All you smart people, do FIML. ABN
The circle “what people actually understand” should be much larger and mostly outside the other circles
Tag: psycholinguistics
The circle “what people actually understand” should be much larger and mostly outside the other circles
All you smart people, do FIML. ABN
FB to allow hate speech if it’s directed at Russians
…”As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
The calls for the leaders’ deaths will be allowed unless they contain other targets or have two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method, one email said, in a recent change to the company’s rules on violence and incitement.
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Harris completely blows hypnotic technique often used by Obama
“I am here. Standing… here…” ::checks notes::
Originally tweeted by Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) on March 10, 2022.
The technique is to first state something no one doubts: “I am here, standing here, talking about…” After this information, best intoned in a trancelike voice which Obama was very good at, the speaker then begins to associate bullshit with the obvious first facts. Amazing numbers of people fell for this technique when Obama used it. When he first ran for president, he would say stuff like, “Here I am standing before you tonight… as president of the United States… I will always… The theory behind this is the unconscious mind makes a firm psychological association that Obama is standing before us as president always. He did this so often and other similar techniques in his early campaign speeches, you can probably watch any one of them to get a decent class in how to do this yourself. Harris completely fails, clearly having no understanding of what she is doing. Many other politicians have copied Obama’s entrancement techniques. Early on, when I saw Obama doing this as often as he did, I knew he was fundamentally a creep and a liar because the technique itself is a profoundly narcissistic form of lying. ABN
“Struggle to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese race”
The above image appears to come from an airport in China. The words say exactly what is in the English headline above. 民族 means “race” in Chinese. This notion of the importance of race in China dates back especially to the writings and speeches of Sun Yat-sen, the “father of modern China.” And Sun meant the Han Chinese race. I personally see nothing wrong with Han Chinese wanting to emphasize their race. Almost all people in the world do that and/or think that way.
In an American or Western context, almost any use the word race is automatically processed as bad. If you place the sentence 为实现中华民族伟大复兴努力奋斗 in Google translate, it will return the following rendering in English: “Work hard to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” This is due to decades of propaganda changing what Sun Yat-sen actually meant by his Three Principles of the People, which he clearly explained at the time. If you doubt this, take note of how Tibetans and Uighurs are treated in China and what happened to the Mongolians in Inner Mongolia. Or just look closely at the cartoon above. ABN
Excellent insight into the Puppet Handler of Trudeau
Everyone knows Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is an empty vessel. He carries himself as a generally unintelligent fellow with a sub-par IQ and a childish demeanor that is often inappropriate. However, recently due to the increased attention upon Canada as they descend into lunatic leftism, the role of Trudeau as a puppet has become more evident.
His Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, is well known to people here for her prior key role in the creation of the USMCA trade agreement, her busybody demeanor and her snarky ideological annoyances. However, Chrystia is also the person who puts the words in Justin’s mouth, literally.
Watch a few seconds of this video from Trudeau’s statements about Ukraine yesterday and pay attention to the mannerisms of Freeland as the Canadian Prime Minister reads his prepared remarks. Watch her closely and what you will notice is that Freeland wrote the remarks. She is visibly saying them in her head while physically mirroring the exact cadence Trudeau uses as he delivers her script. WATCH:
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Wonderful that Sundance noticed this. Well-worth watching a couple minutes. Filing this one under “psycholinguistics.” ABN
Engineering Illusions of The Science
Much of what most people believe is science, is not science. A lot of people might agree with that sentiment, but there is a more important corollary that will make some scientists flip their lids, which is that most of what scientists believe is science, is not science.
We really are that far down the road of misunderstanding or totalitarianism or something.
The story I’m about to tell begins with a warm and fuzzy documentary, but spirals into threats made to a highly respected scientist who took his family into hiding. The tale begins with an essay I wrote many years ago (you can skip it…this is the better essay) that I believe displays something like the infection of science with a virus. This was a story for which I was particularly well suited to examine for reasons you will come to understand if you don’t know me already. Upon digging into this story, what I found was quite troubling as it points to the subtle presence of hard-to-identify corruption that is therefore likely more the norm in “The Science”™ than an outlier.
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This morning my FIML partner told me an essay by Mathew Crawford (linked above) says exactly what I always say about FIML practice—that it just takes practice and that almost anyone can do it with not even that much effort. I am 100% certain Mathew could learn basic FIML in a few hours if he has a suitable partner or a good teacher. In fact, I hereby volunteer to teach him the “tricks” for free. You do not need to be really smart to do FIML. You do have to be willing to practice. Sadly, the hardest part of learning FIML is finding an honest partner who also wants to learn. While math tricks can get attention, FIML can open your mind to levels of conscious understanding you cannot even imagine today. I guarantee it. ABN
“It needed a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors”
He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized, nevertheless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak.
He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions — ‘the Party says the earth is flat’, ‘the party says that ice is heavier than water’ — and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as ‘two and two make five’ were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.
-George Orwell, 1984
“Though the vax has never been tested over the long-term, we know it will be safe and effective.”
“Yes, it is true the vax does not stop transmission, but today a vaccine is defined as: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.“
“Yes, it does not do that either but your chances of dying from the disease are less if you have been vaxxed.”
“No, we cannot reveal the data showing that your chances of dying are less because it cannot be untangled from vax deaths data.”
“Yes, it is true that hospitals received extra payment for covid deaths, but we know they would never fudge death certificates for that reason. Nor would they fudge them to hide vax deaths.”
Dramatis personae, dramatis spirituum, and Buddhist karma
Dramatis personae are actors in a drama, characters in a play, novel, or movie. Jung used the word persona to indicate our subjective and objective sense of our roles in life, how we behave in various situations. He defined personality (persona-ality) rather flamboyantly:
Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence, coupled with the greatest possible freedom of self-determination. [C.G. Jung, “The Development of Personality,” 1932]
For my purpose today, Jung’s description of personality, though delightful, is a bit mundane. I want to introduce the idea that in addition to our mundane dramatis personae of this world, we also possess dramatis spirituum or spiritual personae.
This mundane world, in Buddhist terms is the relative world of transitory phenomena and suffering. In contrast, ultimate reality is the realm of enlightened Buddhas where all suffering is ended.
In Buddhism, the word karma can mean many things in English. It can mean action, habit, tendency, a type of attachment, entanglement, the movement of the mind-stream. In a basic sense, it may be helpful think of karma as often meaning habit. Good habits lead to good outcomes and bad habits lead to bad outcomes, though there are many mysterious exceptions to this simple rule as there are to all simple rules.
Karma can be seen as a burden and yet even the worst karma can end in the space of “a single thought.” If in a single thought you are able to see the fullness of your karmic habit, it can end in that very instant. See in a single thought how your anger makes everything worse and you may never have to control it again because it will never arise again. See in a single thought how alcohol is ruining everything and you may refrain from using it ever again.
Our dramatis spirituum are the ultimate actors that we most deeply are, the actors who remember our mind-streams, who are the forces that draw us toward enlightenment, who end bad karmic habits in the space of a single thought.
When we feel connected to someone, often that is a connection between our dramatis spirituum. It may be just beginning or it may have begun many lifetimes ago. A good simple illustration of this might be the way you remember some people from childhood with a pang of unrequited beauty, unrequited spiritual love. You may have known them only briefly but still think of them and have a strong sense that they may be thinking of you in a similar way. What you are sensing is a karmic connection of dramatis spirituum. This is the deep level many of us sense is where life really lives.
The dramatis spirituum connection you have with your parents or primary caregiver is more complex and filled with far more mundane connections. You may struggle with this connection for many lifetimes before it is resolved on the plane of conscious dramatis spirituum.
I tend to see a current of drama ever present in all things. This is their actions, habit, tendencies, karma, entanglements, desires, realizations, personae, spirituum, mind-stream, enlightenment.
Working memory is key to deep psychological transformation, Part 2
In science, working memory is generally thought of as either:
- “…the sketchpad of your mind; it’s the contents of your conscious thoughts.” (Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory)
- Or “…a core component of higher cognitive functions like planning or language or intelligence.” (Christos Constantinidis, a professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest School of Medicine) [Source for both]
Obviously, both versions are valuable and probably both are roughly true. Some “contents” of working memory are indeed sketchpad-like—a crack in the sidewalk or a passing bird—while others clearly are “core components of higher cognitive functions” and, I would add, long-term memory including all psychological factors.
Our psychology—be it “natured” or nurtured—functions in real-life in real-time because we remember it. It bears on us because it is in our minds, because it colors our minds, shades our thoughts and actions.
Working memory is key to understanding human psychology because it shows us how we really are functioning, thinking, acting, feeling in real-time.
Working memory is also fleeting. If you want to use working memory to understand your real-life psychology, you have to be able to analyze it in real-time. This means you have to capture its contents and examine them as near to their appearance in working memory as possible.
You can do this alone with good effect, but when you do it alone you are prone to self-referential bias and other mistakes. When you do it with another person, they can help you avoid self-referential mistakes as well as other less serious ones.
This is how FIML practice works and why it is done the way it is. FIML analyzes data discovered in the working memory.
So how do you do that? You do that by immediately noticing when something significant about the other person’s speech or behavior enters in your mind or arises in your working memory. Generally, that something will have psychological impact on you, though you might just be curious or notice it for other reasons.
Whether working memory is an independent sketchpad or a component of higher functions, analyzing whatever you feel like analyzing in it is valuable. Sometimes even very little things can have great psychological import.
Analyses of working memory through FIML practice are most productive when they entail what I have called “psychological morphemes.”
Psychological morphemes are the smallest units of human psychology. Metaphorically, they are a word or a letter as compared to a phrase, a paragraph, or even a book. They are the building blocks of larger psychological structures and also may occur as unique isolates.
Whenever a psychological morpheme appears in working memory, it is always interesting. Psychological morphemes almost always signal the onset of a larger psychological interpretation, one either stored in long-term memory or one arising just now.
By working with any and all psychological morphemes as they appear in your and your partner’s working memories and by working with them repeatedly, both partners will come to understand that some of these psychological morphemes have deep roots in their cognitive systems while others do not.
For example, a fleeting expression or tone you observe in your partner may cause you to feel jealous or disrespected. Do FIML immediately and find out what it was.
It’s either true or false or in-between. If you have a good and honest relationship with your partner, most of the time you will find a negative psychological morpheme that appeared in your working memory was false and that it is part of a psychological habit of yours that has deep roots in other cognitive functions.
A great benefit of FIML is repeated analyses of mistaken psychological morphemes leads to their extirpation, sometimes quickly sometimes more gradually. A second benefit of FIML is it makes all communications between partners much clearer and more satisfying. A third advantage is most of these gains lead to better understanding and competency with all people.
first posted NOVEMBER 14, 2018
Covid politics is a macroscopic example of a psycholinguistic problem which occurs microscopically in all interpersonal relations
The ways we talk and don’t talk about covid are similar in kind to the ways we talk and don’t talk interpersonally. This fact is as painful in all important interpersonal relationships as it is painful on a national and global scale concerning covid.
Interpersonally, it is extremely difficult for almost all people to examine psycholinguistically important moments in real-time if they have not been trained or self-taught. Similarly, it is extremely difficult for almost all people to examine almost any aspect of covid if they do not share mostly the same conclusions.
Psychologically humans exist on a spectrum that grades from the unique microscopic moments of unique individual experience to the macroscopic landscape shared by many individuals belonging to a psychological collective. Just as a psychological collective can be created (or discovered) by naming it so individual moments can be defined by individuals naming them, often incorrectly.
Unique individual moments can also be predefined by a psychological collective. Many individuals perceive human life to be precisely that, something defined by a collective. It is very difficult for many individuals to see this and almost impossible for most individuals to be able to talk about this in real-time, real-world situations that are psychologically stressful and thus also psychologically important.
If you lament the disaster of our national covid dueling monologues, stop and consider that your important individual interpersonal relationships suffer similar problems. Dueling monologues arise when microscopic dialogues do not happen, which they rarely do anywhere in the world throughout all history. This problem is big and small, ecompassing the size of individual lives and entire human epochs. It is founded on the psycholinguistic difficulty of talking about talking as it is happening without being distracted by habits, customs, manners.
When talking about talking as it is happening happens, almost everyone becomes confused or angry or dismayed. You have to see this problem. Then figure out how to deal with it. You can do this in your own way (please report back to me if you are successful). Or you can do it through FIML practice which is described in many posts on this site. If you can see what FIML corrects, then the basic description of how to do FIML will be easy to understand. If you can do basic FIML many times, you will share a fundamental skill with your partner that will make your lives much better.
If FIML looks easy but you can’t do it, you probably don’t understand it. If you think you already are doing it, maybe but I doubt it. If you can’t make any sense of it, talk about it with your partner. Once you see what FIML is, you will love it because it frees you from a most basic and common form of human misunderstanding.
first posted NOVEMBER 24, 2021
The rise and fall of rationality in language
Significance
The post-truth era has taken many by surprise. Here, we use massive language analysis to demonstrate that the rise of fact-free argumentation may perhaps be understood as part of a deeper change. After the year 1850, the use of sentiment-laden words in Google Books declined systematically, while the use of words associated with fact-based argumentation rose steadily. This pattern reversed in the 1980s, and this change accelerated around 2007, when across languages, the frequency of fact-related words dropped while emotion-laden language surged, a trend paralleled by a shift from collectivistic to individualistic language.
link
Covid politics is a macroscopic example of a psycholinguistic problem which occurs microscopically in all interpersonal relations
The ways we talk and don’t talk about covid are similar in kind to the ways we talk and don’t talk interpersonally. This fact is as painful in all important interpersonal relationships as it is painful on a national and global scale concerning covid.
Interpersonally, it is extremely difficult for almost all people to examine psycholinguistically important moments in real-time if they have not been trained or self-taught. Similarly, it is extremely difficult for almost all people to examine almost any aspect of covid if they do not share mostly the same conclusions.
Psychologically humans exist on a spectrum that grades from the unique microscopic moments of unique individual experience to the macroscopic landscape shared by many individuals belonging to a psychological collective. Just as a psychological collective can be created (or discovered) by naming it so individual moments can be defined by individuals naming them, often incorrectly.
Unique individual moments can also be predefined by a psychological collective. Many individuals perceive human life to be precisely that, something defined by a collective. It is very difficult for many individuals to see this and almost impossible for most individuals to be able to talk about this in real-time, real-world situations that are psychologically stressful and thus also psychologically important.
If you lament the disaster of our national covid dueling monologues, stop and consider that your important individual interpersonal relationships suffer similar problems. Dueling monologues arise when microscopic dialogues do not happen, which they rarely do anywhere in the world throughout all history. This problem is big and small, ecompassing the size of individual lives and entire human epochs. It is founded on the psycholinguistic difficulty of talking about talking as it is happening without being distracted by habits, customs, manners.
When talking about talking as it is happening happens, almost everyone becomes confused or angry or dismayed. You have to see this problem. Then figure out how to deal with it. You can do this in your own way (please report back to me if you are successful). Or you can do it through FIML practice which is described in many posts on this site. If you can see what FIML corrects, then the basic description of how to do FIML will be easy to understand. If you can do basic FIML many times, you will share a fundamental skill with your partner that will make your lives much better.
If FIML looks easy but you can’t do it, you probably don’t understand it. If you think you already are doing it, maybe but I doubt it. If you can’t make any sense of it, talk about it with your partner. Once you see what FIML is, you will love it because it frees you from a most basic and common form of human misunderstanding.
first posted NOVEMBER 24, 2021
WHO skips “Xi” to name new variant Omicron, provoking global Streisand Effect
American Buddhist Net 