're gonna "click" when communicating with some people, but drop a bomb when saying the same thing to others. Why is that?
      Some people swear that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator explains all. This is a way of identifying 16 different personality types, based on the various combinations of where you fall on 4 different scales. Each type has a unique 4-letter identifier. As an INTP, I supposedly prefer communication that's spare and logically consistent. My wife, on the other hand, is your typical ISFJ, a person who values completeness and some level of feeling-based overcommunication, even if it means saying a few things that are actually contradictory. You can find your type and your communication style in Please Understand Me: Character & Temperament Types by Keirsey & Bates (Prometheus, 1984).
      The aforementioned INTP personality type is reportedly pretty rare in the general population, although it's well represented among, say, professors and Internet afficionados. Apparently, only one INTP has ever been president: John Quincy Adams. Considered an outstanding diplomat and probably the country's best-ever Secretary of State, he never really was a good politician. He was considered by others to be cantankerous and misanthropic (not good for a politician), while at the same time erudite and hardworking (good for a scholar). Characteristically, he considered his finest achievement not to be his negotiation of the Treaty of Ghent, or his creation of the Monroe Doctrine, or his victory in arguing the Amistad case before the Supreme Court -- but rather a scholarly, book-length report on weights and measures that he wrote at Congress's request! His story is artfully told in the recent John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul Nagel (Knopf, 1997).