RE: This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff
08-27-2013, 01:35 PM
(08-27-2013, 12:14 PM)Coldblooded Wrote: »I'm not sure where exactly you heard that statistic, but I probably wouldn't want to trust anything else from that source in the future if I were you. The actual percentage is a lot closer to 50-50. (The Myers-Briggs website was the most reliable looking source I find, and it claims introverts as being 50.7% of the population to extroverts' mere 49.3%)MBTI these days gets used like astrology for HR people, though ;P
There are a lot of statistics thrown around, somewhere between 20-33% in a lot of discussions I’ve read lately, but I don’t really know that you can narrow it down to a meaningful range; assuming a bellcurve distribution of results along the spectrum (as suggested by that site), any statistic in this spectrum can be made accurate by imposing an arbitrary standard for what constitutes an introvert.
I don’t disagree that many Anglospheric cultures (with exceptions, and certainly some exceptions are made for highly exceptional people) are a bit hostile to introverted styles of doing things, to various degrees. There have been books written about this sort of thing... and, of course, I live that life.
I don’t really mind small talk in appropriate venues, when it’s clear everyone around is in the mood to do it. But in my experience, a lot of people in my mainstream (American) culture are very bad at reading that sort of situation, and for whatever reason it is not generally regarded as rude as it probably should be to interrupt someone trying to think hard or read a book or something. And we have placed noisy machines everywhere, which may well be stressing us to death. Some subcultures I’m in seem to treat that a little better, though (e.g. I don’t think the U.S. would be anywhere near the software powerhouse it is today if American programmers on the whole considered it okay to interrupt each other at just any time in any context—it takes a while to get “in the zone”).
In conclusion, screw you, tree outside my window. Despite being feet away, you somehow don’t block any sun for me, but you DO house cicadas and songbirds.