Category: Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML)

Speech comprehension and context

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A new study on speech comprehension shows that humans respond to the “contextual semantic content of each word in a relatively time-locked fashion.”

These findings demonstrate that, when successfully comprehending natural speech, the human brain responds to the contextual semantic content of each word in a relatively time-locked fashion. (Source)

This process is roughly illustrated here:

While I do not doubt these findings for simple speech in simple contexts, I do wonder what the results would be for speech in psychologically complex contexts, whether that speech is simple or not.

I wonder this because I am certain that in almost all psychologically complex contexts (those rich with subjectivity, emotion, idiosyncratic memory or association, etc.) the “contextual semantic content of each word” will necessarily be different, often very different for each speaker.

Psychologically rich interpersonal speech is almost always fraught with contextual differences that can be very large. Sometimes participants know these differences exist and sometimes they don’t. It is very common for speakers to make major mistakes in this area, the most important area of speech for human psychological well-being.

It seems possible that EEG with increased sensitivity might one day be able to detect “context diversion” between speakers, but even if complex emotional information is also included, people will still have to talk about what is diverging from what.

My comments are not meant to detract from the very interesting findings posted above. I make them because these findings illustrate how inherently problematic real-time mutual comprehension of the “contextual semantic content” of all spoken words actually is.

FIML practice is the only way I know of today to find profound real-time mutual comprehension of complex interpersonal speech.

Real-time, real-world analysis of interpersonal communication

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A tool that can reliably augment real-time, real-world interpersonal communication will profoundly change our understanding of human psychology for the better.

Such a tool will provide us with data that makes intent, content, and psychological aspect manifest in real-time.

An AI-assisted EEG device could be an advance toward realizing that goal. Dan Nemrodov, of the University of Toronto, has succeeded in “digitally reconstruct[ing] images seen by test subjects based on electroencephalography (EEG) data.”

“When we see something, our brain creates a mental percept, which is essentially a mental impression of that thing. We were able to capture this percept using EEG to get a direct illustration of what’s happening in the brain during this process,” says Nemrodov. (Do you see what I see? Researchers harness brain waves to reconstruct images of what we perceive)

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.

Are humans biased in favor of punishment?

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A new study indicates that we humans seem to get more reward from punishing wrongdoers compared to compensating victims.

…By combining a novel decision-making paradigm with functional neuroimaging, we identified specific brain networks that are involved with both the perception of, and response to, social injustice, with reward-related regions preferentially involved in punishment compared to compensation. (Source)

Whether we favor punishment over compensation or not, it’s obvious that we humans like punishment and do it often.

My guess is this accounts for a big part of interpersonal strife. Rather than look for a solution to interpersonal problems, a common default mode is to blame and punish instead. We even blame and punish ourselves.

This is why it is so important to know how to identify problems as they arise and how to deal with them as soon as possible.

Since we are probably born with a tendency to favor punishment, this must be taken into consideration whenever we make social and interpersonal decisions.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, “How Emotions Are Made”

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One sentence I liked a lot in this vid is: “The experiences you cultivate today become the predictions your brain uses tomorrow.”

FIML practice cultivates in real-time the experience of changing your real-time interpretation, emotion, perspective, or understanding. Once you have done this many times with a partner, you will find that you will also be able do it with unwanted mental states when alone.

Basic FIML practice can be compared to musical scales or basic sports skills. Once these have been mastered, more complex skills become available. For this reason, FIML is a uniquely effective form of interpersonal psychotherapy.

Why narcissism works

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Narcissism works because its victims don’t see it.

Victims don’t see it because they are children being raised by narcissistic parent(s) or very commonly adults who were raised by narcissists. There is even a term for the latter: ACoN, Adult Children of Narcissists.

Other kinds of people also fall for narcissists, but having been raised by narcissistic parent(s) is probably the most common.

Narcissists often appear normal to others due to narcissism being a fairly common disorder and also due to the narcissist’s deep-seated need to appear normal to others. They are experts at “impression management.” That’s a big part of what narcissism is.

For many ACoNs, narcissistic traits look perfectly normal because that is what they experienced at home. Narcissistic smiles, glares, malice, selfishness, ostracism, false concern, abuse, and more all seem normal because they were imprinted on the primary instincts of the child to need and trust their parents and siblings.

In truth, entire cultures can be narcissistic, abusive, hierarchical. To break these habits in interpersonal relationships, you have to do FIML practice or something very similar.

Fundamental to narcissism…

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…is it is a one-way street.  The narcissist must define and control “reality” so it travels in only one direction—from them to you.

Narcissism is a zero-sum game. The narcissist must win and cannot allow deeply shared realities that require nuance and complexity.

Most narcissists will act maliciously to achieve these ends.

Malice (often hidden), zero-sum, and one-way streets are very strong signs of narcissism.

If you are dealing with a narcissist, especially interpersonally, their narcissism will probably not be clear to you. That’s why you are staying in the relationship.

If you suspect you are dealing with a narcissist look for one or more of the signs above.

Malice, which frequently is concealed, can be the hardest to see. Narcissists gas light, abuse, reputation damage, backbite, physically harm, destroy property, steal, poison, and more. Their pleasure comes from watching you suffer.

Their one-way street deeply needs to define you and your reality. This is typically easier to see than their malice. They may come right out and say what kind of person they think you are. Just saying this does not make a person a narcissist, but saying it often and never accepting your explanations does. And if you say something similar to them, they will become angry either openly or concealed. Remember, it’s a one-way street with a narcissist.

You not only can’t win with a narcissist you can’t even break even because they are always playing a zero-sum game.

At the same time, most narcissists are skilled at “impression management.” They need other people to see them as being right and you being wrong. This is why narcissists often conceal their malice. They may conceal it completely. Or they may hide it in plain sight by explaining to everyone around you (behind you back) what your “problems” are and how they are only trying to help.

If you see any of these signs in parents, siblings, friends, or mates, look more closely. Don’t jump to conclusions. Ask yourself, is my relationship with that person deeply shared or is it a one-way street?

“Russian collusion” by Trump – ‘Game Over’

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It’s been obvious for a long time to anyone paying attention that the “Russian collusion” story aimed at Donald Trump is a lie; and known to be a lie by those directing it within the Democrat Party, the FBI, and MSM.

One of the best researchers in this line of thought posted a terrific article last night: Game Over – Judge Jeanine Interview With HPSCI Rep. Chris Stewart…

I highly recommend reading that piece and perusing others on that site.

Just as tool awareness is nascent in animals so deep semiotic awareness is
nascent in humans.

The Russian collusion story is a story of semiotic manipulation that was too hard for most humans to figure out.

Much of our world—both public and interpersonal—is characterized by semiotic manipulation, often malicious. You cannot understand most of what happens around you (and in you) if you do not understand that.

Consciousness, Big Data, and FIML

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Modern neuroscience does not see humans as having a discrete consciousness located in a specific part of the brain. Rather, as Michael S. Gazzaniga says:

The view in neuroscience today is that consciousness does not constitute a single, generalized process. It involves a multitude of widely distributed specialized systems and disunited processes, the products of which are integrated by the interpreter module. (Source)

Computer and Big Data-driven sociology sees something similar. According to Alex Pentland:

While it may be useful to reason about the averages, social phenomena are really made up of millions of small transactions between individuals. There are patterns in those individual transactions that are not just averages, they’re the things that are responsible for the flash crash and the Arab spring. You need to get down into these new patterns, these micro-patterns, because they don’t just average out to the classical way of understanding society. We’re entering a new era of social physics, where it’s the details of all the particles—the you and me—that actually determine the outcome.  (Source)

Buddhists may recognize in these insights close similarities to core teachings of the Buddha—that we do not have a self; that all things arise out of complex conditions that are impermanent and changeable; that the lion’s share of “reality” for any individual lies in being attentive to the moment.

Notice how similar Pentland’s insights are to Gazzaniga’s—the whole, or the common generalities (of society), can be far better understood if we can account for the details that comprise them. Is an individual mind a fractal of society? Do these complex systems—societies and minds—both use similar organizational processes?

I am not completely sure how to answer those questions, but I am certain that most people are using similar sorts of “average” or general semiotics to communicate and think about both minds and societies. If we stick with general averages, we won’t see very much. Class, self, markets, personalities don’t give us information as sophisticated as the detailed analyses proposed by Gazzaniga and Pentland.

Well then, how can individuals cognize Gazzaniga’s “multitude of widely distributed specialized systems and disunited processes” in their minds? And how can they understand how “the products” of those processes are actually “integrated” into a functional “interpreter module”?

And if individuals can cognize the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter,” how will they understand traditional psychological analyses of the self, personality, identity, biography, behavior?

I would maintain that our understanding of what it is to be a human will change deeply if we can learn to observe with reliable clarity the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter.” That is, we will arrive at a completely new understanding of being that will replace the “self” that truly does not exist in the ways most societies (and people) understand it.

FIML practice shows partners how to observe with great clarity the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter.” Once these process are observed in detail and for a long enough period of time, partners will realize that it is no longer necessary to understand themselves in the “average” terms of self, personality, identity, biography, behavior, and so on.

Partners will come to understand that these terms denote only a more detailed version of a naive, static view of what a person is. Most psychology is largely a more detailed version of a naive, static view of what a person is.

We see this in Gazzaniga and Pentland’s findings that are derived from complex analyses of what is actually happening in the brain or in the multitude of real transactions that actually comprise a society. We can also see very similar insights in the Buddha’s teachings.

It is my contention that FIML practice will show partners the same things—that their actual minds and actual interactions are much more complex (and interesting) than the general semiotic averages we normally use to understand them.

From a Buddhist point of view, when we “liberate” ourselves from “attachment” to “delusive” semiotic generalities and averages and are truly “mindful” of the “thusness” of the ways our minds actually work, we will free ourselves from “suffering,” from the “ignorance” that characterizes the First Noble Truth.

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First published 09/01/12

Basic FIML practice

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Mastering basic FIML practice is similar to mastering musical scales or the basic skills of any sport.

Basic FIML is a kind of mental training that allows you to identify, understand, and react to real-time communication problems quickly and efficiently.

FIML analyses put both partners on the same page. Over time, partners develop a wealth of experience that improves communication while also illuminating individual and interpersonal psychology.

It is a fact that it is difficult for people to talk about how they talk when their talking has become heated for any reason.

FIML is designed to make it much easier to do that. Once mastered, the basic FIML technique results in a kind of metacognition that makes interpersonal analyses of all kinds easier and more efficient. Instead of fighting you can have fun with communication missteps.

After basic FIML has been done successfully a few hundred times, the basic technique does not need to be used as often because the metacognition that has developed between partners can handle many more situations than before.

FIML optimizes communication between partners thereby also optimizing psychological well-being. Though basic FIML can be done less often as skills improve, just as in sports or music it is always best to practice the basics frequently.

You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions — your brain creates them

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Can you look at someone’s face and know what they’re feeling? Does everyone experience happiness, sadness and anxiety the same way? What are emotions anyway? For the past 25 years, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett has mapped facial expressions, scanned brains and analyzed hundreds of physiology studies to understand what emotions really are. She shares the results of her exhaustive research — and explains how we may have more control over our emotions than we think.

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This talk is a very good background for FIML practice, which is based on acknowledging that interpersonal emotions and interpretations are fundamentally ambiguous and must be investigated often to achieve good communication. ABN

Jordan Peterson analyzes a lot of stuff, not just Cathy Newman, and also inadvertently provides an excellent introduction to FIML practice

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In this talk, FIML is logos. It uses word to bring order out of chaos. FIML brings  meaning and clarity to primary interpersonal relations and thus also to individual psychology. You need to want to do this, to be a hero for yourself and others. You have to want to bring meaning and order out of chaos. It’s not easy to do FIML but there is nothing else as interesting or worthwhile on the interpersonal level. I hope JP will take up FIML and introduce it to a wider audience. I do not agree with his statements about bringing out the Jungian shadow. I do agree we must discover our essence or authentic being, but this can be done without myths or shadows through FIML practice. As mentioned in other posts, FIML does not tell you how to be or what will happen to you when you practice it but it will show you, eventually, your authentic being, the essence that underlies your social persona. ABN

Arm’s length communication can be dangerous

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By arm’s length communication I mean “our deepest levels of meaning, emotion, and intention are either implied or more often concealed from the person(s) we are speaking with.” (see: Communication at arm’s length)

When we do arm’s length communication too much, we retard both psychological and sociological growth. We harm both ourselves and others.

Arm’s length communication is often a type of “sociological communication.” That is, communication that holds cultural, sociological or historical assertions above individual psychological experience. This can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing.

It’s good when it helps us see and bad when it blinds us. Bolsheviks were blinded by sociological fantasies that led them to murder tens of millions. It is good for us to understand that today, especially as our society is being torn apart by arm’s length fallacies.

I will now present an example of this tragedy as it is playing out this morning. What happened is Trump allegedly asked an intelligence analyst of Korean extraction, “Where are you from?”

As someone who has extensive experience with East Asia and Asian-Americans, I am aware that this question drives many of them up the wall. One example:

This makes my blood boil. It must have been so awful to be standing there having her expertise invalidated and trivialized. (Source: asianamerican)

As an ordinary American, I am also aware that this question with precisely that wording was extremely normal well into the 1980s and beyond. A younger friend I discussed this with this morning said she still considers it to be a normal question.

“Where are you from?” means what is your ancestry. When most Americans ask this of each other it means what is your ethnic background, what ethnicity or mix of ethnicities do you identify with or feel close to. It does not mean I think you are a bad person or are not an American. In a nation of many immigrant groups, it is a normal thing to ask. Indeed, it is the quintessential American question. Or used to be before SJWs came along.

Information about your ancestry or ethnicity says something (arm’s length) about your psychology and some levels of your “identity.” Isn’t it ironic that a commenter on an Asian-American site would be incensed that the president asked someone about their identity and then proposed that that identity might well-serve US national interests?

Here is another comment from a South Asian that says the opposite:

Being a Chinese speaking South Asian that type of response isn’t surprising. (Source: AZNIDENTITY)

Having lived in East Asia for a long time, I am well-aware that “Where are you from?” is almost always the first question anyone asks me in that part of the world. Chinese, Japanese, Australians, Europeans, other Americans all ask it. It can become boring to answer when the query is rote arm’s length stuff coming from someone who obviously does not care, but that is nothing to be offended by.

We are in a semiotic pickle and I don’t know what to do about it either. There are many other examples of the above, most of them stemming from identity politics in one way or another.

What is happening is that arm’s length identity concepts are being idiosyncratically defined by identity groups and then the demand is made that those definitions be known and accepted by everyone else or “blood will boil.”

Can’t see the trees for the forest

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Examples of not seeing the trees for the forest are flyover assessments of sociological  regions or general assessments of human psychology.

A more detailed example of this pertaining to psychology might be the following description of Borderline Personality Disorder:

People with borderline personality disorder are unstable in several areas, including interpersonal relationships, behavior, mood, and self-image. Abrupt and extreme mood changes, stormy interpersonal relationships, an unstable and fluctuating self-image, unpredictable and self-destructive actions characterize the person with borderline personality disorder. These individuals generally have great difficulty with their own sense of identity. They often experience the world in extremes, viewing others as either “all good” or “all bad.” A person with borderline personality may form an intense personal attachment with someone only to quickly dissolve it over a perceived slight. Fears of abandonment may lead to an excessive dependency on others. Self-multilation or recurrent suicidal gestures may be used to get attention or manipulate others. Impulsive actions, chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness, and bouts of intense inappropriate anger are other traits of this disorder, which is more common among females. (Source)

I have no doubt that this general description of the “forest” of BPD is somewhat useful as a flyover take on a psychic region that seems to have its own reality within American culture. The same link concludes that “there is hope” for personality disorders if we come to “understand that they are illnesses.”

Thus, a general remedy is assigned to a general “illness”; a semiotic contortion is assigned to the category “hope.”

TBH, as a Buddhist  I must say you really should “have difficulty with your own sense of identity” because there is no such thing. Sentience in all its guises is dynamic and ever-changing.

You actually do not need a “self-image” at all. So if the one(s) you keep trying for are “unstable and fluctuating,” you are probably seeing reality more clearly than people whose “self-images” are stable and not fluctuating!

The fundamental problem with BPD and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, two of the most difficult disorders to cure, is in the trees. It is good to see the forest and know where it lies within the terrain of the sufferer’s culture, but the problem of any individual suffering from either of these disorders is always going to be in their trees.

So what are the trees? They are the actual signals received by the person, sent out by the person, and used internally by the person.

Those are the units that best describe what a sentient being is and does. If you can’t fix the trees or treat the trees, the forest will never be healthy.

Psychological optimization

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Biologically, human psychology in a vast network of interconnected cells  bathed in blood and chemistry.

Intellectually, we typically reduce this enormously complex system into terms that reflect types of behavior, such as narcissism, anxiety, dark triad, bipolar, OCD, self-esteem, etc.

While these reductions are helpful for understanding human psychology and showing us where to focus our attention, they cannot be expected to optimize our psychology.

To date, the human brain is the most complex thing we know of in the universe.

Once you have seen through your mom’s narcissism and its effects on you and have consequently been able to overcome much of your anxiety, are you then psychologically optimized?

Of course not. At best, you are then able to function better and feel better and, with luck, forgive your mom whose persistence in her narcissism was due to her enormously complex brain, same as yours.

So how do you optimize? Or how could your mom have optimized before you were born?

Clearly, it would have taken her years to correct her narcissism, let alone optimize her psychology. Same goes for you.

This is why all people need a system that works every day for many years. There is no other way to do it because optimizing a complex system requires tinkering at all levels over a long period of time and cannot be done quickly or be based simply on top-down category assessments.

The FIML systems works every day for many years gradually optimizing one part after another of our complex psychological systems. With current technology and understanding, I do not believe there is a quicker or more thorough way to do that.

An impediment to doing FIML is few people realize that their psychology is far from optimized. A sad aspect of doing FIML is realizing that you live in a world like that.

Fourth wave cognitive behavior therapy

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The third wave of cognitive behavior therapy is a general term for a group of psychotherapies that arose in the 1980s, inspired by acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).

To me, third wave therapies seem more realistic than older therapies because they accept emotions as they are and pay close attention to how they function in the moment.

The link above is well-worth reading. The frames of these therapies are also well-worth considering.

FIML, which I am calling a “fourth wave cognitive behavior therapy,” differs from third wave therapies in that FIML does not use a professional therapist. Instead, partners become their own therapists.

Moreover, how FIML partners frame their psychologies or generalize their behaviors is entirely up to them. Similarly, their psychological goals and definitions are entirely in their own hands.

At its most basic, FIML “removes wrong interpretations of interpersonal signs and symbols from the brain’s semiotic networks.”

This process of removal, in turn, shows partners how their minds function in real-time real-world situations. And this in turn provides the tools and perspectives to reorganize their psychologies in whichever ways they like.

FIML is based on semiotics because semiotics are specific and with practice can be clearly identified and understood. They give partners “solid ground” to stand on. Words, tone of voice, gestures, and facial expressions are some of the major semiotics partners analyze.

Using real-world semiotics as an analytical basis frees FIML from predetermined frameworks about personality or what human psychology even is. With the FIML tool, partners are free to discover whatever they can about how their minds communicate interpersonally (and internally) and do whatever they like with that.