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    Default Why is socionics the way it is?

    I've been studying socionics extensively now, turning it every which way, and still can't figure out why its basic assumptions are what they are. Any sources I find only describe what the system is, not why it is. If the main principles were empirically obvious in practice, the lack of justification could be excused, but they clearly aren't - typing is notoriously difficult, and predictions are even tougher. I hesitate to use a system if I cannot see the full reason behind it, because I thoroughly suspect that one's ideas heavily influence one's perceptions, and virtually any proposition can be "proved" if you try hard enough. I don't suggest that socionics has no basis, but have had a terribly difficult time trying to decipher it.

    Mainly, what I want to know is:
    How are the particular properties of the functions and elements explained and justified from the ground up?

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    I'd suggest you take a look into Carl Jung's "Psychological Types", it lays the foundating for the functions/IEs as well as some explanations on temperament, introversion/extraversion/etc. He also lays out the framework for intuition, sensing, thinking, and feeling, as well as rational/irrational and various other things that are applied in Socionics.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Igxfl View Post
    I've been studying socionics extensively now, turning it every which way, and still can't figure out why its basic assumptions are what they are.
    Everybody is different, although you can see patterns. Before reading about Socionics, I (and many more, I guess) could "see" the basic dichotomies EI NS FT JP beyond the "basic" differences, such as "intelligence", "openmindedness", "empathy", etc. Besides, brilliant psychologists have developed this idea.

    Any sources I find only describe what the system is, not why it is.
    The million dollar question

    If the main principles were empirically obvious in practice, the lack of justification could be excused, but they clearly aren't -
    I disagree with this. They are considerably obvious, just go out and look to the people!

    typing is notoriously difficult
    Yes, sometimes.

    , and predictions are even tougher.
    Yes indeed

    I hesitate to use a system if I cannot see the full reason behind it, because I thoroughly suspect that one's ideas heavily influence one's perceptions, and virtually any proposition can be "proved" if you try hard enough. I don't suggest that socionics has no basis, but have had a terribly difficult time trying to decipher it.

    Mainly, what I want to know is:
    How are the particular properties of the functions and elements explained and justified from the ground up?
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    You sound INTj, Igxfl.

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    Quote Originally Posted by 1981slater View Post
    Besides, brilliant psychologists have developed this idea.
    Entirely irrelevant.


    Quote Originally Posted by 1981slater View Post
    I disagree with this. They are considerably obvious, just go out and look to the people!
    If I were using the Enneagram, K-ball, or anything else you care to apply, I would see obvious evidence for those too. You can see through the eyes of any system you like, but that does not in itself make the system valid. The evidence for socionics does not appear obvious enough to me that I can see much of it without first adjusting my mind to socionics.


    Edit - just saw Timmy's post.

    @ Timmy: That seems helpful; I'll take a look. BTW, I am not looking for hard evidence in the typical sense, but merely a way to affirm that it makes sense, conceptually or empirically, without feeling like I have to force the evidence at first.

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    Or INTp.

    You sound INTx.

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    By the way Igxfl, I suspect you are right about people applying socionics principles in all different ways. Is this really a problem though? If you find that thinking in terms of socionics improves your ability to understand or appreciate the world around you (or if you merely find socionics an entertaining diversion), who cares if it has no hard basis or if others apply it in different ways?
    Last edited by Timmy; 03-09-2011 at 10:22 PM.

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    Also, some of the meta-principals which socionics implies absolutely strike me as manifestly evident and correct beyond a shadow of a doubt.

    Here are some examples:

    1) People are naturally disposed to get along better with some than with others (irrespective of their goals and principals). Realizing this enables one to avoid feelings of guilt over a consistent inability get along well with certain individuals or feelings of frustration over certain others' seeming inability to understand him.

    2) Those with whom we get along best tend also to get along well with one another (although there are plenty of non-socionics explanations for this phenomenon)

    3) None of us are perfect. We all have strengths and weaknesses and we all need one another to thrive.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Director Trevor View Post
    You sound INTj, Igxfl.

    Or INTp.

    You sound INTx.
    Fascinating. I was leaning most towards ENTp. I must look at the types of your suggestion - perhaps they will cause socionics to make more sense. I was probably INTP in MBTI.

    Quote Originally Posted by Timmy View Post
    By the way Igxfl, I suspect you are right about people applying socionics principles in all different ways. Is this really a problem though? If you find that thinking in terms of socionics improves your ability to understand or appreciate the world around you (or if you merely find socionics an entertaining diversion), who cares if it has no hard basis or if others apply it in different ways?
    As stated, I care little for a hard basis in the usual sense. I guess what I'm looking for is what you described - whether thinking via socionics improves my ability to understand or appreciate the world around me.

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    The essence of socionics predictions lie in the intertype relations. If you want to see those work, you need to type yourself and a few people around you correctly, and determine if the relations play out as described.
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    The functional dichotomies underlying socionics (and meyers briggs) derive from the work of Carl Jung. Check out the paper linked below.

    http://forum.socionix.com/files/down...logical-types/

    Jung's functional dichotomies are based purely on observation and intuition. To date, there is no widely accepted metaphysical or neurological foundation for his ideas. If you are looking for hard evidence of it's validity, I'm sorry to say it's just not there. In it's present form, socionics is only valuable to the extent that its postulates conform to your own experience.

    If you read his paper, you'll notice that socionics is truer to Jung's ideas than MBTI. Jung defined each of the functional elements and further elaborated on the contradictory (and yet compatible) nature of Ip/Ep and Ij/Ej functions. His ideas were later adapted to model A by Augusta Aushra. Aushra is responsible for laying out an early theory of inter-type relationships that has largely stood the test of time. Similar to Jung's work, Model A and the theory of inter-type relations is purely based upon observation and intuition. Nothing hard underlying any of it.
    Last edited by Timmy; 03-09-2011 at 10:22 PM.

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    Well, you see, at any given moment your brain is bombarded with literally a bajillion sources of stimuli. You look around, detect a familiar scent, feel an ache in your lower back, maybe you think about the meaning behind a friend's words, or the pain in her voice. Perhaps you can picture how something happens from origin to extinction and back again, realize how that might be broken into segments and improved in this or that way. Whatever it is you see, feel, and think, whatever forms the basis for how the world seems to you, that's only a fragment of everything there is. You only ever capable of receiving a piece of the puzzle.

    Socionics is a theory that deals with how individuals most naturally deal with these sources of information and how they may fit together or butt up against one another. Someone seeing a pyramid from below may see a square while the person looking at the profile is presented with a triangle. Neither one is inherently wrong, their perspectives simply limit them from acknowledging how they might be reconciled if they recognize the extent of their own limitations. That's not to say that socionics is a theory about how everyone can always be right in their own way. The example just portrays one facet of a greater problem, which is that no one knows if there's a damn pyramid in the first place and that each of our vantage points obscures as much as it illuminates. We only experience what we are capable of.

    Neither is socionics a theory leading necessarily into skepticism, however. All it does is point to potential sources of information and perhaps leave the individual with a greater appreciation of what we're talking about when we discuss the 'truth' of any given matter. Socionics also attempts to explain what kind of person provides the most complementary to the most opposing perspective to your own, which in theory tells you the ease or difficulty a potential relationship might present, as well as preventing you from ever getting laid again in your life.
    I quoted that just because I always liked it, but I think the first paragraph is a pretty commonsensical explanation for why informational metabolism of different kinds would be a reasonably safe assumption.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Igxfl View Post
    I've been studying socionics extensively now, turning it every which way, and still can't figure out why its basic assumptions are what they are. Any sources I find only describe what the system is, not why it is. If the main principles were empirically obvious in practice, the lack of justification could be excused, but they clearly aren't - typing is notoriously difficult, and predictions are even tougher. I hesitate to use a system if I cannot see the full reason behind it, because I thoroughly suspect that one's ideas heavily influence one's perceptions, and virtually any proposition can be "proved" if you try hard enough. I don't suggest that socionics has no basis, but have had a terribly difficult time trying to decipher it.

    Mainly, what I want to know is:
    How are the particular properties of the functions and elements explained and justified from the ground up?
    People... just link the new guy reading material, rather than trying to explain everything yourselves.

    Here... this following page is one of my favorite. Gives some concrete examples of noticeable behavior, that gives clues what each element is. It should be exactly what you're looking for:

    http://www.socionics.us/works/semantics.shtml

    Also this page has other information about the elements, and can help you learn how to concretely identify them in yourself and others:

    http://wikisocion.org/en/index.php?t...ation_elements

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    Quote Originally Posted by Igxfl View Post
    Mainly, what I want to know is:
    How are the particular properties of the functions and elements explained and justified from the ground up?
    they can't be
    and don't listen to bolt he has no idea what he's talking about

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    Socionics is a game, well thats how I always treated it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Igxfl View Post
    ...
    I very much agree with your views on the subject, and urge you not to give into the majority opinion here - you will forget where you come from on the matter. Your argument will not be addressed here justly because it can't be; you are right.

    The only way I've come to justify socionics as a belief is through total distrust of its intertype relevance, and use it solely as a tool of introspection. But that is ultimately a compromise with a system I can't cast out from my mind through sheer force of will; I suggest that you either decide to delve into it further with extreme skepticism and tedious caution, accepting only that which you find verifiable or reasonable, or drop it entirely. There are plenty of other facets of psychology to explore, some more empirical than others, but you'll be hard pressed to find any real empirical studies in psychology that aren't just theoretical extensions of observations of man's behavior; pseudoscience at best, so long as their assertions can not be repeated and in this case so long as types/typing remains nothing more than extensions of opinions.

    As for learning it... well... it took me a couple years to reject all the descriptions outright. Jung's descriptions resonate best with their applied introspective use.
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    I have to agree with Bolt. He's the most consistent and intelligent person on this site. In other words, I prefer the wisdom of someone who possesses genuine integrity and individuality, as opposed to those who possess neither and are content being brainwashed sheep.

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    Why is socionics the way it is?

    Why are people the way they are?

    They simply are. Truth is often relative, i suggest not taking socionics as an irrefutable truth. But rather a tool to decipher the second question.

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    Aushra was an ILE. So I'm pretty sure Socionics ≠ Jung, even though she didn't state they were supposed to be the same thing anyway. Just because she was influenced by his writings, doesn't mean anything, nor does Jung explain anything all that relevant to Socionics reasoning. Some of you go into false-objectivism...as though something more credible than Socionics authors is needed to give sense to the theory. There is obvious proof that MBTI, Jung, and Socionics are describing isolated aspects for a different purpose. When you interpret them all as the same thing then you confuse tolerance and resonance for objectivism.

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    Quote Originally Posted by poli View Post
    Aushra was an ILE. So I'm pretty sure Socionics ≠ Jung, even though she didn't state they were supposed to be the same thing anyway. Just because she was influenced by his writings, doesn't mean anything, nor does Jung explain anything all that relevant to Socionics reasoning. Some of you go into false-objectivism...as though something more credible than Socionics authors is needed to give sense to the theory. There is obvious proof that MBTI, Jung, and Socionics are describing isolated aspects for a different purpose. When you interpret them all as the same thing then you confuse tolerance and resonance for objectivism.
    Ahhh...there's no proof of anything in the social and psychological sciences. Socionics, Jung, and MBTI are all contrived. But socionics and MBTI are no doubt inspired by Jung. Why would you ever assume or take that as insignificant? If you ignore Jung just because it's fun to point out that technically they are two different things just as any two similar objects can be said to be different things, you're socionics reasoning will be incomplete. This different shit is ridiculous; there are always similarities between things.

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    i have to see the systems as all pointing to the same sort of phenomenon in different ways otherwise i get mired in details that seem superficial to me. like "in mbti Fi has more to do with personal feelings and in socionics its more about morals and relationships." and if i take distinctions like that with a lot of weight then i become confused as hell. its possible i'm doing it wrong but its the only way it works in my head.

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    Quote Originally Posted by poli View Post
    Aushra was an ILE. So I'm pretty sure Socionics ≠ Jung, even though she didn't state they were supposed to be the same thing anyway. Just because she was influenced by his writings, doesn't mean anything, nor does Jung explain anything all that relevant to Socionics reasoning. Some of you go into false-objectivism...as though something more credible than Socionics authors is needed to give sense to the theory. There is obvious proof that MBTI, Jung, and Socionics are describing isolated aspects for a different purpose. When you interpret them all as the same thing then you confuse tolerance and resonance for objectivism.
    Poli an LII? That's bullshit. You couldn't Ti your way out of a paper bag.

    I believe Transigent uncovered that T/F and S/N were talked about since the days of ancient Greece. Of course it was Jung who discovered extroversion and introversion, that was his original discovery and what ultimately lead him away from Freud.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Igxfl View Post
    I've been studying socionics extensively now, turning it every which way, and still can't figure out why its basic assumptions are what they are. Any sources I find only describe what the system is, not why it is. If the main principles were empirically obvious in practice, the lack of justification could be excused, but they clearly aren't - typing is notoriously difficult, and predictions are even tougher. I hesitate to use a system if I cannot see the full reason behind it, because I thoroughly suspect that one's ideas heavily influence one's perceptions, and virtually any proposition can be "proved" if you try hard enough. I don't suggest that socionics has no basis, but have had a terribly difficult time trying to decipher it.

    Mainly, what I want to know is:
    How are the particular properties of the functions and elements explained and justified from the ground up?
    You're right that there is a gap between what is self-evident (what Timmy listed) and the constructs of socionics. As I understand the history of socionics, these self-evident observations were what Augusta was mulling over while she looked for a way to understand and organize these differences between people/relationships. She probably began with a bias towards typology, because she seemed to pay particular attention to the typologies that were available to her for study. She stopped with Jung because his typology was more all-encompassing than the others, described healthy aspects of personality, and allowed for systematization.

    The choice of Jung's typology was made for subjective (intuitive?) reasons as much as for empirical ones. Naturally, there were no studies comparing different typologies and how well they could account for relationship patterns. Augusta began typing people through Jung's typology with an eye to their interaction and began noticing patterns. Eureka!

    Even if we try our best to fill in the logical gap and substantiate why there must be no less or more than 4 functions with 2 varieties each, why each function must have its complement, or why only certain orderings of functions are possible, these efforts are pretty much futile because they don't address the real problem, which is the poorly understood physical nature of functions, types, and relations.

    So, socionics takes its basic constructs on faith, seeing that they appear to be useful in describing real people and relationships. People have been doing this for thousands of years; it's only very recently that technological progress has allowed us to learn much about the physical realities underlying personality.

    While it's easy to understand the frustration of someone who sees that socionics is full of unexplicable constructs, it doesn't make sense to throw out the whole field because of its imperfections. There really are those self-evident facts of life that demand an explanation — why certain people are drawn to each other, etc. Socionics is pretty astute in its examination of relationships, and a lot of good work has been done, hard as it is to master and apply. But no explanation currently can satisfy our desire for "from the ground up" understanding. What empirical science has to offer so far are merely tantalizing tidbits, but nothing close to unified theory of personality and interaction.

    Personally, this doesn't bother me anymore. There was a time when I was looking for "Truth" through socionics. I got as far as I could and stopped when diminishing returns kicked in. Now I see socionics as a tool in my "toolkit" of ways to think about people and the world. I think many people on this forum have gotten to this point.
    Last edited by Rick; 05-12-2011 at 01:48 PM. Reason: (added final paragraph)
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rick View Post
    Now I see socionics as a tool in my "toolkit" of ways to think about people and the world.
    I am glad that Igxfl made this topic, because I can relate very much to feeling skepticism about a seemingly incomplete system requiring such leaps of faith. That said, I too see Socionics as a sort of tool - it's not satisfactory in itself, but a stepping stone to other perspectives.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Igxfl View Post
    IAny sources I find only describe what the system is, not why it is. ...How are the particular properties of the functions and elements explained and justified from the ground up?
    They aren't. That's called Positivsm. Perfectly reasonable according to Auguste Comte.
    “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” --- Pippi Longstocking

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    I've once heard an explanation that related four cognitive functions to four timespace dimensions but the arguments provided in proof were hopelessly trippy.

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