Here are my inclinations.
I am a learn-overt
This is a portmanteau of learning and intro/extrovert. Personality is helpful when it provides clues to the motives of a person’s actions. My action is mostly determined by the prospect of learning something.
Learning boosts my energy
I may appear as an introvert because learning condensed materials (e.g. a book) is an efficient way of learning. However, I also enjoy acquiring undocumented knowledge, empathy, and communication skills through talking to people. Unlike introverts, I do not feel tired even after talking to groups after groups of people. However, I feel tired easily alone or accompanied, if I do not feel that I am learning.
Conversations
When having conversations, I enjoy the conversations to go deep and to discuss the unobservable. It is completely fine to start a conversation like “what did you have for lunch”, because we need to understand other people’s circumstances, but it will be more interesting if we eventually move on to the importance of nutrition, rather than where to shop for groceries; if we discuss where to shop for groceries, it will be more engaging to discuss the market structure of supermarkets than to discuss the traffic of the store. Interesting discussions are not about where we start or where we are at, it is about the direction we go1. I feel the more abstract the concepts, the closer they are to a mental model, and therefore the more transferrable it is. The world is like a sphere with generators inside producing facts to the spherical surface. I enjoy figuring out the mechanics of the nature and society by going deep.
Meanwhile, I also tend to avoid impractical conversations. Namely, conversations that no one has any idea of or control over. Topics from financial news, politics and COVID-19 often fall into this category. Such topics are polluted with noise with little signals to act on.
Personal relationships
Being learning-driven means I usually benefit from my interactions with other people. This encourages me to adopt the following practices to give back/forward. When friends need my support, I will help them lavishly; even if there is no learning involved, I take it as my responsibilities. I also allocate time to help proactively
I advocate for radical honesty.
Being truthful about what we observe and think helps us to get closer to reality. No one is always right. Instead of second-guessing and self-censoring, we should be open to being corrected and correcting others’ mistakes. I believe this is essential for building deep and mutually beneficial relationships.
We should aim for being emotionally correct instead of politically correct. We need to respect everyone’s well-being in society, but that does not mean we can bend our reality against evidence.
Expand my life at the extremes
Similar to the desire to learn, I like to expand my life and make discomfort zones feel at home.
I may appear as a workaholic because my work is one of the easiest ways to live at intellectual extremes. That is a result of blessings in my life that allowed me to learn and work with world-class colleagues in cutting-edge research and innovation fields. However, I would love to challenge myself with experiences I never had before (e.g. gliding, skydiving). I have a wishlist of items from which I randomly pick one to complete every season.
I prefer progress over ideologies
I am a pragmatic person. Be it a state-directed tree-planting program (left), or a tax reduction in green technology (right), I support policies that make progress.
I understand progress may be dangerous
It is much more rewarding to work on things that lead to progress than to work on regulations; people do not appreciate successful regulations (because their success lies in that no bad things happened). Therefore, I actively seek rational pessimistic people to work with me.
I understand progress may not lead to equalities
Many technological advancements may not be enjoyed by the mass in their infancy (e.g. phones, aeroplanes). Meanwhile, many frugal innovations bring already developed technologies to the mass. I believe both are important and we should not favour one over the other: it is too easy to criticize the former as an indulgence, but we need the early adopters’ investment for these technologies to be possible.
My personality/team role assessments
Belbin team role
According to the highly concordant results from assessments completed by myself and my colleagues, my top three roles are plant, resource investigator, and specialist.
This means that I am good at generating ideas (plant), gaining opportunities for ideas (resource investigator), and building challenging ideas (specialist). This result fits the profile of a technical entrepreneur, who can build and sell their ideas effectively. I have found that many entrepreneurs are also bloggers, probably because they are equally idea-driven.
This result also indicates areas that I should pay attention to. These roles are more idea-driven and this may make me appear self-focused. As a plant, I should communicate my ideas effectively with others. As a resource investigator, I should gain opportunities for the team, the collaborators, not just myself. As a specialist, I should bring the team together. I would love to work with colleagues who are more result-focused and people-focused, so that team can carry through the ideas and take care of everyone’s welfare at the same time.
These are just the top three results. None of the roles is ill-fitted, and I may adopt other roles when needed.
MBTI test
I am not sure about the scientific validity of this test and my result shows around 60% inclination for any area (i.e. none of my inclinations are strong). My result was INTJ when I took it in 2015.
I am a skeptic (maybe?)
I do not believe in the intrinsic values of many things, including skepticism. Therefore, the more I elaborate, the more self-conflicting I sound. :P