Tag: psychology

What limits speech? In a word: Fear

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If we consider speech with only one listener and look firstly at the micro level, we find it is fear of wrong word choice, wrong gesture, expression, demeanor, or tone of voice that limits our speech because a misstep with any one of these may transgress interpersonal limits.

At the meso level, it is either fear of offending or embarrassing (our understanding of) the “personality” of our listener or the fear of an actual flareup from our listener.

At the macro level, it is the fear of introducing a largish idea with sociological or career implications that might disturb, embarrass, or anger our one listener.

With two or more listeners, the analysis is much the same though the numbers of people make it more complex, until we get to so many people we are speaking to an audience. Then it becomes simpler in some ways because the micro and meso levels will be less prominent due to distance between speaker and audience and there being no clear single target of our tone of voice or phraseology.

On the other hand, an audience’s response can be more complex and problematic because more than one person can become angry at us.

Human beings thus are stuck in a game that is controlled by how most of us listen most of the time.

Stated differently, human beings have magnificent speech and communicative capabilities, but rarely get to use them to their full, best effect because one or more of the many speech limits outlined above will cause us either to hold our tongues or else risk creating a disruption in the mind(s) of our listeners.

This seems like a Big Problem to me. I do not want to spend my life constrained by those rules. FIML can help us overcome this problem but even FIML cannot do it all.

We must also recognize that our very comprehension of meaning itself is grounded in fear.

Incidentally, this is a main area where I have some disagreement with traditional Buddhist practice which tends to put the onus of right speech too much on the speaker.

This makes sense in many contexts but in many other contexts it can cause speakers to withhold or be timid when they should not.

Or it can cause listeners to believe that speakers must always keep in mind their weaknesses and that they (listeners) are being entirely proper when they misinterpret or mis-react to someone’s speech. This kind of thinking too often leads to overly emotional responses, a greatly reduced scope of discussable topics, and an overall pettiness that constrains everyone.

Placing the onus for right speech always on the speaker and never requiring right mindfulness of the listener leads to a kind of hierarchy of speech or a totalitarian view of what is right and wrong to say.

In the world today, we can clearly see how speech is constrained in this way through censorship, shadow-banning, muting, shaming, deplatforming, cancelling and more with almost no good purpose ever being served except elitist control of the masses.

At interpersonal levels, our speech is too often limited by the narcissistic sensibilities of listeners or what we fear those sensibilities might be. None of this is optimal good speech.

In Buddhism we want to optimize speech, thought, mindfulness, and listening. It is good to be mindful of what we say, when we say it, and to whom. But it is not good to always tread in fear every time you open your mouth.

Idiolects and idiotics

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An idiolect is the “dialect” of one person. It is unique to that person. We all speak an idiolect unique to us. No one else speaks in exactly the same way as you do. In fact, the varieties of idolects among speakers of even the same dialect can be quite pronounced, to say nothing of speakers who have been acculturated to different dialects.

Virtually, the same thing is true for our use and understanding of semiotics. Each one of us has a unique tangle of semiotics even if we share the same culture. Even if two people were born and raised in the same very strict cult, they will have different takes on their “shared” semiotics; they will see thier semiotics in individual and unique ways.

The term “idiolect” is a blend of the prefix idio, which means “own, personal, distinct to the individual” and the suffix lect, which is taken from the word “dialect.”

In that spirit, I want to coin the term “idiotics” to mean “the semiotics unique to one person.” Each and every one of us has a very complex idiotics.

It is profoundly important to know this and to understand it deeply.

We can talk at length about the generalities of our idiotics and profit from discussions like that. But we will never fully grasp what our idiotics do, how they function, and when they come into play unless we tackle them the moment they arise.

This is so because idiotics are very complex, with many parts bonded and tangled together in unique ways. The only time we can really get anything approaching an objective view of them is when they arise as small bits within real-life conversations. We can only see them when they function in the moment, when they touch our emotions in the moment, when they determine how we hear, speak, or respond in the moment.

General discussions lead away from idiotics because general discussion by their very natures (being general) are not unique to the individual. By definition, generalities are not idiotics.

This is one reason it is possible (indeed, common, I believe) for individuals to feel horribly lonely while in the company of other people. Or to feel horribly lonely when trying to explain yourself as you get more and more lost in generalities.

If you are never able to deal with, contend with, analyze, or remark upon you or your partner’s idiotics, you will have a bad time.

FIML practice works because it works with idiotics. Ironically, working with your own and your partner’s idiotics will make you much smarter.

Speech pathology

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An insidious and common kind of speech pathology is having more in your imagination than you are allowed to say.

What prevents you from speaking may be cultural. Or it may be a lack of skill, which in this case is almost certainly due to being in a culture that does not train its members to do this.

I would hypothesize that a person’s degree of emotional/psychological suffering scales very closely to the degree that they are not able to speak about what is in their imagination.

Some people kill their imaginations to save themselves the trouble of feeling bad. This is what alcohol addiction, and some other drugs, can accomplish. This is also what is accomplished by becoming subservient to the conventions of a culture that proscribes or inhibits speech that might free its members from the suffering described above.

As far as I can tell, there is no large or major culture anywhere in the world that allows its members speech to match their imaginations.

Imaginative speech in art is mostly OK in most cultures. But interpersonal imaginings not so much.

If you imagine anyone in any way, especially in a way that is painful to you, but you cannot speak about it to them, you have this speech pathology, or your culture does. If the person you are imagining is just an acquaintance or transactional friend, this does not matter too much, though it is not an ideal situation.

If the person you are imagining is your primary interlocutor, you have a serious speech pathology.

Psychological disorders shift throughout life, defying easy categorization

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It has long been known that the more severe a mental disorder is, the greater the variety of symptoms it will manifest.  A newish study based on longitudinal data shows that virtually all psychological disorders shift throughout life, rarely maintaining the same diagnosis.

“Better than any particular diagnosis, three parameters described each person’s mental health over their life: (a) age of onset, (b) duration of symptom history, and (c) number of different kinds of comorbid disorder symptoms. People with younger onset of symptoms, more years with symptoms, and more different kinds of symptoms tended to be the same people. These people also had more indicators of poor brain health at age 3, steeper child-to-adult cognitive decline, and older brain-age on structural MRI at midlife,” Caspi explained.

“This finding cautions against over-reliance on etiological theories, research hypotheses, and clinical protocols that are specific to one diagnosis. Studying disorders one at a time does not accurately represent most patients’ lived experience of shifting across disorder families.”

“Studying one disorder may mislead about specificity and hide transdiagnostic discoveries from view. There is a need for measurement instruments that capture shared liability to shifting disorders across the life course in order to make discoveries more efficiently. There is also a need to develop transdiagnostic treatments that can prevent many different conditions,” Caspi said. (New psychology study finds people typically experience shifting mental disorders over their lifespan)

IMO, if we base our understanding of human psychology—including disordered psychology—on signals, the problem of wavering diagnoses becomes clearer.

A complex signal system once disordered cannot be expected to maintain a homeostasis of “disorderedness.”

Stress limits speech so much, the obvious is often shrouded

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

Historically, in most if not all, cultures, the inherent stress of speaking has been dealt with by forming hierarchies which define what kinds of speech are acceptable.

Every culture I know of still does this still today, including small subcultures wherever you find them.

Mind control, which is a covert hierarchy of dominant definitions, functions most of all by tagging words and concepts as stressful or not.

No culture anywhere throughout all of history has ever discovered the FIML technique due to the ubiquitous human fear of stressful speech.

Once you get the hang of it, FIML is the opposite of stressful. FIML removes speech stress at its most basic level.

That’s also why it is hard to see and do FIML at first. ABN

Fourth wave cognitive behavior therapy

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The third wave of cognitive behavior therapy is a general term for a group of psychotherapies that arose in the 1980s, inspired by acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).

To me, third wave therapies seem more realistic than older therapies because they accept emotions as they are and pay close attention to how they function in the moment.

The link above is well-worth reading. The frames of these therapies are also well-worth considering.

FIML, which I am calling a “fourth wave cognitive behavior therapy,” differs from third wave therapies in that FIML does not use a professional therapist. Instead, partners become their own therapists.

Moreover, how FIML partners frame their psychologies or generalize their behaviors is entirely up to them. Similarly, their psychological goals and definitions are entirely in their own hands.

At its most basic, FIML “removes wrong interpretations of interpersonal signs and symbols from the brain’s semiotic networks.”

This process of removal, in turn, shows partners how their minds function in real-time real-world situations. And this in turn provides the tools and perspectives to reorganize their psychologies in whichever ways they like.

FIML is based on semiotics because semiotics are specific and with practice can be clearly identified and understood. They give partners “solid ground” to stand on. Words, tone of voice, gestures, and facial expressions are some of the major semiotics partners analyze.

Using real-world semiotics as an analytical basis frees FIML from predetermined frameworks about personality or what human psychology even is. With the FIML tool, partners are free to discover whatever they can about how their minds communicate interpersonally (and internally) and do whatever they like with that.

Semiotics for Beginners

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This essay by Daniel Chandler is good introduction to semiotics and a good way to help readers better understand how we are using the term on this site. I highly recommend the essay for anyone interested in thought, culture, language, or psychology. But it will be especially useful for Buddhists because having some idea of what semiotics is all about can be a great help in understanding many of the teachings of the Buddha. The deep significance of fundamental Buddhist concepts like emptiness and dependent origination may become clearer and more useful when viewed from a semiotic point of view.

Buddhists might also take note that semiotics is difficult to define and/or get a grasp of and in this resembles some of the more abstract or philosophical teachings of the Buddhist tradition, particularly the work of Nagarjuna. Semiotics is the study of meaning, how we communicate it and what it is. Buddhism, one might say, is the study of how meaning pertains to the self, or the illusion of the self, and how our perceptions of the world around us are built out of a welter of ever-changing codependent meanings–semiotics.

We use the term semiotics on this site because it greatly facilitates our discussions of FIML practice. Terms like semiotics, emptiness, dependent origination, and so on were not created to make subjects obscure but rather to clarify them.

Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice

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By analyzing minute emotional reactions in real-time during normal conversation, FIML practice disrupts the consolidation, or more often the reconsolidation, of “neurotic” responses.

In FIML, a neurotic response is defined as “an emotional response based on a misinterpretation.” The misinterpretation in question can be incipient (just starting) to long-standing (been a habit for years).

The response is disrupted by FIML practice and, thus, tends not to consolidate or reconsolidate, especially after several instances of learning that it is not valid.

A neurotic response is a response based on memory. The following study on fear memories supports the above explanation of FIML practice.

Memories become labile when recalled. In humans and rodents alike, reactivated fear memories can be attenuated by disrupting reconsolidation with extinction training. Using functional brain imaging, we found that, after a conditioned fear memory was formed, reactivation and reconsolidation left a memory trace in the basolateral amygdala that predicted subsequent fear expression and was tightly coupled to activity in the fear circuit of the brain. In contrast, reactivation followed by disrupted reconsolidation suppressed fear, abolished the memory trace, and attenuated fear-circuit connectivity. Thus, as previously demonstrated in rodents, fear memory suppression resulting from behavioral disruption of reconsolidation is amygdala-dependent also in humans, which supports an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism.

~Disruption of Reconsolidation Erases a Fear Memory Trace in the Human Amygdala

FIML practice works by partners consciously and cooperatively disrupting reconsolidation (and initial consolidation) of neurotic memory (and associated behaviors). FIML both extirpates habitual neurotic responses and also prevents the formation of new neurotic responses through conscious disruption of memory consolidation.

FIML probably works as well as it does because humans have “an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism” that favors more truth. Obvious examples of this update mechanism can be seen in many simple mistakes. For instance, if you think the capital of New York State is New York City and someone shows that it is Albany, you will likely correct your mistake immediately with little or no fuss.

Since FIML focuses on small mistakes made between partners, corrections are rarely more difficult than the above example though they may be accompanied by a greater sense of relief. For example, if you thought that maybe your partner was mad at you but then find (through a FIML query) that they are not, your sense of relief may be considerable.

FIML and sociotics

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The term idiotics means “the idiosyncratic agglomeration of the semiotics of a single individual.”

An individual’s idiotics indicates the agglomeration of public and private semiotics that comprise the unique signaling system of their mind; this signaling system is what we normally call a person’s mind.

Each individual brain has an idiotics that is unique to it. The signaling system that employs and organizes this unique idiotics works internally within the individual and externally as a system that signals to other people.

Problems in signaling—both internal and external problems—occur when the signaling systems of two (or more) people are not in good accord. That is, when two (or more) people misunderstand the signals they are sending to each other or the signals being sent to them. Obviously, mistakes in signaling can and frequently do compound, or snowball, leading to very large errors.

To control for error, human beings have probably evolved master semiotics that provide general ways for people to comprehend (pretty badly or well-enough, depending on your perspective) the signaling of other people.

Let’s call these general semiotic categories that allow for crude comprehension between people sociotics.

Sociotics is a compound of the words sociology and semiotics. It means the “public semiotics,” or socially agreed upon and accepted semiotics, of just about any group you can think of.

Most sociotics is emotional. A good deal of it is very emotional. The beliefs of a religion, the stories of an ethnic group, the values of a community can be extremely emotional.

In this respect, a great deal of sociotics binds very deeply with human emotion to form an intoxicating blend of meaning and feeling.

Most people do not see any choice but to adopt a sociotics. Without one, they feel lost, empty, undefined. Even the sociotics of science can be very emotional, to say nothing of the sociotics of political, gender, or ethnic identities.

FIML partners will surely find that their idiotics have strong sociotic components. Rather than accept their inherited and often mindless and emotional sociotics, partners would do well to analyze them and transfer their emotional allegiance away from them and toward rational bonding with each other based on FIML principles.

FIML has much greater power to organize the sociotics and idiotics of FIML partners than does any other traditional communication system. This is so because FIML practice provides a means for partners to understand each other without resorting to thoughtless extrinsic sociotic categories for mutual definition. FIML practice helps partners form wholesome bonds with each other without becoming entangled in the emotional and irrational sociotics of large groups.

Another way to say this is FIML is a sort of “operating system” for the mind/brain, while sociotics are broadly shared public references that are fairly static and not too complex.

Ideally, good scientific practice is also an operating system rather than a static sociotic. The scientific method deeply informs FIML practice, but since FIML is an interpersonal operating system, it cannot be the same as science. FIML can be investigated by the scientific method and it can be confirmed or falsified by the scientific method, but this is not strictly (in the sense of formal science) the job of FIML partners. FIML partners, however, if they are doing FIML correctly, are engaged in a practice that is fundamentally rational and objective and that removes mistakes from partners’ signaling systems, including sociotic mistakes.

Dissociation in FIML practice

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In the field of neuropsychology, the term dissociation is used to describe various ways of identifying the neural substrate of specific brain functions.

One way this is done is by studying “lesions,” or damaged areas, in people’s brains and figuring out how that damage affects such functions as perception, speech, memory, vision, and so on.

Neuroimaging is another method for observing particular brain regions and thus “dissociating” them from the larger brain system in order to understand their unique functions.

While FIML practice does not rely on lesions in the brain and has not (yet) been studied in an fMRI machine, it does employ a kind of dissociation.

When a FIML partner stops a conversation and makes a query, the partner being questioned is essentially being asked to dissociate a few moments of communication from the large welter of brain function that had been going on before the query.

By isolating, or dissociating, that small segment of communication, both partners gain insight into how they express themselves and how they interpret what they are hearing or perceiving.

Seeing many dissociated segments of communication teaches partners that their communication is frequently more random, ambiguous, misleading, and just plain wrong than they had realized prior to doing FIML practice.

Dissociation in FIML practice also teaches partners how to sharpen their overall communication by frequently adjusting and fine-tuning small segments of it through FIML queries and follow-up discussions.

I can imagine more advanced neuroimaging devices than we have today showing what part of the brain is being used to do the “macro-perception” required by a FIML query. I hope that a more advanced device will also show how small mistakes in communication can often lead to very large mistakes in mutual understanding.

Ideally, an advanced neuroimaging device would dissociate the initial error in both partners’ brains and show how that error then quickly spreads chemically and neurologically throughout their brains.

For now, all we have is shared self-reporting between FIML partners, but this is still a very large improvement over not doing FIML at all. By clearing up many micro-errors in communication, FIML practice also greatly improves macro-functionality of the brain.

An important reason we punish crime is to deter others from doing it, including copycats

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After Lindsay Clancy killed her three children:

  • Marisol Vázquez suffocated her 21-month-old daughter in Chicago.
  • Wilma Medina stabbed her 9-year-old son in the neck, killing him.
  • Oninda Romelus shot her four children in a car in Texas, killing her 13-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.
  • Naikishia Williams fatally stomped her 7-year-old daughter in Riviera Beach, Florida.
  • Irene Whitehead of Cedar Springs, Michigan, suffocated her 2-year-old daughter.
  • Cynthia Robinson of Chester, Pennsylvania, fatally beat her 20-month-old son.
  • Ashlee Buzzard of California shot her 9-year-old daughter Melodee to death and buried her remains in Utah.
  • Monika Rubacha of Lakewood Ranch, Florida, killed her two children, ages 11 and 14, in a murder-suicide while her husband was away for work.
  • Janette MacAusland of Wellesley, Massachusetts, murdered her 7-year-old son Kai and 6-year-old daughter Ella.
  • Marlene Vidal of San Antonio, Texas, set fire to her SUV with her two children, ages 5 and 6, inside.
  • Sarah Myers of Mechanicsville, New York, poisoned and killed her four children before killing herself.
  • Kailey Erhart of Mandan, North Dakota, murdered her 3-year-old and 5-month-old children and injured her third child.
  • Corie Walsh, a Lindsay Clancy fan, strangled her 2-year-old son to death.

link

A theory of FIML

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FIML is both a practice and a theory. The practice  is roughly described here and in other posts on this website.

The theory states (also roughly) that successful practice of FIML will:

  • Greatly improve communication between participating partners
  • Greatly reduce or eliminate mistaken interpretations (neuroses) between partners
  • Give partners insights into the dynamic structures of their personalities
  • Lead to much greater appreciation of the dynamic linguistic/communicative nature of the personality

These results are achieved because:

  • FIML practice is based on real data agreed upon by both partners
  • FIML practice stops neurotic responses before they get out of control
  • FIML practice allows both partners to understand each other’s neuroses while eliminating them
  • FIML practice establishes a shared objective standard between partners
  • This standard can be checked, confirmed, changed, or upgraded as often as is needed

FIML practice will also:

  • Show partners how their personalities function while alone and together
  • Lead to a much greater appreciation of how mistaken interpretations that occur at discreet times can and often do lead to (or reveal) ongoing mistaken interpretations (neuroses)

FIML practice eliminates neuroses because it shows individuals, through real data, that their (neurotic) interpretation(s) of their partner are mistaken. This reduction of neurosis between partners probably will be generalizable to other situations and people, thus resulting a less neurotic individual overall.

Neurosis is defined here to mean a mistaken interpretation or an ongoing mistaken interpretation.

The theory of FIML can be falsified or shown to be wrong by having a reasonably large number of suitable people learn FIML practice, do it and fail to gain the aforementioned results.

FIML practice will not be suitable for everyone. It requires that partners have a strong interest in each other; a strong sense of caring for each other; an interest in language and communication; the ability to see themselves objectively; the ability to view their use of language objectively; fairly good self-control; enough time to do the practice regularly.

Wolfram’s ‘computational irreducibility’ explains FIML perfectly

[In mathematics, a ‘computation’ is the process of performing mathematical operations on one or more inputs to produce a desired output. A problem in analyzing human psychology arises when we understand that human psychology cannot be reduced computationally. The ‘computational irreducibility’ of human psychology does not mean, however, that there is no way to probe it and understand it. In the following essay, I show how FIML practice can greatly enhance our understanding of our own psychologies and, by extension, the psychologies of others.

Rather than rely on tautological data extractions or vague theories about human psychology, FIML focuses on small interpersonal exchanges that can be objectively agreed upon by at least two people. These small exchanges correspond to what Wolfram calls ‘specific little pieces of computational reducibility’. When we repeatedly view our psychologies from the point of view of specific little pieces of computational reducibility, we begin amassing a profoundly telling collection of very good data that shows how we really think, speak, and act.]

FIML is a method of inquiry that deals with the computational irreducibility of humans. It does this by isolating small incidents and asking questions about them. These small incidents are the “little pieces of computational reducibility” that Stephan Wolfram remarks on at 42:22 in this video. Here is the full quote:

One of the necessary consequences of computational irreducibility is within a computationally irreducible system there will always be an infinite number of specific little pieces of computational reducibility that you can find.

42.22 in this video

This is exactly what FIML practice does again and again—it finds “specific little pieces of computational reducibility” and learns all it can about them.

In FIML practice, two humans in real-time, real-world situations agree to isolate and focus on one “specific little piece of computational reducibility” and from that gain a deeper understanding of the whole “computationally irreducible system”, which is them.

When two humans do this hundreds of times, their grasp and appreciation of the “computationally irreducible system” which is them, both together and individually, increases dramatically. This growing grasp and understanding of their shared computationally irreducible system upgrades or replaces most previously learned cognitive categories about their lives, or psychologies, or how they think about themselves or other humans.

By focusing on many small bits of communicative information, FIML partners improve all aspects of their human minds.

I do not believe any computer will ever be able to do FIML. Robots and brain scans may help with it but they will not be able to replace it. In the not too distant future, FIML may be the only profound thing humans will both need to and be able to do on their own without the use of AI. To understand ourselves deeply and enjoy being human, we will have to do FIML. In this sense, FIML may be our most important human answer to the AI civilization growing around us. ABN

Speech comprehension and context

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A new study on speech comprehension shows that humans respond to the “contextual semantic content of each word in a relatively time-locked fashion.”

These findings demonstrate that, when successfully comprehending natural speech, the human brain responds to the contextual semantic content of each word in a relatively time-locked fashion. (source)

This process is roughly illustrated here:

Figure 1 Regularized Regression Analysis for Estimating an Electrophysiological Correlate of Semantic Dissimilarity to Natural Speech

While I do not doubt these findings for simple speech in simple contexts, I do wonder what the results would be for speech in psychologically complex contexts, whether that speech is simple or not.

I wonder this because I am certain that in almost all psychologically complex contexts (those rich with subjectivity, emotion, idiosyncratic memory or association, etc.) the “contextual semantic content of each word” will necessarily be different, often very different for each speaker.

Psychologically rich interpersonal speech is almost always fraught with contextual differences that can be very large. Sometimes participants know these differences exist and sometimes they don’t. It is very common for speakers to make major mistakes in this area, the most important area of speech for human psychological well-being.

It seems possible that EEG with increased sensitivity might one day be able to detect “context diversion” between speakers, but even if complex emotional information is also included, people will still have to talk about what is diverging from what.

My comments are not meant to detract from the very interesting findings posted above. I make them because these findings illustrate how inherently problematic real-time mutual comprehension of the “contextual semantic content” of all spoken words actually is.

FIML practice is the only way I know of today to find profound real-time mutual comprehension of complex interpersonal speech.

The 1950s had some drawbacks (mainly because they had fewer technological and medical advancements), but there were so many advantages to growing up in the 50s vs today:

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  • Dramatically lower obesity rates; far more natural physical activity and whole-food diets.
  • Minimal routine psychiatric drug use (especially in children). Much less anxiety and depression.
  • Much lighter childhood vaccine schedule with fewer cumulative exposures.
  • Median home price was ~2-3x annual income (vs. 5-10x+ today). Single moderate income often supported a family and homeownership.
  • Much lower divorce rates, far less fatherlessness, and more stable two-parent households.
  • No porn, social media, or excessive childhood screen time meant young people developed stronger social skills, less isolation/anxiety.
  • Significantly lower violent crime and homicide rates.
  • More unsupervised outdoor play for children, less helicopter parenting and institutional oversight.
  • No 24/7 news doom cycle, algorithmic polarization, or constant digital comparison. Slower, more community-oriented life.
  • Stronger community ties and shared cultural norms. Minimal non-white immigration.
  • Chemical & Environmental Exposure: Minimal microplastics, phthalates, BPA, and other “forever chemicals”
  • Lower overall synthetic pollutant load in food, water, and air.
  • Water & Additives: No widespread water fluoridation in most places yet.

link

Had a conversation this afternoon and, at one point, said, ‘One reason people hate boomers today is life was so good in the fifties.’ Boomers are also hated because it’s normal for many young people to dislike old people. Then, ofc, the hate also comes from so many boomers having ruined USA by not noticing what was happening to it — the price of innocence. ABN