Month: April 2018

Technology and human transformation

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Most fundamental changes in human societies happen due to technological advances.

The next big change in human psychology will come from inexpensive, very sensitive brain scans.

These scans will show millions people in real-time how their brains are actually behaving and reacting. Presently unnoticed or concealed twinges of emotion will become conspicuously visible on a screen or within a hologram that surrounds our heads.

People will be able to use this technology in the company of a computer program or with a human partner. A good AI program will use brain-scan information to reveal much about us. We will learn stuff about how we actually function that very few are aware of today.

Having this knowledge will change the way we understand ourselves and our interactions with others. Rather than work almost exclusively with the vague stories we tell ourselves, we will be able to see how our brains (and bodies) actually function in real time.

The difference between our stories and how we actually function is very great. Great enough to completely change the landscape of what we now think of as human psychology.

There already exist inexpensive EEG rigs that are sort of good at measuring moods and honesty. There are also expensive ones with more capacity. Within a decade or two, these devices will be much better. An accurate lie-detector will surely be included in the consumer package.

This technology will rewrite our understanding of human psychology and remake the ways we think of human society today. If you want to get a head start on the future, learn how to do FIML now.

 

You need a strong stomach (and brain) for this

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Read this—FBI Never Investigated Abedin/Clinton Laptop Emails In October 2016…—and peruse the comments where there are numerous valuable insights and links.

Here’s one: Dutch banker Ronald Bernard blows the whistle on world’s satanic elite

Watch the Bernard interview in full screen, especially from 20:00 on where he describes his unwillingness to participate in child sacrifices. Watch his expression around 22:00. Do you think he is lying? I don’t.

Is the really deep core of Trump’s rise to power that he is backed by a group of good people who have enough evidence to bust the very top of the world’s elite?

 

General analyses of signaling systems illuminate fundamentals of psychology

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Individual psychology is a locus or node within a larger social system.

More precisely, individual psychologies are particular signaling systems within larger social signaling systems.

It is valuable to see this because general analyses of signaling systems—even those having nothing to do with human psychology—can shed light on human signaling systems, including both individual psychology and many aspects of sociology.

When human psychology is viewed as a signaling system, we can readily see that narcissism is bound to occur because narcissism is fundamentally a simplistic signal system.  (See Narcissism redefined (yet again) for more.)

When human sociology is viewed as a signaling system, we can similarly see that parasitism is bound to occur because the exploitation of one system by another is a fairly simple matter.  (See Social parasitism in ants and humans for more.)

In like manner, we can see that social hierarchies importantly have evolved because they are simple and decently efficient signal (communication) systems.

We can also see why hierarchical system often are overthrown and why they often do not arise in systems where they are not needed.  For example, no hierarchy is needed for a language system once the basics have been established.  A parasitic or authoritarian group might impose a hierarchy on a language system, but that’s a different animal.

When individual psychology is viewed as a signaling system, we can see that a great deal of what we consider “disordered” or “ill” within that system is fundamentally a problem of the signal system itself and not the “personality” we have mistakenly abstracted out of that system.

Indeed, most of what we think of as personality is nothing more than an individual signal system attempting to conform to its understanding of the larger social system within which it exists.  When science is applied to “personality” erroneously conceived, we arrive at the many psychometric tautologies on personality traits we now have.  Psychometrics have limited value for describing societies, but are frequently misleading, even damaging, when applied to individuals.  In this, they resemble BMI data which originally was used as a marker for the health of whole populations, not individuals, and which can be misleading when applied to individuals.

When we view individuals as signaling systems rather than personalities, we can immediately see that these systems can and should be optimized for better communication.  Indeed, this is the real job of psychology—optimizing individual signaling systems. Not just treating “personality” disorders.

Social parasitism in ants and humans

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

Parasitic ants parasitize other ants using aggression and deception. (Source)

Ant parasitism is an evolved social behavior, a “game” that has arisen within large social communities. We have a great deal of evidence that human communities can also be parasitic or harbor parasitic human subgroups.

It makes sense that social parasitism as a “game” of signal exchanging would evolve in large social groups. Social signal system have an inherent capacity to diverge; and from there to fight, compete, exploit.

There are many large examples of human social parasitism, the Manchurian elite of the Qing Dynasty being one. Social parasitism can also be seen among humans in small groups of gaslighters, gangs, or cults.

Every summer, blood-red ants of the species Formica sanguinea go on a mission to capture slaves. They infiltrate the nest of another ant species, like the peaceful F. fusca, assassinate the queen, and kidnap the pupae to raise as the next generation of slaves. Once the slaves hatch in their new nest, they appear none the wiser to their abduction, dutifully gathering food and defending the colony as if it were their own. (How blood-red ants became slave snatchers)

Sunday Talks – Explosive Interview With Devin Nunes…

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Chairman of the House Intelligence Community Devin Nunes appears on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the origin of the counterintelligence operation, that began in July 2016, against the Trump campaign.

Last week the FBI releases the original “electronic communication” (EC) documents, that underpinned the origin of the FBI counterintelligence operation. The first half of this interview contains some stunning information: the raw intelligence product within the EC did not come through official intelligence channels. (Source)

Status and hierarchy are as fundamental to human life as murder

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All three are middling instincts that are easily controlled or not even thought about by most people.

I mention this because several social-psychologists I like and respect have come down hard on the fundamental importance of the human instinct for status and advancement within human hierarchies.

I discussed this topic in January regarding Jordan Peterson. Yesterday, I noticed the video below where Peterson seems to be conflating status, hierarchy, and self-improvement. To me, it sounds like he is backing away from his views on the fundamental importance of status within a human hierarchy. This is good because the only evidence anyone can offer for that claim will be based on psychometric tautologies or, more vaguely, cultural inertia.

BTW, I like Peterson and wish him the best. His is a valuable and necessary voice. I hope he keeps talking and eventually becomes prime minister of Canada.

 

Games as semiotic focus

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Define a game as “a set of rules that focuses and directs thought, feeling, intention.”

Most human games are overwhelmingly involved with human semiotics. Human feeling, thought, and intention overwhelmingly operate within and are defined by human semiotics.

Humans are semiotic animals who live within semiologies as much or more than their natural environments. Few of us can even comprehend our natural environments save through a semiotic system.

A semiology is a signal system, a system of signals. Humans need and want their signal systems to be organized; from this arises culture and psychology.

From this arises the many games of human semiotic organization. Humans crave meaning—a synonym for semiotic organization and focus—and thus play games (as defined above) with their intentions, thoughts, emotions, behaviors, instincts, perceptions, desires, and so on. Without meaning, focus, purposive semiotic organization, life is dismal and many humans destroy themselves and others for this alone.

Human semiotic organization can be beneficially reorganized in two basic ways:

  • Through general thought, which mainly changes how we focus and what we focus on. This region of organization includes all culture and science, including mainstream psychology and its treatments.
  • Through analysis of the most basic elements of semiotic organization, individual semiotics and semiologies. To do this at the individual level, two individuals are needed because you cannot successfully analyze your own semiotics by yourself. This is so because a great number of human semiotics are fundamental to both psychology and communication. They do not exist independently.

The goal of reorganizing individual semiologies is to optimize them. As individual semiologies optimize, individual psychologies inevitably optimize apace. Much is possible at this level that is not possible at the general level of psychological theory.

Reorganization at this level is done through individual semiotics, the actual signals of individual communication and psychology alike. To play this game—the game of semio-psychological reorganization and optimization—you have to have rules. Here they are.

Me on the outside vs me on the inside

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This image was used on a social anxiety site to illustrate what it says. My take on it is virtually everyone in the world is like this if you expand social anxiety to mean inner confusion.

Under current worldwide social norms, inner confusion reigns because there is no way for individuals to communicate with profound authenticity, no way to connect on authentic levels. The closest most people can get is shared ideals, shared vows, shared beliefs, all mere pale shadows of true authenticity.

Those who lack profound authentic communication must needs necessarily also lack authentic self-knowledge. You cannot know thyself all alone. You must be able to communicate it, communicate with it, interact with it to know it. And you must be able to do this with a knowing other who is doing the same with you. This is so because our psychologies are based on interpersonal communication. There is no other way.

FIML practice can correct virtually all interpersonal communication problems between two people. FIML optimizes interpersonal communication and by so doing optimizes self-knowledge as well.

Motivated reasoning, speaking to effect

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Motivated reasoning means reasoning to gain. Speaking to effect means speaking to cause something.

Both are the most common forms of thought and speech for all people with few exceptions.

Speaking to effect and motivated reasoning maintain personas.

Because it is difficult to tell truths and because trying to do so brings calamity, we don’t. We narrow thought instead; our voices dull faceless muffled sounds with no meaning.

This is the tone and timbre of samsara, the feeling of group delusion, the Suffering of the First Noble Truth.

Real-time, real-world analysis of interpersonal communication

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…From this, you can see that a percept is a “thing” in the mind, an electro-checmical “structure” with imagery, thought, and emotion. Based on what is known about the physical, brains (like all matter) are fields or fields intersecting; superimposed fields with remarkable stability and complexity.

If we consider the brain as some sort of field array and its particles as excited points on it, we can see how “mind” could be retained in the field array even though its brain particles have become unexcited through changed attention or death. (Source)