…The authors of this study argue that physical sensations form the core of any emotional experience. When people feel an emotion, they experience interoceptive states, which are the brain’s internal perceptions of signals from inside the body, like a racing heart or a tense stomach. The researchers wanted to map these self-aware, physical feelings, known as somatosensory experiences, to see what a state of political anger or political hope actually feels like in the human body.
Understanding these bodily sensations can shed light on how political contexts alter basic psychological responses. To explore these physical patterns, the researchers conducted a study with 992 adult participants from the United States. The sample was designed to be nationally representative in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and political party affiliation. The median age of the participants was 46 years, and the group included exactly 50 percent women.
The scientists used a validated digital mapping technique called the emBODY tool to measure physical reactions. During the experiment, participants viewed digital silhouettes of the human body and used a coloring tool to indicate exactly where they felt physical sensations. They painted regions red to show increased activation, such as warmth or tension, and they used blue to show decreased activation, such as numbness or physical heaviness.
Political disgust produced an entirely different physical map compared to everyday disgust. Everyday disgust, such as the natural physical reaction to spoiled food, tends to be felt heavily in the stomach and throat. When participants mapped political disgust, the physical sensation looked remarkably similar to anger, with high activation concentrated in the head and upper body.
Democrat-leaning participants reported stronger bodily sensations for negative political emotions compared to Republican-leaning participants. For political anger, anxiety, depression, and disgust, Democrat-leaning individuals showed much higher physical activation, primarily concentrated in the head and upper torso.
I strongly believe a major cause of neuroticism, emotional agony, and mental illness is our minds are more complex than much of our thinking and most of our communication.
This causes us to be like prisoners trapped in small space when we are capable of much greater freedom.
A new study illustrates why this happens.
The study show how auditory hallucinations can be induced in people who are not otherwise prone to hearing them.
Pairing a stimulus in one modality (vision) with a stimulus in another (sound) can lead to task-induced hallucinations in healthy individuals. After many trials, people eventually report perceiving a nonexistent stimulus contingent on the presence of the previously paired stimulus. (Pavlovian conditioning–induced hallucinations result from overweighting of perceptual priors)
Since this effect can be induced fairly simply it shows that:
Note that these hallucinations “result from overweighing perceptual priors.”
A “perceptual prior” is, in these cases, a mistaken assumption about reality.
If our auditory and visual “realities” are susceptible to mistakes like these, how much more is our psychology?
Due to our generally very simple ways of interacting with other people, we are essentially forced to hallucinate who they are and at the same time who we are.
That is, our complex minds are essentially forced to see ourselves and others in simple, hallucinatory terms that cannot possibly be true.
I believe this is the cause of great mental and emotional distress for all people everywhere.
I also believe that this problem can be largely overcome by practicing FIML
FIML allows us to remove our psychological hallucinations about our FIML partner as they remove theirs about us.
FIML works because it allows partners to escape the simplicities and many hallucinatory traps of ordinary communication.
As far as I know, there is no other method for doing this. FIML is practical psychotherapy that will optimize your mind and psychology by providing the data you need to overcome hallucinating most of your life.
In this respect, FIML is a preeminent Buddhist mindfulness practice done by two (or more) people working together.
I hope the day comes when Buddhist Sanghas will practice FIML among themselves and teach it to lay followers when they have mastered the technique.
FIML is deeply human and not something AI will be able to do. It is very well-suited to this Human Realm because it shows us how delusions are formed, where they lie within us and how to extinguish them.
Game theory uses models to understand how people interact under predetermined conditions or rules.
The end result of any particular model is called its “equilibrium.” Equilibrium implies no one will change their input if external conditions remain the same.
One way to make a game theory model is to reason backwards from the equilibrium you want. To keep it simple, there are two players.
Let’s say we want an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life. Here is a hypothesis: an equilibrium like that should also result in psychological optimization, psychological well-being for both players.
To achieve that equilibrium, my game model will be based on the following rules:
communication will be as honest as possible
communication will be as clear as possible
all acts of communication (within reason) will be subject to clarification, revision, correction, and explication to the point (within reason) that there is no misunderstanding and whatever ambiguity remains is reduced to its lowest practical level
To do this, players will:
focus on the smallest practical units of communication because error and ambiguity (which often leads to error) frequently begin at this level; this level includes: words, phrases, gestures, tone of voice, expressions, gasps, laughter, grunts, and so on; anything that communicates; all pertinent semiotics
correcting error at the above level, which we will call the micro-level, ensures that small mistakes do not lead to large mistakes; it also teaches players how to correct errors at meso and macro levels of communication
since human minds are limited in what they know and can communicate, and if players are diligent in following the above rules, players will steadily become more familiar with each other; how they speak, hear, think, what their references are, their values, beliefs, and so on
if they continue to maintain these practices, they will build on their mutual familiarity, eventually achieving an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life
I have played this game with my partner for over ten years and can attest that it has worked even better than we had hoped.
Not only have we achieved an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life, but also what we hypothesized has come to pass: this equilibrium has also resulted in what feels to us to be psychological optimization and psychological well-being for both of us.
Note that initially FIML will upset your normal interpersonal equilibrium, whatever that may be. It cannot be otherwise. Note also that the rules of FIML will help you find or create a much better equilibrium.
If FIML is undertaken in a spirit of exploration, creativity, and fun, it will tend to self-generate or self-catalyze many new insights into your psychologies and how you interact with each other.
The ultimate FIML equilibrium is a dynamic one that keeps both partners open to the dynamic reality of life. With little or no “content” of its own, FIML rules allow partners to adapt to or create any “reality” they want.
Once understood, FIML is pretty much only difficult in the very beginning because in the beginning it will upset your normal interpersonal equilibrium. By doing FIML, you are choosing to change your normal equilibrium to a more efficient one.
Metacognitive clutter is stuff that makes higher mental states not work well.
An individual example might be holding a mistaken view of your role in some organization or activity. Your mistaken view causes much of what you are doing to be wrong and to detrimentally entangle other parts of your life.
A national or social example of metacognitive clutter might be the many dumb subjects and shallow statements required of American politicians. See the following for a more detailed analysis: Semiotics in politics and the totalitarianism of PC.
Another area where metacognitive clutter causes a lot of problems is interpersonal relations. If you cannot speak to your SO and/or closest friends from a metacognitive point of view, you sort of don’t really have an SO or close friends.
In this context, metacognition means being able to talk about how you understand each other and why you think, feel, and behave as you do.
Good interpersonal metacognitive communication produces better relationships, happier people, and healthier individual psychologies.
This happens because good communication removes metacognitive clutter, greatly reducing interpersonal mistakes and cognitive entanglements.
I, for one, do not believe you can do really good metacognitive communication without a prior agreement to do that and a technique that reliably works on small details. See this for information on such a technique: How to do FIML.
General discussions on beliefs, biographies, emotions, philosophies, religion, science, and so forth are helpful, even essential, for good metacognitive communication but they cannot by themselves remove the idiosyncratic clutter that has built up in the mind over many years.
Meso and macro level techniques cannot remove micro clutter, especially idiosyncratic micro clutter which we all have a lot of.
The day will come when AI can answer almost all of our questions.
I doubt it will be able to know on its own what questions we want to ask. In that respect, we will have knowledge or information AI does not have.
AI will also not know what we humans are going to ask each other or say to each other. And only a human interlocutor can answer a subjective question we ask them about themself.
Only humans have complex subjectivity which is difficult for us to figure out. AI may be able to help us with that to some degree.
But how will it help us with the complex subjectivity that exists between two or more humans?
With the help of some sort of brain monitoring device worn or embedded in a human, AI will have some calculable grasp on our subjectivity.
Would it ever be good enough to be a substitute for a human companion?
Is subjectivity anything else but confusion within the human system? Or is it a nonrational transient appraisal or measure of the system?
Subjectivity can be beautiful, ugly, inspiring, boring, intriguing, illusory.
FIML may wind up being the only thing humans can do that AI cannot do. ABN
This article argues that the human brain saves energy by predicting or imagining “reality” more than actually perceiving it: Do Thrifty Brains Make Better Minds? The article argues that this way of using our brains allows us to work more efficiently with complex data or in complex situations.
I think this general premise is pretty well known and agreed on, but the linked article puts it in a new way. The following sentence caught my eye: This… underlines the surprising extent to which the structure of our expectations (both conscious and non-conscious) may quite literally be determining much of what we see, hear and feel.
The article uses visual perception as an example, but the idea applies just as well, and maybe more so, to what we hear in the speech of others. FIML practice works by inserting a new mental skill between the first arising of a (stored) interpretation and its full-blown acceptance as “reality”.
all the world is a solipsistic circus with no way out. all cultures are self-referential solipsisms. all speech is hopelessly entangled in definitions that go nowhere. we ourselves don’t know what we mean. one thing defines another. actions prove words only because nothing else does, and neither does that. this is caused by words making no sense except through their connections to other words ABN
Interoception means our “perception or sense of internal body states,” including the states of our cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, and thermoregulatory systems among others.
Proprioception means “one’s own” or “ones’ individual” (Latin proprius) “perception.” We normally use this word to refer to our physical position in the world—whether we are standing or sitting, how we are moving, and how much energy we are using.
Both interoception and proprioception generally refer to physical states of the body though, of course, how we interpret those states may involve much more than immediate physical considerations.
Erroneous interoception or the misinterpretation of internal states is is generally thought to be an important contributing factor to many psychological disorders, including anxiety, depression, panic disorder, and more.
Consider some other levels of interoception—our states of mind; our mental impressions of other people and of ourselves; our senses of our own psychologies.
These levels of psychological reality are normally accessed through introspection, meditation, mindfulness, and psychotherapy. All of these methods are good, but each of them lacks ongoing, real-time input from another human being, thus missing the dynamic functioning of the human mind in real-life situations.
FIML corrects this problem by providing objective, dynamic access to real-time psychological functioning. FIML is a method or tool for optimizing human psychology by honing our perceptions of our mental states as they actually function in real-world situations.
It has been shown conclusively that in the earliest sutras Buddha is shown as having attained nirvana in this lifetime, and did not lose it during the decades before his death. Hundreds of years later, in Normative Buddhism, the early picture of Buddha’s enlightenment as nirvana had become increasingly modified, to the point that many came to consider it impossible to attain nirvana in one lifetime. Nevertheless, this must not mislead us into thinking that such was the view of the Buddha’s followers in his lifetime, or soon after his death. It is logically necessary for the Buddha to have achieved nirvana and for his followers to have believed that they could do the same thing if they imitated him, in order for such later ideas to have developed in reaction to it. If the Buddha had not achieved his remarkable, heroic breakthrough, there would have been no Buddhism.
Beckwith, Christopher I.. Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia (pp. 42-43). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
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In early Buddhism, it is also true that no one thought of the Buddha as a god. The Buddha himself, even in ‘Normative Buddhist’ texts, claims that he is ‘just a man’ and that anyone can achieve nirvana if they do the work (karma). It would probably be a good thing for Buddhists today to emphasize these points; and by so doing, remind Buddhism of its deepest roots — Nirvana is a real state that anyone can achieve if they do the work; and all dharmas (things) are characterized by the Three Signs, or Trilakṣaṇa: “All dharmas are anitya ‘impermanent’…. All dharmas are duḥkha ‘unsatisfactory, imperfect, unstable’…. All dharmas are anātman ‘without an innate self-identity’.” ABN
…although the sense of duḥkha in Normative Buddhism is traditionally given as ‘suffering’, that and similar interpretations are highly unlikely for Early Buddhism. Significantly, Monier-Williams himself doubts the usual explanation of duḥkha and presents an alternative one immediately after it, namely: duḥ-stha “‘standing badly,’ unsteady, disquieted (lit. and fig.); uneasy,” and so on. This form is also attested, and makes much better sense as the opposite of the Rig Veda sense of sukha, which Monier-Williams gives in full as “(said to be fr. 5. su + 3. kha, and to mean originally ‘having a good axle-hole’; possibly a Prakrit form of su-stha q.v.; cf. duḥkha) running swiftly or easily (only applied to cars or chariots, superl[ative] sukhátama), easy”. It would seem that there were two forms of each word; Prakrit and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit chose the -kha forms instead of the -stha forms, which survived nevertheless in a much smaller way. The most important point here is that duḥ + stha literally means ‘dis-/ bad- + stand-’, that is, ‘badly standing, unsteady’ and is therefore virtually identical to the literal meaning of Greek astathmēta, from a- + sta- ‘not- + stand’, both evidently meaning ‘unstable’. This strongly suggests that Pyrrho’s middle term is in origin a simple calque.
Beckwith, Christopher I.. Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia (p. 30). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
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The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is usually translated as the truth of ‘suffering, unsatisfactoriness, or stress’. Beckwith presents a sound argument that it actually indicates a philosophical argument that untrained views are ‘badly standing, unsteady’ and not to be relied upon. Beckwith’s argument references Pyrrhonism because Pyrrho is known to have studied Buddhism in Bactria where he lived for ten years in Alexander’s court. During that time Pyrrho learned Buddhist philosophy and used it as the basis of Pyrrhonism, the earliest form of Greek skepticism. Beckwith is working with only attested documents. His argument that Pyrrhonism comes directly from Buddhism is very strong. I highly recommend his book Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. ABN
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.
I betray my poor education by admitting that I had never heard of W. V. Quine’s “indeterminacy of translation” until last week1. My ignorance is especially egregious as I have worked as a professional translator for many years.
Maybe I had heard about it but had forgotten. I am being self-reflective because FIML practice is deeply, fundamentally concerned with the “indeterminacy” of translating one person’s thoughts into another person’s head.
Quine’s thesis is not just about translating from one language to another, though there is that. It is much more about the fundamental impossibility of determining what anything means well enough to “translate” it into another context, a next sentence, into another person’s mind, or even “translating” your own speech from the past into the context of your mind today.
If I had known about Quine, I probably never would have thought of FIML because his ideas and the slews of papers written on “indeterminacy of translation” surely would have made me believe that the subject had been worked through.
As it was, I have plodded along in a delightful state of ignorance and, due to that, maybe added something practical to the subject.
In the first place, I wholeheartedly believe that speech is filled with indeterminacy, which I have generally called ambiguity or uncertainty. In the second place, I have confined my FIML-related investigations mainly to interpersonal speech between partners who care about each other. I see no solution to the more general problem of indeterminacy within groups, subcultures, or linguistic communities. Until brain scans get much better, large groups will be forced to resort to hierarchical “determinacy” to exist or function at all.
For individuals, though, there is much we can do. FIML practice does not remove all “indeterminacy.” Rather, it removes much more than most people are aware is possible, even remotely aware is possible. My guess is FIML communication provides a level of detail and resolution that is an order of magnitude or two better than non-FIML.
That is a huge improvement. It is life-changing on many levels and extremely satisfying.
FIML does not fix everything—and philosophical or “artistic” differences between partners are still possible—but it does fix a great deal. By clearing up interpersonal micro-indeterminacy again and again, FIML practice frees partners from the inevitable macro-problems that micro-ambiguity inevitably causes.
Moreover, this freedom, in turn, frees partners from a great deal of subconscious adhesion to the hierarchical “determinacy” of whichever culture they are part of. Rather than trapping themselves in a state of helpless acceptance of predefined hierarchical “meaning,” FIML partners have the capacity to sort through existential semiotics and make of them what they will with far less “indeterminacy,” or ambiguity, than had been possible without FIML practice.
UPDATE: Both indeterminacy of translation and FIML fit with Buddhism very well. The core Buddhist concepts of impermanence, emptiness, and no-self (or intrinsic self-nature) are in the same philosophical region as indeterminacy of translation and FIML. Indeterminacy provides a philosophical grounding for the emptiness, impermanence, and no-intrinsic-self nature of anything within the human realm. FIML addresses this overall area of indeterminacy/ emptiness with a technique which greatly improves resolution of what is indeterminable. As empty humans we are agglomerations of indeterminable thought and action, more or less floating in a thick Bayesian mist of probabilities which are likewise indeterminable, impermanent, and empty of intrinsic self-nature. ABN
Humans are retarded because throughout our long history of being able to speak and listen, not a single one has discovered FIML or taught it.
How can humans be any more retarded than that? We all talk, but no one has ever figured out how to talk correctly, let alone taught us how to talk correctly.
This fact alone makes me seriously doubt all religions everywhere. What god, God, Saint, or sage would not teach humans how to talk, thus saving us from many millennia of mental illness, sadness and pointless violence.
(I love chess), but consider what a waste of time it is; how many years so many people spend studying it. Yet not one human anywhere has ever spent a tiny fraction of that much time figuring out how talking and listening actually works, or how to talk and listen as well as a grandmaster plays chess.
Becoming good at FIML is probably 1,000-10,000 times easier than becoming a chess grandmaster, or a capable engineer, or a PhD in linguistics, history or psychology.
What subject is more obvious than people suck at talking and listening?
Think about it: What constitutes what most people think is talented talking and listening?
For talking, it’s fluency, vocabulary, charm, persuasiveness, explanatory ability, etc. But never accuracy in dynamic real-time, real-world situations. Virtually all so-called talented speakers, whether public or private, are performers. They perform dazzling speech acts like acrobats, but rarely tell the truth and never know how to properly analyze even their own words.
As for listening, it’s the flipside of performative talking. All people everywhere have been and are still raised to talk and listen in these ways, a sure sign of species-wide mental retardation.
The other way people are raised is to stifle speech and listening, which is an even more direct way to make them retarded
All you have to do to escape human linguistic retardation is learn FIML and do it with someone close to you, someone smart enough to understand why it is necessary. ABN
Simply stated, semiotic codes are the conventions used to communicate meaning.
Codes can be compared to puppet masters that control the words and semiotic bundles that people use when speaking and listening. For many people, semiotic codes are largely unconscious, functioning mainly as limits to communication or as givens.
Some examples of codes might be the ready-made formulas of politics or the ordinary assumptions of any culture anywhere.
Codes work well in most cases when we do ordinary or formal things, but they inhibit thought and communication when we want to go beyond ordinary or formal interactions and behaviors.
Unconscious, unexamined, or strongly-held codes can be a disaster in interpersonal relations if one or both (or all) parties are rigid in their definitions and understanding of the codes being used. These are the sorts of conditions that lead to absurd exchanges at the dinner table and are one of the main reason most of us learn never to talk about politics or religion at most gatherings.
Gathering for dinner itself is a code. On Thanksgiving we are expected to break bread without breaking the code of silence on politics or whatever else your family can’t or won’t talk about. There is not much the individual can do to change this because the harder you try—no matter how good your intentions—the more it will seem that you are breaking the code, being aggressive, or threatening the (probably fairly weak) bonds that hold your dining unit together.
Many years ago, Charles Berger and Richard Calabrese proposed a theory about communication known as the Uncertainty Reduction Theory. This theory deals with how people initially get to know each other. It proposes:
…that, when interacting, people need information about the other party in order to reduce their uncertainty. In gaining this information people are able to predict the other’s behavior and resulting actions, all of which according to the theory is crucial in the development of any relationship. (source)
The basic idea is that we humans need to reduce uncertainty in order to understand each other well-enough to get along. If we succeed at reducing uncertainty sufficiently, it then becomes possible to continue to develop relations.
The theory works pretty well in my view, but the problem I see with it is reducing initial uncertainty is much the same as feeling out semiotic codes, discovering which ones both (or all) parties subscribe to. As mentioned, this works well-enough for ordinary and formal relations, but what happens next? For the most part, most people then become trapped in the codes they seem to share.
What happens next can even be seen as sort of comical as people over the weeks or months continue to reduce uncertainty while confining themselves even more. Very often, if you try to go a bit deeper, you will be seen as breaking the code, disrupting convention, even threatening the group.
This is the region in which intimate relationships can be destroyed. Destruction happens because the parties involved are trapped in their codes and do not have the means to stand outside them and analyze them. Obviously, this leads to either reduced or turbulent speech.
I think the Uncertainty Reduction Theory might be extended and amended to include a stage two theory of uncertainty reduction. FIML practice would constitute a very reasonable stage two as FIML is designed to remove uncertainty and ambiguity between close partners.
Notice that FIML itself is not a semiotic code. It is a tool, a method, a procedure that allows partners to communicate without using any code at all save ones they consciously choose or create for themselves.
It seems clear to me that all established interpersonal codes are ultimately limiting and that people must find a way to analyze whatever codes they hold or have been inculcated with if they want to have truthful or authentic communication with their closest partners.
Most codes are public in the sense that they are roughly known by many people. But all of us have idiosyncratic ways of understanding these public codes and all of us also have private codes, idiosyncratic codes that are known only to us.
Sometimes our understanding of our idiosyncratic codes and/or idiosyncratic interpretations of public codes is not all that clear to us. One reason is we do not have good ways to access them. Another reason is a good many idiosyncrasies are sort of born in the dark. We muddle into them privately, inside our own minds with little or no opportunity to share them with others. Indeed, as seen above, to try to share them all too often leads to disruption of the shallow “certainty” that adherence to the shared code has provided.
What a mess. We need codes to learn, grow, and communicate with strangers. But we have to go beyond them if we want to learn, grow, and communicate with the people who are most important to us.
FIML is a sort of stage two Uncertainty Reduction Practicethat allows partners to observe and analyze all of their codes—both public and private—in real-time.
Why is real-time analysis important? It is important because codes can only be richly and accurately analyzed when we see clearly how they are functioning in the moment. The “psychological morphemes” that appear only during brief moments of communication must be seen and analyzed if deep understanding is to be accomplished.
A major feature in language is the importance of asking and how you ask.
The impetus for all speech resides deeply in and around the imperative that we must want and ask for the spiritual development we are seeking. Frivolous asking and mundane desires do not count. They are outside of deep language use.
The Buddha only spoke on the Dharma when and if he was asked to do so.
The source and meaning of language and meaning itself can be glimpsed in this. Right Language is a soul-deep operation of the mind.
In this respect, FIML is a profound philosophical answer to what language is, what meaning is, what communication and communion are. FIML is this answer because it reveals and analyzes real-time, real-world speech between honest partners.
You cannot cut that close to the bone in any other way. Two people, true speech, true analysis — the source of linguistic being is revealed. The conundrums of psychology are healed.
FIML speaks to us within language, not from outside of language. With practice, FIML will move the source of your speech and meaning to your true experience. It will remove from you the need to understand yourself through extrinsic language and meaning.
In this sense, FIML is truly a philosopher’s stone. It will take you to the deepest levels you are capable of. ABN
American Buddhist Net 