Conversation With Safsom About Reinin Dichotomies, Model A and +Ti vs -Ti
Safsom: I don't want people to take this literally and say "mmm yess immoral person being said bad. Beta or Delta." Because there is more to the "aristocracy" of Deltas if there does even exist one - I think it is quite internal, subdued, and to do with personal space. I find the only people Deltas categorically dislike and subject to "hierarchical" formation are those that disagree with considering new perspectives and hold too strongly to one view. Aristocratic/Democratic to me seems less realistic.
Safsom: Static/Dynamic and Judicious/Decisive are usually fine. So is Merry/Serious. Result/Process is a bit too easy to distort, I don't see it as realistic
My Response: Depends what definition you use, I’d say, which is really true for any Reinin dichotomy (i.e. the semantics is important, not just the structural aspect you are pointing to). And there are a lot of crappy definitions for it, such as in this conversation thread (not the fault of any one person since you may have got it from someone else but just saying).
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Safsom: Like why is LII a Result type, for example? I would imagine the types most prone to using conceptual reconfiguration and scenarios (Ni/Ne dynamic) to flesh out their systems and structures (Ti) would be very focused on refining these systems formally through the scenarios (as Ti usually is formal and explicable logic). Whereas the LSIs, for example, who are there as Process, have a very non-exploratory (in most cases) creative, and in the absence of Ni presence, might see its categorisations as logically self-evident and limit formal proof to a minimum
My Response: In a lot of Socionics systems, perhaps they wouldn’t be. Most of the LII’s in Western Socionics for example have evolutionary logic. In SHS, the conceptual reconfiguration based on “scenarios” sounds more like irrational thinking to me, using a more local, situational logic based on holistic contexts. More formal either-or logic that justifies with absolute clarity and precision is more LSIish in certain Socionics paradigms. LSI logic is more formal (invoking the aspect of “form” in space, Si) whereas LII logic is more “polymorphic” as I prefer to understand it. Reflecting imaginally on your logic and keeping it more updatable to innovations doesn’t seem to be aided by formal logic actually, but rather by a more relaxed, polymorphic approach. Whether someone explains something or not has little to do with process or result and LSIs can indeed be quite minimal there too, I agree (especially if they get into more of a "might makes right" Se attitude, or simply want to maintain power by not explaining too much). Both LII and LSI could have reasons to explain or not explain, regardless of whether you use process or results or not
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My Response: I think both evolutionary and involutionary logics can be inclined to shave away the logically unnecessary. The LSI is a more positivist logic that complexifies from simpler assumptions and systems that are easier to understand formally (e.g. Von Neumann: If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is… math and physics are way simpler than subjects like economics, psychology, sociology, etc.), and it is looking to justify and establish a strict logical causality, which can lead to shaving off quite a bit that doesn’t meet that standard for them. LII might be trying to simplify a very complex system elementally, but the system may be so complicated that few are capable of understanding their output. I think both LSI’s and LII’s can be seen as pedantic and overcomplicating, depending on the circumstances.
Safsom: I do think TiNe in LIIs means that far from "immediately thinking of a solution with good intuition" means that LIIs will consider alternatives until they're fully integrated. Which takes a lot longer than TiSe. LIIs would be Process along with LSIs in my view
My Response: True, but I think that’s something all humans must do in a way. They just have a different way of dealing with the wait in the meantime. I’d say neither TiNe or TiSe take longer though since they are pretty much perpetual processes. It’s not like they stop in some final way at some point, though they may get to a very good point of closure, or of mistakenly thinking they have reached some certainty on the basis of epistemological naivete and psychological immaturity. Since TiSe has a lot more rigid requirements for its logic, it is much harder to reboot back to earlier stages, but it has benefits in terms of clarity and formal precision.
Safsom: You can easily have an LSI that has the most complex systems internally but is too retarded to explain himself. Reinin users will ignore his obvious Se and type him LII. Similarly, you can also have an LII that is super interested in exposing every step of reasoning, and despite consideration of every alternative, Reinin users will type him LSI because "Process". What's important are the IME based hypotheses, not stupid acausal random traits like the Reinins
My Response: The problem is that this is just a prejudiced account of “Reinin users” though, and uses a false dichotomy between them and “IME users”. Why not both? LSI vs LII based on who has a more complex system is silly, because simple vs complex is a false dichotomy. But if you developed a more usable definitions or descriptions of a Reinin dichotomy, then you could in principle use it and it might be much more successful. I don’t think Reinin dichotomies are acausal, but it also seems dumb to say that we can’t use something until we personally understand its causal mechanisms. Imagine if they did something like that in medicine. There’s still an enormous amount that we don’t know about the human body as a complex system, and while finding causes is wonderful and paramount, waiting to apply anything until you reach that point is unworkable and unrealistic. You may see patterns and not fully understand them yet, but nonetheless see a role that they play in a system.
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Safsom: Which is why you try to balance them, which is what most do (left and right brained approaches to Socionics)
My Response: Exactly, there must be a balance between left and right brain approaches, as an integrated whole. I don’t know if I’d agree that most do that though. Maybe a little, but not very consciously at least. Maybe more consciously doing this is something that would lead to greater advancement for us all.
mfckr: but some of the methodological disagreement is more a matter of taste than fact
My Response: It is a very good point that our comfort zones and temperament and cognitive styles might influence the approach to typology that we’d like to take, and to achieve a more balanced perspective we can’t lose sight of this fact
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Safsom: The first thing that I'd like to clarify here is that I am operating within the boundaries of Model A and was attempting to explain the role that the Reinin dichotomies play within the Model A structure (and I will explain why in the context of Socionics, I prefer Model A to Model G or any other model that I have seen so far). Perhaps you are correct in stating that the definitions that I am using of Process and Result are distorted; but for the most part (and I try to maintain integrity in these kinds of arguments); these are the definitions that I've seen applied in practice, by practioniers (who otherwise) seem to know a lot about the application of Socionics (indicated by the volume of technical knowledge they possess and at times, regurgitate). And of course; the theoretical differences between Process and Result could be entirely different from what I've analyzed or posited here, but there also comes a point when a component of a theory (especially a theory that is meant to be modelling things as observable as interactions via information-exchange between people) is abstracted to the point of unobservability.
My Response: There are a lot of definitions of Process/Result out there. I’m not trying to say that you are doing something wrong in dismantling a simplistic false dichotomy definition of it like complex vs simple. There may indeed be lots of people who use that, and it is worth refuting. However, you just have to realize that doesn’t apply to everyone. In terms of SHS in particular which is the school that mainly uses Model G, that definition is incorrect, and the number of people who can be considered competent in it are those who have worked with Gulenko himself which is me and like two other people in the entire Western world. That doesn’t mean no one else can use Reinin dichotomies competently in their way, just that the competence only extends to certain paradigms. Also, information-exchange only describes some models of Socionics; it doesn’t describe what Model G is used for, for example (the energo-model). As for abstraction, a lot of people do indeed abstract a lot in order to understand certain Reinin dichotomies. While abstraction shouldn’t be treated as inherently illegitimate, it is also not necessary nor is it really the case for some approaches. Abstraction and observable, in any case, ultimately must be connected; an abstraction might not be easy to observe at first and become easier over time as you see more concrete cases, and if you observe concrete instances long enough, you might notice some surprising patterns that others might look at and think are abstractions.
My Response: I don’t even think it is true that Socionics exists as a static theoretical structure. That would only refer to the structure of Socionics, without the holistic empirical associations we are expected to observe in conjunction with the parts of the structure when using it to interact with reality. So it’s not just that it’s mobilized to a purpose, which is very true; even a large part of its content is associative, rather than structural in nature. I don’t see how this is avoidable. So the only point in treating Socionics as a static structure would be to mislead people, whether intentionally or not.
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My Response: Agreed, and this is one reason why I find the Model A conservatism approach to typology so unexciting and intellectually bankrupt. It makes it so hard to actually adapt your structure to flexibly adapt to your observations, and allows such a measly range of experimentation due to assumptions to knowledge. Basically, it takes an approach of applying a decided upon theory to reality, fitting people into a normalized system which cannot be disputed and anything that doesn’t fit into the Procrustean bed is perceptually discarded, instead of starting from reality and particulars and flexibly crafting theories to better and better account for your ongoing observations of the individuality of real people even if those observations don’t fit into your structure or your opinion of what the system “should be” (e.g. it should all go back to model A in linear causal connections). I approach typology theory as an investigative open-ended researcher, not someone who wants to do my best to fit people into a system of natural philosophy based on my conceptions. “The doctrine that we could not perceive the world around us unless we already had the concept of space is nonsense. It is quite the other way around: We could not conceive of empty space unless we could see the ground under our feet and the sky above. Space is a myth, a ghost, a fiction for geometers. All that sounds very strange, no doubt, but I urge the reader to entertain the hypothesis. For if you agree to abandon the dogma that "percepts without concepts are blind," as Kant put it, a deep theoretical mess, a genuine quagmire, will dry up. This is one of the main themes of the chapters that follow.” -The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Safsom: In the case of Socionics, I would say that the subjects of observation are people, their thought processes and their interactions with each other (which I think is realy a given)...
My Response: I mostly agree with this. I really like that you emphasize the study of PEOPLE rather than systems or mathematics (not to say that systems and math aren’t relevant at all). Thought processes is an interesting aspect too, but I would also add behavior and possibly feeling processes as well (why emphasize thought over feeling?). The interactions are also important, and need not be localized to only informational interactions (although that might be an interesting aspect).
Safsom: Even worse is the adjustment of archetypes (which are meant to be based on observations primarily) based on these extensions. I agree that perhaps Reinin dichotomies might be observable in types with a large enough sample size. But I also believe that we should follow order when testing the theory; starting with fundamental propositional hypotheses (like IMEs), and then eventually building up to quicker observable heuristics (like the Reinin dichotomies).
My Response: All of this should be based on observations: IME’s, Reinin’s, Archetypes. None of them are inherently more basic or inherently “extensions”, but should occur together in a gestalt that we observe at once (and if they don’t, they aren’t yet integrated, and are understandable to not use or explore only from time to time). But basically all Socionics schools disagree on archetypes. The Model A Conservatism culture has adjusted Socionics archetypes a lot to suit their assumptions, and they are dissimilar to Jung’s, Aushra’s original archetypes, and many other Russian schools who use Model A and more besides. Archetypes should mainly be expected to be adjusted by the basic perceptions that motivate our models and paradigms, which is why we always need to do our best to make sure those are solid to begin with which requires more experimentation. IME’s are not inherently more fundamental than Reinin’s, but some paradigms might ALREADY have certain observable heuristics that relate to them which they regard as fundamental (since they currently are more fundamental to their perception), which is what lead you to regarding IME as inherently more fundamental to begin with. And I’m not saying that they/you should just include Reinin’s into what they can observe, if they don’t already observe them. It’s okay to leave it out. Just trying to say that more regular, concerted effort should go into questioning assumptions rather than only cantilevering them out ever further. And that goes for everyone.
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My Response: You haven’t met many competent Model G typists though, have you? I’m one of 3 people in the entirety of the Western world who has been trained by SHS in Model G and diagnostics. Many people might be interested in Model G, but very few have actually trained in it or learned much about it. In any case, SHS doesn’t use all Reinin’s, but they use the one’s inherent in temperament, quadra, cognitive style and order ring, some with more conservatively than others. My own list would be:
My response: I agree with you that the aristocracy of Delta is far more subdued than the aristocracy of Beta, to the point that calling it aristocracy is questionable (but there may be something to it). This is a good point that needs to be explored more decisively at some point IMO.
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Safsom: Static/Dynamic and Judicious/Decisive are usually fine. So is Merry/Serious. Result/Process is a bit too easy to distort, I don't see it as realistic
My Response: Depends what definition you use, I’d say, which is really true for any Reinin dichotomy (i.e. the semantics is important, not just the structural aspect you are pointing to). And there are a lot of crappy definitions for it, such as in this conversation thread (not the fault of any one person since you may have got it from someone else but just saying).
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Safsom: Like why is LII a Result type, for example? I would imagine the types most prone to using conceptual reconfiguration and scenarios (Ni/Ne dynamic) to flesh out their systems and structures (Ti) would be very focused on refining these systems formally through the scenarios (as Ti usually is formal and explicable logic). Whereas the LSIs, for example, who are there as Process, have a very non-exploratory (in most cases) creative, and in the absence of Ni presence, might see its categorisations as logically self-evident and limit formal proof to a minimum
My Response: In a lot of Socionics systems, perhaps they wouldn’t be. Most of the LII’s in Western Socionics for example have evolutionary logic. In SHS, the conceptual reconfiguration based on “scenarios” sounds more like irrational thinking to me, using a more local, situational logic based on holistic contexts. More formal either-or logic that justifies with absolute clarity and precision is more LSIish in certain Socionics paradigms. LSI logic is more formal (invoking the aspect of “form” in space, Si) whereas LII logic is more “polymorphic” as I prefer to understand it. Reflecting imaginally on your logic and keeping it more updatable to innovations doesn’t seem to be aided by formal logic actually, but rather by a more relaxed, polymorphic approach. Whether someone explains something or not has little to do with process or result and LSIs can indeed be quite minimal there too, I agree (especially if they get into more of a "might makes right" Se attitude, or simply want to maintain power by not explaining too much). Both LII and LSI could have reasons to explain or not explain, regardless of whether you use process or results or not
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Jon B.C.: LII seeks to minimize the amount of effort needed, looks for the shortest path, seeks to eliminate the unnecessary. Holographic panoramic cog style, a logical shaving off of the unnecessary
My Response: I think both evolutionary and involutionary logics can be inclined to shave away the logically unnecessary. The LSI is a more positivist logic that complexifies from simpler assumptions and systems that are easier to understand formally (e.g. Von Neumann: If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is… math and physics are way simpler than subjects like economics, psychology, sociology, etc.), and it is looking to justify and establish a strict logical causality, which can lead to shaving off quite a bit that doesn’t meet that standard for them. LII might be trying to simplify a very complex system elementally, but the system may be so complicated that few are capable of understanding their output. I think both LSI’s and LII’s can be seen as pedantic and overcomplicating, depending on the circumstances.
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Safsom: Why is LSI "Process" despite having PoLR Ne. This makes no sense to me
Varlawend: Probably you are using a system that doesn’t translate linearly to the system using the definition of process that you are disputing. The way you use the idea of Ne might relate to process or evolutionary thinking.
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Jon B.C.: Because they lack the intuition ‘ne polr’ to immediately discern the essence of things and must attempt things ‘in the present’ to find out
My Response: I’ve never liked the idea of essence. There may be something to it, but I’d prefer a better concept. It just seems a little grandiose to me. I think a better way of seeing this is that LSIs are more vulnerable to the effects of noise, chaos and uncertainty in their logical understanding of life since it is more rigid than the logic of the LII and has a harder time “rebooting” (i.e. a harder time with involution rather than continual evolutionary deployment of the program that they have accepted and integrated into their life).
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Safsom: why would LII immediately discern things and assume they're true without justifying it rationalistically? They lead with Ti after all
My Response: Justification is more evolutionary, but I wouldn’t say LII is just assuming something is true so much. Not that LSI does, but they are more inflexible in certain ways. Justification is an attempt to establish singular, definitive certainty, which is more LSIish (it is powered in a sense by the solidity of Se, and the need for more explicit, causal connections). LII is less focused on formal justification and more focused on analysis (not building a system up from parts, but teasing out the elemental order in a more entangled, complex system, which doesn’t start from some axioms but ends at axioms, hence the reverse direction of involutionary thinking). And then LII can explain that more by showing you different halographic panoramic “clips” or “windows of perception” into a system so that you can try to follow their analytical thought process holistically from the perspective of the different elements of the system.
Safsom: Why is LSI "Process" despite having PoLR Ne. This makes no sense to me
Varlawend: Probably you are using a system that doesn’t translate linearly to the system using the definition of process that you are disputing. The way you use the idea of Ne might relate to process or evolutionary thinking.
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Jon B.C.: Because they lack the intuition ‘ne polr’ to immediately discern the essence of things and must attempt things ‘in the present’ to find out
My Response: I’ve never liked the idea of essence. There may be something to it, but I’d prefer a better concept. It just seems a little grandiose to me. I think a better way of seeing this is that LSIs are more vulnerable to the effects of noise, chaos and uncertainty in their logical understanding of life since it is more rigid than the logic of the LII and has a harder time “rebooting” (i.e. a harder time with involution rather than continual evolutionary deployment of the program that they have accepted and integrated into their life).
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Safsom: why would LII immediately discern things and assume they're true without justifying it rationalistically? They lead with Ti after all
My Response: Justification is more evolutionary, but I wouldn’t say LII is just assuming something is true so much. Not that LSI does, but they are more inflexible in certain ways. Justification is an attempt to establish singular, definitive certainty, which is more LSIish (it is powered in a sense by the solidity of Se, and the need for more explicit, causal connections). LII is less focused on formal justification and more focused on analysis (not building a system up from parts, but teasing out the elemental order in a more entangled, complex system, which doesn’t start from some axioms but ends at axioms, hence the reverse direction of involutionary thinking). And then LII can explain that more by showing you different halographic panoramic “clips” or “windows of perception” into a system so that you can try to follow their analytical thought process holistically from the perspective of the different elements of the system.
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Jon B.C.: Ti works fast, ne is whats putting the different times together. LIE and LII are more similar than different in that regard
My Response: In the system I most use, Te is much faster than Ti (extroverted elements are faster, since their processing is devoted to action, and Ti is more of an analysis paralysis perfection function regardless of which types are using it). But I have heard of systems where Ti is more right-brained (Lenore Thompson, Cognitive Type, more JCFish approaches) where Ti might be fast due to being more embodied and instinctual in a sense.
My Response: In the system I most use, Te is much faster than Ti (extroverted elements are faster, since their processing is devoted to action, and Ti is more of an analysis paralysis perfection function regardless of which types are using it). But I have heard of systems where Ti is more right-brained (Lenore Thompson, Cognitive Type, more JCFish approaches) where Ti might be fast due to being more embodied and instinctual in a sense.
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Safsom: I do think TiNe in LIIs means that far from "immediately thinking of a solution with good intuition" means that LIIs will consider alternatives until they're fully integrated. Which takes a lot longer than TiSe. LIIs would be Process along with LSIs in my view
My Response: True, but I think that’s something all humans must do in a way. They just have a different way of dealing with the wait in the meantime. I’d say neither TiNe or TiSe take longer though since they are pretty much perpetual processes. It’s not like they stop in some final way at some point, though they may get to a very good point of closure, or of mistakenly thinking they have reached some certainty on the basis of epistemological naivete and psychological immaturity. Since TiSe has a lot more rigid requirements for its logic, it is much harder to reboot back to earlier stages, but it has benefits in terms of clarity and formal precision.
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Jon B.C.: Involution/evolution is prob the better name
My Response: Agreed. Process and results can be confusing, because everything is a process and of course results mean something to everyone. Process/results as semantics may only apply well in some systems in a few scenarios.
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Safsom: Then why does LSI lack of intuition mean they're slower, for ESI it means they're faster?
My Response: It doesn’t, I agree. Slowness can be situational and is not only type related, but also the stage of result and process that you are at. If the LSI has some totally perfected system, then they may be very fast to apply it, and the LII might want to develop a fuller range of perception before commenting on some logical point due to their more panoramic cognition style (again, in some systems, this might not apply to Model A reductionist Socionics).
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Safsom: Insofar as you consider the model (A) as the basis for Socionics, they [Reinin Dichotomies] are useless
My Response: But considering Model A as such seems at best based on the vague and only experientially justifiable impressions, so it doesn’t seem to be meaningfully privileged position to me. In some ways, it is worse, because when you have certain dogged logical expectations to begin with such as that everything is explainable in terms of Model A, it is extremely easy psychologically to rationalize everything into that perspective and play down any perception that could suggest an alternative approach (indeed, there would be a whole slew of cognitive biases enticing you to do exactly that). Yet people often act like it is based on more than that, as if there is some kind of self-evidence in these Model A axioms, which to me just seems epistemologically childish. Logic can only work effectively based on what you can already perceive, which is always limited, which is why the obsessive Model A adherence seems to be a kind of bizarre fanaticism to me. William Blake called that kind of literalistic thinking a “Newtonian Sleep”, and indeed it is a kind of hypnosis. If you are not devoted to actively questioning your assumptions and trying out other structures in practice that don’t fit your assumptions, then you are missing a lot of experiential insights that could broaden your cognitive horizons, which I think should be the priority over supporting any one model or perception since it is one of the only ways to break out of circle of self-justifying logic that plagues so much of the typology community.
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Ibrahim: Reinin dichotomies are also a model, just not a very good one
My Response: They can be, but it depends on your approach to them. If you are just describing something, it doesn’t seem to be a model in the same way that something like Model A is, since it’s not claiming to be some kind of reductionistic, causal structure.
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Safsom: Again, I find Reinin people are the most opposed to actual IME analysis - it's effectively a different model, but they claim it isn't
My Response: There may be people like that, and overall I think it is a shame that such a debate is occurring since it is such a useless false dichotomy. IME’s, functions and dichotomies can both be useful in the right situation and it doesn’t make sense to just a priori decide to prioritize one over the other.
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Safsom: I would say that the Reinins are also poor compared to hypotheses for behavior we can derive from IMEs
My Response: This idea of “Reinin’s” is too general to be useful. People and schools have different definitions for Reinin dichotomies, just like they have different definitions of IME’s.
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Safsom: i.e given the nature of Ti, we can say as a rule that all Ti users will be systematic and structured with principles in their thinking
My Response: That’s kind of robotic though, because can’t everyone use Ti? How do we know that the thinking of people (that they report, no less) is the most reliable way of typing people? Everyone, when using Ti, might display some amount of systematic and structured principles in their thinking. And Ti users might sometimes not. Indeed, it would be absurd to think that they always do. Now, I agree that we could say what you are about something like Ti in general, but the question of how that applies to individual people is complicated since ALL of them (or virtually all of them) could be “Ti users”.
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Safsom: Why would I split Ti users into those that like to explain themselves and those don't and use that as a category for typing?
My Response: You shouldn’t, but that’s obviously a terrible definition for Process/Result. It’s way too simplistic for reasons that probably don’t require an explanation.
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Jon B.C.: Involution/evolution is prob the better name
My Response: Agreed. Process and results can be confusing, because everything is a process and of course results mean something to everyone. Process/results as semantics may only apply well in some systems in a few scenarios.
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Safsom: Then why does LSI lack of intuition mean they're slower, for ESI it means they're faster?
My Response: It doesn’t, I agree. Slowness can be situational and is not only type related, but also the stage of result and process that you are at. If the LSI has some totally perfected system, then they may be very fast to apply it, and the LII might want to develop a fuller range of perception before commenting on some logical point due to their more panoramic cognition style (again, in some systems, this might not apply to Model A reductionist Socionics).
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Safsom: Insofar as you consider the model (A) as the basis for Socionics, they [Reinin Dichotomies] are useless
My Response: But considering Model A as such seems at best based on the vague and only experientially justifiable impressions, so it doesn’t seem to be meaningfully privileged position to me. In some ways, it is worse, because when you have certain dogged logical expectations to begin with such as that everything is explainable in terms of Model A, it is extremely easy psychologically to rationalize everything into that perspective and play down any perception that could suggest an alternative approach (indeed, there would be a whole slew of cognitive biases enticing you to do exactly that). Yet people often act like it is based on more than that, as if there is some kind of self-evidence in these Model A axioms, which to me just seems epistemologically childish. Logic can only work effectively based on what you can already perceive, which is always limited, which is why the obsessive Model A adherence seems to be a kind of bizarre fanaticism to me. William Blake called that kind of literalistic thinking a “Newtonian Sleep”, and indeed it is a kind of hypnosis. If you are not devoted to actively questioning your assumptions and trying out other structures in practice that don’t fit your assumptions, then you are missing a lot of experiential insights that could broaden your cognitive horizons, which I think should be the priority over supporting any one model or perception since it is one of the only ways to break out of circle of self-justifying logic that plagues so much of the typology community.
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Ibrahim: Reinin dichotomies are also a model, just not a very good one
My Response: They can be, but it depends on your approach to them. If you are just describing something, it doesn’t seem to be a model in the same way that something like Model A is, since it’s not claiming to be some kind of reductionistic, causal structure.
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Safsom: Again, I find Reinin people are the most opposed to actual IME analysis - it's effectively a different model, but they claim it isn't
My Response: There may be people like that, and overall I think it is a shame that such a debate is occurring since it is such a useless false dichotomy. IME’s, functions and dichotomies can both be useful in the right situation and it doesn’t make sense to just a priori decide to prioritize one over the other.
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Safsom: I would say that the Reinins are also poor compared to hypotheses for behavior we can derive from IMEs
My Response: This idea of “Reinin’s” is too general to be useful. People and schools have different definitions for Reinin dichotomies, just like they have different definitions of IME’s.
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Safsom: i.e given the nature of Ti, we can say as a rule that all Ti users will be systematic and structured with principles in their thinking
My Response: That’s kind of robotic though, because can’t everyone use Ti? How do we know that the thinking of people (that they report, no less) is the most reliable way of typing people? Everyone, when using Ti, might display some amount of systematic and structured principles in their thinking. And Ti users might sometimes not. Indeed, it would be absurd to think that they always do. Now, I agree that we could say what you are about something like Ti in general, but the question of how that applies to individual people is complicated since ALL of them (or virtually all of them) could be “Ti users”.
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Safsom: Why would I split Ti users into those that like to explain themselves and those don't and use that as a category for typing?
My Response: You shouldn’t, but that’s obviously a terrible definition for Process/Result. It’s way too simplistic for reasons that probably don’t require an explanation.
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Safsom: You can easily have an LSI that has the most complex systems internally but is too retarded to explain himself. Reinin users will ignore his obvious Se and type him LII. Similarly, you can also have an LII that is super interested in exposing every step of reasoning, and despite consideration of every alternative, Reinin users will type him LSI because "Process". What's important are the IME based hypotheses, not stupid acausal random traits like the Reinins
My Response: The problem is that this is just a prejudiced account of “Reinin users” though, and uses a false dichotomy between them and “IME users”. Why not both? LSI vs LII based on who has a more complex system is silly, because simple vs complex is a false dichotomy. But if you developed a more usable definitions or descriptions of a Reinin dichotomy, then you could in principle use it and it might be much more successful. I don’t think Reinin dichotomies are acausal, but it also seems dumb to say that we can’t use something until we personally understand its causal mechanisms. Imagine if they did something like that in medicine. There’s still an enormous amount that we don’t know about the human body as a complex system, and while finding causes is wonderful and paramount, waiting to apply anything until you reach that point is unworkable and unrealistic. You may see patterns and not fully understand them yet, but nonetheless see a role that they play in a system.
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Safsom: Which is why you try to balance them, which is what most do (left and right brained approaches to Socionics)
My Response: Exactly, there must be a balance between left and right brain approaches, as an integrated whole. I don’t know if I’d agree that most do that though. Maybe a little, but not very consciously at least. Maybe more consciously doing this is something that would lead to greater advancement for us all.
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mfckr: but some of the methodological disagreement is more a matter of taste than fact
My Response: It is a very good point that our comfort zones and temperament and cognitive styles might influence the approach to typology that we’d like to take, and to achieve a more balanced perspective we can’t lose sight of this fact
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Part Two
Safsom: I do not think that the Reinin dichotomies can actually be tested as a structure - partially because of the problem of subjectivity/objectivity (which is paramount here), and in other part because their basis either lies in (a. arbitrary traits which seem pretty unrelated to function blockings (like the Asking/Declaring dichotomy, for example) or (b. theoretical extrapolations on the function blockings which can only really be approximated by imperfect tests (and with the limits not edging closer to perfection, actually, but stopping at quite a point)
My Response: Why are Reinin dichotomies more subject to an objectivity vs subjectivity problem than anything in Model A? Why must traits relate to the function stacks in a way that you can see in order to be valid? It would be nice to know how they do, sure, but fundamentally that wouldn’t change the fact that such traits are observable or not (or integrated into our observations or not). There are many observable things in the cosmos that we don’t understand. Why would tests be a good way to measure Reinin dichotomies? Personally, I think the tests are only marginally useful.
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Part Two
Safsom: I do not think that the Reinin dichotomies can actually be tested as a structure - partially because of the problem of subjectivity/objectivity (which is paramount here), and in other part because their basis either lies in (a. arbitrary traits which seem pretty unrelated to function blockings (like the Asking/Declaring dichotomy, for example) or (b. theoretical extrapolations on the function blockings which can only really be approximated by imperfect tests (and with the limits not edging closer to perfection, actually, but stopping at quite a point)
My Response: Why are Reinin dichotomies more subject to an objectivity vs subjectivity problem than anything in Model A? Why must traits relate to the function stacks in a way that you can see in order to be valid? It would be nice to know how they do, sure, but fundamentally that wouldn’t change the fact that such traits are observable or not (or integrated into our observations or not). There are many observable things in the cosmos that we don’t understand. Why would tests be a good way to measure Reinin dichotomies? Personally, I think the tests are only marginally useful.
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Safsom: The first thing that I'd like to clarify here is that I am operating within the boundaries of Model A and was attempting to explain the role that the Reinin dichotomies play within the Model A structure (and I will explain why in the context of Socionics, I prefer Model A to Model G or any other model that I have seen so far). Perhaps you are correct in stating that the definitions that I am using of Process and Result are distorted; but for the most part (and I try to maintain integrity in these kinds of arguments); these are the definitions that I've seen applied in practice, by practioniers (who otherwise) seem to know a lot about the application of Socionics (indicated by the volume of technical knowledge they possess and at times, regurgitate). And of course; the theoretical differences between Process and Result could be entirely different from what I've analyzed or posited here, but there also comes a point when a component of a theory (especially a theory that is meant to be modelling things as observable as interactions via information-exchange between people) is abstracted to the point of unobservability.
My Response: There are a lot of definitions of Process/Result out there. I’m not trying to say that you are doing something wrong in dismantling a simplistic false dichotomy definition of it like complex vs simple. There may indeed be lots of people who use that, and it is worth refuting. However, you just have to realize that doesn’t apply to everyone. In terms of SHS in particular which is the school that mainly uses Model G, that definition is incorrect, and the number of people who can be considered competent in it are those who have worked with Gulenko himself which is me and like two other people in the entire Western world. That doesn’t mean no one else can use Reinin dichotomies competently in their way, just that the competence only extends to certain paradigms. Also, information-exchange only describes some models of Socionics; it doesn’t describe what Model G is used for, for example (the energo-model). As for abstraction, a lot of people do indeed abstract a lot in order to understand certain Reinin dichotomies. While abstraction shouldn’t be treated as inherently illegitimate, it is also not necessary nor is it really the case for some approaches. Abstraction and observable, in any case, ultimately must be connected; an abstraction might not be easy to observe at first and become easier over time as you see more concrete cases, and if you observe concrete instances long enough, you might notice some surprising patterns that others might look at and think are abstractions.
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Safsom: Let me elaborate what on I mean here. A theory like Socionics; while it can exist as a static theoretical structure, usually is mobilized to some applicable purpose, that is to say, it is formulated in a manner where its abstractions are meant to be reflective of real-world, observable phenomena (and extrapolations from there)
My Response: I don’t even think it is true that Socionics exists as a static theoretical structure. That would only refer to the structure of Socionics, without the holistic empirical associations we are expected to observe in conjunction with the parts of the structure when using it to interact with reality. So it’s not just that it’s mobilized to a purpose, which is very true; even a large part of its content is associative, rather than structural in nature. I don’t see how this is avoidable. So the only point in treating Socionics as a static structure would be to mislead people, whether intentionally or not.
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Safsom: These abstractions are useful insofar as they reflect and are extrapolated from observations, and if they can be applied to novel observations that are perhaps somewhat similar (in terms of composition) to the initial instances that they are derived from.
My Response: Agreed, and this is one reason why I find the Model A conservatism approach to typology so unexciting and intellectually bankrupt. It makes it so hard to actually adapt your structure to flexibly adapt to your observations, and allows such a measly range of experimentation due to assumptions to knowledge. Basically, it takes an approach of applying a decided upon theory to reality, fitting people into a normalized system which cannot be disputed and anything that doesn’t fit into the Procrustean bed is perceptually discarded, instead of starting from reality and particulars and flexibly crafting theories to better and better account for your ongoing observations of the individuality of real people even if those observations don’t fit into your structure or your opinion of what the system “should be” (e.g. it should all go back to model A in linear causal connections). I approach typology theory as an investigative open-ended researcher, not someone who wants to do my best to fit people into a system of natural philosophy based on my conceptions. “The doctrine that we could not perceive the world around us unless we already had the concept of space is nonsense. It is quite the other way around: We could not conceive of empty space unless we could see the ground under our feet and the sky above. Space is a myth, a ghost, a fiction for geometers. All that sounds very strange, no doubt, but I urge the reader to entertain the hypothesis. For if you agree to abandon the dogma that "percepts without concepts are blind," as Kant put it, a deep theoretical mess, a genuine quagmire, will dry up. This is one of the main themes of the chapters that follow.” -The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
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Safsom: In the case of Socionics, I would say that the subjects of observation are people, their thought processes and their interactions with each other (which I think is realy a given)...
My Response: I mostly agree with this. I really like that you emphasize the study of PEOPLE rather than systems or mathematics (not to say that systems and math aren’t relevant at all). Thought processes is an interesting aspect too, but I would also add behavior and possibly feeling processes as well (why emphasize thought over feeling?). The interactions are also important, and need not be localized to only informational interactions (although that might be an interesting aspect).
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Safsom: ...the observations from which the basis of the structures of Socionics are derived are a combination of direct behavioral extrapolations (yes, Jung's portraits did contain many mystical sounding extrapolations, but I think that the perception of these sounding mystical was rather unwarranted - for a lot of his portraits, Jung seemed primarily focused around describing observations of people that recurred throughout his time of study, meaning that while Jung was a phenomenologist or at least had phenomenological focus, his starting point was raw observation) and Kepinski's theory of information metabolism, which I suppose you could argue was a self-contained structure without many observational backings, but Aushra seemed to augment it enough to fit in with Jung's observations (neutralizing the basis somewhat).
My Response: Jung’s Ni heavy approach isn’t bothersome to me. I think a scientific attitude can be taken to mysticism too, in any case, rather than just a mindless dismissal of it. Phenomenology and observation in my view are mutually supporting and go hand in hand. But I doubt anyone would disagree that Jung’s observation aren’t a stopping point, and neither should the observations of any of these theoretical models be (they don’t at some point just become “observationally valid”). As for Information Metabolism, I think the idea is interesting. However, there is no need to be beholden to it: it has basically no empirical evidence behind it (and thus similar conceptions with some twists could be just as or more accurate) and practically no version of Socionics would be changed much in its practice if the speculated information metabolism were removed from the theory (in other words, IM just doesn’t do much work, and gives more of a cybernetic-ish style to the theory than anything else).
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Safsom: Of course, the most intuitive way to go about this is to combine various aspects of the two main components. For example, we can take the metabolic redefinition of introverted thinking (which started out as an archetype rooted in observations) and see how it will interact with the metabolic redefinition of extroverted intuition to see how they as a combination metabolize information together. In the process of doing so, we analyze each compnent to assign them a few fundamental traits, based on the abstracted nature they have as processes, but also based on the observations that they are derived from (as I have said earlier, of course these are all derived from observations at the core).
My Response: This is a legitimate program of study, for sure. But I think it is jumping the gun to say that this is “the most intuitive” approach. This is an extremely evolutionary, structural logic heavy approach in SHS, and I don’t think it is fair to assume that others share your intuitions. Moreover, there could be so, so many legitimate approaches, some of which we might not even have yet been imagined, based on observations that you or I haven’t yet had. Basically, that’s a fine approach, but no need to be so decisive about it from the outset, and as long as you can be flexible about it.
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Safsom: Theoretically speaking, a combination of introverted thinking and extroverted intuition should yield a propensity towards attempting to break down observations and from them derive certain static rules that hold true regardless of other observations coming in, but at the same time due to extroverted intuition's influence on the psyche, feel compelled to perhaps explore and latch on to other options serving the agenda of the creation of these rules. Here, we can derive a hypothesis regarding the nature of introverted thinking and extroverted intuition, I can say that most people demonstrating the synthesis of these two aspects will metabolize information in a manner which has the behavioral manifestation of an intellectual person focused on discerning causal phenomena by branching out analyses to consider various developments / scenarios and attempt to under them find certain repeating tendencies. Note that this is a hypotheis. This is not infalliable. Note that theoretically, introverted thinking and extroverted intuition also imply weak extroverted ethics and introverted sensing.
My Response: This is indeed one reasonable conception, and you acknowledge its fallibility. I want to highlight this, because while that is a very good start to acknowledge, most people stop there. The next most scientific step is to actually find out where the real weaknesses of that concept are and try to falsify it, to test its limits. Usually people skip this, and then go on building from the concept, stretching it as they please (strong-minded Ne types, LII’s who earned a skeptical bone, etc.). Try to think about the falsification conditions for the idea. This isn’t necessarily easy, so don’t be too hard on yourself, but because it’s not easy it largely isn’t done, so things never really improve. And even if an idea is falsified, that doesn’t mean throwing it away completely: maybe it just needs adjustments. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. These are the discontents of your approach from my perspective:
-You take a very information heavy approach here, and it’s hard to blame you for that because that’s how most Socionists do things without realizing that this is a historical contingency of the material fashion in post-Soviet education than something that has ever been justified as some sort of necessity (or even justified as the most fruitful approach). In energy approaches to Socionics, the functions are not all conceived as much like different types of information or information processors. -Information (putting into form) is primarily related to structural logic in these approaches, and other functions have a relatively more energetic nature. Therefore, it is possible to make the criticism that much other Socionics theory privileges the role of Ti over other functions and tries to understand and interact with them excessively within the framework of Ti and thus misses out on the whole nature of functions more distant from Ti (especially extroverted functions, which are more oriented to action and changing the environment than reflecting on it or maintaining it). I’m not saying you have to agree with it, but it’s worth considering as another conceivable starting point to deepen your perspective.
-This difference in the understanding of the extroverted elements plays a role in understanding the limits to your approach to Ti here. Ti in general wants to account for the system and is static and reliable, so it needs to have a certain truth regardless of observations. I don’t see why it matters whether you apply Se, Ne, Si or Ni to it for it to have that attribute since Ti alone has a predisposition to analyze the structure. One thing that is interesting to me is to consider the functions as a sequence, which is something I’ve been thinking about lately since it could give us more knowledge about why the signed functions have the characteristics that they do. +L is a sequence of T into L into S; Inspectors start with a relatively fixed holistic imagination or timing in their mind, and then they precisely design a system or plan around the requirements of this imaginal space or timing, constructively building it up from parts with the necessary quality in some material or medium. This is the approach you outline above (not that you are LSI, but it is +Ti), and it has significant advantages. You can get that robustness to observation by starting with axioms you believe to be solid (Ni/Se), and then formally, rigidly building on with strict causal rules of inference and “justification” (the whole word justification is very legalistic and has an element of romance to it “justice”, and is much more LSI). That definitely has a lot of advantages, because it is more gradual and rigorous at each individual step. The fact that this is a system of “logical requirements” is a hint that this L relates more to F than I, because the Inspector is more sensitive to strict logical requirements that are in a sense powerful, unable to be moved by a stronger force. To justify something is to “defend” it, and the price paid for the fixity and certainty gained by this logic is the need to exclude that which doesn’t meet the standards of its accepted conditions of justification or design so that the structure is maximally strong and secured. But by having the rigid, solid axioms that it does, this logic is much more vulnerable to I, what is outside the standards, what is in the unknown and has not been accounted for or explored yet. So the Inspector still has a lot of vested interest, through research and planning, in making sure their assumptions are going to be robust to observation. Otherwise the dragon of chaos (Ne) continues to mount, when not confronted, as Peterson refers to it. Rebooting such exclusive logic to early stages is much harder because you have built on them linearly in layers, as if doing architecture (L into S), sometimes in interlocking areas of your life as well.
-Or, you can get the robustness to observation by -L: a sequence of S into L into T. The Analyst starts with some data set or some experience that is attached to and familiarized with, and then in a more relaxed way extracts out from that minimally overlapping elements of the system, which allows the Analyst to predict how the system will evolve or see how it can be redirected through the clear interactions of such minimally overlapping parts. Much less sensitive to rigid logical requirements than +Ti, the logic of the Analyst works better in systems where there is more freedom of behavior and less smooth (more fuzzy) behavior in the system, more layered complexity, and where standards are less formal, explicit or known. Hence the logic relates more to I, where there is more need for constant reconfiguration, disentangling more unpredictable complexity, etc. Due to this need to tangle with disentangling and breaking down the system into previously unconceived parts that would present an inevitable contradiction in relation to the current understanding, -L is a more inclusive logic that can’t exclude as much in needing to account for these possible contradictions. And this natural inclusiveness and ever breaking down makes it more vulnerable to F than I. When the logic can’t easily exclude or fortify itself through justification and rigidity, and it deals with more non-standard, less integrated systems that are more displaced from protective standards, F can much more easily subordinate it and take advantage of this vulnerability. Everyone has a relative weakness, and you lose some rigor, security and the more easily explicated step by step logical chains as compared to the approach that you were advocating. You can still convey your point of view with this logic by using clip thinking and new windows of perspective from the separated elemental parts of the system to grant a newly panoramic view that renews and balances your perception of the system. And when you deliberately break apart your axioms as much as you can, and arrive at new axioms that rapidly start to change your perspective from the ground up, that can also be very powerful.
-You can’t take both of these approaches at the same time; they are mutually exclusive. However, you can consider them both in the grand scheme of things. I’d go so far as to say that you must, if you wish to be prudent, and since, no matter who you are, you probably have a predisposition for one, then you are prudent to seek out engagement and feedback with the reverse in order to come to closer grips with your inevitable weaknesses. And there is preciously little -L in the Model A conservatism approach to Socionics, or in the approach that you outline above. There’s a lot of cozying up to certain conceptions, assumptions and axioms that are felt to be simply robust, and building onto them with considerable care and attention. That’s not wholly illegitimate, but there is very little examination of assumptions, explorations off of the prescribed course which risk being disruptive to the ivory tower of logic being built, looking into differences between people of the same type to give further respect to the individuality of man (as opposed to his conformity) and to detect whether there might be more fundamental differentiations than we originally conceived of (which by definition would be outside of our current perception). Indeed, these are often actively discouraged with “lessons”, demoralization, ganging up on people, and redirections towards structures that most of the vested interest has already been sacrificed to. It reminds me a lot of what Plato called double ignorance. And the solution isn’t just believing someone else, but periodically and purposefully lessening the fundamentalism and rigidity of the axiomatic deductive approach.
It seems to me that the Model A conservatism approach more or less entirely misses important points like this: "We are very used to thinking of wholes as composed by parts. That is, a whole is generated by gathering the necessary parts (which, crucially, already exist) and putting them together in some way such that a thing is made from the parts. This is the essence of manufacturing. In this view, wholes are “built up” from parts. The logic is recursive: the parts are themselves manufactured in an analogous way. But the modern mind misses that in the organic and living unfolding of the world, wholes are generated by and out of other wholes, and the parts we observe are very often descended from the elaboration and internal differentiation of a whole whose existence precedes them. Consider the embryonic development of a multicellular organism. It proceeds first by an existing whole (a “parent”) generating another whole (a “child”), then by the growth of that whole and concomitant internal differentiation into parts—sub-wholes that descend from and are synthesized by the whole. The importance of this sequence can not be overstated: In living systems the whole generates the parts. The parts do not exist a priori. In each step of this process we can see that both wholes and parts come from existing wholes. They are not constructed in the usual sense—they are not manufactured. They are synthesized via an unbroken chain of wholes, extending back to the beginning. Robert Rosen recognized this as an essential feature of complex living systems, and further recognized the vast insufficiency of the Newtownian state-recursion paradigm in accounting for it. This insufficiency has not been widely recognized nor appreciated, never mind adequately addressed in the sciences. Stuart Kauffman has voiced similar insights, pointing out that, for example, the function of an organ, like the heart, is not something that can be found in the heart by itself, but is a property that is inherited from its context: the whole organism in which it is embedded, and which has produced it. We have projected our impoverished manufacturing model of the world onto the world and attempted to stuff ourselves inside of it. This is more than a theoretical problem. Our literal, built environment is full of parts, but is lacking wholes.” -Joe Norman
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Safsom: I am of course not concerned with corrborating observations; but corroboration should be conducted when the discrepant emerging observations seem like the rule and not the exception. In the case of a lot of the more important Reinin dichotomies (like Process/Result, for example), it seems like there exist complex rules describing their mechanics (like the function order chart that Waifureich sent earlier), but little when it comes to actually explaining how these mechanics yield the traits associated with Process/Result, or even worse, the lack of trait-bound testable and observable hypotheses to actually attempt to test these dichotomies (due to overt abstractedness by the very definitions of these dichotomies), resulting in a lack of general utility and observability.
My Response: It doesn’t seem to me that the definitions for process/results or the cognitive styles are overwhelmingly complex. They have maybe a brief paragraph defining them on each level of the communicative space in the SHS approach. I have a sentence long description of the cognitive styles on my blog. Not to mention that these traits even apply to the IME’s that you admire, and thus might be useful for differentiating them. Waifu has no training in this particular paradigm so I don’t see why he should be seen as representative of it, but the sort of chart that Waifu sent is not meant to be a mechanical description of the dichotomy, but rather a chart that says to what it applies. Speculating about the inherent mechanisms is truly an interesting and worthwhile discussion that I have some thoughts on, but is not germane to the more basic patterns observed which, if observed, have to be explained in the first place. No amount of mechanistic thought can get around this necessity of often seeing patterns before having a total mechanistic description of how they arise (and that’s assuming that they even do arise from mechanisms).
In any case, Gulenko has done at least much testing of his dichotomies, if not more, than anyone using Model A that I’ve heard of. I don’t think I could say the same for all users of Reinin dichotomies. The reason it might be hard for people to apply these dichotomies who don’t have a very integrated system like Gulenko does is because they not understanding how they fit into the whole, so they have to come up with all sorts of complicated abstractions to justify what isn’t yet naturally observed. But people in SHS regularly use with great success and agree on these dichotomies in people, just like the Model A typists do. So it may not be useful to you unless you can integrate your understanding of these dichotomies into your observations of people in conjunction with the other elements of the system. Otherwise, it may seem, or even be in some cases, useless abstraction.
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Safsom: ...the observations from which the basis of the structures of Socionics are derived are a combination of direct behavioral extrapolations (yes, Jung's portraits did contain many mystical sounding extrapolations, but I think that the perception of these sounding mystical was rather unwarranted - for a lot of his portraits, Jung seemed primarily focused around describing observations of people that recurred throughout his time of study, meaning that while Jung was a phenomenologist or at least had phenomenological focus, his starting point was raw observation) and Kepinski's theory of information metabolism, which I suppose you could argue was a self-contained structure without many observational backings, but Aushra seemed to augment it enough to fit in with Jung's observations (neutralizing the basis somewhat).
My Response: Jung’s Ni heavy approach isn’t bothersome to me. I think a scientific attitude can be taken to mysticism too, in any case, rather than just a mindless dismissal of it. Phenomenology and observation in my view are mutually supporting and go hand in hand. But I doubt anyone would disagree that Jung’s observation aren’t a stopping point, and neither should the observations of any of these theoretical models be (they don’t at some point just become “observationally valid”). As for Information Metabolism, I think the idea is interesting. However, there is no need to be beholden to it: it has basically no empirical evidence behind it (and thus similar conceptions with some twists could be just as or more accurate) and practically no version of Socionics would be changed much in its practice if the speculated information metabolism were removed from the theory (in other words, IM just doesn’t do much work, and gives more of a cybernetic-ish style to the theory than anything else).
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Safsom: Of course, the most intuitive way to go about this is to combine various aspects of the two main components. For example, we can take the metabolic redefinition of introverted thinking (which started out as an archetype rooted in observations) and see how it will interact with the metabolic redefinition of extroverted intuition to see how they as a combination metabolize information together. In the process of doing so, we analyze each compnent to assign them a few fundamental traits, based on the abstracted nature they have as processes, but also based on the observations that they are derived from (as I have said earlier, of course these are all derived from observations at the core).
My Response: This is a legitimate program of study, for sure. But I think it is jumping the gun to say that this is “the most intuitive” approach. This is an extremely evolutionary, structural logic heavy approach in SHS, and I don’t think it is fair to assume that others share your intuitions. Moreover, there could be so, so many legitimate approaches, some of which we might not even have yet been imagined, based on observations that you or I haven’t yet had. Basically, that’s a fine approach, but no need to be so decisive about it from the outset, and as long as you can be flexible about it.
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Safsom: Theoretically speaking, a combination of introverted thinking and extroverted intuition should yield a propensity towards attempting to break down observations and from them derive certain static rules that hold true regardless of other observations coming in, but at the same time due to extroverted intuition's influence on the psyche, feel compelled to perhaps explore and latch on to other options serving the agenda of the creation of these rules. Here, we can derive a hypothesis regarding the nature of introverted thinking and extroverted intuition, I can say that most people demonstrating the synthesis of these two aspects will metabolize information in a manner which has the behavioral manifestation of an intellectual person focused on discerning causal phenomena by branching out analyses to consider various developments / scenarios and attempt to under them find certain repeating tendencies. Note that this is a hypotheis. This is not infalliable. Note that theoretically, introverted thinking and extroverted intuition also imply weak extroverted ethics and introverted sensing.
My Response: This is indeed one reasonable conception, and you acknowledge its fallibility. I want to highlight this, because while that is a very good start to acknowledge, most people stop there. The next most scientific step is to actually find out where the real weaknesses of that concept are and try to falsify it, to test its limits. Usually people skip this, and then go on building from the concept, stretching it as they please (strong-minded Ne types, LII’s who earned a skeptical bone, etc.). Try to think about the falsification conditions for the idea. This isn’t necessarily easy, so don’t be too hard on yourself, but because it’s not easy it largely isn’t done, so things never really improve. And even if an idea is falsified, that doesn’t mean throwing it away completely: maybe it just needs adjustments. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. These are the discontents of your approach from my perspective:
-You take a very information heavy approach here, and it’s hard to blame you for that because that’s how most Socionists do things without realizing that this is a historical contingency of the material fashion in post-Soviet education than something that has ever been justified as some sort of necessity (or even justified as the most fruitful approach). In energy approaches to Socionics, the functions are not all conceived as much like different types of information or information processors. -Information (putting into form) is primarily related to structural logic in these approaches, and other functions have a relatively more energetic nature. Therefore, it is possible to make the criticism that much other Socionics theory privileges the role of Ti over other functions and tries to understand and interact with them excessively within the framework of Ti and thus misses out on the whole nature of functions more distant from Ti (especially extroverted functions, which are more oriented to action and changing the environment than reflecting on it or maintaining it). I’m not saying you have to agree with it, but it’s worth considering as another conceivable starting point to deepen your perspective.
-This difference in the understanding of the extroverted elements plays a role in understanding the limits to your approach to Ti here. Ti in general wants to account for the system and is static and reliable, so it needs to have a certain truth regardless of observations. I don’t see why it matters whether you apply Se, Ne, Si or Ni to it for it to have that attribute since Ti alone has a predisposition to analyze the structure. One thing that is interesting to me is to consider the functions as a sequence, which is something I’ve been thinking about lately since it could give us more knowledge about why the signed functions have the characteristics that they do. +L is a sequence of T into L into S; Inspectors start with a relatively fixed holistic imagination or timing in their mind, and then they precisely design a system or plan around the requirements of this imaginal space or timing, constructively building it up from parts with the necessary quality in some material or medium. This is the approach you outline above (not that you are LSI, but it is +Ti), and it has significant advantages. You can get that robustness to observation by starting with axioms you believe to be solid (Ni/Se), and then formally, rigidly building on with strict causal rules of inference and “justification” (the whole word justification is very legalistic and has an element of romance to it “justice”, and is much more LSI). That definitely has a lot of advantages, because it is more gradual and rigorous at each individual step. The fact that this is a system of “logical requirements” is a hint that this L relates more to F than I, because the Inspector is more sensitive to strict logical requirements that are in a sense powerful, unable to be moved by a stronger force. To justify something is to “defend” it, and the price paid for the fixity and certainty gained by this logic is the need to exclude that which doesn’t meet the standards of its accepted conditions of justification or design so that the structure is maximally strong and secured. But by having the rigid, solid axioms that it does, this logic is much more vulnerable to I, what is outside the standards, what is in the unknown and has not been accounted for or explored yet. So the Inspector still has a lot of vested interest, through research and planning, in making sure their assumptions are going to be robust to observation. Otherwise the dragon of chaos (Ne) continues to mount, when not confronted, as Peterson refers to it. Rebooting such exclusive logic to early stages is much harder because you have built on them linearly in layers, as if doing architecture (L into S), sometimes in interlocking areas of your life as well.
-Or, you can get the robustness to observation by -L: a sequence of S into L into T. The Analyst starts with some data set or some experience that is attached to and familiarized with, and then in a more relaxed way extracts out from that minimally overlapping elements of the system, which allows the Analyst to predict how the system will evolve or see how it can be redirected through the clear interactions of such minimally overlapping parts. Much less sensitive to rigid logical requirements than +Ti, the logic of the Analyst works better in systems where there is more freedom of behavior and less smooth (more fuzzy) behavior in the system, more layered complexity, and where standards are less formal, explicit or known. Hence the logic relates more to I, where there is more need for constant reconfiguration, disentangling more unpredictable complexity, etc. Due to this need to tangle with disentangling and breaking down the system into previously unconceived parts that would present an inevitable contradiction in relation to the current understanding, -L is a more inclusive logic that can’t exclude as much in needing to account for these possible contradictions. And this natural inclusiveness and ever breaking down makes it more vulnerable to F than I. When the logic can’t easily exclude or fortify itself through justification and rigidity, and it deals with more non-standard, less integrated systems that are more displaced from protective standards, F can much more easily subordinate it and take advantage of this vulnerability. Everyone has a relative weakness, and you lose some rigor, security and the more easily explicated step by step logical chains as compared to the approach that you were advocating. You can still convey your point of view with this logic by using clip thinking and new windows of perspective from the separated elemental parts of the system to grant a newly panoramic view that renews and balances your perception of the system. And when you deliberately break apart your axioms as much as you can, and arrive at new axioms that rapidly start to change your perspective from the ground up, that can also be very powerful.
-You can’t take both of these approaches at the same time; they are mutually exclusive. However, you can consider them both in the grand scheme of things. I’d go so far as to say that you must, if you wish to be prudent, and since, no matter who you are, you probably have a predisposition for one, then you are prudent to seek out engagement and feedback with the reverse in order to come to closer grips with your inevitable weaknesses. And there is preciously little -L in the Model A conservatism approach to Socionics, or in the approach that you outline above. There’s a lot of cozying up to certain conceptions, assumptions and axioms that are felt to be simply robust, and building onto them with considerable care and attention. That’s not wholly illegitimate, but there is very little examination of assumptions, explorations off of the prescribed course which risk being disruptive to the ivory tower of logic being built, looking into differences between people of the same type to give further respect to the individuality of man (as opposed to his conformity) and to detect whether there might be more fundamental differentiations than we originally conceived of (which by definition would be outside of our current perception). Indeed, these are often actively discouraged with “lessons”, demoralization, ganging up on people, and redirections towards structures that most of the vested interest has already been sacrificed to. It reminds me a lot of what Plato called double ignorance. And the solution isn’t just believing someone else, but periodically and purposefully lessening the fundamentalism and rigidity of the axiomatic deductive approach.
It seems to me that the Model A conservatism approach more or less entirely misses important points like this: "We are very used to thinking of wholes as composed by parts. That is, a whole is generated by gathering the necessary parts (which, crucially, already exist) and putting them together in some way such that a thing is made from the parts. This is the essence of manufacturing. In this view, wholes are “built up” from parts. The logic is recursive: the parts are themselves manufactured in an analogous way. But the modern mind misses that in the organic and living unfolding of the world, wholes are generated by and out of other wholes, and the parts we observe are very often descended from the elaboration and internal differentiation of a whole whose existence precedes them. Consider the embryonic development of a multicellular organism. It proceeds first by an existing whole (a “parent”) generating another whole (a “child”), then by the growth of that whole and concomitant internal differentiation into parts—sub-wholes that descend from and are synthesized by the whole. The importance of this sequence can not be overstated: In living systems the whole generates the parts. The parts do not exist a priori. In each step of this process we can see that both wholes and parts come from existing wholes. They are not constructed in the usual sense—they are not manufactured. They are synthesized via an unbroken chain of wholes, extending back to the beginning. Robert Rosen recognized this as an essential feature of complex living systems, and further recognized the vast insufficiency of the Newtownian state-recursion paradigm in accounting for it. This insufficiency has not been widely recognized nor appreciated, never mind adequately addressed in the sciences. Stuart Kauffman has voiced similar insights, pointing out that, for example, the function of an organ, like the heart, is not something that can be found in the heart by itself, but is a property that is inherited from its context: the whole organism in which it is embedded, and which has produced it. We have projected our impoverished manufacturing model of the world onto the world and attempted to stuff ourselves inside of it. This is more than a theoretical problem. Our literal, built environment is full of parts, but is lacking wholes.” -Joe Norman
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Safsom: I am of course not concerned with corrborating observations; but corroboration should be conducted when the discrepant emerging observations seem like the rule and not the exception. In the case of a lot of the more important Reinin dichotomies (like Process/Result, for example), it seems like there exist complex rules describing their mechanics (like the function order chart that Waifureich sent earlier), but little when it comes to actually explaining how these mechanics yield the traits associated with Process/Result, or even worse, the lack of trait-bound testable and observable hypotheses to actually attempt to test these dichotomies (due to overt abstractedness by the very definitions of these dichotomies), resulting in a lack of general utility and observability.
My Response: It doesn’t seem to me that the definitions for process/results or the cognitive styles are overwhelmingly complex. They have maybe a brief paragraph defining them on each level of the communicative space in the SHS approach. I have a sentence long description of the cognitive styles on my blog. Not to mention that these traits even apply to the IME’s that you admire, and thus might be useful for differentiating them. Waifu has no training in this particular paradigm so I don’t see why he should be seen as representative of it, but the sort of chart that Waifu sent is not meant to be a mechanical description of the dichotomy, but rather a chart that says to what it applies. Speculating about the inherent mechanisms is truly an interesting and worthwhile discussion that I have some thoughts on, but is not germane to the more basic patterns observed which, if observed, have to be explained in the first place. No amount of mechanistic thought can get around this necessity of often seeing patterns before having a total mechanistic description of how they arise (and that’s assuming that they even do arise from mechanisms).
In any case, Gulenko has done at least much testing of his dichotomies, if not more, than anyone using Model A that I’ve heard of. I don’t think I could say the same for all users of Reinin dichotomies. The reason it might be hard for people to apply these dichotomies who don’t have a very integrated system like Gulenko does is because they not understanding how they fit into the whole, so they have to come up with all sorts of complicated abstractions to justify what isn’t yet naturally observed. But people in SHS regularly use with great success and agree on these dichotomies in people, just like the Model A typists do. So it may not be useful to you unless you can integrate your understanding of these dichotomies into your observations of people in conjunction with the other elements of the system. Otherwise, it may seem, or even be in some cases, useless abstraction.
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Safsom: Even worse is the adjustment of archetypes (which are meant to be based on observations primarily) based on these extensions. I agree that perhaps Reinin dichotomies might be observable in types with a large enough sample size. But I also believe that we should follow order when testing the theory; starting with fundamental propositional hypotheses (like IMEs), and then eventually building up to quicker observable heuristics (like the Reinin dichotomies).
My Response: All of this should be based on observations: IME’s, Reinin’s, Archetypes. None of them are inherently more basic or inherently “extensions”, but should occur together in a gestalt that we observe at once (and if they don’t, they aren’t yet integrated, and are understandable to not use or explore only from time to time). But basically all Socionics schools disagree on archetypes. The Model A Conservatism culture has adjusted Socionics archetypes a lot to suit their assumptions, and they are dissimilar to Jung’s, Aushra’s original archetypes, and many other Russian schools who use Model A and more besides. Archetypes should mainly be expected to be adjusted by the basic perceptions that motivate our models and paradigms, which is why we always need to do our best to make sure those are solid to begin with which requires more experimentation. IME’s are not inherently more fundamental than Reinin’s, but some paradigms might ALREADY have certain observable heuristics that relate to them which they regard as fundamental (since they currently are more fundamental to their perception), which is what lead you to regarding IME as inherently more fundamental to begin with. And I’m not saying that they/you should just include Reinin’s into what they can observe, if they don’t already observe them. It’s okay to leave it out. Just trying to say that more regular, concerted effort should go into questioning assumptions rather than only cantilevering them out ever further. And that goes for everyone.
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Safsom: I don't think that Model G is right in asserting that the Reinin dichotomies are essential to type when I haven't seen Model G typists able to propose observable hypotheses on what each Reinin implies.
My Response: You haven’t met many competent Model G typists though, have you? I’m one of 3 people in the entirety of the Western world who has been trained by SHS in Model G and diagnostics. Many people might be interested in Model G, but very few have actually trained in it or learned much about it. In any case, SHS doesn’t use all Reinin’s, but they use the one’s inherent in temperament, quadra, cognitive style and order ring, some with more conservatively than others. My own list would be:
Dichotomies I almost always look at: Extroversion/Introversion, Rational/Irrational, Logic/Ethics, Sensing/Intuition, Static/Dynamic, Process/Result, Central/Peripheral
Dichotomies I occasionally look at: Positivist/Negativist, Aristocratic/Democratic, Ascending/Descending
Dichotomies I quite rarely look at: Asking/Declaring
Dichotomies I haven’t meaningfully integrated into my perception at all: Tactical/Strategic, Constructivist/Emotivist, Farsighted/Carefree, Obstinate/Yielding
My attitude towards that last category is that maybe it is possible to integrate them, but it may not be. I am open to discussing hypotheses, but otherwise I am not rushing it or focusing on it. I would expect people to have the same attitude towards concepts in Socionics that a significant amount of others claim to have integrated but they haven’t yet. Skepticism and openness at the same time is the only sane epistemological approach, and anything else is naive and childish in its lack of prudence.
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Safsom: I don't think a himalayan yak is principally unseeable for most people either, but most people will not get the chance to go to the himalayas to look at yaks. I think we should stick to what most people in practice will see. And in practice it's a lot easier to see things like "Ti" (provided derived hypotheses are sound, and there are websites with good ones like Ibrahims whole socionics) than things like say, "Result" (whose composition is much more abstract)
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Safsom: I don't think a himalayan yak is principally unseeable for most people either, but most people will not get the chance to go to the himalayas to look at yaks. I think we should stick to what most people in practice will see. And in practice it's a lot easier to see things like "Ti" (provided derived hypotheses are sound, and there are websites with good ones like Ibrahims whole socionics) than things like say, "Result" (whose composition is much more abstract)
My Response: We don't directly "see" any typology concepts; that would be confusing the map for the terrain. Typology models are structures that we apply to our more basic observations to organize them. Assuming that we can do this sort of direct "seeing" of typology concepts in Model A starts to get dangerously close to the Model A Structural Fundamentalism that I criticized previously. Most people can't pick out plants in a rainforest without significant training, but that doesn't mean it can't be done or isn't important to do. Most people can't understand advanced theoretical physics or string theory, but some specialists of the population still need to be able to do it. If there are patterns in some domain of significance (and I would argue that Socionics is significant for humans to comprehend) which can be effectively organized into categories like "Ti" and "Result", then those observations should be categorized regardless of how many people are currently familiar with them. It's very easy and conformal to just bend to social consensus lead by stubborn and intractable people, but that is very much against any sort of scientific or disinterested approach to the topic. The questioning isn't how many people currently are making an observation, but whether it can be effectively and purposefully made.
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