The Ever-expanding Universe of the Objective Personality System(OPS)

This is the first article in a series on the Objective Personality System(OPS).

Much like The Big Bang brought forth our Universe from nothingness and has expanded into the possibly boundless Cosmic Web, so the realm of Personality Theory, AKA Typology, has expanded from simple atomic Jungian Psychological Functions, through an epoch of MBTI cosmic background noise, out into the vast inert openness of Trait Theory, and only recently spiraling out from a super nova has emerged the expansive Objective Personality System(OPS) theory.

This new-ish personality theory has bounded light-years ahead of its Pop-psychology personality theory competitors to boldly expand where no personality theory has expanded before…

OPS Social Types Release

As of March 2023, the OPS team have added a new “Social Types” layer to the OPS theory.

OPS Social Types Release Notes

The Social Types are comprised of four Social behavior patterns which each personality is said to have in a particular order. Similar to the OPS Animals, the new Social Types are comprised of four Social Traits. But unlike the OPS Animals, there are only four allowed orders of the four Social Traits.

Therefore the new Social Traits do not follow the same logical pattern as the existing OPS Animals. For reference, the OPS Animals have 16 allowed Animal Orders out of the 24 possible permutations of four logical objects.

According to the OPS team’s release notes: “The 4 Social Types use the exact same ‘math’ as the 4 Sexual Types.”

By which they are presumably referring to the OPS Sexual Modalities. In the OPS theory, there are four Sexual Modalities and each is composed of two non-dependent Female/Male component choices related to two allegedly recognizable cognitive functions within a personality.

In this sense, the new Social Types do not follow the same logical pattern as the existing OPS Sexual Modalities, as there are four order-dependent components in the new Social Types instead of two order-non-dependent Sexual Modality components.

The OPS team has chosen to create a new hybrid concept instead of using either of the two existing logical structure concepts from the Animals or the Sexual Modalities.

There are four Social Trait components in each Social Type, but essentially only the first two are being considered in the “math”, as will be explained below.

Therefore the OPS theory has expanded not only with a new layer of Social Type complexity, but also with the creation of a new logical structure concept.

To Coin or Not to Coin

The Social Types release notes briefly mentions two new OPS Coins for the Social Types, but there is no mention of the OPS Typing Checklist being expanded to include these new Coins or the resultant expansion of the number of OPS Types.

If the Social Types use the same math as the Sexual Modalities, wouldn’t they also have two OPS Checklist Coins used to define each Social Type as part of the overall OPS Type?

And wouldn’t those two new Social Coins multiple the number of OPS Types by a factor of four — the same factor as the Sexual Modality Coins — from 512 Types to 2048 Types?

This would expand the number of OPS Coins from Nine(9) to Eleven(11), as 2¹¹ is 2048.

There is an immediate problem with this scenario of adding only two Social Coins, as although the OPS team are stating that the Social Types use the same math as the Sexual Modalities, there are four Social Traits as opposed to the two Sexual “Traits” (F/M) in the Sexual Modalities.

And therefore there would necessarily have to be additional new Coins to define the exact order of the Social Traits in each Social Type.

Bear with me as this possibility is explored…

If the four Social Traits were similar to the four Animals, which technically require four Coins as well as an Animal Order rule to define the exact order of the four Animals in each Type. Then in this four-new-Social-Coins scenario, the proposed necessary Social Coins would be ‘Friends vs. Flexing’, ‘Specialize vs. Responsibility’, a third coin to define the order of the chosen first two Coins, and a fourth Coin to define the order of the remaining two unchosen Social Traits.

These four Coins would completely define the four trait Social Types.

However, since for some unexplained reason there are only four Social Type orders allowed out of the possible 24 permutation orders of the four Social Trait logical objects, there are necessarily unrealized or unwritten constraints being applied to the allowed orders of the four Social Traits.

This means that Social Trait Order Rules can be written, and these would eliminate the need for the two Social Order Coins(3rd and 4th Coins).

Phew!

Therefore, despite there being four Social Traits, only two Social Coins are required to define the exact order of all four Social Traits when the yet-to-be-written limiting Social Trait Order Rules are applied.

Which still brings us back to the expansion of the total OPS Types from 512 Types to 2048 Types.

Social Coin 1: 512 x 2 = 1024; Social Coin 2: 1024 x 2 = 2048.

This large expansion of the number of OPS Types may sound ridiculous, but if the Social Types were defined by the Animal logic instead of the hybridized Sexual Modality logic, and assuming that the Social Trait Coins are not dependent on other existing OPS Coins(which they might be), then the number of OPS Types would expand to 8192 Types.

Big Bang indeed.

Of course, the OPS team could choose to segregate the new Social Types from the existing OPS Typing Checklist logic, but then the Social Types would not be part of the Typed personality, and would merely be a different lens looking at the same data in a new manner.

There are already a few public OPS community posts about the Social Types, treating them as if they are a split off concept in this manner. But I predict that if this is the case, the separate “Types” will have a confusing effect on the official OPS Type understanding.

Imagine the scenario, there would be two Types: The regular OPS Type, and then this other Social Type add-on.

When am I using my Animals? Is it only when I’m not being Social? If I’m being Social, does that mean that I’m not using my Animals? Am I using my behavioral Animals and my Social Traits at the same time? I’m more confused now than I was before.

In other words, instead of simplifying or streamlining the OPS theory, the new Social Types appear poised to potentially complicate the OPS theory.

Incidentally, is anyone else getting Enneagram vibes… Social Types… Sexual Types… Is there a Self-Preservation Type release coming soon?

Perhaps the Animals are the Self-Preservation Type. {fierce Animal noises}

The Personality System at the End of the Universe

As mentioned, the OPS team have chosen not to add these required new Social Coins to the OPS Typing Checklist at this time.

This is inconsistent with previous additions to the OPS theory, which begs the question on whether other Coins should be removed from the OPS theory.

As the OPS team mentioned in their Social Types release notes, the math of the new Social Types is “the exact same” math as the Sexual Modalities. And if there are no Social Coins, should the Sexual Modality Coins be removed from the OPS theory? Or split off into their own silo as Sexual Types?

Should the Animal Orders follow the same Social Types order restrictions and therefore the number of allowed Animal Orders would be reduced from 16 to 4 allowed orders?

This could really eliminate some Coins and reduce the number of superfluous OPS Types.

I’m being a bit facetious if that isn’t coming through…

It is odd that this OPS theory release did not include more details about the Social Coins. I may be reading into the situation, but the OPS team may be struggling with yet another expansion of the OPS theory.

Shannon Powers, Dave’s better half, has expressed exasperation in at least one past OPS educational video about the expanding OPS theory and the addition of new Coins and Typing complexity.

There is a sense that the OPS theory keeps growing and growing as if an Extroverted Intuitive(Ne) Dominant personality was guiding the theory.

Perhaps the time will eventually come when an Introverted Intuitive(Ni) Dominant mission statement will be adopted by the OPS team and the expanding OPS universe will finally collapse down in The Big Crunch… with similar concepts combining… and similar logic enfolding… in an origami of Ni personality bliss.

Although on second thought, recent measurements of the expansion of our universe suggest the universe will not reverse course and collapse… but will instead expand forever… perhaps much like the OPS theory…

16384 Types… 32768 Types… 65536 Types…

For reference, if the OPS theory expanded to 33 Coins, there could be a distinct OPS Type for every living person on this planet of more than 8 billion people.

My OPS-33 Type would be called Ralph Trent.

Thank you for reading. Enjoy your day.

Please discuss on the appropriate OPS and Typology forums.