Tag: psychology

On Freudianism and the assertion of interpersonal meaning

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Freudianism is an extreme example of the assertion of meaning where there is none, or very little.

It is extreme for two reasons: 1) because it is scientifically groundless and 2) because so many people believed it.

Communism, many religious beliefs and practices, fads, styles, ethnic myths, many “historical” misinterpretations, and much more are examples of false meanings that are asserted and believed by large numbers of people.

You could say that pretty much all human culture is a similar stew of strongly asserted falsehoods mixed with some facts.

Freud was an interesting writer and his ideas were and are worth considering, but they should have remained minor points in the history of psychology and never become “meanings” that influenced the entire Western world.

In this respect, Freudianism is an excellent sociological or macro example of what individuals do psychologically, on micro and meso levels with themselves and others.

Humans are extremely prone to append or assert meaning where it does not belong either because there is no “meaning” in that context or because the “meaning” being asserted is incorrect.

Freudianism shows how powerfully and massively wrong we often get meaning and how wrong our analyses of human thought, emotion, and behavior can be.

At the macro level of trends like Freudianism, we can and should have asked for evidence.

At the micro and meso levels of human psychological understanding we can and should ask for evidence or confirmation from the person or persons about whom we are asserting psychological meaning.

If you do this frequently with a trusted partner, you will begin to see that many of the “meanings” you append to that partner and to yourself are false.

False macro meanings like Freudianism can be corrected through science. At the micro or meso levels of the individual, wrong meanings can only be fully corrected through a practice like FIML.

In future we may be better able to understand micro and meso levels of interpersonal meaning through the use of brain scans, but even brain scans need interpretation and will be difficult to use during real-time, interpersonal interactions.

See Micro, meso, and macro levels of human understanding for more on what is meant by these levels.

Networks of words, semiotics, and psychological morphemes

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Words and semiotics are held together in networks. “Psychological morphemes” are also held together in networks.

A “psychological morpheme” is the smallest meaningful unit of a psychological response. It is the smallest unit of communication that can give rise to an emotional, psychological, or cognitive reaction.

Of course word networks, semiotic networks, and emotional, psychological, and cognitive networks all intertwine with each other.

FIML practice is designed to help partners untangle unwanted emotions from these intertwined networks. FIML practice focuses on psychological morphemes because they are small and thus rather easily understood and rather easily extirpated from real-time contexts (when partners are interacting in real life in real-time).

The hard part about FIML practice is it is done in real life in real-time. But the easy or very effective part about FIML is that once partners learn to do it, results come quickly because the practice is happening in real life in real-time. It is not just a theory when you do it in that way. It is an experience that changes how you communicate and how you understand yourself and others.

In FIML practice partners are mindful of their emotional reactions and learn that when one occurs, it is important to query their partner about it. They are mindful of psychological morphemes and as soon as one appears, but before the morpheme calls up a large network leading to a strong reaction, they query their partner about it.

This practice leads to a fairly smooth and effortless extirpation of unwanted psychological responses. This happens because the data provided by the partner that “caused” the reaction shows the partner who made the FIML query that the psychological morpheme in question arose due to a misinterpretation. Seeing this repeatedly for the same sort of neurotic reaction causes that reaction and the psychological network that comprises it to become extinguished.

A fascinating study from the University of Kansas by Michael Vitevitch shows that removing a key word from a linguistic network will cause that network to fracture and even be destroyed. An article about the study and a link to the study (pay wall) can be found here: Keywords hold vocabulary together in memory.

Vitevitch’s study involves only words and his analysis was done only with computers because, as he says, ““Fracturing the network [in real people] could actually disrupt language processing. Even though we could remove keywords from research participants’ memories through psycholinguistic tasks, we dared not because of concern that there would be long-term or even widespread effects.”

FIML is not about removing key words from linguistic networks. But it is about dismantling or removing psychological or semiotic networks that cause suffering.

Psychological or semiotic networks are networks rich in emotional meaning. When those networks harbor unwanted, inappropriate, or mistaken interpretations (and thus mistaken or unwanted emotions), they can cause serious neurotic reactions, or serious mistaken interpretations.

These mistaken interpretations, and the emotions associated with them, can be efficiently extirpated by revealing to their holder the “key” psychological morphemes that set them off.

The psychology of a semiotic network hinges on repeated reactions to key psychological morphemes and that this process is analogous to the key words described in Vitevitch’s study.

Vitevitch did not remove key words from actual people because it would be unethical to do so. But it is not unethical for consenting adults to help each other find and remove key psychological morphemes that are harmfully associated with the linguistic, semiotic, cognitive, and psychological networks that make up the individual.

You don’t just think about politics, you physically feel it in your body

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…The authors of this study argue that physical sensations form the core of any emotional experience. When people feel an emotion, they experience interoceptive states, which are the brain’s internal perceptions of signals from inside the body, like a racing heart or a tense stomach. The researchers wanted to map these self-aware, physical feelings, known as somatosensory experiences, to see what a state of political anger or political hope actually feels like in the human body.

Understanding these bodily sensations can shed light on how political contexts alter basic psychological responses. To explore these physical patterns, the researchers conducted a study with 992 adult participants from the United States. The sample was designed to be nationally representative in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and political party affiliation. The median age of the participants was 46 years, and the group included exactly 50 percent women.

The scientists used a validated digital mapping technique called the emBODY tool to measure physical reactions. During the experiment, participants viewed digital silhouettes of the human body and used a coloring tool to indicate exactly where they felt physical sensations. They painted regions red to show increased activation, such as warmth or tension, and they used blue to show decreased activation, such as numbness or physical heaviness.

Political disgust produced an entirely different physical map compared to everyday disgust. Everyday disgust, such as the natural physical reaction to spoiled food, tends to be felt heavily in the stomach and throat. When participants mapped political disgust, the physical sensation looked remarkably similar to anger, with high activation concentrated in the head and upper body.

Democrat-leaning participants reported stronger bodily sensations for negative political emotions compared to Republican-leaning participants. For political anger, anxiety, depression, and disgust, Democrat-leaning individuals showed much higher physical activation, primarily concentrated in the head and upper torso.

link

Complex mind, simple thoughts

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I strongly believe a major cause of neuroticism, emotional agony, and mental illness is our minds are more complex than much of our thinking and most of our communication.

This causes us to be like prisoners trapped in small space when we are capable of much greater freedom.

A new study illustrates why this happens.

The study show how auditory hallucinations can be induced in people who are not otherwise prone to hearing them.

Pairing a stimulus in one modality (vision) with a stimulus in another (sound) can lead to task-induced hallucinations in healthy individuals. After many trials, people eventually report perceiving a nonexistent stimulus contingent on the presence of the previously paired stimulus. (Pavlovian conditioning–induced hallucinations result from overweighting of perceptual priors)

Since this effect can be induced fairly simply it shows that:

These data demonstrate the profound and sometimes pathological impact of top-down cognitive processes on perception… (from the study itself: Pavlovian conditioning–induced hallucinations result from overweighting of perceptual priors)

Note that these hallucinations “result from overweighing perceptual priors.”

A “perceptual prior” is, in these cases, a mistaken assumption about reality.

If our auditory and visual “realities” are susceptible to mistakes like these, how much more is our psychology?

Due to our generally very simple ways of interacting with other people, we are essentially forced to hallucinate who they are and at the same time who we are.

That is, our complex minds are essentially forced to see ourselves and others in simple, hallucinatory terms that cannot possibly be true.

I believe this is the cause of great mental and emotional distress for all people everywhere.

I also believe that this problem can be largely overcome by practicing FIML

FIML allows us to remove our psychological hallucinations about our FIML partner as they remove theirs about us.

FIML works because it allows partners to escape the simplicities and many hallucinatory traps of ordinary communication.

As far as I know, there is no other method for doing this. FIML is practical psychotherapy that will optimize your mind and psychology by providing the data you need to overcome hallucinating most of your life.

In this respect, FIML is a preeminent Buddhist mindfulness practice done by two (or more) people working together.

I hope the day comes when Buddhist Sanghas will practice FIML among themselves and teach it to lay followers when they have mastered the technique.

FIML is deeply human and not something AI will be able to do. It is very well-suited to this Human Realm because it shows us how delusions are formed, where they lie within us and how to extinguish them.

A survey to understand the experience of living with developmental prosopagnosia (face-blindness)

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This mixed methods study examined the real-world experiences of living with developmental prosopagnosia (face blindness), a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that severely affects the ability to recognise faces despite otherwise normal vision, IQ and memory. Twenty-nine UK based adults with confirmed face recognition difficulties completed an online survey describing and quantifying their experiences of living with poor face recognition. Although the majority (62%) of participants reported being able to recognise their immediate family, e.g., parent, partner, or child, strikingly 35% reported being unable to reliably recognise their immediate family members out of context. Even fewer (45%), reported always being able to recognise their three closest friends when encountering them unexpectedly, highlighting that DP commonly affects the recognition of highly familiar faces with whom individuals have close emotional relationships. Furthermore, participants who reported being able or unable to recognise their immediate family showed no significant difference in objective face memory ability. More than two thirds of participants (65.5%) reported being able to recognise fewer than 10 familiar faces (with the most common response being none), far below typical abilities. Thematic framework analysis highlighted how low public, professional, and employer awareness of developmental prosopagnosia [DP] presented challenges across multiple domains including seeking diagnosis, social and family relationships and workplaces. Driven largely by concerns about negative evaluation by others, most participants employed a range of highly effortful, though error prone, strategies to disguise and compensate for their face recognition difficulties. Some of the strategies described may help explain why many individuals can perform within typical norms on laboratory face processing tests despite their clear difficulties in everyday life and highlight the need for ecologically valid tests. Participants’ highest priorities for future research were improved awareness of developmental prosopagnosia and interventions to improve their face recognition ability.

link

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I have this condition, but can come to recognize people sort of OK after interacting with them 3-7 times. Two points: 1) many people who have prosopagnosia do not know it; and 2) people with a singular appearance or who wear something distinctive, like the same hat all the time, are much easier for people with DP to recognize. I did not fully understand my own condition until well into middle age, and even then my understanding was not so good. One aspect of this condition I have not seen recognized is it greatly disturbs initial socialization with colleagues, neighbors, or potential friends. For example, my actual, innate internal warmth toward others does not activate on time toward people I have only interacted with a few times. A friendly exchange today somehow has been lost in me a week later when I see that same person again. Even if they tell me who they are and are sympathetic to prosopagnosia, an important piece of human connection has been lost in me; it as if I were talking to them for the first time again. This can easily be misunderstood by the other person as I do not like them or am cold or moody, which I am not. More people are aware of face-blindness than in the past, but the subtle social overtones of the condition—the lag in normal progress toward camaraderie, for example—may not be clear to most, including even those who have this condition. If many of your best friends, whom you took to quickly, have unique features or dress unusually, these may be signs you have DP. ABN

Game theory and interpersonal relations

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Game theory uses models to understand how people interact under predetermined conditions or rules.

The end result of any particular model is called its “equilibrium.” Equilibrium implies no one will change their input if external conditions remain the same.

One way to make a game theory model is to reason backwards from the equilibrium you want. To keep it simple, there are two players.

Let’s say we want an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life. Here is a hypothesis: an equilibrium like that should also result in psychological optimization, psychological well-being for both players.

To achieve that equilibrium, my game model will be based on the following rules:

  1. communication will be as honest as possible
  2. communication will be as clear as possible
  3. all acts of communication (within reason) will be subject to clarification, revision, correction, and explication to the point (within reason) that there is no misunderstanding and whatever ambiguity remains is reduced to its lowest practical level

To do this, players will:

  1. focus on the smallest practical units of communication because error and ambiguity (which often leads to error) frequently begin at this level; this level includes: words, phrases, gestures, tone of voice, expressions, gasps, laughter, grunts, and so on; anything that communicates; all pertinent semiotics
  2. correcting error at the above level, which we will call the micro-level, ensures that small mistakes do not lead to large mistakes; it also teaches players how to correct errors at meso and macro levels of communication
  3. since human minds are limited in what they know and can communicate, and if players are diligent in following the above rules, players will steadily become more familiar with each other; how they speak, hear, think, what their references are, their values, beliefs, and so on
  4. if they continue to maintain these practices, they will build on their mutual familiarity, eventually achieving an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life

I have played this game with my partner for over ten years and can attest that it has worked even better than we had hoped.

Not only have we achieved an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life, but also what we hypothesized has come to pass: this equilibrium has also resulted in what feels to us to be psychological optimization and psychological well-being for both of us.

The rules to our game can be found here: FIML.

Note that initially FIML will upset your normal interpersonal equilibrium, whatever that may be. It cannot be otherwise. Note also that the rules of FIML will help you find or create a much better equilibrium.

If FIML is undertaken in a spirit of exploration, creativity, and fun, it will tend to self-generate or self-catalyze many new insights into your psychologies and how you interact with each other.

The ultimate FIML equilibrium is a dynamic one that keeps both partners open to the dynamic reality of life. With little or no “content” of its own, FIML rules allow partners to adapt to or create any “reality” they want.

Once understood, FIML is pretty much only difficult in the very beginning because in the beginning it will upset your normal interpersonal equilibrium. By doing FIML, you are choosing to change your normal equilibrium to a more efficient one.

Metacognitive clutter

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Metacognitive clutter is stuff that makes higher mental states not work well.

An individual example might be holding a mistaken view of your role in some organization or activity. Your mistaken view causes much of what you are doing to be wrong and to detrimentally entangle other parts of your life.

A national or social example of metacognitive clutter might be the many dumb subjects and shallow statements required of American politicians. See the following for a more detailed analysis: Semiotics in politics and the totalitarianism of PC.

Another area where metacognitive clutter causes a lot of problems is interpersonal relations. If you cannot speak to your SO and/or closest friends from a metacognitive point of view, you sort of don’t really have an SO or close friends.

In this context, metacognition means being able to talk about how you understand each other and why you think, feel, and behave as you do.

Good interpersonal metacognitive communication produces better relationships, happier people, and healthier individual psychologies.

This happens because good communication removes metacognitive clutter, greatly reducing interpersonal mistakes and cognitive entanglements.

I, for one, do not believe you can do really good metacognitive communication without a prior agreement to do that and a technique that reliably works on small details. See this for information on such a technique: How to do FIML.

General discussions on beliefs, biographies, emotions, philosophies, religion, science, and so forth are helpful, even essential, for good metacognitive communication but they cannot by themselves remove the idiosyncratic clutter that has built up in the mind over many years.

Meso and macro level techniques cannot remove micro clutter, especially idiosyncratic micro clutter which we all have a lot of.

Slavery and Colonialism. Are Whites Responsible for the Stagnation of Africa and Blacks in General?

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OpenAI Text Summary

The text presents a controversial perspective on historical narratives surrounding colonialism and slavery, positing that contemporary discussions around these topics are often manipulated to induce guilt among White people. The author claims that this guilt is exploited by various groups, including self-hating Whites, racial minorities, and international financiers, to foster a narrative that undermines the racial identity and survival instinct of the White race. The argument hinges upon the idea that the portrayal of history has been distorted to promote a sense of moral obligation among Whites while dismissing the complexities of historical events, such as slavery and colonialism, which the author claims were not exclusively the result of European actions but involved various actors, including Black Africans themselves.

The text argues that the European slave trade was not a unique or novel development, as it was built upon pre-existing practices wherein African tribes captured and sold one another. The author references historical specialists to support the claim that the demographic impact of the slave trade on Africa was minimal and that contrary to popular belief, the industrial revolutions in Europe were not significantly financed by profits from slavery. Furthermore, it is asserted that many Black individuals were themselves slave owners, and the text points out that a considerable number of White individuals also suffered from forms of slavery, which complicates the narrative of racial oppression. The author suggests that the prevailing discourse surrounding reparations and racial guilt is fundamentally flawed, arguing that contemporary generations should not be held accountable for the sins of their ancestors.

…the forgers of history forget to mention that, like the inter-European trade of White Christians, the European slave trade was a Jewish specialty. The vast majority of slave traders who were not Arabs or Blacks were in fact Jews. They owned the slave ships; the crews and auction brokers were predominantly Jewish, as were a disproportionate number of slave owners, especially in the West Indies, Brazil, and South America. The headquarters of this very lucrative trade were in New Port Rhode Island, which is also the site of the first synagogue in the Western hemisphere. Trading in this human misery was halted on Saturdays to observe the sabbath.

link

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This is not a new topic and readers of this site are probably aware of the basics of it. I have only lightly skimmed the linked article, but is appears to be a good overview of slavery and who did it and why. ABN

FIML and cerebral efficiency

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This article argues that the human brain saves energy by predicting or imagining “reality” more than actually perceiving it: Do Thrifty Brains Make Better Minds? The article argues that this way of using our brains allows us to work more efficiently with complex data or in complex situations.

I think this general premise is pretty well known and agreed on, but the linked article puts it in a new way. The following sentence caught my eye: This… underlines the surprising extent to which the structure of our expectations (both conscious and non-conscious) may quite literally be determining much of what we see, hear and feel.

The article uses visual perception as an example, but the idea applies just as well, and maybe more so, to what we hear in the speech of others. FIML practice works by inserting a new mental skill between the first arising of a (stored) interpretation and its full-blown acceptance as “reality”.

Psychological optimization

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Why settle for not being crazy when you could be going for psychological optimization?

A mental disorder, also called a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a diagnosis of a behavioral or mental pattern that can cause suffering or a poor ability to function in ordinary life.

Why settle for being able to “function in ordinary life” when you could have an extraordinary life?

Why take pills to get by when you could be optimizing your brain?

Humans go for optimization whenever we can. We optimize technology, our diets, our medical treatments, our educations, even our friendships.

Optimization: an act, process, or methodology of making something (as a design, system, or decision) as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible.

Hell yeah. That’s what you want for your mind, your life. Why settle for less?

OK, that does read like a sales spiel, but I will deliver.

All you have to do is put time and thought into the process of optimizing your psychology. An optimized psychology is an optimized brain and life.

First, you have to learn how to do FIML.

This requires about as much time and effort as learning to play a musical instrument at a beginner’s level. About as much time as it takes to learn to drive a car. Or to learn to play pool well enough to enjoy it.

FIML takes less time to learn than a semester at school, whatever grade. Less time than most job-training courses. Less time than becoming a decent amateur cook. Less time than buying a house or redoing your kitchen.

The hardest part about FIML is learning the technique through reading. Start here: How to do FIML.

The second hardest part is having a friend or mate who is willing and able to do it with you. Sadly, this is a deal-breaker for too many people.

I hate saying this, but it is fairly normal for people world-wide not to have a friend who is close enough to do FIML with. This is the result of so many non-optimized psychologies in this world!

Many people have five or more “good friends” and a loving spouse, but not even one of them willing or able to do FIML.

Their excuses will be they can’t understand it, don’t want to bother, don’t want to be that honest, don’t want that kind of relationship, don’t have the time, already are doing it (no, you are not), etc.

The result is they and you will continue to languish in less than optimal mental states. Moods, alcohol, pills, arguments over nothing, ridiculous misunderstandings, ominous silences, severance of ties, and worse will rule your world(s).

For most, the best relief they will find are self-help books based on generalities, career books about “getting ahead” as defined by more generalities, nonsense about “loving yourself,” low levels of religious belief and practice, exercise programs, etc.

You didn’t learn to drive a car that way. Driving a car requires interaction, observation, the help of another person.

Your psychology needs similar kinds of input.

Once you have learned to do FIML with a trustworthy partner, the practice will tend to self-generate because the insights gained will be real and have real and deeply felt benefits for both partners.

Besides the “how to” and FAQ links at the top of this page, most posts on this site describe some aspect of FIML practice.

For psychologists, I honestly do not see how you can claim to be able to treat other people if you have not done at least a few years of FIML practice. Human interactions without any technique for consistent meta-control and understanding (which FIML provides) are 100% guaranteed to be riddled with misunderstanding and wrong views.

Interoception, proprioception, and perception of dynamic mental states

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Interoception means our “perception or sense of internal body states,” including the states of our cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, and thermoregulatory systems among others.

Proprioception means “one’s own” or “ones’ individual” (Latin proprius) “perception.” We normally use this word to refer to our physical position in the world—whether we are standing or sitting, how we are moving, and how much energy we are using.

Both interoception and proprioception generally refer to physical states of the body though, of course, how we interpret those states may involve much more than immediate physical considerations.

Erroneous interoception or the misinterpretation of internal states is is generally thought to be an important contributing factor to many psychological disorders, including anxiety, depression, panic disorder, and more.

Consider some other levels of interoception—our states of mind; our mental impressions of other people and of ourselves; our senses of our own psychologies.

These levels of psychological reality are normally accessed through introspection, meditation, mindfulness, and psychotherapy. All of these methods are good, but each of them lacks ongoing, real-time input from another human being, thus missing the dynamic functioning of the human mind in real-life situations.

FIML corrects this problem by providing objective, dynamic access to real-time psychological functioning. FIML is a method or tool for optimizing human psychology by honing our perceptions of our mental states as they actually function in real-world situations.

Motivated reasoning, speaking to effect

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Motivated reasoning means reasoning to gain. Speaking to effect means speaking to cause something.

Both are the most common forms of thought and speech for all people with few exceptions.

Speaking to effect and motivated reasoning maintain personas.

Because it is difficult to tell truths and because trying to do so brings calamity, we don’t. We narrow thought instead; our voices dull faceless muffled sounds with no meaning.

This is the tone and timbre of samsara, the feeling of group delusion, the Suffering of the First Noble Truth.

NASA astronaut finds God after returning to Earth: Reid Wiseman breaks down in tears after seeing a cross – as he claims ‘it’s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through’

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The Artemis II commander, who says he is ‘not religious’, was reflecting on his mammoth mission to space during a press conference yesterday.

One reporter asked the crew whether they had experienced any shift in consciousness following their 10–day journey to the dark side of the lunar surface.

Wiseman confirmed he had, referencing a moment that occurred after the team were picked up by the US Navy following their splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

‘I’m not really a religious person but there was no other avenue for me to explain anything or experience anything,’ he said.

‘So I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come visit us for a minute. When that man walked in – I’d never met him before in my life – but I saw the cross on his collar and I just broke down in tears.’

Wiseman said it’s ‘very hard to fully grasp what we just went through’ and in the week since the astronauts came back, they have not had time to process their experience.

‘It was other–worldly and it was amazing,’ he said.

link

Indeterminacy of translation and FIML

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I betray my poor education by admitting that I had never heard of W. V. Quine’s “indeterminacy of translation” until last week1. My ignorance is especially egregious as I have worked as a professional translator for many years.

Maybe I had heard about it but had forgotten. I am being self-reflective because FIML practice is deeply, fundamentally concerned with the “indeterminacy” of translating one person’s thoughts into another person’s head.

Quine’s thesis is not just about translating from one language to another, though there is that. It is much more about the fundamental impossibility of determining what anything means well enough to “translate” it into another context, a next sentence, into another person’s mind, or even “translating” your own speech from the past into the context of your mind today.

If I had known about Quine, I probably never would have thought of FIML because his ideas and the slews of papers written on “indeterminacy of translation” surely would have made me believe that the subject had been worked through.

As it was, I have plodded along in a delightful state of ignorance and, due to that, maybe added something practical to the subject.

In the first place, I wholeheartedly believe that speech is filled with indeterminacy, which I have generally called ambiguity or uncertainty. In the second place, I have confined my FIML-related investigations mainly to interpersonal speech between partners who care about each other. I see no solution to the more general problem of indeterminacy within groups, subcultures, or linguistic communities. Until brain scans get much better, large groups will be forced to resort to hierarchical “determinacy” to exist or function at all.

For individuals, though, there is much we can do. FIML practice does not remove all “indeterminacy.” Rather, it removes much more than most people are aware is possible, even remotely aware is possible. My guess is FIML communication provides a level of detail and resolution that is an order of magnitude or two better than non-FIML.

That is a huge improvement. It is life-changing on many levels and extremely satisfying.

FIML does not fix everything—and philosophical or “artistic” differences between partners are still possible—but it does fix a great deal. By clearing up interpersonal micro-indeterminacy again and again, FIML practice frees partners from the inevitable macro-problems that micro-ambiguity inevitably causes.

Moreover, this freedom, in turn, frees partners from a great deal of subconscious adhesion to the hierarchical “determinacy” of whichever culture they are part of. Rather than trapping themselves in a state of helpless acceptance of predefined hierarchical “meaning,” FIML partners have the capacity to sort through existential semiotics and make of them what they will with far less “indeterminacy,” or ambiguity, than had been possible without FIML practice.

  1. first posted DECEMBER 7, 2014 ↩︎

UPDATE: Both indeterminacy of translation and FIML fit with Buddhism very well. The core Buddhist concepts of impermanence, emptiness, and no-self (or intrinsic self-nature) are in the same philosophical region as indeterminacy of translation and FIML. Indeterminacy provides a philosophical grounding for the emptiness, impermanence, and no-intrinsic-self nature of anything within the human realm. FIML addresses this overall area of indeterminacy/ emptiness with a technique which greatly improves resolution of what is indeterminable. As empty humans we are agglomerations of indeterminable thought and action, more or less floating in a thick Bayesian mist of probabilities which are likewise indeterminable, impermanent, and empty of intrinsic self-nature. ABN