Tag: brain science

How FIML affects memory

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Basic FIML practice works mainly with short-term memory, or working memory, by being “always available” to purge mistaken interpretations as soon as they arise within it.

This is why basic FIML practice must start quickly. And this is why partners must make a prior agreement about doing FIML.

Partners must both completely understand that FIML is “always available” to either of them and that the initiation of a FIML discussion must happen quickly enough to deal with the contents of the short-term memory.

Of course there will be times when conditions will not permit a FIML discussion (dinner at mom’s), and there will be other times when one or both partners decide to not pursue a discussion due to fatigue.

In either of those cases, a good discussion may be still taken up later on or on the next day, though the loss of good data from the working memory of the moment in question often makes these discussions less enlightening. Beginners would do well to avoid kicking the can down the road as much as possible. Advanced FIML partners may find that they are able to do it well enough on more occasions than when they were beginners.

Once partners have made an agreement to make FIML practice “always available,” they will rapidly cease planting new seeds of mistaken interpretations in their short-term memories.

Their success at doing this depends on how well they do basic FIML practice. If one or both of them is not mindful or honest enough to do it well, it may take longer for them to trust the practice and each other. In most cases, I believe, FIML practice itself—merely trying reasonably well to do it—will correct lingering trust and mindfulness problems, both of which strongly characterize virtually all non-FIML communication.

Once partners are fairly successful at basic FIML practice, the new seeds that they are no longer planting in their short-term memories obviously will never be “consolidated” and thus never enter their long-term memories.

Consolidation is a technical term for the process of turning a short-term memory into a long-term memory. Long-term memories are, of course, much more stable than short term ones.

After just a few weeks, reasonably good FIML partners will begin to notice that nothing, or nothing much, is happening between them to cause new problems. They will notice that they are mostly no longer creating, consolidating, and storing new mistaken interpretations of each other.

This is a nice feeling. But partners will not be finished just yet because for all of their lives prior to doing FIML they have been creating, consolidating, and storing mistaken impressions of everyone they know, including their partner.

As partners continue doing FIML, they will see that FIML practice is also gradually purging their long-term memory of mistaken interpretations. It does this through the short-term memory.

In FIML practice, you can think of your short-term memory as being like a funnel or drain through which the mistaken contents of your long-term memory will flow out of you.

The reason this happens is all mistaken interpretations in your long-term memory will eventually impact your short-term memory.

The moment this happens when you are with your partner, you will catch it. Eventually you will start to actually see how your long-term memory is influencing what you take into your short-term memory. As you purge those sorts of mistakes from your short-term memory with the basic FIML technique, you will notice that those long-term memory mistakes will start to weaken and disappear.

How long they take to disappear will depend on their strength and your practice. If you are mindful and honest, they may go away fairly quickly.

An example is in order. Let’s say that you had an experience when you were young that caused you to feel stupid. The experience may even have been pretty minor. All that matters is you consolidated that experience and stuck it into your long-term memory where, from then on, it influenced a great deal of what goes into your short-term memory.

All of us have stuff like that. If you are like the person described above, you will tend to have a hair-trigger about feeling stupid in many situations. And because of that, you will make mistakes like this: you may see someone smile at you and judge that they are patronizing you because you think they think you are stupid.

Examples vary, but you get the idea. Change the example to insecure, abandoned, low self-esteem, whatever, and change the incident from a smile to a tone of voice, the basic problem is the same—you have a long-term memory interpretation that frequently, even constantly, influences how you interpret the present.

If you think the capitol of New York State is New York City and someone shows you that it is Albany, you may go “huh,” but you will probably drop the NYC idea right away with little or no fuss. The evidence is right there before your eyes. Pretty easy to change.

It’s not so different for emotional material. If you do FIML right—that is, by focusing on small incidents in the moment with a caring parnter—you will affect your long-term memory in much the same way as upgrading any other wrongly learned fact.

Strong emotional memories, naturally, will require more examples for the new information to unseat them, but the process is not all that different.

As stated in other posts, I don’t think that FIML practice is right for everyone. FIML partners need to care deeply about each other and they must be willing at least to learn to trust each other completely. That is already a pretty high bar, especially in this fucked-up world. Beyond that, partners have to be mindful and be willing to do FIML discussions frequently.

For couples that meet the basic requirements, in most cases, I believe, FIML practice will show positive results in a few weeks, good results in a few months, and excellent results in a few years. Once you get the idea, I doubt you will want to stop.

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.

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

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…the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates. (Source)

This declaration was made on July 7, 2012.

Here is a report on the declaration: Scientists Finally Conclude Nonhuman Animals Are Conscious Beings.

Retail semiotics

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This short interview is worth reading: ‘What About Tutoring Instead of Pills?’

A quote:

Kagan: I share your unhappiness. But that is the history of humanity: Those in authority believe they’re doing the right thing, and they harm those who have no power.

Semiotics—what we take to have meaning and how we perceive it symbolically—is generally driven by “those in authority.” They may be academics, doctors, media personalities, corporations, politicians, and so on.

We structure our understanding of ourselves and the world around us based on the semiotics we have accepted. Ordinary people accept, almost always unconsciously, “retail semiotics” that are fashioned, marketed, and sold by “those in authority.”

For example, what has happened to our retail understanding of child development and the treatment of mental illness is the semiotics of these categories is dominated by Big Pharma, which pushes expensive drug treatments while at the same time funding research which has been compromised by that funding.

You can see similar retail-wholesale arrangements in many other areas in any society in the world.

Rather than thinking of people as developing psychologically, it can be very helpful to think of them as developing linguistically, emotionally, and semiotically.

Semiotics is not the same as linguistics, but it does develop in rough parallel to linguistics. As our capacities for language mature, so also does our understanding of meaning and the signs and symbols that bear meaning.

If we decide on a practical career and have few other interests, our understanding of the semiotics of other fields (art, sociology, Buddhism, etc.) will probably suffer. If we are raising a child who is doing poorly in school, we may very well just follow along with what is recommended by “experts” who are themselves retail consumers of the “child development semiotic.”

If those “experts”—a pediatrician, say, and a couple of teachers—claim our child “needs” drugs to perform well in school, we will probably accept what they say with few reservations.

It is very difficult not to do this in many areas of our lives.

The Buddha is famous for saying we should not blindly believe him or anyone else but that we should discover for ourselves what is true. In modern terms, this can be restated to mean be careful of retail semiotics, be skeptical of them and where they originate, look to the evidence and who is providing it.

As Kagan says, if your kid is having trouble in school “…what about tutoring instead of pills?”

________________

Edit: The reason we use the term semiotics on this site is when FIML partners do a FIML query, the data in their minds at the moment(s) in question is best described as raw semiotics. That is, it is the raw material that makes up the composite of consciousness at the moment(s) in question. This material, or data, can be sharply focused, vague, irrelevant to the subject at hand, emotional, associative, organized, disorganized, and so on. When partners get good at observing this data accurately and describing it to each other, they will find that much of it, if not all of it, is connected to a psycho-semiotic network that underlies awareness and gives rise to it. Understanding this network is extremely valuable and will provide partners with great insights into how and why they feel, think, and behave as they do. It is very difficult (and I think impossible) to understand this network through solitary pursuits only. The reason for this is a solitary mind will fool itself. In contrast, two minds working together will be able to observe this network with much greater accuracy. Language, semiotics, and emotion are fundamentally interpersonal operations, so it is reasonable to expect that deep comprehension of these operations will be best achieved through interpersonal activity.

Lies and self-deception

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Most Buddhist practitioners will immediately understand and agree with the results of a recent study that shows that people feel better when they tell fewer lies. The study (Telling fewer lies linked to better health and relationships.*) is modest but worth considering.

Notice that the improvements found in the study come from refraining from lying.

“We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health,” says lead author Anita Kelly. (Same link as above.)

A good deal of Buddhist practice involves refraining from unwholesome thoughts and behaviors and ultimately eliminating them. Refraining from lying, or “false speech,” is the fourth of the Five Precepts, which are the basis of Buddhist morality. Lies cloud the mind and hinder clear thinking.

Buddhist mindfulness gets us to slow down and question how sure we are of our thoughts, feelings, and judgements. It helps us refrain from willfully lying, and it  can help us refrain from unconsciously lying if we have the help of a trusted partner.

Another term for unconscious lying is self-deception. Self-deception may make us feel good for awhile in some circumstances, but in the long-run it is much the same as any other kind of lying. It’s not true. It constitutes inner false speech and causes serious intellectual and emotional contradictions that will almost certainly lead to wrong thoughts, behaviors, and interpretations.

Michael S. Gazzaniga in a recent online essay has this to say:

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….Our conscious experience is assembled on the fly as our brains respond to constantly changing inputs, calculate potential courses of action, and execute responses like a streetwise kid. (Source)

It is our “interpreter module,” to use Gazzaniga’s words, that can and does unconsciously lie to us or allow us to engage in self-deception.

In the same essay, Gazzaniga also says:

In truth, when we set out to explain our actions, they are all post hoc explanations using post hoc observations with no access to nonconscious processing….The reality is, listening to people’s explanations of their actions is interesting—and in the case of politicians, entertaining—but often a waste of time. (Source: same as above)

FIML practice may not be capable of giving us access to “nonconscious processing,” but it will give us access to what is/was in our working memories while showing us that what we said or heard may have been vague, ambiguous, muddled, or wrong.

With the aid of a trusted partner, FIML helps us catch our minds on the fly. Partners are encouraged to refrain from long explanations and just stick to what they remember having been in their minds during the few seconds in question. This forestalls long, self-deceiving explanations.

Beginning FIML partners will likely be amazed at how often their interpretation of what their partner said is completely wrong.

FIML emphasizes using trivial incidents because partners will be much less likely to self-deceive when the incident is minor. A minor mistake is easier to change than a major one. If partners keep working with minor mistakes and clear them up as soon as they arise, how can major misunderstandings even develop?

In the future, we may have brain scans that can help us separate fact from fiction in our minds, but for now, I know of no better way to do it than with a trusted partner in FIML practice. Your partner will help you see the minutiae of your mind as it actually works and impacts them. This leads to a large reduction in lying and self-deception and an increase in feelings of well-being and mutual understanding.

______________________

*Sorry, could not find the actual study online.

The human operating system

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Traditional human operating systems include a standardized language, standardized semiotics, and a “personality,” which is generally understood to be a measure of how the individual has adapted to the standardized language and semiotics of their time-period.

Standardized in this context means that the language the individual uses is some version of a recognizable dialect, while their semiotics is some version of a recognizable subculture, which may include such elements as clothing styles, beliefs, goals, expectations, education, mannerisms, and so on.

When we speak of a person’s psychology, we usually mean their emotional make-up, their habitual thought processes, their fears or talents, the sum total of their experiences, etc. In this context, a person’s semiotics can be understood to be the signs, symbols, and underlying meanings they see, feel, believe, and respond to. Semiotics, as we are using the term, might also be understood to indicate the distinctive features of a subculture.

For example, the musical semiotics of someone who likes jazz and does not like country will be different from someone who likes country and not jazz. This difference may say something about these two people’s psychologies but in many cases it is much simpler and clearer to just talk about the differences between their semiotics. Similarly, their different tastes in music may say something about the subcultures they belong to, but again it is often much more useful to isolate these differences as different semiotics.

Most people are using a traditional human operating system (THOS). A THOS is defined in the first paragraph above. It is characterized by being largely static and roughly agreed upon by many people.

Personality today is generally understood to be something that is sort of defined or indicated by the Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. But how do you measure that? Well, you use tests that explore the standardized language and semiotics that is deemed “appropriate” to the culture to which the testee belongs.

If the testee is not fitting into the standard mold (the standard semiotics), the tester will probably conclude that the testee is either not agreeable, open, conscientious, or extroverted. If the testee is seriously bothered by the standard semiotics for which he or she is being tested, they may also be marked as “neurotic” by the test-giver.

How would you do on a Big Five personality test given in North Korea by North Korean psychologists?

The problem with standardization of “personality” metrics and/or semiotics is standards only help us delineate ourselves in some ways; they cannot be expected to truly define us.

To define yourself, to know yourself, you need an independent operating system (IOS). Obviously, if your IOS gets too far from reasonable human norms (decent ethics, being rational, respecting evidence, etc.), you will lose the good things that humans have figured out over the centuries.

So how do you get an IOS but remain able to draw on all the good stuff of human history and the culture(s) you know best?

You have to change how you use and perceive language and semiotics. You have to find a way to free yourself from being a standardized semiotic between your ears.

If you read the Big Five personality traits and start measuring yourself according to them, what is the basis for your measurement? What does openness mean to you? Gay sex on a roller coaster? Being open-minded about an essay like this one? If you feel sensitive and nervous in North Korea (neurotic as defined by the Big Five) is that good or bad?

What if the society you live in makes you feel nervous and sensitive because you know it can be violent, greedy, hypocritical, and ignorant? Would you feel secure and confident (the opposite of neurotic) if you were in an office where you knew white collar crime (Libor, say) was being done daily? Would you be open to blowing the whistle and risking ostracism or even jail time?

When language, semiotics, and personality are all defined in more or less standard ways and you think you need to go along with that, you can say good-bye to what the Buddha called the thusness or suchness of your being. Buddhism is all about discovering/uncovering the “ultimate reality” of the “real nature” that inheres within us.

One problem with Buddhism, though, is it has become standardized. If you are nice, trusting, and sweet to everyone you meet, you will have your head handed to you in a matter of days in most US cities. We simply cannot expect to model behavior today according to an ancient monastic ideal that we very probably cannot even understand anymore.

The best way to get an IOS, and I believe practice Buddhism in today’s world, is do FIML because FIML practice allows you and your partner to use all the good stuff from human history to develop your own way of talking to each other and understanding each other. A FIML generated IOS frees partners’ semiotics from extrinsic definitions and this allows both of them to comprehend themselves and each other in unique ways that account for their idiosyncrasies—the suchness and thusness of both of them, taken together and independently.

If an individual pursues thusness alone, they will form many wrong ideas because it is impossible for an individual to check their own work. When FIML partners work together and remain mindful of the good things in human history, they are able to check their work and discover the suchness that underlies them.

As mentioned in other posts, FIML does not tell you what to think or believe. Rather, it provides a method to help you and your partner think for yourselves. FIML will change your THOS to an IOS.

If FIML partners are guided by fundamental Buddhist ideas, they will progress more quickly and be less likely to take wrong turns. Understanding the emptiness of standardized semiotics will make it easier for partners to see how cultural norms can interfere with a deep comprehension of life. Keeping basic Buddhist ethics in mind at all times will help partners avoid moral excess or thoughtlessness. Contemplation of dependent origination will give partners a ready guide to understanding the uniqueness of every communicative event. Buddhist teachings on clinging or attachment, especially when understood as clinging to wrong ideas or wrong semiotics, will greatly help partners discard mistaken beliefs and views that may have been influencing them for decades. The Buddha’s teaching on impermanence will make it easier to see through the long history of THOS and why we need new ways to speak, listen, and think today.

Brain-to-brain coupling: a mechanism for creating and sharing a social world

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Cognition materializes in an interpersonal space. The emergence of complex behaviors requires the coordination of actions among individuals according to a shared set of rules. Despite the central role of other individuals in shaping one’s mind, most cognitive studies focus on processes that occur within a single individual. We call for a shift from a single-brain to a multi-brain frame of reference. We argue that in many cases the neural processes in one brain are coupled to the neural processes in another brain via the transmission of a signal through the environment. Brain-to-brain coupling constrains and shapes the actions of each individual in a social network, leading to complex joint behaviors that could not have emerged in isolation. (Source)

Very much agree with this statement, which is the intro to a short scholarly opinion piece on interpersonal cognition.

The very basis of FIML practice is the interaction of two people. The FIML technique is designed to allow two people to become deeply aware of the (normally) elusive, idiosyncratic, and highly complex signalling mechanisms that are always functioning whenever they interact.

As partners become richly aware of this dynamic system, they will find they are able to change it for the better by removing mistakes and ambiguity. Mistakes and ambiguity are prominent—indeed, characterize—virtually all normal interpersonal communication. By largely removing these factors from their interpersonal communication, partners will experience significant improvements in communication, general awareness, and feelings of well-being.

The linked essay asks the following question: How to further develop principled methods to explore information transfer across two (or more) brains?

One answer is do FIML practice. Rather than study themselves from outside, FIML partners will study themselves as they are in all of their own unique complexity as uniquely “coupled brains.” In the terms of the linked paper, FIML practice is “brain-to-brain coupling” that leads to “complex joint behaviors” that cannot possibly “emerge in isolation.”

FIML practice provides a general “shared set of rules” that allows “complex behaviors” to “emerge” between two (or more) people. These “complex behaviors”, in turn, give partners the opportunity to control and transform how they “shape” their minds.

New study supports FIML practice

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This study—Neural Correlates of People’s Hypercorrection of Their False Beliefs—supports the contention that FIML practice can produce deep, wide-ranging, and enduring changes within the brain/mind of practitioners.

The basic finding of the study is:

Despite the intuition that strongly held beliefs are particularly difficult to change, the data on error correction indicate that general information errors that people commit with a high degree of belief are especially easy to correct. (Emphasis added.)

According to the study, this happens due to …enhanced attention and encoding that results from a metacognitive mismatch between the person’s confidence in their responses and the true answer.

This is exactly what happens when a FIML query shows the questioner that his/her assumptions about what their partner’s thoughts or intentions were were wrong.

Initially, FIML partners may experience some embarrassment or disbelief at being wrong, but since FIML queries are generally based on negative impressions, being shown to be wrong will also produce feelings of great relief and even delight.

A FIML query will generally arise out of a state of “enhanced attention” and usually further increase it by being spoken about. Incidentally, this is probably the most difficult aspect of FIML practice—controlling the emotions that accompany enhanced attention, especially when that attention concerns our own emotional reactions.

With continued practice of FIML, however, even strongly held erroneous interpersonal beliefs will be fairly easily corrected whenever they are discovered during a FIML discussion. Correcting core false beliefs (mistaken interpretations) has a wide-ranging, beneficial effect on all aspects of a person’s life.

Since the hypercorrection effect discussed in the linked study only occurs during moments of enhanced attention, the FIML technique of focusing quickly on good data agreed upon by both partners can be seen as a way of inducing states of enhanced attention that will lead to deep changes in both partners. This technique (using good data) also turns the discussion from one about feelings to one about “information,” which the study finds makes errors “especially easy to correct.”

Furthermore, since FIML practice tends to deal with very small incidents, the enhanced attention FIML induces works like a laser that quickly and painlessly excises erroneous thoughts and feelings while they are still small and have not been allowed to grow into full-blown emotional reactions.

the absent voices here are academic and organized medicine

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This link is to a good post about misdeeds in Big Pharma and the absence of any serious push-back from psychiatrists.

I for one don’t think there is any idea or any professional or governmental approach that can fix the greed and self-deception inherent in virtually every social system ever devised by human beings.

The only hope I see will come from technology. We are getting close to having brain scans that are able to discover human lies and self-deception with 100% accuracy. Will humans be able to use them to eradicate fraud from government, finance, and science?

Brain plasticity and “critical periods” for learning

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Neurodevelopment: Unlocking the brain

This is an interesting article on brain plasticity and “critical periods” for learning some skills (e.g. stereo-vision, language acquisition, etc.). It seems there may be ways to reset or reopen critical periods through chemical or behavioral interventions.

Vision therapy, which aims to correct adult amblyopia and other eye conditions, already has shown that basic visual skills can be relearned and some visual problems corrected by proper training.

Incidentally, FIML practice retrains us to listen, speak, and think differently. In doing this, FIML may be reopening a critical period for language/semiotic processing or even for the fundamental organization of consciousness itself. Once acquired, FIML skills have far-reaching effects on virtually all aspects of human social and psychological awareness.

If Buddhist practice is thought of in a light like this (that new cognitive skills are learned as some old ones are unlearned), it may remove some of the mystical aspects of how people understand the Dharma while also making Buddhist teachings more appealing to people with science training or an affinity for objective science.

Why Smart People Are Stupid

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This short article by Jonah Lehrer shows an important reason why FIML works so well.

From the article:

The problem with the introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence. In fact, introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings. We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point. The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.” (Emphasis added.)

I chose this quote because it is relevant to the introspective practices of Buddhism and other disciplines.

I love introspection. But introspection without a way to check our work can and will lead us astray.

FIML practice corrects our (very numerous) mistakes in assessing the thoughts and intentions of other people. FIML also disabuses us of the errors we hold about ourselves based on our mistaken understandings of others.

The psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, as quoted in the article says: “My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.”

I believe him. This is how our minds (don’t) work.

FIML will probably not correct your general tendencies toward bias and misplaced confidence, but it will vastly reduce the number of mistakes you make about your partner (and thus yourself). This a huge benefit because when you have clarity with your partner, you gain an emotional and psychological security that is deeply satisfying.

For Buddhists, FIML helps us to avoid the mistakes inherent in pure introspection as well as the mistakes inherent in accepting only the generalities of the Buddhist tradition while missing its profound experiential depths.

How to talk to people

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I am going to mention a book and an interview in this post and want to emphasize from the outset that I am just using these items as a springboard to briefly say something about generalized techniques for communication or getting along with people. My comments have next to nothing to do with the authors of the book or what they say in the interview. I haven’t read the book and don’t know anything about it.

That said, I for one, can’t stand it when people consciously use communication techniques when they talk to me. I can see a place for this sort of thing for salespeople or people who often have to deal with the public. No problem there. What bothers me is when people use these kinds of techniques with friends and even spouses.

I am sure I don’t always spot it when someone does use a technique with me, but often I do. I see it as a kind of lying or a way of deceiving your interlocutor so you can get something from them. Even if all you are getting is companionship or friendship, it still seems low to me to employ techniques you have read in a book or learned in a seminar. No doubt many benefit from those sorts of books and seminars, but many of these techniques are indistinguishable from outright manipulation. I don’t see them as a good way to deal honestly with friends.

Some of the techniques I am talking about are deliberately using positive language for effect; speaking briefly with special intent; smiling more than you feel; deliberately mirroring others’ expressions, gestures, tones of voice, word choices, etc.; using people’s first names as a way to get close to them; hugging people for the same reason; pretending to agree when you don’t; omitting important facts to keep things “positive”, and so on.

I got started on this post after reading an interview at this link: Your words matter. As mentioned, this is probably a very worthy book by two very worthy people. The interview just caused me to think about how much it bothers me that we humans are forced to spend so much of our time in inauthentic communication with others.

Life is too short to be working angles or using techniques with friends and loved ones. For one thing, when we do that we are withholding our deep selves from the people we most care about. And for another thing, those same people will be able to sense what we are doing. At some level, they will feel that that they are being manipulated.

We often refer to FIML as a technique, but it is not a general technique like the ones described above. FIML is a process that helps partners dispense with techniques, manipulation, and all other kinds of bullshit and misunderstanding that can, and will, harm their relationships if not dealt with.

Thalience: The successor to Science

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Thalience is, I believe, the brain-child of Karl Schroeder. It describes a post-science world (or very advanced science) where all science is done by science bots rather than humans. The bots not only do the science, they also ask the questions.

As Schroeder puts it “…it is an attempt to give the physical world itself a voice so that rather than us asking what reality is, reality itself can tell us.”

I think thalience is an interesting idea and may have extra value because by removing human beings and thus human failings from the activity of science, we will get less cheating and conflict of interest in addition to having robots ask really interesting questions we might never think of.

Add to Schroeder’s idea, Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument and you start wondering if we are already living in a thalient world, but just don’t know it.