Why Socionics Doesn't 'Work'

[Luk]

Many seem to erroneously try to associate IEs with specific outcomes when they only represent information preferences and processing structure.

Before reading this post I was gonna feel stupid for asking:
Which one's the Math IM element?

Because I expected Math to be a combination of and things that have nothing to do with Socionics, like intelligence. Probably also some external factors like and motivation.

[Rebelondeck]

Before reading this post I was gonna feel stupid for asking:
Which one's the Math IM element?

Because I expected Math to be a combination of and things that have nothing to do with Socionics, like intelligence. Probably also some external factors like and motivation.

You do seem to be with the vast majority on this site when you use IEs as adjectives for motivation. Motivation evolves more from upbringing, influences and environment than it does type. A type raised in poverty will likely have much different motivations from the same type raised in privilege. Various IEs combine to do maths in different ways; there's usually no one approach to accomplishing anything. It would be naive to say that only people with certain IEs could accomplish a specific task.......

a.k.a. I/O

[Luk]

You do seem to be with the vast majority on this site when you use IEs as adjectives for motivation. Motivation evolves more from upbringing, influences and environment than it does type. A type raised in poverty will likely have much different motivations from the same type raised in privilege. Various IEs combine to do maths in different ways; there's usually no one approach to accomplishing anything. It would be naive to say that only people with certain IEs could accomplish a specific task.......

a.k.a. I/O

So if I usually feel motivated to act by Fe-minded encouragement, is that deep-seated appreciation for warm encouragement a part of my upbringing? Maybe. But Fe is Fe, no matter how somebody learned to appreciate those who are careful with it.

If it truly is my upbringing that makes me appreciate warm encouragement (which it might be), and socionics predicts such a thing for the type representing me (LII), then my sociotype (LII) is equally part of my upbringing. I made no assumptions about where that appreciation came from before entering Model A. It is there and I can use the model to analyse its effects.

I don't think your use of "upbringing" can discredit my socionic modeling. From a Model A standpoint (unless I'm missing something?), it doesn't matter where an LII's appreciation for Ti is coming from. The model cannot address those kinds of causes because I think they're far beyond our current understanding of the human mind. If it tries to address the causes, I will happily discard them and clean up the model. Genetics, upbringing, frustrations... they all play a part and are equally irrelevant when analysing things within such a model.

The model addresses the effects of having a Base Ti, not the causes.

So how is it relevant that my upbringing determines my appreciation for Fe-minded encouragement? It could have been used to make me want to learn Math, exactly in accordance with socionic predictions of LII. Therefore I can say that can be a motivator for someone to become good at Math.

[Singu]

Before reading this post I was gonna feel stupid for asking:
Which one's the Math IM element?

Because I expected Math to be a combination of and things that have nothing to do with Socionics, like intelligence. Probably also some external factors like and motivation.

It's like saying "Which computer hardware is responsible for the calculator app?".

Well the calculator app is a software and therefore it's just a bunch of programming codes. Socionics can't figure out what that code is, because it doesn't ask that question. It's like looking at a monitor and visually observing what the software does. But it doesn't try to look at its codes, and its hardware that's responsible for the whole thing is rather mysterious.

If you could try to figure out how the calculator works, then you might have a chance at replicating it. But if all you do is observe some apparent patterns and thinking that pattern will repeat, then it's a hopeless task.

[Luk]

A three-in-one deal! 🎉 Feel free to skip it if you're not interested / I'm not replying to you. 😦 I'm feeling a little self-conscious right now.

---

This has nothing to do with socionics. Socionics does not dictate what your career path should be.

I pretty much agree, with a pedantic caveat: your career path is in large part dictated by your environment; people are a part of your environment and socionics models your interaction with those people.

Intertype relations, at the very least, influence your career path, even if not in a neatly predictable way. It's all pretty personal.

---

@Luk Fe refers to the way one would rationalize encouragement in comparison to some baseline reference or requirement but I've known quite a number of Fe-types that neither sought nor needed encouragement whatsoever. Externalized-F is interactive rationalization so group participation is sought for confirmation purposes, which is a broad category under which encouragement could fit - if one needed it. I've known copies of all types that've sought encouragement. I've an aptitude for maths so I didn't require encouragement and I've met copies of every type who didn't have difficulty with the subject - with or without encouragement....

a.k.a. I/O

"Fe refers to the way one would rationalize encouragement in comparison to some baseline reference or requirement"
I don't think it does. Fe is not in any way limited to encouragement, though encouragement (emotional instigation, emotional support, enthusiasm) can be seen as Fe-related constructs.
Inspiring fear into others by acting afraid is another Fe-related construct.
Inhibiting excessive emotions in others can be another Fe-related construct, depending on the situation.

They're Fe-related constructs because they're strategies that target a person's Fe-related information processing; their Fe function, which is what tries to model Fe information processing.

If I scream in fear, your response will be partially dictated by how you process extraverted emotional information. That's not encouragement.

"Fe-types"
Every type processes Fe-related information, in different ways. Are you referring to Fe-ego? Are you referring to Alpha & Beta? Does it include SEE and IEE, who also process vast amounts of Fe-related information?

"Fe-types that neither sought nor needed encouragement whatsoever"
I'll assume that you're including EIE and ESE. I wouldn't expect them to be in much need of emotional encouragement of the kind that I was talking about. As far as I'm aware, EIE can be pretty driven. That doesn't invalidate the point. Some types might respond better to certain kinds of emotional encouragement than others, unless we are to say that all types respond the same to all kinds of emotional encouragement.

"so group participation is sought for confirmation purposes"
I didn't understand that.

"I've known copies of all types that've sought encouragement"
That sounds like every type is equally likely to respond well to every kind of emotional encouragement. I don't have a statistically significant base of socionic data, but dismissing the importance of Fe defeats the point of using socionics to model human interactions.

If that isn't what you meant, think about what it means for at least some types to respond better to warm emotional expression. If they were taught Math in an environment that made them feel this kind of emotional comfort, they would be more likely to take Math seriously.

I was never associating Fe with the content of Math. (I called them "external factors") I'm talking about the the typical Math classes and learning environment, which I believe discourage some sociotypes from taking Math seriously.

"I've an aptitude for maths so I didn't require encouragement"
Just because you didn't need it doesn't mean others wouldn't.

"I've met copies of every type who didn't have difficulty with the subject - with or without encouragement"
Again, just because they didn't need it doesn't mean certain types wouldn't benefit from various kinds of encouragement.


If the student-teacher relationship can be modeled by socionics, my point still stands. (The point that started it all.) Socionics factors external to the content of Math affect somebody's Math interest, learning, and therefore skill in the subject. Not for those who are passionate or particularly good at Math, but the rest of the common folk.

---

It's like saying "Which computer hardware is responsible for the calculator app?".

Well the calculator app is a software and therefore it's just a bunch of programming codes. Socionics can't figure out what that code is, because it doesn't ask that question. It's like looking at a monitor and visually observing what the software does. But it doesn't try to look at its codes, and its hardware that's responsible for the whole thing is rather mysterious.

If you could try to figure out how the calculator works, then you might have a chance at replicating it. But if all you do is observe some apparent patterns and thinking that pattern will repeat, then it's a hopeless task.

I could never get behind the hardware/software metaphor for socionics models.

• Metaphors for models are useful as educational devices. In a debate, a metaphor is counterproductive.
  
  • A metaphor adds another level of abstraction on top of a model. Models already abstract reality. Why make things more complicated?
  • To keep up a metaphor, you need to create a suspension of disbelief. Constant suspension of disbelief in a debate is counterproductive because it prevents you from grounding yourself in logic.
  • Metaphors hide parts of the underlying model.
  • Metaphors distort the underlying model.
  • If one is very attached to a metaphor, they should make a model from scratch using that metaphor and not add it on top of another model.
• The human brain and a modern computer work differently. The main proof is that no amount of psychology can be applied to somebody's personal computer. You can find similarities, but they're not the same.
• Sociotypes have little to do with hardware. I suppose the metaphor is trying to imply that sociotypes cannot change, but that's an added assumption on top of the primary model. Maybe sociotypes really cannot change, but that's irrelevant to the points I made.
• Sociotypes have little to do with software. Sociotypes were created to describe and predict existing phenomena. No phenomena exist before somebody writes the firmware/software. They have different aims. One aims to predict or describe phenomena, while another aims to create phenomena from scratch. There are more differences than similarities.
• Human behaviour has little to do with software. You can make the analogy, sure, but if I need to suspend my disbelief for all the differences between humans and software, it's not a useful metaphor.
• The calculator app was created from scratch with a precise purpose in mind. It is a series of carefully written instructions. "Fe" is a collection of human behaviours aggregated from a wider population and amalgamated into a single, slightly vague concept. "Fe" has no purpose, but the calculator app does.
• "But if all you do is observe some apparent patterns and thinking that pattern will repeat, then it's a hopeless task."
  Ancient tribespeople didn't know how the Sun worked. They saw the Sun rising periodically and made predictions we can still trust today.
  As far as we know, modern and medieval physics don't represent reality, but they're still very useful and got us pretty far.
  You don't need to understand reality to make predictions about reality.

You might not agree with everything I said, but any single one of those points is enough for me to dismiss the metaphor. That's just a measure of how much I dislike it. 😛

I can't dispute any points made within the metaphor, because to me the metaphor is already too shaky to hold a meaningful conversation.
And my first instinct in a debate is to tear down all metaphors/obscurity anyway.

[Singu]

The human brain and a modern computer work differently. The main proof is that no amount of psychology can be applied to somebody's personal computer.

We can, we just know no known ways of doing how. But nothing says that it's impossible. The human brain is no different in concept than a computer, it just uses neurons instead of silicones.

Sociotypes have little to do with hardware.

I'm saying that types and functions are observations of the results of software. Presumably, we're saying that the hardware is the brain.

Sociotypes have little to do with software. Sociotypes were created to describe and predict existing phenomena. No phenomena exist before somebody writes the firmware/software. They have different aims.

The entire point of "predicting" something is to guess what has never happened before. Socionics is about observing something, and then expecting something, a pattern perhaps, to repeat itself. That's not prediction... that's just expecting the same thing to happen again.

You don't "predict" something that already exists. You predict the future - which doesn't exist yet.

Human behaviour has little to do with software.

Human behavior is largely affected by cognition - that's the software.

The calculator app was created from scratch with a precise purpose in mind. It is a series of carefully written instructions. "Fe" is a collection of human behaviours aggregated from a wider population and amalgamated into a single, slightly vague concept. "Fe" has no purpose, but the calculator app does.

Human behavior has no purpose, because it evolved more or less randomly. But how computers calculate and how people have the ability to do calculations more or less work in the same way. What makes humans unique is for their ability to be creative - as in, do something that has never been done before.

Ancient tribespeople didn't know how the Sun worked. They saw the Sun rising periodically and made predictions we can still trust today.

Again, that's not prediction, it's just expecting the same thing to happen. Prediction is about imagining something that has not even been seen before in reality. A so-called "counterfactual" - contrary to the facts.

[Luk]

We can, we just know no known ways of doing how. But nothing says that it's impossible. The human brain is no different in concept than a computer, it just uses neurons instead of silicones.

Presumably, we're saying that the hardware is the brain.

Saying that we're made up of the same thing is not a convincing comparison. We're all made of hadrons and leptons, but that doesn't mean you will try to convince me to apply the stars as a metaphor for the human mind, right?

Therefore, what matters in these kinds of metaphors is how an object behaves, not what it's made of.

CPUs are sequential. Even GPUs are sequential, despite the parallelism. They read instructions in order.
The brain doesn't do that. It's inherently parallel and its sequential phenomena are generally higher level functions. The opposite of modern computers.

You might bring up field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), but those present other differences.

If you plan to convince someone of a metaphor, you need to understand all the specifics of the metaphor. Which specific kind of computer? What's the hardware you're comparing it to? How is the hardware programmable, and the more detailed specs. I know enough about computers to see that such information was glossed over, and that compromises the metaphor further.

If you do not want to sustain a metaphor at the finest of details (which I wouldn't expect you to; I suggested dropping it), it will not work in certain debates. It won't work right now unless you yourself understand the metaphor entirely. To such an extent that it can be prodded from every angle and hold up to detailed scrutiny. And it has to remain convincing to others, not to you. It's your metaphor and you can do with it as you like, but others don't have an obligation to take it at face value.

I'm saying that types and functions are observations of the results of software.

As most software users know, you can learn to use a software based on its behaviour. You try out something and see if it does what you expected. You form a mental model of what it will do and use it to form predictions. Quite successfully. Sometimes software behaves unpredictably or it proves our model wrong ("Huh, I didn't know it would do that."), and that seems to be accepted as a fact of life: you learn software as you go.

So we do the same with socionics. We observed humans, we performed experiments, tried out various hypotheses, and repeated until socionics was born. Then we experimented some more. It's a valid process to predict human behaviour.

If you insist that you can't use socionics to predict human behaviour, I believe you.
If you insisted that you couldn't use Microsoft Excel to predictably create spreadsheets, I'd believe you.

If at least some people are able to use a tool, the fault lies with the user blaming the tool, not with the tool itself.

And if you want people to stop using a tool you cannot use yourself, there's only one way to do it: invent a better tool.

The burden of proof is on you in the argument you're making about how socionics cannot be used to predict human behaviour. Others seem to do just fine.

Human behavior is largely affected by cognition - that's the software.

You can say that A is the same as B if you know what A and B are like. I'll assume you know software. So what's the spec of the human behaviour? No one knows how the human mind works, so you cannot claim that it's like something else. On what basis would you do that?

All software has a spec.
Almost all software has a versioning system. You might argue that genetics is the versioning system, but that's not all of the human behaviour. Not by a long shot. You might argue that what happens after birth is just inputs and outputs, but a software's input and output is predictable and well understood. The only way to sustain the metaphor is to say that human behaviour is also predictable, but that goes against your original argument that you cannot predict human behaviour. (While we can predict hardware and software with a strinking degree of accuracy.) And it goes against current knowledge. Nobody knows how to predict human behaviour, therefore you cannot claim that it's any more predictable than a chaotic system.

And humans are very much like a chaotic system: Small changes in the input yield massive changes in the output later on. Software is not truly chaotic. Hardware is certainly not.

Human behavior has no purpose, because it evolved more or less randomly. But how computers calculate and how people have the ability to do calculations more or less work in the same way. What makes humans unique is for their ability to be creative - as in, do something that has never been done before.

Humans designed computers to calculate using some of the Math humans have created.

But they still don't do it the same way. To imply that computers and humans add numbers the same way at a biological level implies that humans can intuitively or unconsciously add up integers and floating point numbers. Some can, but we don't know what's going on with savants. When you add numbers together, you are simulating a program in your head. It's at least two levels higher than the equivalent in a computer. The computer does it in hardware. To do it like you, it would need to run a program that can in turn simulate another program that will then be used to add numbers together. So computers and humans are not the same in terms of how they add numbers together.

You bring up creativity. An olive branch, I suppose. Because only software designed to emulate neurons is capable of creativity. And an emulated human brain can't be used as a metaphor for the human brain, the same way the painting of Mona Lisa can't be used as a metaphor for the woman da Vinci painted. One is a representation of the other. You can't have a metaphor without translating concepts.

So if no hardware or software is capable of creativity (not unless it's a representation of the human brain), then the hardware/software model is missing something pretty important that the human brain has. And that wouldn't be a big deal if creativity didn't come up in socionics, but it does.

The entire point of "predicting" something is to guess what has never happened before. Socionics is about observing something, and then expecting something, a pattern perhaps, to repeat itself. That's not prediction... that's just expecting the same thing to happen again.

You don't "predict" something that already exists. You predict the future - which doesn't exist yet.

Again, that's not prediction, it's just expecting the same thing to happen. Prediction is about imagining something that has not even been seen before in reality. A so-called "counterfactual" - contrary to the facts.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predicting
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/predict
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...nglish/predict
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/predict#Verb

It is prediction. And it doesn't even matter because I was the one who introduced the term into the conversation, so I'm not changing the meaning of your words. 😜 You're changing the meaning of mine.

---

People aren't catching on. I'm just not responding to this thread...

What do you mean? Your thread sparked other conversations. 😄

[Singu]

Saying that we're made up of the same thing is not a convincing comparison. We're all made of hadrons and leptons, but that doesn't mean you will try to convince me to apply the stars as a metaphor for the human mind, right?

Therefore, what matters in these kinds of metaphors is how an object behaves, not what it's made of.

CPUs are sequential. Even GPUs are sequential, despite the parallelism. They read instructions in order.
The brain doesn't do that. It's inherently parallel and its sequential phenomena are generally higher level functions. The opposite of modern computers.

Neurons, silicons, atoms, mechanical levers, whatever that you want to use, are all basically just "placeholders". What we need are "points" that connect together using physical objects in order to perform calculations, do logical tasks, and to eventually inspire creativity.

So in principle, what can be done with neurons can be emulated by silicons, atoms, mechanical levers, whatever that you want to use. It's just that currently, our brains are more powerful and more efficient than modern computers.

If our brains use parallel processing, then that can be emulated using modern computers that use sequential steps (in fact, we're already moving towards parallelism via multi-core CPUs). It's just that our brains are taking advantage of our neurons that can perform parallel processing, just as computer programmers were programming things with the premise of using sequential CPUs, because that's the most efficient way of doing things.

So nature is the programmer of our consciousness. It has been programmed onto our brain by nature.

So the problem is not the hardware, but it's the software. If you say that it can't be done, then there's nothing that says that it can't. The brain is a physical object that follows the laws of physics. It's just a matter of understanding how.

As most software users know, you can learn to use a software based on its behaviour. You try out something and see if it does what you expected. You form a mental model of what it will do and use it to form predictions. Quite successfully. Sometimes software behaves unpredictably or it proves our model wrong ("Huh, I didn't know it would do that."), and that seems to be accepted as a fact of life: you learn software as you go.

Yes, because we consciously or unconsciously create models in our heads, and then expect certain things to happen - we predict, essentially. One of the ways to do this is to simply expect the same thing that has happened to happen again.

But the entire reason why the same thing happens again, is because it has been programmed that way to do so. If the programming code changes, then it no longer happens again.

We could certainly have a deeper and more accurate understanding if we knew how the software was programmed and therefore know exactly how it operates. Or perhaps, we could ask the programmer for instructions.

But if the programmer died or something, or if we didn't know the code, then the next best thing is to guess how the software might be programmed. And since consciousness and human psychology has been programmed by nature, we can't ask anyone - we'd have to guess.

So we do the same with socionics. We observed humans, we performed experiments, tried out various hypotheses, and repeated until socionics was born. Then we experimented some more. It's a valid process to predict human behaviour.

How do we perform experiments, and how do we have hypotheses from human observations? By definition, experiments and hypotheses are guesses that has never been observed before. We want to use our observations in order to check if our guesses are correct or not.

You can't predict human behavior by just expecting the same thing to happen again. Someone might suddenly change his mind, or he might act differently in different situations.

It is prediction. And it doesn't even matter because I was the one who introduced the term into the conversation, so I'm not changing the meaning of your words.  You're changing the meaning of mine.

The future is different from the past. You don't predict something by just expecting the same thing to happen.

"Analyzing the past to predict the future" is probably one of the gravest mistakes ever proposed. It's also kind of an oxymoron.

As always, you predict the future by imagining a counterfactual situation. It's an untested idea, it's a hypothesis, it's a guess.