Swedish human rights activist Anna Ardin is glad Julian Assange is free.
But the claims she has made about him suggest she would have every reason not to wish him well.
Ardin is fiercely proud of Assange’s work for WikiLeaks, and insists that it should never have landed him behind bars.
“We have the right to know about the wars that are fought in our name,” she says.
Speaking to Ardin over Zoom in Stockholm, it quickly becomes clear that she has no problem keeping what she sees as the two Assanges apart in her head - the visionary activist and the man who she says does not treat women well.
She is at pains to describe him neither as a hero nor a monster, but a complicated man.
Thanks for the fair comment. Would you mind elaborating on “control the context to eliminate bias and gaming” under this situation?
To your second point, yeah I could’ve made that more clear. At that point in my comment I was still unpacking what veracity and validity could mean in the context of a personality test. For example, it’s hard to discuss repeatability in the context of personality that can change under life circumstances. If you take the most reputable personality tests out there (and they’re all with a grain of salt), they will of course be impacted if you take it, for example, the day after your mother dies. Or you are exhausted from an 18 hour shift. Or you just had a newborn child, etc. These are more extreme examples just to convey the idea. Naturally one can say, “well of course if you choose the same answers and your personality is consistent, then yes the test itself will be repeatable.”
For the same reason people will say, “But (scientific) polls of elections aren’t accurate!” it’s because they view them as predictive and immutable when they, like personality tests, are explicit snapshots in time.
The more substantive question to me is: do the questions asked by this test sufficiently cover most aspects of one’s personality? That’s hard to say. Obviously the more questions asked, the more granular the results can become, so I’ll grant that.
This relates to your final point: What would I consider to be the test’s objectives? For me, it’s an exercise in gleaning insight into one’s own personality; to help with reflection and introspection. To identify your strengths and weaknesses. In some sense, to provide some identity. I can’t tell you how I felt understood. I actually teared up while reading the analysis for the first time. As something of an outsider for much of my life it was like it filled in the missing pieces I long suspected and yet always doubted. Like I said I can’t speak for what others got out of the test, but it was the best therapy I ever received. (And for context, I read every other generalized group to make sure it wasn’t generalized astrological bullshit where every description could match every person, for which nothing came close).
For those who wish to try to get something out of these tests, I advise:
Take the test multiple times over weeks, months, years; see if you find a pattern or what comes up at your most neutral, baseline, normal, average state of mind on an average day in your life.
Ask yourself if it feels like this test is you, but also:
Ask close friends, loved-ones if they believe this is you (better yet, give them a control, then give them the actual results for you). Alternatively do it alongside your partner so you get external feedback.
Sure, apologies if you already know any of this.
As with other scientific fields, there are guidelines and processes in place to evaluate the structure and approach for research.
iirc you don’t technically have to adhere to them, but it will certainly be a point of industry and peer criticism if you don’t, sometimes leading to papers not being accepted for journals and other more esoteric consequences.
This is one of the reasons proper peer review is important.
A basic example would be picking from (or narrowing to) an appropriate subset of the population.
If you were trying to perform research with the goal of evaluating the population as a whole, running your experiment exclusively with women between the ages of 18-25 would immediately be picked up as a reason the results can’t be trusted (in terms of the stated goal).
A slightly less obvious example (for certain kinds of experiments) would be sentence structure and unconscious bias through contextual information.
When wording questions and examples it is easy to introduce a bias in the tone and word choice, which can affect the outcome of the research.
A real world example of the unconscious bias aspect is hiring discrimination : https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/the-resume-bias-how-names-and-ethnicity-influence-employment-opportunities
A simplistic summary is that there is a bias (unconscious or otherwise) against people with “ethnic” sounding names on their resume.
There is, of course, more nuance to it than that, but still.
This is much less cut and dry because sometimes the bias is the thing being studied and forms a part of the test, which is why when creating these kinds of experiments the process is carefully evaluated and revised, hopefully by multiple people.
Another one you touched upon already is context, the time of day, life events, general disposition etc.
Good test design will try to account for as much of this as possible (though it’s unlikely to remove it all entirely).
That’s not always strictly true, quality is also important and there are diminishing returns on quantity, the length of a questionnaire can sometimes have it’s own effect on the results for instance.
It sounds like this experience was/is of great use to you. I’ve heard similar things about ADHD and ASD diagnoses.
Finding your tribe/place sounds great.
What i would say is that people who don’t have this level of resonance with the results could well see it less favourably than you.
That isn’t necessarily because they performed the test (or interpreted the result) incorrectly, it could just mean less to them.
Read your comment twice and truly I appreciate the neutral tone and detailed explanations. Certainly food for thought. I do get wary about saying I found something in this test because I’m certainly cautious when reputable sources generally shoot it down. I hate the idea that I’m falling for some sort of pseudoscience and weigh that against (a) how it tangibly helped me, and (b) whether we simply haven’t found the proper way to test its efficacy properly; for I do find psychology and psychometrics in itself to be both a bit less explored and less quantitative (or deterministic?) compared to say fields more deductive and rooted in mathematics like physics. I’m not a scientist or research analyst so I must yield to those who know more for the latter.
Thanks for the conversation.
No problem. Outside perspectives are usually interesting to explore.
Perhaps a different approach might help.
[ I will caveat the following with : i am not , in any way, qualified to give any psychological advice or medical suggestions, this is not that, it’s just my personal opinion. ]
Rather than try and figure out if the test itself is flawed or not, look at the outcome instead.
Based on how you described it, it wasn’t the specific methodology itself that was helpful to you.
You can take whatever positives you experienced and explore them completely independently.
Does it matter that you used a potentially flawed methodology to come to a useful conclusion about yourself ?
Well and honestly that’s pretty much how I do look at it. I’m just painfully aware though how easy it is to fall for something you want to be true, or to be coaxed into a false narrative. No differently than how some people are more impressionable and vulnerable at various points in their lives. So I’m trying to balance that versus trying to have an honest take on how it helped me.
Dare I say, this is pretty much the problem with religious faith in my view — coming from a formerly religious family. Many will argue that if it isn’t rooted in truth but still helps you, then is it okay? That’s hard for me.