We desperately need 'The Semantics of the Information Elements,' and I need to (synonym for "look at, with my eyes") 'negative semantic themes'

[Nico1e]

(*RANT! omg, wtf??? This thing is AUTOMATICALLY filling in the word 'see' in the 'tags' section, and THEN it has the GALL to tell me, 'Tags cannot be overly common words (see).' And I am not capable of telling it to stop automatically writing the word 'see' in the 'tags' section!!! It's doing that because the title of my thread contains the word 'see' and it thinks I'm referring to the SEE type. In order to post this thread at all, I have to rewrite the thread title so that it does not contain the word SEE!*)

I just had a huge insight.

Negative semantic themes.

The reason why the theme of 'comfort' doesn't resonate with me, as a Si base type, is because I am not comfortable. Si is described as having to do with 'comfort.' When I see the word 'comfort,' I imagine a happy, smiling person fluffing up their pillows, and settling down into them with a deep sigh. Wouldn't that be nice?

Alas, I do not resonate with this.

Oh, but we're supposed to automatically understand that the word 'comfort' implies 'degrees of comfortableness,' including discomfort? But we don't see all the implications behind every word. An intuitive type might be able to look at a word and see that it has a bunch of implications behind it. But we sensors need to see all the examples listed out in detail.

If the description said that a Si type complained about discomfort, and then it went into detail about all the various types of discomfort we might complain about, we might resonate with that description more. Many people are not happy and comfortable, and when they see the mental image of the comfy person settling into their pillows with a happy smile on their face, they think, 'That's not me.'

So we need more themes in the semantics of the information elements. We need to show the dark sides of every theme. If there is a theme of comfort, there are themes of discomfort as well. It turns out that the semantics page (the one that's on socionics.us, the page that talks about the book) didn't list every single word that was written in the Russian book, but instead, it only listed the most general top-level categories. Perhaps in the book, there were indeed those negative themes that would seem more familiar to those of us who aren't running around with big happy smiles on our faces all the time.

Intuitives can see the implications in a general word. Sensors usually cannot. On top of that, it's even worse if you are a sensing-emotional type, and you have to not only understand the detailed specific implications of the words, but also, you have to logically argue that you fit into a particular category and not some other category, and you have to fight for that argument - if you're an SF type, that's very difficult and unnatural. We can't expect SF types to automatically see the meanings behind all the words and then argue logically which type they belong to.

So SF types are having a hard time deciding which category they go into.

I don't like the Myers-Briggs, Keirsey, or 'JCF' (Jungian Cognitive Functions) as much as I used to. However, the good thing about them is that they have a lot of resources written in English. You can read a wide variety of descriptions of the 16 types, written by many different people. I resonate well with descriptions of the ISTP that talk about specific jobs they might work in, for instance. What? We're not supposed to be specific? It's best to be general, abstract, compact, and high-density in our descriptions? But we can't see ourselves in those - the words are meaningless. I like to read descriptions that contain specific things that these types have been seen doing.

I particularly liked a web page where it listed a bunch of different real-world jobs, and it listed which personality types they had found doing those jobs.

Anyway, that is my idea for today: try to expand the words that are too general and abstract, into words that are specific and concrete. If there is a positive-sounding semantic theme, then show the negative side of it as well. I'd resonate better with the Si description if it didn't merely say 'comfort and health,' but said every nuance of those things, like 'sick,' 'cold,' 'pain,' etc, etc, etc.

They need to show which word themes go with which blocked-together elements. Alpha SF's Fe isn't the same as Beta NF's Fe. To an alpha SF, the forest might feel 'spooky,' and that is one example of the type of Fe themes they have. (And I cannot possibly do this justice, so forgive my lame description.) It can be a feeling associated with a physical location. To a beta NF, Fe is something different that I will have a hard time describing, but it's like Steve Jobs talking about the universal human condition, how we all are going to die someday. They are not going to have the same experience of Fe. The words that they use to express Fe will not be exactly the same words.

We need 'The Semantics of the Information Elements' written again in English. We need that experiment to be done again. It doesn't have to be set up exactly the same way - in fact, if the experiment were done differently, we could harvest different information from it. I'd like to see what would happen if they assumed that the IM elements are blocked together by quadra, instead of mixing the quadras together the way that they did (from what I read about the experiment, it looks like they took all the types who had a particular element in their ego block, which means they would have had, for instance, alpha Si in the same group as Delta Si). Maybe that's not necessary - maybe the effect of quadras isn't as strong as I think it is - maybe they really do use the same words for an IM element no matter which quadra they are in.

Anyway, I also think they could have extracted more and more and more themes from each IM element. Not much has been translated into English, and the book probably has a ton of extremely valuable stuff that they discovered. I'd like to see that book. I think it would be very helpful - that's an understatement - I think it's a gold mine. It would be so useful to help people recognize the types, and recognize themselves. Here's a huge, enormous, gigantic, detailed word list. Do you tend to use the words in this list when you're writing and talking? Is there a particular list of words that you strongly avoid using? Is there a list of words that you just can't even understand, and you don't even know what those words mean? All of those things would help us decide what type someone is, and what they are not, and what positions those elements are in, in their functions.

So... somebody get a hold of that book, and then start scanning it into a pdf file for me.

enough for now.

[DividedsGhost]

the information elements are abstract though. they dont exactly exist. you would be buying into someone's interpretation of them that might not reflect best the nature of the human psyche. it's probably best to accept them for what they represent in the conceptual form. the following is the best i have to describing that.

extroversion - you impress onto the world
introversion - the world impresses onto you

intuition - indirect perception with the world
sensation - direct perception with the world

feeling - personal value
thinking - impersonal value

for example
extroverted intuition = impressing your perception indirectly onto the world
*suggestively influencing //this is quite different than what socionics preaches and something that kind of bugs me a bit
extroverted sensation = impressing your perception directly onto the world
*assertively influencing
vs
introverted intuition = the world impresses onto you indirectly
*passive reflection
introverted sensation = the world impresses onto you directly
*passive immersion
etc.

does that seem confusing though?

[Exodus]

Ah yes, great idea as per the negatives, this trips people up sometimes. has just as much to do with expressing anger and sadness as happiness and bubbliness. And types can be prone to complain or be picky about physical sensations more than the average human.

Feel free to add all these words to http://www.wikisocion.org/en/index.php?title=Vocabulary. That's the English-speaking version of the Semantics project. I put a lot of time into the page before the database crash and will probably attempt to rebuild/revisit it someday.

As for quadra differences, can you give an example? The more I investigate the semantics the more I believe that there is a clear separation between the semantics of blocked elements, even when they are/must be used together.

[Exodus]

the information elements are abstract though. they dont exactly exist. you would be buying into someone's interpretation of them that might not reflect best the nature of the human psyche. it's probably best to accept them for what they represent in the conceptual form. the following is the best i have to describing that.

extroversion - you impress onto the world
introversion - the world impresses onto you

intuition - indirect perception with the world
sensation - direct perception with the world

feeling - personal value
thinking - impersonal value

for example
extroverted intuition = impressing your perception indirectly onto the world
*suggestively influencing //this is quite different than what socionics preaches and something that kind of bugs me a bit
extroverted sensation = impressing your perception directly onto the world
*assertively influencing
vs
introverted intuition = the world impresses onto you indirectly
*passive reflection
introverted sensation = the world impresses onto you directly
*passive immersion
etc.

does that seem confusing though?

Yeah, IMO these are way too abstract and do not give a very clear picture of the information elements: "impressing your perception indirectly onto the world" - how can I impress my "perception" on something? And what's the difference between direct and indirect in this context? There is a lot to flesh out here.

[DividedsGhost]

the information elements are abstract though. they dont exactly exist. you would be buying into someone's interpretation of them that might not reflect best the nature of the human psyche. it's probably best to accept them for what they represent in the conceptual form. the following is the best i have to describing that.

extroversion - you impress onto the world
introversion - the world impresses onto you

intuition - indirect perception with the world
sensation - direct perception with the world

feeling - personal value
thinking - impersonal value

for example
extroverted intuition = impressing your perception indirectly onto the world
*suggestively influencing //this is quite different than what socionics preaches and something that kind of bugs me a bit
extroverted sensation = impressing your perception directly onto the world
*assertively influencing
vs
introverted intuition = the world impresses onto you indirectly
*passive reflection
introverted sensation = the world impresses onto you directly
*passive immersion
etc.

does that seem confusing though?

Yeah, IMO these are way too abstract and do not give a very clear picture of the information elements: "impressing your perception indirectly onto the world" - how can I impress my "perception" on something? And what's the difference between direct and indirect in this context? There is a lot to flesh out here.

i see. it's supposed to be the difference in changing from a role of inertia or exertion. impressing is exerting. you can't exert if your being passive (inertia). it's fits perfectly with the temperaments.

mainly though, im not suggesting that that replace fleshing out IEs, but that it should be good to have basic mathematical definitions to keep interpretations from getting way out of line. saying for example that Ne is novelty or ideas is hugely missing the point in lieu of its mathematically fundamental nature in relation to all the other functions. The 8 functions reflect each other through their dimensions (intuition, sensation, feeling, and thinking) of cognition. for the idea of 16 types to be reasonable, it has to at least attempt to represent all forms of cognition in a grand scope without losing what they are essentially. fleshing them out does no good without also knowing the full concept.

there are interesting mathematical relationships between the functions. what is thought of as dual pairs are possibly more unrelated than people think.

for example, think of the rational functions as existing on the points of a square and the irrational functions as well and to get to other functions, you must travel around the squares edge.

----Ne
Ni------Se
----Si

some ideas are incomplete like the ultimate opposition being between the ego and superego. that's not totally true. in fact, as you see in the example the farther element is always the dual pair that must travel through the two surrounding paths till it gets to its complete opposite, like light and dark. In fact, I'm almost certain Jung specifically chose this as being the force of contention in the unconscious because it is so different, so foreign that it's existence being realized drives one into temporary sporadic madness and can only be better dealt with by understanding the archetypal self. yet socionics claims we value it and attempts to romanticize this relationship with quadras and quadra dynamics. id say it's more like a spiritual awakening to go so far into the deep end of your psche. but still socionics says we value it and for what reason exactly?

now add into this that one can both be irrational and rational at the same time and you add in a totally new dimension of mathematical relationships, one where talking about rationality impressed with irrationality is different from irrationality impressed with rationality. we're now at three dimensions. now add into the mix the concept of the ego and we add another dimension of perplexity in referencing the functions. four complex dimensions of thought just on the math alone before even getting into later trying to flesh it all out accurately.

without the mathematical foundation though, the fleshing out is just a wild guess, even if an educated one.

[Morcheeba]

the information elements are abstract though. they dont exactly exist. you would be buying into someone's interpretation of them that might not reflect best the nature of the human psyche. it's probably best to accept them for what they represent in the conceptual form. the following is the best i have to describing that.

extroversion - you impress onto the world
introversion - the world impresses onto you

intuition - indirect perception with the world
sensation - direct perception with the world

feeling - personal value
thinking - impersonal value

for example
extroverted intuition = impressing your perception indirectly onto the world
*suggestively influencing //this is quite different than what socionics preaches and something that kind of bugs me a bit
extroverted sensation = impressing your perception directly onto the world
*assertively influencing
vs
introverted intuition = the world impresses onto you indirectly
*passive reflection
introverted sensation = the world impresses onto you directly
*passive immersion
etc.

does that seem confusing though?

I don't see these descriptions as being too abstract, in fact, I see them as being very simplistic. These examples imo are the best I've seen around here in explaining the differences in IE's. I don't think they should be "fleshed out" so to speak because we have seen this done over and over again and it causes nothing more than confusion. To me this is very clear cut and to do anything more will bring us back to the predicament of = comfort.

To the OP, you don't have to answer this, but do you suffer from any kind of depression and/or anxiety? If this is the case, then you don't have to add a negative aspect to each function. Any person of any type can be uncomfortable given the right situation. Most of the descriptions are one dimensional and leave out a huge part of the human experience and the kind of suffering that can occur in anyone.

As far as the problem with , I think your description is good enough to describe the nuances of looking beyond the periphery of an object, imo this function is the most "psychic".

[Exodus]

Totally agree with Morcheeba. Tons of people - including Augusta, myself, Smilingeyes... - have attempted to come up with "rigorous" (i.e. regular) semantics for the IEs. I eventually realized that this approach is more fruitful if it starts from the more concrete, intuitive definitions that we all use on a daily basis. This is my current set of definitions.

But the point is that semantics (the empirical side of the theory) is inherently non-mathematical. The math of the IEs is very simple actually - I'd be interested if you could come up with some extra structure for them.

[mu4]

I will talk about something like this eventually.