Tag: Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML)

An insight into how propaganda and a good deal of culture works

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I read a Wikipedia entry yesterday on what’s known as an information cascade.

An information cascade

occurs when people observe the actions of others and then make the same choice that the others have made, independently of their own private information signals. A cascade develops, then, when people “abandon their own information in favor of inferences based on earlier people’s actions”. (From the Wijipedia link above)

The way this relates to propaganda, including the softer, gentler kind employed in the West, can be found in point four below. These four points are the “four key conditions in an information cascade model:”

1. Agents make decisions sequentially
2. Agents make decisions rationally based on the information they have
3. Agents do not have access to the private information of others
4. A limited action space exists (e.g. an adopt/reject decision). (Ibid.; emphasis added)

The “limited action space” is the key to propaganda because it constitutes a false dichotomy that requires great strength for an individual to overcome. It’s much easier to accept whatever explanation is being offered by the state than to question it and run the risk of being called a kook or traitor. (“You’re either with us or with the terrorists,” as Bush famously said to support his war efforts.) This is remarkable because in many cases the only reasonable course of action is to want more information. How do we know for sure that Sadam has WMD? Where did that “yellow cake” information come from? Etc.

This same sort of “limited action space” relates to human culture and psychology in that all individual human beings embody thousands of results of “information cascades” determined by other members of their culture. We can call these results cultural mores, cultural beliefs or values, public semiotics, or most simply, the way things are done around here.

It takes enormous strength to question public semiotics but public semiotics unquestioned can cause enormous suffering, especially when they have major effects on interpersonal communication, which they always do.

The only way I know of to overcome this problem on an interpersonal level is to do FIML or something very much like it. The static, culturally engendered “information cascades” that lie in our heads and affect how we understand our loved ones are poison if they are not caught and observed carefully because each of them constitutes a “limited action space” that causes individuals to box each other in with profoundly mistaken interpretations.

Even a single instance can be serious. But many instances aggregated over the years almost always will lead to, if not interpersonal disaster, greatly reduced interpersonal communication and greatly reduced individual growth and happiness.

Being normal is boring?

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An interesting Swedish study (described here: Creativity ‘closely entwined with mental illness’) found not that creative people have higher incidences of mental illness, but rather that they are more likely to be related to someone with mental illness.

As a Buddhist, I am inclined to think most people are deluded, crazy if you will. From my practice of FIML, I am certain that most people suffer significant interpersonal stress due to ambiguities in language/communication that are rarely if ever dealt with in a satisfactory manner.

Repost: More thoughts on “Empathy”

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Edit: We are moving, vacationing, very busy right now, so we have less time to write new posts. Please look through our archives for more posts about FIML and Buddhism. Thanks. ABN

It seems that many individuals who self-describe as “empathetic” think of empathy as a talent they have for “reading people”, or knowing what others are thinking without having to ask. I think this is a huge mistake that can actually lead such people to have less empathy over time. To me it seems much more appropriate to think of empathy not as a talent one possesses but as a desire to understand other people. If we think of it this way then the ever-problematic “I know” becomes “I want to know.”

If empathy is conceived as an interest or desire, it is more likely to be developed and pursued. If, however, it is conceived as a static quality or talent, it will be taken for granted, misapplied, and probably warped into just another form of hubris.

Continue reading…

Repost: 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.

Continue reading…

How to evaluate something you don’t know

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A fascinating post by Robin Hanson—We Add Near, Average Far—describes some of the difficulty of presenting an idea like FIML to an Internet audience.

The problem is lots of detail and many bits of evidence make it difficult for people to evaluate the overall worth of a complex idea because people tend to evaluate information of that type by averaging the data rather than adding it up.

Should we just say that FIML will make you and your partner smarter and happier? Maybe we should when discussing it online, though of course, we won’t do that.

In person, we have found people quite receptive, but that is probably due to the same effect—in person we focus on one or two results of FIML practice and we only do that if people show interest.

I think Buddhism probably has a similar problem getting it’s message across through books or film. You really have to go to a temple or spend time with people who understand the Dharma to fully comprehend Buddhism as a way of thinking or living. This is why Buddhism is called a “mind-to-mind” teaching.

Up close and personal, most of us realize that we live in a very complex world and that our capacities for understanding our conditions cannot be taken for granted. But when it comes to learning how to hone or augment our skills for dealing with speech and symbolic communication, we tend to look for simple answers, or abstract ones, that do not include the kinds of detail we must pay attention to. Broad extrinsic theories that provide a general picture without essential detail—and these are everywhere in psychology, religion, sociology, the humanities—simply cannot do for you what a technique like FIML can because FIML is entirely based on the actual data of your actual life, and there is a great deal of that.

I do understand why it is hard to see this. At the same time, I wonder why it is so obvious in the physical sciences and engineering that we can’t do anything properly if we don’t make sure of our data.

Why should the humanities be different? We simply cannot communicate well or understand ourselves well without good data. FIML provides good data.

Signal intensity

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An important part of FIML practice is understanding signal intensity. That is, how big or strong or important the signal in question is.

FIML practice was designed to work with small signals and works best when close attention is paid to small signals. These “small signals” can be ones you send to your partner, ones your partner sends to you, or the ways in which either one of you interprets any signal at all.

Small signals are of great importance because they can be signs or aspects of larger or habitual ways of interpreting signals. Small signals can also generate mistaken interpretations that have the potential to snowball.

An example of a habitual way of interpreting signals might be a person who grew up in a less wealthy environment than his or her partner. The less wealthy partner may tend to interpret spending or not spending money differently than the other partner. This could manifest as stinginess, being too generous, or as mild anxiety about money in general. Of course, both partners will be different in the ways they interpret signals dealing with money. Their semiotics about money will be different.

FIML partners would do well to deal with these differences by paying close attention to small signals of that type the moment they come up. This is where partners will come to see how this entire class (money) of signals is affecting them in the moments of the lives they are actually living. It’s good to also have long general discussions about money, but be sure to pay close attention to the appearances of small signals.

From this example, please extrapolate to the signaling areas that matter to you and your partner. These may include anything that causes mistakes in communication or anything that causes either partner to feel anxiety or discomfort.

A good way to gain access to this perspective is to also pay close attention to how often you and your partner miscommunicate about trivial material things. Notice how often—and it happens a lot—you misunderstand each other about even the simplest of concrete, material matters. For example, what kind of lettuce to buy, where you left the keys, is the oven off, etc.

All people everywhere make many communicative mistakes in matters as small as those. If we do that in the material realm, where mistakes are easy to see and correct, consider how much more often and how much more serious are signaling mistakes in the emotional, interpersonal realm.

When you do a FIML discussion with your partner, be sure to frequently include an analysis of how big or small the signals in question are—how intense they are. Remember that FIML practice strongly encourages discussing even the very smallest of signals. FIML does that because small signals are easier to isolate and analyze; clearly seeing a small signal often is sufficient to understanding a big habit. Small signals can snowball, so they should not be ignored.

Repost: When is a FIML discussion finished?

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A FIML discussion is initiated when one partner (or both) experiences an emotional jangle. It is finished when both partners experience a profound resolution.

A FIML discussion begins when one partner feels that something in what the other has said or done has caused them to begin to have an emotional reaction. Before that reaction becomes very strong, we want to stop ourselves and observe its cause while asking our partner what was in their mind at the moment they said or did whatever it was that caused us to react. Ideally, we will be able to quickly stop ourselves, monitor our response, and calmly query our partner, who will answer our questions clearly and neutrally. With practice this is not as difficult to do as it may sound.

So then, when is a FIML discussion finished? How do we know when to stop?

Continue reading…

Big mistake: We often own what we didn’t mean

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A fascinating study from Sweden confirms something that FIML practice has shown us to be a fairly common occurrence and a potential source of serious interpersonal problems.

In FIML terms, the mistake is that we own something we didn’t mean. Or we take on an attitude, mood, or belief that we did not hold after we have been misheard or misunderstood.

In the study from Lund University in Sweden—How to confuse a moral compass—researchers found that:

People can be tricked into reversing their opinions on moral issues, even to the point of constructing good arguments to support the opposite of their original positions…

I was not surprised at all to read that because FIML practice has clearly shown my partner and me that it is really easy to fall into the trap of owning what your partner erroneously thinks you meant.

For example, you are tired, you ask your partner a question, their answer is slow in coming or unclear, you feel frustrated and that feeling enters your tone of voice or shows in your facial expression, your partner asks with some irritation “are you mad at me“—now here’s the mistake—in your fatigue and confusion you answer “yes,” then all hell beaks loose.

The problem is you were not mad at your partner; you were tired and frustrated and it showed, but when they asked you if you were mad at them, in the rush of the moment, you took it on; you said “yes” due to the sort of effect that the Swedish study has found.

Th example above is fairly crude. I chose it because something like that happened to me just yesterday and because I doubt there is anyone who has never made a mistake like that, so it’s easy to understand.

Other cases of this phenomenon can be more subtle—vague speaking or listening can lead to you taking on a position that is not what you actually think; so can convenience in the moment; being too polite; confusion, wanting to get-along or be agreeable, and so on.

This phenomenon usually happens subconsciously or semi-consciously. The big danger interpersonally is that your new not true position can become hardened into something significant to the other person. From there, it can snowball into becoming “what you believe,” “how you are,” or one of your “personality traits.”

What this phenomenon shows, especially in interpersonal contexts, is how much we are interconnected, how much our understanding of ourselves—even our own beliefs and feelings—is determined by what others attribute to us.

The Swedish study shows the phenomenon is all but automatic. In FIML terms, we could also say that this phenomenon shows the great power of what we have called “semiotic bundles.” One you get put into a semiotic category (or put yourself into one), there is a strong tendency to want to stay in that category, even to defend it, even if it had never been your original position at all. Anger often fuels it, but you don’t have to be angry to have it happen.

Watch for it when you interact with your partner. You both will be delighted to discover and quickly correct this mistake as soon as it happens.

(I bet a good deal of what we call “acculturation” depends on this phenomenon, as does conformity. In other posts on this site, we have discussed the power of “public semiotics” and our deep need for them to communicate. But powerful things can also be dangerous. With the help of your FIML partner, watch yourself closely and see if you can catch yourself doing a “mini-acculturation” to a mood or belief you did not hold and do not believe.)

Three kinds of knowing and how they have changed (us)

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The three kinds of knowing I am going to discuss are:

  • Google
  • FIML
  • Social

Google: Most people with access to the Internet appreciate that there is no longer much to be proud about for displaying many kinds of factual knowledge. Not so long ago knowing the right way to sharpen a knife or the etymology of a strange word counted for something. People usually were impressed and this influenced how we thought of ourselves and others. Google, of course, has changed that.

FIML: Most people today still believe that they can with decent certitude know what other people mean when they speak, what their intentions are, and even what their real intentions are. A mature adult is generally expected to have a sophisticated “theory of mind.” Much else follows from this, for our understanding of who we think we are is based significantly on how we understand others. FIML partners will surely appreciate that we very often do not know what others’ intentions are or even what they mean, even at very basic levels.

Social: The third kind of knowledge that really matters in human life is social—who you know, who they know, what they think of you, etc. Internet social media is surely changing this area by widening social networks. Much more significant than Facebook, though, is the database held by the NSA. If the rumors are true, that database holds a record of all electronic communications for everyone in th USA (and probably the world) for the last ten years. That potentially changes for all time how we are able to understand social networks; how we are able to understand society itself. It will be a long time before a database like that is made available to the public, but it is available to someone right now.

Discussion

My guess is most people find the way that Google has changed our understanding of information refreshing. Feeling special because you know something is an easy conceit to give up. Similarly, feeling stupid because you don’t know something is a burden that is pleasant to put down. It’s also nice to have to do much less guessing about all kinds of things. If you aren’t sure, you can usually Google the answer. Many Wikipedia articles provide roughly what an expert in the field would be conversant with, or would say to a non-expert.

My reason for writing the above is to briefly raise the subject of how much our access to information has changed and how much that has changed us over the past 10-20 years. The common themes for the three areas discussed are access and reliability. We have better access to more reliable information.

For readers who have not yet tried FIML, I might encourage you by saying that FIML is sort of like a Google for the mind because it will give you better access to more reliable information about yourself and others than you ever had before.

Just as Google is not all that mysterious once you understand it, so neither is FIML. FIML is little else than a technique to access interpersonal information in a way that it has not been accessed traditionally. It takes some time to learn FIML—the full technique is not as simple as it may seem—but it is worth it. It took time to learn Google. Compare how Google has changed you to a grandparent, say, who has not bothered to learn to use a computer.

I don’t expect FIML to become a fad, but I do tend to believe that as brain science improves and accurate brain scans become more accessible, our moral and social sense of how we interact with each other will have to rely on something like FIML rules. When the day comes that anyone can purchase an accurate lie-detector/mood-detector for use at home, the new information will cause social norms to change even more quickly than Google did. We will not be able to continue to pretend that we understand (or can conceal) things about ourselves and each other that are simply not true. FIML helps greatly with this.

How people are

~ ABN ~ 3 Comments

An interesting essay appeared online a couple days ago. The main thrust of the essay, Signaling bias in philosophical intuition by Katja Grace, is nicely stated in its first paragraph:

Intuitions are a major source of evidence in philosophy. Intuitions are also a significant source of evidence about the person having the intuitions. In most situations where onlookers are likely to read something into a person’s behavior, people adjust their behavior to look better. (Emphasis added)

The essay makes many good points about how we judge, or interpret, philosophers. For example, “…people treat philosophical intuitions as evidence about personality traits.” And “People are enthusiastic to show off their better looking intuitions. They identify with some intuitions and take pleasure in holding them.”

If this is true of professional philosophers who, we can assume, are more careful about their thoughts and their expression than most people, how much more is it true for non-philosophers?

Yesterday I wrote on this site:

Normal people live in vague worlds where they grope toward each other like ghosts in the fog. How can we understand each other or ourselves if we do not pay attention to the small signals that are, arguably, the most important units of interpersonal communication? (Source)

I felt a camaraderie with Grace for I believe that virtually all people, not just philosophers, “are enthusiastic to show off their better looking” sides. I also strongly believe that as I do that toward you and you toward me, our authentic beings are lost in the fluff.

FIML practice has been designed to allow partners to send signals to each other that are profoundly more authentic than the simplistic “better looking” ones we normally exchange. FIML does this by providing a method for partners to examine in real time the small signals that are the “psychological morphemes” of interpersonal communication.

Please take a moment to read Grace’s essay, which is far more nuanced than what I have suggested.

How to observe the semiotics that form the basis of your consciousness

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A few days ago, I posted the essay, How semiotics can help us understand ourselves.

Today I want to discuss how you can grasp the semiotics that form the basis of your consciousness.

I am sure you already understand a good deal about yourself, but my guess is your understanding is probably in the form of a group of abstractions, such as—“my personality is thus-and-so”; “since I had this sort of childhood/education/etc., I am now outgoing/fearful/frugal/etc.”; “I believe in personal responsibility/behavior/etc.”; “my mom was a religious nut so I am an atheist, etc.”

In the post cited above, we used the terms signaling system and semiotics more or less interchangeably. A signaling system emphasizes what the message is and how it is sent, while semiotics emphasizes how the message is interpreted.

If we think of our minds as being signaling systems that are constantly referring to whatever semiotics we interpret as “true” or “real,” we can get a very good idea of how they function in the moment by observing what they are referring to in “the moment” (1-10 seconds, or so). By observing our minds closely, we can learn what semiotics cause us to have emotional responses or to interpret things in the ways we do. We can see how our mental/emotional signaling system builds up within us the appearance of a self with a biography, a personality, needs, fears, desires, goals, and so on.

If, for example, at some point in your life you learned and accepted as real a semiotic that you are stupid, you can spend hours, even decades, analyzing your feelings without getting any results. But if you can actually watch your mind as it signals to itself the semiotic “I am stupid,” and if you can see while that is happening that the signal is a mistake, then your mind will tend to stop sending you that signal.

If you can repeat that experience a few times—that is, catch that same mistake a few times—your mind will almost certainly stop wasting its resources thinking you are stupid. It will do this almost effortlessly because the mind is efficient and won’t waste time doing something it knows is a mistake.

So how do you do that, how do you catch the mistakes? You probably have already tried to catch them through introspection, reading, or discussing them with friends with less than satisfying results.

And what’s even harder to do is catch mistakes that you are not even aware of. How do you catch them?

I don’t think you can do it all by yourself. And I don’t think you can make satisfying progress by discussing these matters even with very wise friends. You can’t do it yourself because you can’t see yourself, and you can’t do it through long discussions because the signalling system works too quickly for that.

If you don’t cut in quickly and observe what it is doing, you won’t be able to change it easily.

Here is a way to look at that. Have you ever had a clock or mirror on the wall that was removed; maybe the mirror fell or the clock broke. At some point, the object that you had been used to seeing for years was gone. For some time after that, you probably turned unconsciously more than a few times to look at the now absent mirror or clock. That gives a strange feeling because at moments like that we see how deeply unconscious signs (the clock or mirror) affect our sense of who we are.

After a while we get used to the bare wall, but the lesson in how deeply signs operate within us should be clear. The other lesson of how we can indeed change our reference or expectation from a wall with a clock or mirror to a wall without either should also be clear.

At first, the mind is surprised, but after a while, it accepts that there is no clock on the wall with little fuss.

When two people do FIML practice, they help each other remove broken clocks and mirrors from the walls of their minds. FIML strongly emphasizes catching the signal and the semiotic it is referring to as quickly as you can. If partners can isolate their signals quickly, they will find that they are dealing with very small and discrete signs that very, very often are not true.

Normal people live in vague worlds where they grope toward each other like ghosts in the fog. How can we understand each other or ourselves if we do not pay attention to the small signals that are, arguably, the most important units of interpersonal communication?

And how can you pay attention to them if you don’t catch them quickly in the moment? If you try to understand yourself through long explanations and stories, you will only be understanding the underlying semiotic library that your moment-by-moment signals are referring to. If you catch those small signals as they happen in the moment, though, you will come to understand how and why that library is being accessed and how that affects you.

When your partner shows you that one of your signals was wrong and that it was referring to a part of the library that had no proper bearing on that moment, and when they show you that again, and again, that particular signal will stop firing. And there is a very good chance your library will change as well. It will change you deeply to see that.

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.

My apologies

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

I want to apologize to readers for having posted a fairly serious mistake on the How to do FIML page.

I proofread the page many times but for months failed to notice that I had mixed up the explanation of who was speaking and who was listening. Originally, I had used two characters named A and B to illustrate basic FIML. In my explanation, I somehow switched them around.

I have corrected the mistake and changed the characters’ names to Andrew and Megan for clarity.

I hope the page makes better sense now and is easier to follow.

Advanced FIML

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It is of paramount importance that FIML partners learn to use the basic FIML technique described here: How to do FIML.

Even very advanced partners should be using the basic technique most of the time.

This is because most mix-ups are fundamentally simple and/or are based on something quite simple. And this happens because of how humans use and process language. Basically, our limbic system is too closely connected to our neocortex. Our emotional reactions have a strong tendency to overwhelm our capacities for good listening and rational analysis.

Mix-ups are 100% completely guaranteed for all people because all of us have learned to speak non-FIML languages. And even after we are able to do FIML, we will still readily slip back into non-FIML reactions.

It’s no one’s fault. We are primitive beings with poor control of both language and our emotional reactions to it.

That said, advanced FIML partners will find themselves regularly engaging in FIML discussions that may be continued for days and that will refer to factors that lie outside of the basic data described in the basic technique.

As partners progress, they will come to better understand the complexity of their interactions while noticing that some dynamic features between them tend to repeat. It’s good to keep a record in your minds of those features or routines that tend to recur. These are the idiosyncratic dynamics of your Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistic reality.

Yes, some of these dynamic features can and will be generalizable to other couples, but the mixture of all of them together will largely be unique to the two of you.

FIML is not about telling you what to think or believe. It is, rather, a technique that will help you and your partner achieve optimum communication and mutual understanding with each other.

FIML partners must learn the basic technique and they must use it frequently because all other discussions will require it. That said, advanced FIML partners should also expect to engage in FIML discussions that go well beyond the basic technique in length, complexity, and the factors considered.

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.