The Richness of Paired Dichotomies
May. 21st, 2008 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorka"There are two types of people in this world; those who dichotomize, and those who don't."
With all due respect to my father's old joke, I'll admit that I find paired dichotomies - tetrachotomies? - generally more useful for classifying the world. They're just so useful!
Earth/Air/Water/Fire (the Classic)
Pentacles/Swords/Cups/Wands (the Tarot suits, and essentially the same as the first)
Gold/Blue/Green/Orange (the True Colors test)
Driver/Analytical/Amiable/Expressive (PeopleStyles)
Totalitarian/Socialist/Anarchist/Capitalist
Civic/Adaptive/Idealist/Reactive (Strauss & Howe again)
Power Gamers/Real Roleplayers/Loons/Munchkins
. . . and a new one on me, Achiever/Explorer/Socializer/Killer. This is obviously adaptable to the MMORPG world, and to some extent to gaming in general. I play as an Explorer/Socializer; I'm not great in tournaments because I, as a player, don't play to specific goals (although I'll pursue the character's goals, no problem, for the sake of the roleplaying). I GM for Explorer/Achievers. People who either play or GM to 'grief' piss me the heck off, and it's one of the reasons I won't play Paranoia.
Anyway, there is something fundamentally satisfying to me about quarterings. There are a few quartered-quarterings - the Myers-Briggs, several of the OKCupid tests - that are interesting as meshings of mutually perpendicular quadrant axes, diagnostic hypercubes. Good ol' A. Square looking not so much upward as outward . . .
With all due respect to my father's old joke, I'll admit that I find paired dichotomies - tetrachotomies? - generally more useful for classifying the world. They're just so useful!
Earth/Air/Water/Fire (the Classic)
Pentacles/Swords/Cups/Wands (the Tarot suits, and essentially the same as the first)
Gold/Blue/Green/Orange (the True Colors test)
Driver/Analytical/Amiable/Expressive (PeopleStyles)
Totalitarian/Socialist/Anarchist/Capitalist
Civic/Adaptive/Idealist/Reactive (Strauss & Howe again)
Power Gamers/Real Roleplayers/Loons/Munchkins
. . . and a new one on me, Achiever/Explorer/Socializer/Killer. This is obviously adaptable to the MMORPG world, and to some extent to gaming in general. I play as an Explorer/Socializer; I'm not great in tournaments because I, as a player, don't play to specific goals (although I'll pursue the character's goals, no problem, for the sake of the roleplaying). I GM for Explorer/Achievers. People who either play or GM to 'grief' piss me the heck off, and it's one of the reasons I won't play Paranoia.
Anyway, there is something fundamentally satisfying to me about quarterings. There are a few quartered-quarterings - the Myers-Briggs, several of the OKCupid tests - that are interesting as meshings of mutually perpendicular quadrant axes, diagnostic hypercubes. Good ol' A. Square looking not so much upward as outward . . .
