Tag: analysis

Psychology as a feature (and bug) of language

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Since almost all uses of language are ambiguous and since this ambiguity can only be resolved sometimes, it follows that whatever is not resolved is interpreted subjectively.

Since such subjective interpretations happen many times per day, it follows that individuals will tend to deal with unresolved ambiguity in idiosyncratic ways that tend toward becoming patterns in time.

This results in what we call “personality.” Extroverts seek to define the moment by asserting meaning while introverts tend to wonder about that or just accept the meaning asserted by the extrovert.

A paranoid person sees danger in unresolved ambiguity while a neurotic person worries and reacts to it.

Having experienced early trauma associated with unresolved ambiguity, borderline personalities are acutely aware that something is wrong and often mad about it.

Besides these rough categorizations, all people are molded by their habitual responses to unresolved ambiguity.

Personality is little more than a name for our groping attempts to find or manufacture assurance and consistency in a world where little is certain.

Instead of talking so much about our feelings or pasts, we would do better if we talked about how we talk and how we deal with the ambiguity inherent in virtually all significant communication.

Language itself is neutral as a thing in itself, but the way we use it is not neutral. We assume way too much and clarify far too little.

PINNED: The full final Jeffrey Epstein interview with Steve Bannon released by the DOJ January 30th 2026

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UPDATE: I watched the entire interview last night. Bannon does a terrible job — he fawns, talks over Epstein constantly, repeats stupid questions.

Epstein displays classic Jewish good manners and soft chutzpah (Jewish deceit, confidence, braggadocio). He looks and sounds like a reasonable. personable, mildly intelligent man. On the Jewish spectrum, his manners and mannerisms, and tone of voice, are the opposite of Ben Shapiro. If you met Epstein and he wanted to gull you, you would fall for it. I can easily see how prince Andrew fell for him; and how Epstein coaxed and allowed his sorry worst side to crawl out.

After finishing the interview, I did other stuff and did not give it much thought. When I went to bed and turned out the light, before long I felt I was in the presence of the Devil or the Devil was inside me wriggling. It was a unique experience, for the presence of whatever that was, was palpable in the region of my upper abdomen. Within a few long seconds I knew it was the result of watching Epstein and wondered if I were in spiritual danger.

After some minutes, the presence of the Devil passed away and I slept soundly and feel good today. Epstein is a classic example of a Jewish con artist. The interview is well-worth watching just to see such a good example of how a cruel and super sleazy Jewish Supremist is able to deceptively present himself. And why a very large gang of Jewish Supremists have managed to gain control of so much. And why nothing good is ever going to come of it. ABN

Identity and signaling

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Identity is constructed of memories, memories that have to be tended to, and this takes time and energy.

You have to remember who you are and often have to work pretty hard just to maintain that image within yourself, to say nothing of projecting it toward other people and getting them to accept it.

A big problem with this way of constructing a “self,” an identity, is it’s probably based on misinterpretations and a good deal of self-deceit.

Our identities, such that they are, are complex fictions. They are a central flaw in our internal signaling system.

If your identity is large and complex, it will use a good deal of energy. As you signal internally to yourself about your identity, you will also be receiving signals from other people, and these signals will necessarily be processed by your large and complex identity. And that, of course, will lead to serious misinterpretations, both internal and external.

If you belong to a group that defines, or helps you define, your identity, you can save some energy but will have as much fiction, maybe even worse fiction.

Consider the codes of group behavior (group signaling)  for Stalin’s NKVD officers who purged so many millions of innocents in the 1930s. All of those officers had identities that were largely determined by signals coming from the NKVD and Joseph Stalin.

There was a weird sort of ethical behavior among those officers in that they were trying to adhere to a group signaling system and not go their own way. This same problem in less serious form can be observed all over the world in every culture.

One problem with ethics and ethical signaling within groups is ethical questions can be difficult. There are few formulas that will always work, and formulas are what hold groups together.

Back to your identity. I hope it is clear that you have to be careful when you base your identity on group signaling systems. If you are a banker, you might do many bad things out of loyalty to your group. Same for all of us.

While ethics are hard to codify, the will to behave ethically is simpler. I want to do the right thing but I don’t always know what it is or how to do it. That is a good statement to make. If you can honestly say that to yourself, that is good because that means that your internal signaling system is seeking greater integrity, great clarity.

When we seek clarity and integrity within our signaling systems, we are seeking better ethics. We are changing our identities, or allowing our identities to be transformed by a higher desire for clarity, purity, integrity, goodness.

When we seek to improve our signaling systems, our ethics, we begin to abandon static identities and poorly constructed fictions about ourselves by subjecting them to a higher order of thought. If we can take a meta-position on ourselves, we will find the process of improving signaling is easier and more enjoyable than clinging to a static fictionalized identity that may have been constructed years before, or by other people..

Kill-Or-Be-Killed (KOBK) Game Theory explained

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KOBK game theory is primarily a military game theory. It covers the psychology, morality, aims, and methods of players who are involved in any sort of power struggle. Its main premise is that players in KOBK conflicts, by definition, do not know for certain how powerful they are vis-a-vis their adversaries or how powerful their adversaries are. Moreover they do not know for certain the aims, motivations, and/or methods of their adversaries.

These conditions force all adversaries to kill-or-be-killed. They must kill their adversary or be killed by them. Kill does not necessarily mean death. It just means to render their adversary provably powerless. Joe Biden was ousted as a presidential candidate against his will. In the KOBK sense, he was ‘killed’.

KOBK has useful explanatory application in interpersonal relations, group dynamics, history, politics, and geopolitics. It is always a primary factor in warfare.

Its usefulness can be seen in the world today. KOBK is the underlying motivator of US foreign policy. It is the underlying motivator of Israeli foreign policy. Understanding the deep KOBK imperatives of USA and Israel helps us also understand the deep KOBK imperatives acting on all other nations in the world.

Most of Europe has been ‘killed’ by USA which controls virtually all of it. Japan has been ‘killed’ by USA. To many, it seems Israel has ‘killed’ USA since all of our foreign policy serves Israel more than USA.

Most people can sense a KOBK underlayer in life but hardly ever go there. Divorces sometimes explode into KOBK battles. But most of the time most of us understand we are much better off getting along with others by practicing normal or ordinary human morality.

The main problem with how most people think about morality is they fail to understand that powerful people do not have the luxury to practice ordinary human morality. Powerful people practice KOBK. They live in a world of alliances, armistices, truces, conspiracies, guarded cooperation and open warfare.

Consider the state of our world today. We are on the brink of WW3. BRICS has become a considerable alliance.

A very powerful and secret group is hiding somewhere inside USA, Europe and Israel, vying for world domination. We do not know exactly who they are.

But we can know them from their apparently ‘reckless’ or ‘incompetent’ behavior, which is anything but reckless or incompetent. It is KOBK behavior. They are vying for control of the planet.

This secret group did not make a mistake in Ukraine. Israel is not making a mistake in Gaza and beyond. The plandemic was not a mistake. Our public officials and ‘intellectuals’ are not all incompetent or mistaken. They are involved in KOBK warfare and will never stop until they have ‘killed’ all of their adversaries or been ‘killed’ by them.

And once either of those outcomes happens, it will still be a KOBK world.

Can semiotics, language, and education trap us?

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Education frees us from whatever ignorant state came before it. But it can also trap us in a different sort of ignorance.

For example, someone who feels lost and alone may join a street gang and learn many new things while forming new alliances. But that same person may well trap themselves in a criminal life-style. Once learned, the education a gang provides can prevent gang members from learning even better things.

I believe all education can be like that if we are not careful. To be clear, education in this context refers to learning anything.

Another way to say the above is once we learn or take on a new semiotic matrix or code, we may become trapped by it. Many people who fell for the semiotics of the Obama campaign retained their “belief” in him long after he had shown himself to be a disappointment. Because many of his supporters are good people, they were trapped in his attractive, but false, semiotic matrix of hope and change.

Similarly, another person may learn that his religion is wrong and take on the semiotics of “science” without realizing for many years that science has limits and that it can operate in ways that resemble fundamentalist religion.

I think we can say with few reservations that it is axiomatic that semiotics, language, and education can trap us even as they free us from whatever state came before them. They do not always trap us, but they almost always can trap us if we are not careful.

A microcosmic example of how language can trap us might be this: you say something sort of muddled, get called on it as if your statement were much more specific, and before you know it you find yourself trapped in defending a point of view you never held.

A teenager might want to learn about psychology and in doing so learn what the word personality means. Then they might decide that their personality is of some type. Then they may get trapped in molding themselves according to their understanding of that personality type. The same thing can happen with astrological signs—you read yours when you are young and retain for many years, if not a lifetime, some sense that you belong to the semiotic matrix indicated by that sign.

In good science, real skeptical science, bold science that demands explanations of facts, traps are usually discovered and overcome quickly. But science has a limited range and it cannot do very much for the emotions, subjectivity, or authentic uniqueness of each individual.

Individuals can overcome some individual or subjective traps through science and general learning, but they can never overcome them all in those ways. Our deepest and most significant subjective states can never be well understood through generalities.

And if those subjective states contain errors or traps (as they surely do), they can only be cleared up by observing those errors or traps as they function in real-world situations.

An especially alert and intelligent gang member might gain insight into what his gang membership is doing to him and how it is trapping him. But he will surely retain many of the gang’s subjective interpretations of the world around him even after he has left the gang. His comprehension of cultural semiotics—the semiotic matrix that he perceives around him—will remain deeply imbued with the gang’s interpretations long after he has left.

For example, the former gang member may retain a  sense of pride that makes him quick to anger. He may retain feelings of fear or non-belonging after leaving the gang. Psychotherapy may help in these areas, but a practice like FIML will do even more because FIML will allow the person to see how their former interpretations of the world are still actively functioning even though they may have repudiated the general semiotics of those interpretations.

Joining the gang liberated him from his former state, and then leaving the gang liberated him from the strictures of gang life. But in both cases, his new education has imposed a new semiotic code that can easily trap him in new mistakes and miseries.

The same can be said about all of us concerning almost anything we learn, which means practically anything we do. If we do not come to fully understand how our subjective states—our interpretations–actually function within the semiotic codes we have taken on, we will be trapped in the new state even as we have been liberated, partially, from the former state.

See also: Negative effects of joining a gang last long after gang membership ends.

Loose Lips Sink Ships: ANOTHER Zoom Call Leaks… | Candace Ep 297

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UPDATE: Candace is at her best when she is angry for a good reason. Just my personal opinion, but she has a deeply female way of thinking and expressing herself, on top of which she also has high intelligence and rhetorical talent. If you have missed her series on Charlie Kirk’s assassination or on Brigitte Macron, you might want to check them out. Once you get into the story, it builds like true-life novel. ABN

A psychological, historical and philosophical context for understanding FIML practice — John Range

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[Below is a very thoughtful comment on an ABN post: Psychology and mental illness. In his comment the writer, John Range, provides a first-rate psychological, historical and philosophical context for understanding FIML practice. I hope readers will take the time to consider Range’s insights. The article he refers to is The Myth of Mental Illness by Paul Lutus. ABN]

Dear ABN

I applaud your efforts to reintroduce the study of the “psyche”into psychology.

FIML’s methodology rests on pure experience, the only point allowing for a scientific resolution of the deep seated and serious problems raised by Paul in his article.

FIML tacitly recognizes the genuinely empirical nature of data “immediately” given in the 1st person perspective of our “inner” or mental world of experience as well as, data “mediately” given in the 3rd person perspective of our “outer” or physical world of experience. It does this without reducing one to the other or invalidating either, in any way. Psychology has heretofore lacked such an explicitly stated methodology integrating without distortion these two disparate domains. The methodology of FILM has the added and by no means trivial advantage of being clear simple and intuitive.

Paul correctly notes and laments that psychology in failing to find a way to ground its theories based on 1st person experience in an unbiased and impartial manner has in many ways descended from its lofty status as healer and guardian of an unbiased and impartial standard of sanity to the dubious level of emotional masseurs and/or agents of state totalitarianism.

Whereas Paul fails to consider the mental world of experience as anything other than a myth derived from the ghost-in-the-machine epistemology, FIML, is rooted in an astute recognition the subject/object dichotomy does not itself inhere within the structure or function of pure experience, but is rather a set of external relations added to it.

“What I want to do in this post is point out the ways that FIML practice does not have the sorts of problems Lutus describes. FIML is not (yet) supported by large studies because not ]enough people have done it and we don’t have the money to conduct the studies. Nonetheless, FIML practice is based on real data agreed upon by both partners and in this respect is evidence-based, though the kind of evidence used in FIML practice is not the same kind that is used in large studies of many people.” [Psychology and Mental Illness]

The recognition of “immediate” 1st person experience as real data, that is to say as real empirical data runs directly counter to the (hidden in plain sight) metaphysical bias underpinning Western civilization since Descartes and Newton.

Ironically, even the connotations of the terms “subject” or “subjective” when taken in contradistinction to the terms “object” or “objective” imply our “immediate” and directly perceived 1st person experience is somehow ontologically inferior to our 3rd person experience which is merely indirectly perceived and “mediated” through the senses.

This provably false bias, is virtually ubiquitous in modern culture, as it operates at the pre-conscious conditioned level in which people believe without knowing they believe. For example, the term “objective” can denote (1) “Unbiased and Impartial” and/or (2) “the 3rd person perspective”. These two distinct meanings, of the term “objective”, are chronically (and all too often disingenuously) conflated.

By including the qualifying phrases “in this respect” in the above quote and “in that” in the following sentence “It works with real data that is objective in that both partners must agree on it.” [ibid] you sagaciously, albeit tacitly, recognize and avoid this conundrum.

Nevertheless, the conflation of these two (in matter of actual fact mutually exclusive meanings) lies at the root of Paul Lutus’s suggestion that in order for psychology to be a legitimate science it must emulate Newtonian physics by simply abandoning its quest to incorporate our lebenswelt or “lived-world-of-experience” basing itself solely on “physical” data. From the perspective of non-linear consciousness studies, this is hardly a step forward. Rather epistemologically speaking it is a step back into the dark ages.

I cannot fail to note in this regard, that I said emulate Newtonian physics because as it turns out, Paul’s “suggestion” runs counter to developments in Quantum Mechanics.

For more than half a century, attempts to resolve what is known as the “measurement problem”, (“In QM you know exactly what is happening until you look”), have forced a grudging yet growing consensus and recognition from practicing theoretical quantum physicists, that even, and especially in, QM’s deep foundational mathematical structure; the 1st person perspective of the observer cannot be separated or excluded from the 3rd person perspective of the system being observed!

The empirical data of quantum physics together with its irreducibly descriptive mathematics has, taken by itself, literally forced theoretical quantum physicists to recognize the stubborn fact that within the formal structure of quantum theory, the observers “immediate” 1st person perspective cannot be discarded, disregarded or stripped from the mathematical description of experimental results. [CF Theoretical quantum physicist Henry Stapp’s oeuvre for example]

Paul’s suggestion is not new. Psychology has for over a century been trying to model itself after Newtonian physics to the point that in its early development, the study of the psyche (our “immediate” 1st person experience) was banished by behaviorists from psychology (psychology is, of course, etymologically rooted in Greek meaning “the study of the psyche”).

This flawed approach brought us the various flavors of behaviorism and (along with the difficulties so strongly pointed out by Paul) contributed to the tarnishing of the star of the various psychological disciplines which partially grounded their approach in the 1st person perspective such as Karen Horney’s psychoanalysis, Carl Jungs analytic psychology, Victor Frankl’s logotherapy, Fritz Pearl’s gestalt therapy, etc., etc.

Their tarnishing pf the 1st person perspective in psychology was also assisted, by at least two other not entirely unrelated historical factors.
(1) Data given within the 1st person perspective of our “inner” or mental world of experience remained stubbornly incommensurable with the best data given within the 3rd person perspective of our “outer” or physical world of experience. Both in theory and in practice the non-local nature of mind proved exasperatingly difficult to integrate with the local nature of the brain.
(2) In psychology’s parent discipline, “philosophy” Husserl and Brentano were having finding it equally difficult if not impossible to find their coveted philosophical “Archimedean Point”. Ultimately they failed to discover an unbiased and impartial ground for phenomenological analysis. Here too, incommensurability reared its head.

FIML deftly avoids all these pitfalls. By simply focusing on the here and now interaction of two individual mindstreams, the justification of FIML’s methodology rests securely on one self evident, empirically given fact concerning the nature of being in time: we directly perceive our mindstreams as being none other than this very coveted integration of our inner and outer worlds of experience.

FIML also is quite compatible with William James’ “Radical Empiricism” as put forth in his seminal paper “Does Consciousness Exist?”

As an aside, for my part, after meditating on these relations and in the interests of crystal clear communication, I now attempt to avoid using the word “objective” when I mean “impartial and unbiased,” even though it is grammatically correct.

Otherwise, since subjective data may be taken in this sense to be “objective” data, one must insure that adequate pains are taken in order to avoid rather convoluted and/or highly ambiguous sentences.

Best Wishes
John Range

link

The Historical Jesus: New Evidence or New Techniques?

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Abstract

Thomas C. Schmidt’s Josephus on Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (2025) is a new study of a famous passage concerning Jesus in Josephus’s Antiquities (18.63–64): the testimonium flavianum (TF). Schmidt’s energetically argued case that Josephus personally knew people present at Jesus’s trial, who became his informants for the TF, is creating an impact far beyond the academy. If valid, that claim would transform the TF from something Josephus may have partly written in the 90s (scholars usually debate which phrases are authentic) into the earliest eyewitness evidence for Jesus and his followers. This article first contextualises the TF in Josephus’s life and Judaean Antiquities, then summarises Schmidt’s case before probing its assumptions, gaps, and interpretations – of Josephus, the New Testament, and rabbinic literature. It finds that the elaborate case for the TF’s oft-doubted authenticity (in Part 1) must be taken seriously, whereas the more sensational claims (in Part 2) do not well explain the evidence.

HISTORICALJESUSNEWEVIDENCEORDownload

Why you can’t fix it with generalities

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Psychological, cognitive, emotional, or communicative problems cannot be fundamentally corrected by using general analyses or generalized procedures. You can teach someone to think and see differently, even to behave differently, by such procedures, but you cannot bring about deep change by using them. The reason this is so is change through generalizations does little more than substitute one external semiosis for another. The person seeking change will not experience deep change because all they are essentially doing is importing a different explanation of their “condition” into their life.

This happens with Buddhists who remain attached to surface meanings of the Dharma as well as to people seeking mainstream help for emotional problems. Any change will feel good for a while in most cases, but after some time stasis and a recurrence of the original problem, or something similar to it, will occur. You cannot become enlightened by importing someone else’s ideas. You cannot achieve deep transformation by replacing one inculcated semiosis with another. You cannot find your authentic “self” by using the static ideas of others.

The way around this problem is to use a technique that is at its core entirely dynamic. Buddhist mindfulness, which stresses attentiveness in and to the moment, is a dynamic technique. The problem with this technique in the modern world is it is not well-suited to the cacophony of signs and symbols that surround us almost all the time. Mindfulness too often entails being mindful of a cultural semiosis that is itself a tautology, a trap that does not contain within itself an obvious exit.

Mindfulness coupled with FIML practice overcomes this problem because the interactive dynamism of FIML gives partners a tool that strengthens mindfulness while at the same time affording them the opportunity to observe in the moment how their habitual semiosis operates, and why it operates that way. FIML gives partners the means to create a rational leverage-point that they can both share and use to grapple with neurotic issues that have always eluded generalized treatments.

FIML does not tell partners how to be or what to think. It describes nothing more than a technique that gives partners access to their deep “operating systems.” If you hack your “operating system” with FIML practice, you will find that you are able to eliminate neuroses (kleshas in Buddhist terms) and replace them with a semiosis (subculture) of your and your partner’s own choosing. To do FIML, partners must have a deep ethical, emotional, and intellectual commitment to each other, but it is important to recognize that these are not static or generalized ideas. They are dynamic principles upon which the transformational behaviors of FIML are built.

Like children, the thinking is absurd

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This level of incompetence mixed with deliberate corruption is rife throughout USA. Most of it appears to be in Dem states which have drifted into woke emotionalism and concomitant corruption. The buck should have stopped at the governor’s office. At the national level, corruption is much the same, though much worse and more entrenched. All large organizations are susceptible to corruption and weak employees who dare not do the right thing. Many organizations can live a long time while burdened with parasites, but in the end, entire civilizations fall for these reasons. ABN

An overview of the philosophy of Frank Ramsey

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…Ramsey’s idea was that a given belief is to be understood in terms of its causes and effects, the ways in which it’s formed and the role it plays in behaviour, in conjunction with other beliefs, desires and mental states. This idea, now called functionalism in the philosophy of mind, is considered by many the most promising way to make sense of mental representation.

The Ramsey Effect

A philosophy of psychology must contend with similar problems as a philosophy of mind, and vice versa.

So how to understand any given belief pertaining to any psychological matter having to do with self or other?

In addition to what is stated in the quotation above, psychological “belief” (or, better, analysis) must contend with real-world, real-time events as they happen.

Understanding must be based on real-world, real-time events. That is precisely what FIML does or allows us to do. That is what FIML is for.

FIML can be understood as a philosophical process or method of thinking that is constant, continuous, and never stops. FIML situates the mind’s understanding of itself and other in an ongoing psycho-philosophical inquiry that is stabilized by being an agreed upon method that partners can use and refer to whenever they want.

In this, FIML reflects, embraces, and participates in the conscious development or evolution of thought, mind, spirit, belief, awareness. FIML is actively in the world while also providing a psychologically stable place from which to observe the world, self, and other.

In many respects for humans, there is nothing more basic or important than consciousness. Since FIML consciously works with consciousness as it shifts and adapts to another consciousness in real-time, it is arguably the most basic and objective thing there is.

Language cannot be divorced from communication with other. Theories of language and mind must account for this. Since communication with other is an activity (that always affects each), a philosophy of mind/belief/language must be based on an active method of ongoing communication analysis.

Just as you cannot learn to swim without getting into the water, you cannot have a philosophy of mind that does not actively analyze and influence communication in real-time.

Evidence Charlie Kirk was killed by a shaped charge under his shirt, probably secreted in the battery pack of his microphone

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Synced the 4 angles… things to notice.  

His shirt movement is difficult to explain with a rifle shot from any angle.

 The necklace movement indicates the epicenter, not only from the area where it snaps but from its trajectory up and around his right shoulder around his back where it rest on the back of his left shoulder.

The shirt deformation on the back of his collar indicates a extremely quick gas expansion which is followed by the shrapnel lifting the front of his left collar up around his face. Combine this with the necklace movement and you get the epicenter of the energetic event.

Watch the cavitation of his chest and stomach traveling away from the epicenter. It’s the opposite direction of the cavitation of his neck and face, another sign of the epicenter.

Look at his knees… they quickly close and almost cross as he lifts his body from the chair. His elbows  turn as his hands clasp, crossing his knuckles and flexing his wrist. His left leg even extends as he falls out of the chair.

link

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For a detailed explanation see this. ABN