A Constructive Approach to Strength and Weaknesses

At certain times in life, for many people, I think it can be very constructive to view strengths and weaknesses as integral parts of one's personality. Socionics can help with this. It can be useful to stop trying to identify with or overcome one's weak areas and focus instead on strengths. I think this is especially important during the active formation of one's self-identify, typically during one's late teens and early twenties.

At other times, brushing off character flaws or overstating one's strengths — especially using some socionics (or other psychological) pseudo-explanation — may be counter-productive. It can keep you from addressing important issues that could improve your quality of life and level of happiness.

Different moments in life present different challenges and require different approaches. There is a time and a place for imbalance as well as for balance.

As one matures, however, one must find a balance where one neither dwells on areas of weakness nor ignores them.

Here's how I've come to view strengths and weaknesses that I used to associate with specific socionics functions and saw as less fluid than I do now.

Basically, I think in terms of "best practices" and "skill acquisition." Every conceivable area of life has its "best practices," be it professional development, housekeeping, or emotional health. You simply happen to know or to not know these practices.

And whether you realize it or not, you already employ certain practices (habits) in every area of life. Your practices may range from "horrific" in one area to "top-notch" in another.

While personality/socionic type may be somewhat predictive of your skill profile, I think it eventually becomes unproductive to dwell on it. You still have to work on your habits, and that's an entirely different process altogether.

It's important to realize that a) almost everything you do is an ingrained habit that is almost entirely automated, and b) neuroplasticity allows for new habit formation, which can be directed through conscious control, though our conscious resources are limited (but they can be grown, too).

Instead of thinking, "I'm just not good at X," you can think, "I currently have low-quality X habits." Then improving this area becomes a matter of finding out some best practices and finding a way to incorporate them. I suspect the best way to do this is through repetitive exercises designed to create automatic habits.

Now, let's talk about "best practices." These tend to be quick-and-dirty solutions that give you 80% of possible results for 20% of the possible effort.

People who, for instance, truly love cooking, may put in a 100% effort to get all 100% of the results. And it's these people who tend to write the cookbooks. Cookbooks don't actually contain the best practices the vast majority of people need to improve their food consumption habits and skills. So don't necessarily count on recognized pros to give you the practices you need.

Constantly concocting complex dishes that stimulate every possible taste receptor in your mouth and nose may be a "best practice" for a chef, but not for a nonprofessional whose goal is optimization of health and well-being.

In other words, best practices for total mastery and best practices for maintenance will take you in different directions.

If "maintenance" is your aim, some of the best role models are people who are clearly above-average in a certain area while appearing to invest uncommonly little effort. Most likely, the way they do this is by applying very specific, tried-and-true algorithms that require a minimum of effort once turned into habits.

When you look at things this way, you may discover that you indulge in many of your areas of strength for purely recreational purposes. Could that actually be unconstructive? Is the value of that recreation greater than the value of developing a different set of habits and skills? Something to think about.

Probably the most effective and painless way to improve a skill is to copy someone who clearly does it much better than you. In the absence of such a person, you may have to look much harder for best practices, searching online, in books, or asking around.

Once you think you have identified a best (or "better") practice that is compatible with your lifestyle and values, it is time to work on habit formation. Depending on the skill, this might mean committing to a daily practice requiring anywhere from one minute to hours of effort. The more willpower and concentration necessary for the task, the more likely that you will need to do it in the morning soon after waking.

In my view, skills — even mental ones — are basically just composed of mechanical habits. "When X, do Y." For instance, "when you sit down at the computer, start your timer. When 20 minutes have passed, get up and walk around." "When a team player near you opens for a pass, start opening for a pass yourself so that he has someone to pass to immediately." "When you feel yourself becoming negative, stop to remember the good things that have happened recently, and why they happened."

With as little as a few days or weeks of conscious effort, you may be able to establish a habit that noticeably changes your life for the better.

Functional Spirituality

There is a fascinating trend in western societies that I refer to as "functional spirituality": using techniques from religions and spiritual traditions to achieve specific psychological results in the absence of religious faith.

Functional spirituality has become possible due to advances in neuroscience and accumulating research on mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Today there is an increasing number of exercises one can perform to improve one's well-being in specific ways that have been proven to work:

• calm anxiety through meditation, visualization exercises such as "responsibility transfer," and body language manipulation
• feel connectedness to other people through visualization exercises that activate oxytocin production 
• improve outlook and mood through gratitude and other mental exercises and through manipulation of facial expressions and body language 
• recover from illnesses by applying proven placebo methods

Thanks to science, it is now possible to isolate the specific benefits and techniques of various spiritual practices and reduce them to their essential components. Pareto's Law can now be applied to obtain 80% of the benefits from 20% of the effort. This was possible in the past to a degree, before anyone knew anything about neurochemicals and brain waves, but it required a great degree of experience and intuition.

Furthermore, it was very difficult to test different approaches and determine which was better. Few people went from religion to religion to test the efficacy of different prayer and meditation techniques. There was so much "other stuff" that came along with religions that one could not easily isolate the techniques from the dogmas and the social conventions.

Today, with more and more knowledge of the effects of different practices on human well-being, one can theoretically put together an effective, individualized spiritual practice based on one's personal needs and life situation. For those with a degree of conscious control over their lives, it would seem we are entering a golden age of personal spirituality.

Today it is conceivable to establish social groups that perform certain rituals together for the express purpose of obtaining the psychological benefits associated with religious activity — without any religious subtext. However, if the group espoused a particular ideology that they discussed in the context of their practice — such as "we follow the best practices offered by science" — then over time it could certainly develop into a quasi-religious organization.

But one does not have to believe in anything supernatural to do any of this. If science demonstrates that belief in the supernatural is psychologically beneficial due to "responsibility transfer," then one can simply engage in "benevolent Universe" or "benevolent supernatural Being" visualizations to obtain those benefits. One might even say, "I practice belief in order to lower my anxiety levels." The triumph of Reason over Faith is now so complete that virtually all the advantages of faith can be incorporated into a reason-based existence.

Everything that can be automated will be automated

When I look at how technology and society are evolving, a few simple trends stand out.

Everything that can be automated will be automated. 

Everything that can be digitized is being digitized. 

The people who seem to be making the most money are those who are contributing to the increasing digitization and automation of things. A simple way to find business opportunities is simply to take note of things that could be better automated or digitized. Then find a team, do the marketing, create the product, etc.

There are still a million things left to digitize and automate as we transition to a data and algorithm controlled world. We’re not even close to halfway there yet.

Just look at government. Governance in the future could be reduced to a set of complex computer programs that gather and process data from millions of different sensors and data sources and produce decisions and systems that can then be reviewed by a committee of humans.

Virtually all human interaction with government can be digitized and automated. Even the bulk of law-enforcement and the penitentiary system. Taxation could be fully automated.

Thanks to automation, bureaucracy may soon become a thing of the past. Hundreds of thousands of government office workers will be free to pursue arts and crafts, gardening, and yoga (joke).

I think that digitization and automation can bring wonderful results in manufacturing, governance, logistics, education, and research. These activities engage newer, more analytical parts of the human brain.

What is less clear is how to deal with many risks to individual health and welfare that this trend brings with it on an emotional and physical level. To name a few:

• wrist/hand, eye/facial, and musculoskeletal problems and pain due to imperfect ergonomics and computer screen technology
• compulsive use of electronic devices, the Internet, and communications technology and technology related addictions
• social isolation and psychosocial problems related to replacing person-to-person interaction with online interaction
• sleep disturbances due to disruption of melatonin production and compulsive use of electronics 
• hormonal disturbances and negative changes in brain chemistry due to any of the above 

There have been many times in the past when a new technology, product, or system was forced upon people with little thought to their well-being. Perhaps the best example is the Industrial Revolution, which caused (forced) people to move to the cities and submit to many privations — extremely cramped living quarters, 14-15-hour work days, child labor, constant supervision, etc. Eventually, social conscience and humaneness were introduced into the system, and the most extreme ill effects were eliminated.

There are many more examples. Cigarettes now have filters, automobiles produce less harmful exhaust than they used to, convenient but nutrient-poor processed foods are now fortified with vitamins and minerals.

Damage is first made tolerable, then gradually reduced further in proportion to society’s degree of enlightenment.

There is an excellent TED talk called "The Long Reach of Reason" which illustrates how societies have progressively become more humane through the application of both ethics and reason — but with most of the credit going to reason.

Reason makes it clear that inhumane treatment, the infliction of unnecessary pain, and overexploitation of any important resource are ultimately counterproductive. But it often takes a while for reason to catch up with culture and technology.

The current global trend towards automation and digitization is also leading to forms of pain and exploitation that society is just beginning to recognize. People are still very much enamoured of computers and the Internet and are relatively blind to their negative side-effects and unsympathetic towards those who experience them. Others see the side-effects as a minor nuisance that people just need to learn to deal with.

I strongly disagree. To me, the way so many of us use our computers and Internet today can be likened to smoking filterless cigarettes, eating unfortified processed foods, or breathing unfiltered exhaust. Things could be so much better. It's mainly a question of product design.

Let’s exercise our imagination a bit. I don't think anyone would disagree that personal electronics should ideally:

• help people become more knowledgeable and more intellectually capable
• help them feel more connected (not just informationally, but emotionally) to others
• help them learn faster
• not fragment a person's focus or cause them to multi-task constantly
• not interfere with their ability and desire to move around and interact with their physical environment
• not cause them undue pain or distress
• not interfere with getting deep sleep 
• not disrupt their hormonal state or promote addictive behaviors or depression
• not inhibit their desire and ability to pursue romantic relationships

This may sound unrealistic, and some readers may deny the problem in the first place. Others will lay the responsibility for these things upon the user alone ("The Internet itself doesn't harm people; people's choice of how to use the Internet does." "It's not the job of tech companies or the government to force people to use their products in a certain way.").

Let's remember that people once worked 15-hour workdays, breathed poisonous air, and even sold their own children into slavery. In each case a host of logical arguments could have been produced to explain why things "had to be" that way and were unlikely to ever change. The truth is, things can be any way people decide they should be (if there are people left to decide).

As doctors and researchers increasingly document negative side-effects of the technology we use, and innovators come up with new technical solutions, I believe that more and more tools will become available for people to avoid potential detriments to their physical and emotional health by technology.

I can imagine:

• computer monitors that cause no more eye stress than reading a book
• screens that change as night comes on to not inhibit melatonin production and can be set to turn off and help you get away from your computer screens at a predetermined time
• connective technology that doesn't cause the subtle damage that current wireless technologies can (look up "sperm count and cell phone kept in pocket")
• software that is responsive to your psychological state and adapts the environment (interface) and suggests tasks that are most conducive to preserving a balanced state of mind
• software that stops you and asks you questions when it detects behaviors that go against your stated goals
• software that allows you to customize your virtual environment in order to avoid getting sucked in to things you don't want to do
• software that can be told to leave you alone unless X or Y happens (e.g. an important e-mail, etc.)
• Internet interfaces that, rather than always offering you more information that you might be interested in, limit this new information to only a bare minimum 
• fully customizable social media networks where you can choose the functionality you want and disable or minimize what you don't want (like Facebook's news feed and other features that prompt compulsive online social behaviors for those who are inclined to such problems)
• technology that distills what you want to know from social media networks, e-mail, news, etc. into audio so that you can keep track of what you're interested in on the go, without staring at a screen (as we know, people's visual channel is more powerful than audio and thus more potentially engaging and addictive)
• technology that allows you to respond to the above types of messages verbally and have it converted into text for the other person if necessary, all without looking at a screen

These ideas are tailored to the needs of self-employed creative professionals like me. People working in offices may have other needs as well. The basic idea is that technology should become almost fully customizable so that people can decide what they want to use it for and have it do just that.

What we currently have is computer and Internet technology that is still largely one-size-fits-all and contains very many potentially addicting elements. These elements seem to make good business sense for software and hardware makers, but they may ultimately prove counterproductive. Once a technology begins inhibiting its user's productivity and personal effectiveness, it has become counterproductive. The producer may continue to profit from the user's compulsive behaviors, but society as a whole suffers as users' productivity and general fitness declines.

If less addictive options become available and people start to choose them over the alternatives, producers will be forced to compete for the consumer segment that is opting out of traditional designs and interfaces. If people quit Facebook in significant numbers because of certain features or the lack thereof, it might make good business sense to embed the functionality that would persuade "deserters" to come back.

Obviously, the ideas I've suggested above will bring fresh new problems with them. People will become used to and dependent upon omniscient, omnipresent software that allows them to find out anything and connect with anyone at any moment. This could become a kind of "god" to people, eliciting a psychological and emotional attachment.

We already have this now to some degree, but only if you're in front of a screen. Getting rid of that limitation will allow people to be more physically active again without sacrificing interconnectedness. It could also allow software to penetrate our lives even more deeply.

One of the ways to overcome the social isolation that increasing Internet use often brings is to live in more compact settlements where people can get around on food and visit a variety of public spaces and interesting venues where they can interact with both like-minded people and strangers face to face.

Fortunately, this trend is already underway in overly suburbanized societies and is called "New Urbanism." The natural complement to an increasingly data-oriented society with high levels of computer and Internet use is an urban environment that facilitates face-to-face social interaction and physical exercise and play to the greatest degree possible. These should be default behaviors by design.

Personally, I look forward to technological advancements in computing and connectivity, provided they do not undermine proper human functioning. There is so much good that can come out of electronics and computing.

Digitization and automation could allow us to continually monitor and respond to ecological changes. Wars could become less and less likely because people feel emotionally connected to the whole world. People could become more rational and knowledgeable given their ability to access factual knowledge in a second or less. Long-standing “tragedies of the commons” could be overcome through computer-aided communications.

I also hope this will be a world of healthy, active, passionate, and socially integrated people.

Optimizing for Happiness

I like using the concept of "optimization." Optimization is central to any serious endeavor. For example, in competitive long-distance hiking and cycling, one must optimize a lot of different things simultaneously: gear weight, gear functionality given probable risks and wear and tear, personal conditioning, diet, habits of energy expenditure and personal upkeep (both physical and mental/emotional).

But there is one category of optimization that trumps the rest: optimization of time needed to get from start to finish. One may choose to take slightly heavier equipment if it cuts down on maintenance time, if the sleep quality will be better, if it will improve emotional well-being and resilience, etc., because each of these things in turn will have an effect on the total time needed to reach the finish line.

One may avoid going "all out" in favor of a pace that is right at the threshold of sustainability. One may look for just the right amount of sleep that allows one to walk or cycle as long as possible while still retaining most of the restorative benefits of sleep. And one will develop habits that keep all systems functioning at a sustainable level without significant dips in performance that would require a longer restorative period and thus hurt the finishing time.

In our lives we also try to optimize many things at once: health, fitness, attractiveness, professional success, finances, quality of childcare, acquisition of important skills, relaxation quality, relationship health, and general life satisfaction.

Each of these things is very important. But is there one category of optimization that trumps the others, as in competitive sports (finishing time, points, etc.) or big business (the balance sheet)? I believe there is — or can be, — and that is to optimize for happiness.

In the past I've written about the somewhat conflicting goals of pursuing happiness versus pursuing biological success. I've found it useful to view biological urges and various personal tendencies as being important to happiness, but as having a life of their own. If given free reign, they quickly become destructive (lead to unhappiness), but if too tightly controlled, another kind of unhappiness results. The way to find the happy medium and optimal expression of one's different parts and mechanisms is to make maximizing happiness one's goal.

What would your life look like if you optimized for maximum happiness? Where and with whom would you live? Where, how, with whom, and how much would you work? What, where, and how would you eat? How would you balance your needs for privacy, companionship, and community?

These questions might sound reminiscent of mundane questions like "what would your dream job be?" or "if you could do anything and get paid for it, what would it be?" The answers to questions like these tend to be things like "travel the world" and "work on a laptop from a Bali beach" and other things that people commonly dream of.

But is what you dream of what would actually make you happy? Psychological research suggests not. People are notoriously bad at predicting how different events will affect their contentment. I suppose people's dreams are more geared towards achieving some variety of biological success than towards happiness.

Now imagine you are participating in a competition. A massive prize goes to the person who achieves the highest average happiness level over a year-long period as measured by some objective metric. You have now turned into a professional happiness seeker; instead of being one of many things you are trying to achieve at the same time, achieving objectively measurable high levels of happiness has become your single most important goal.

Now how would you approach the pursuit of happiness? I'll bet you'd obtain some kind of "happiness meter" and keep track of it on a regular basis during the day. Maybe you'd take notes on what things seem to cause the peaks and valleys. Perhaps there are some tricks to avoid the dips in happiness you are used to experiencing. Maybe, with an idiosyncratic set of tweaks arrived at by trial and error, you can maintain your happiness at a consistently high level over a long period of time.

Somewhere up there is your theoretical personal happiness ceiling, determined by genes and psychological makeup. "Extreme" happiness levels probably express themselves quite differently in different people.

This is just a thought experiment, but I think this is a worthwhile pursuit — perhaps the most worthwhile pursuit a person can undertake. I suspect that most of the things that make us happy are quite close to home and can be achieved with some important tweaks here and there.

Something to think about: do happy people reproduce as much as those who pursue biological success?

Am I a Body or a Mind?

At the moment I'm experiencing a really satisfying and upbeat period in my life. I have a pretty clear idea about why I feel so good.

I am physically active and engage in some kind of group and individual sports on a daily basis, including table tennis, indoor rock climbing, ultimate frisbee, a brief set of high-intensity exercises, and frequent backpacking trips. As opposed to an individual fitness regimen, I do these activities with or around other people and can't wait for the next session. The social benefits and camaraderie are substantial and increasing as time goes on. I am in great shape, but it's really my body's functionality and health that I'm developing, not just my external physique. The better shape my body is in, the more I feel like using it whenever I have the chance. I look for opportunities to immerse myself in ice-cold mountain streams, something that would have made me cringe two years ago. I enjoy climbing over obstacles and hanging on tree branches. Not long ago, I went canyoning with a group of 10 people. The physical challenges and bonding made for a powerful experience, and I had that rare feeling: this is what we were made to do.

I have finally put in the critical mass of effort to turn cooking for myself into a stable, nearly automatic habit. For the most part, I know what to eat and why. The food I eat tends to be highly nutritious, and I rarely let myself get very hungry like I have been prone to do in the past. I am taking a supplement that is delivering some of the vitamins and nutrients I was low in, and my vitamin D levels are approaching optimal values. I can tell my stress hormones are down and my serotonin and confidence are way up. From the different blood tests I've taken in the past two years, it is safe to assume my vitamin and mineral levels are up and my endocrine system is in a lot better shape (I won't be able to test them for another few months). My levels of alertness are much better; my body feels rested and I no longer fret so much about getting enough sleep.

My mind is clear and sharp, and I once more feel like tackling hard work requiring extended focus and concentration. I love being able to fully concentrate on projects and skill acquisition once again. I feel like I'm finally moving forward in life rather than trying to catch up to where I once was. I've managed to finally set up a great living situation that I expect to maintain long-term. Crucially, instead of having Internet at home, I have 2 places within a 6 minute walk that I regularly visit for online work. One is a hostel with wi-fi that has allowed me to use their wi-fi for a reasonable by-the-hour price. Naturally, I'm writing this post at home where I can fully concentrate on my thoughts without distraction.

I went through some hard times in the past 3 years, including the end of a relationship, adjusting to life in a new country with a new culture and language and no friends, loneliness and loss of motivation, depressed immune function and frequent illness, passing out and narrowly escaping death from carbon monoxide poisoning, changing residence multiple times, living with transient foreigners while trying to establish myself long-term in a new country, banking on a big new project and seeing it fail completely before ever really starting, facing imminent financial problems, and waffling over important decisions. That is the period I came out of this summer.

There are other good things currently going on besides what I've mentioned, but I really feel the main story is about my body and the improvements in my physical life. I was reflecting about this today when I realized that back when I first began studying socionics deeply, I was in a very different state of mind. Whereas now I am very focused on my body, back then at age 23-26 I identified intensely with my mind. What was most important to my self-identity were functions and preferences embedded in my brain and discerning how they expressed themselves and interacted with those of other people.

Now I am firmly in a stage where I identify with my body. All those powers of observation and discernment that were once focused on mental functions and interaction patterns are now directed at physiology. I now study and internalize information about neurotransmitters, hormones, nutrients, and physical processes just like I once mulled over socionics. Well, maybe not quite as much.

When I let on to people the degree to which I've studied my own physical functioning, I find that some are turned off and think there's something unnatural or counterproductive about thinking so much about these things. This reminds me of people's reactions to socionics. People imagine themselves doing what I'm doing and thinking what I'm thinking and sense that it would throw things off balance in their lives. But I'm different from them and it's perfectly okay for me. Self-study for me is like watching a good movie for someone else. I derive great satisfaction and insight from my deep study and self-tracking practice and increasingly have that feeling of possessing a kind of secret esoteric weapon that I had during the period I was most focused on socionics.

I love knowing that I possess accurate, objective knowledge about the different components of my life and how I feel. I love being able to know that this month is objectively better than the previous one and in what ways, and that I have not felt this good this long for well over two years. And I know which areas contribute most to this feeling and which areas are deficient and can be corrected to further improve my life.

For now at least, I am definitely a body. I look forward to continuing to develop its potential and optimize for health and happiness.

Living Well — Catalog of Sources

I've realized recently that my study of psychology (including socionics), physiology, nutrition, etc. is all based on an interest in living well. By "living well" I am talking not about standard of living or material success, but achieving as high a degree of happiness and contentment as is possible.

Different facets of good living have interested me at different times. Perhaps due to upbringing, my interest in mental and interpersonal aspects initially far outstripped my awareness of influences from the body and nutrition. Now these last two have become very important, and I am slowly becoming something of an expert on them and have had a fair bit of success implementing my knowledge of them in my day-to-day life.

Here is a kind of catalog of good and very good books I have read recently that may be of interest to readers. Following each book I assign it a category in parenthesis and give a very short summary. I heartily recommend all these books.

Rick's "Living Well" Catalog

(last update Aug. 9, 2013)

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (psychology, lifestyle) — proven contributors to happiness according to scientific research, plus some philosophy

The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (general psychology) — the seven basic emotional systems, their origins and operations

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (lifestyle) — what to do to get your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual engines running properly

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It (general psychology) — facts and studies that illuminate how our minds work and how we are able to concentrate and focus our will

The Highly Sensitive Person (psychology) — people who are prone to overarousal, the challenges they face, and the individualistic lifestyles they lead

The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast! (skill acquisition) — the principles and practice of skill acquisition with a number of practical examples

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (physiology) — developing our bodies' potential through wise nutrition, training, and technique, supported by abundant research and self-experimentation

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (nutrition) — study of traditional societies, their overall health, and what they ate

Preview of My Changing Views on Personality and Relationships

(This post started out as a response to Jonathan's comment on my previous post, then grew to article length)

Part of why it may seem I'm going a little too far in turning away from socionics (I acknowledge that's possible) is that I haven't yet talked about the views that are taking the place of socionics in my mind. That's because I wanted to first do a methodical run-through of socionics before getting to my new perspectives, but it's going slow because I have almost no one to discuss it with these days. Hence this post, which is a kind of preview of my emerging ideas — "convictions," you might say — on phenomena previously described by socionics.

At this point, allowing myself to skip past some of the methodical stuff and cut to the chase will probably be useful to both me and my readers. Here are some of the main points in no particular order: 

1. Identifying people as "the same type" is useful only when they have significant obvious similarities. I'm done with sticking highly sensitive or highly intelligent/creative/refined/whatever individuals into the same type as people with a completely different background and sensitivity just because they share some esoteric "information preferences." If other people don't see obvious parallels between two people, then calling them the same type does more harm than good (this conviction comes from personal experience). 

2. This inevitably suggests a different set of types — either a similar number of types but with a much more uneven distribution, or a greater number of types. I personally don't care much anymore to name the types or create a consistent system such as socionics. However, identifying and describing the important common traits between two people I still find to be very worthwhile. 

3. The brain is not organized into socionic functions the way socionics suggests. The contents of our ongoing stream of conscious mental activity cannot be categorized by socionic function. In other words, the majority of the time, you will not be able to clearly relate what you're thinking about — or how you're thinking about it — to some socionic category. Rather than trying to force a socionics categorization, I'm more interested in just letting the information speak for itself and kind of self-categorize based on principles of pragmatism.

3.1. I would find it interesting to go through some of the music we once examined (back in 2007) using socionics terminology and allow different kinds of categories to emerge from that exercise. The questions I would start out with are, "what effect does this music have on the listener, and what does this music say about the composer's personality and state(s) of mind, and possibly the culture in which he/she grew up in?" Along the way we might discover that some music is just "better" than other, that level of sophistication is just as important a factor as the "states of mind" we were trying to describe using socionics functions, or that we come up with a number of states worth describing that does not equal 8.

3.1.1. I almost forgot to acknowledge, however, that Jung's and Augusta's idea of dividing up thought processes and basic traits into co-equal mental functions is a powerful and liberating idea that teaches one to see the other side of things and identify possible alternatives to nearly any approach to anything. That makes for a very useful mental tool, even if the details are not strictly correct. 

4. A result of point #3 is that interaction mostly does not occur on the basis of socionic functions. I believe that applying a general psychology/science perspective in examining specific cases brings one to different (simpler and better) conclusions than socionics about why people do or do not get along.

5.1. There is still something to functions and their impact on relationships. It's like they are bundles of values, but not actual mental processes or modules of information perception, processing, and output. 

5.2. There is still something mysterious about why people who are so different can sometimes get along so well. What socionics has done, however, is to put complementary differences on a pedestal. For the most part, people hang out with people of similar personalities who — perhaps — differ from them in some more subtle (and perhaps simpler and physiologically definable) way than being "a completely different type." 

6. Duality as described by Augusta is basically equivalent to falling in love. Remove the love, and duality is more mundane a phenomenon and barely preferable — on average — to other relationships. In modern culture, we expect and even require love for long-term relationships and generally prefer any relationship with love to one without it, regardless of the intertype relationship. There are good reasons for this coming from the logic of biological success.

6.1. Love does not obey the "laws" of intertype relations, and the idealizations that people project onto objects of passion do not necessarily come from the person's supposed Super-Id (dualizing) functions. That is, if you listen closely to what people want to have in an ideal partner — not just their conscious preferences but their emotional reactions to different people — I think you see that the preferences are 1) indeed significant and generally there for good reason; 2) not reducible to an "ideal dual"; and that 3) some people are [much] more universally desirable than others, and again, not because people are stupid and don't know what will make them happy, but because there are [nearly] universally positive and negative traits, habits, and life circumstances of great signifance to human interaction to which socionics is blind (see point #8).

6.1.1. It could be true that dual relations are more often magical than others. However, the fact that they tend to be described as magical feeds a tendency to see duals any time there is magic. Furthermore, a "magical" dual might have more in common with a "magical ___ type" than with a non-magical dual. 

7. There do exist particularly potent combinations of people that socionics is unable to predict (because its model of the psyche is not just incomplete, but fundamentally incorrect). The cause of the potency is unknown to socionics but can be discovered on a case-by-case basis and then, perhaps, generalized into a set of patterns and general rules. I would speculate that these combinations are highly symbiotic on grounds that are more or less permanent (constitutional) rather than situational (e.g. your specific current needs complement the other person's). Such pairings are consistently able to elicit symmetrical positive emotions in each other. Why? I don't know, but I'm now quite confident it is not socionics.

7.1. People with more extreme traits may have different patterns of interpersonal compatibility than those with traits closer to the norm. In particular, they may experience incompatibility much more often and have greater unmet needs for understanding and connection. The causes of this are fairly straightforward and obvious and probably have little or nothing to do with socionics.

8. There are many very important universals that socionics is blind to. For instance, that some people are almost universally annoying while others are almost universally liked/admired. There are not 16 strategies of success, but rather just a handful, plus variations. People achieve success not only by relying on unique strengths, but also by developing universal qualities common to most varieties of success. Trying to follow a somewhat contrived and esoteric type-specific path to success seems to me generally less useful than working on improving the universals.

8.1. For the most part, our lives are dominated by universals — standard situations that would elicit similar reactions in most people. Socionics suggests the opposite.

8.1.1. However, there are definitely times when a person needs to focus on discovering and enhancing the individual and specific. Socionics can give some broad hints, but nothing more. So can other typologies. So can non-typological empirical psychology.

8.2. There are "better" and "worse" states to be in that are remarkably universal, but these states are hard to describe from a socionics perspective. "Type development" is a clumsy and unparsimonious way to describe it. Modern science now has a ton to say about what contributes to happiness and well-being, and research results don't obviously suggest a typological approach.

9. The territory that we each stake out in life and build our self-identities upon is mostly based on unconscious calculations of our probability of biological success in the various roles/niches we have tested or know of given our existing investments and available energy and resources. These roles are often continually changing as different actors come and go and resource allocation patterns (i.e. the economy) evolve, since these things affect our personal prospects. While there may be patterns in which personalities gravitate towards which kinds of roles, situational and non-typical factors are generally more important. Since our connections with people are to a large extent determined by these roles, the things that bring people together and create a bond are best described using non-socionic language because socionics plays a small part in it.

9.1. I think lasting interpersonal conflicts can be parsimoniously described as reflecting threats to self-identities, current roles, and biological success. If you are a sadist and want to cause people psychological pain, don't nerdily attack their hypothetical "point of least resistance"; instead, doubt their self-identity, jeopardize their current roles, and question their biological success. 

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That's a glimpse of where my ideas are taking me.

Back to Augusta...

An important question I ask myself is, if things really are as I have suggested here, how can Augusta and so many followers have thought for so long that the system worked? I think that a key to the longevity of many not-quite-true (I don't mean that perjoratively) idea systems is their complexity. The structure and sophistication of systems of thought often have the effect of aweing their adherents. If the ideas are complex and extensive, they may take a very long time to prove or disprove. I, for one, only feel confident in calling socionics "inaccurate" as of the past 6 months.

A long-lived idea system must also be at least reasonably accurate at some level — or impossible to disprove. The fact that thinkers have been identifying types of people for millenia suggests that there is some basis for this approach. It is also plainly evident that different combinations of people are more or less compatible, and that once-established relationships and attitudes toward each other often last for a long time. However, our limited consciousness seems incapable of understanding why this is the case without the help of science. One of Augusta's errors (and mine too) was overstating the role of permanent, constitutional differences in personality. Her model treats people as essentially unchanging actors and isn't well suited for describing short- and long-term development. This error, as well as its opposite — that everything is situational — are easy to make if you are unaware of the last 30 years of psychology research.

Augusta attempted to explain phenomena which are still clouded in mystery — namely love and interpersonal attachment/rejection patterns — and did a half-decent job at it. Good enough to make a lot of people excited about the discovery. Because there are so many types and varieties of intertype relations, a place could be found for any person in the universe revolving around any particular person. To find points where the system breaks down requires comparing overlapping universes to see how the predicted relationships and perceived personalities play out. Like I said, this can take a lot of time — years and years — as one tries tweaking typings and one's understanding of socionics to see if things can be made to fit after all. 

How Important Is Happiness Really?

It is generally assumed that happiness is not only the abstract "aim of our existence," but also one of the main sources of motivation in people's decision making. People choose to do one thing or the other based on whether they think it will make them happy or not. Research has shown that we're not always that good at predicting what will make us happy.

My observation both of myself and others has led me to the conclusion that, while happiness is indeed important to people, they generally assume (often incorrectly) that it will follow as a by-product of other, more important pursuits, which can be summed up as "biological success." 

Biological success is a complex concept encompassing physical health, sexual attractiveness, social standing (status, recognition, influence), material well-being, security, and prospects for the future. These are the kinds of things that probably most affect the likelihood that one will pass on one's genes to future generations. What evolution prescribes is an often conflicted mixture of things that "feel right" on a personal level and things that will gain the approval of one's particular reference groups and provide one's offspring with better chances of enjoying a secure position in that society.

According to this evolutionary logic, it seems that as soon as "sufficient" success is achieved in one area, one's attention shifts to another area of greater perceived weakness. This might be one way of looking at why people gain weight after marriage, sacrifice a degree of physical fitness to own a car (especially in poorer countries), or give up hobbies and social lives to become workaholics. In many contexts, these are choices that increase biological success — as long as most of the people around them are making the same choices. The logic is similar to that of an arms race. 

There is also a minority subculture of people who seem to do the opposite — give up things that would win them broad social approval in order to maximize physical fitness, richness in their emotional lives, enjoyment from hobbies and non-monetary pursuits, etc. I sympathize with this subculture, but I think they enjoy, on average, less reproductive success (I don't have data). Even these people are highly subject to social influence; they simply band into communities that have a somewhat different value system, and proceed to do things that will earn them esteem within that community.

At any rate, it seems exceedingly rare to meet someone outside of the psychotherapist's office for whom maximizing happiness is the chief aim of his/her existence. Even for these people, I think unhappiness only really becomes a problem when it is seen as a cause of failure in other areas of life. 

My own experience in studying happiness has been eye-opening. When I began my practice of self-quantifying (tracking various aspects of my everyday life through an increasingly sophisticated rating system), it was to learn more about how I was living my physical life. It became clear to me that my emotional life had an effect on my physical life, so I began to track that as well. Then, I added components of my intellectual life. I figured I needed a composite score, so I created an algorithm that accurately reflected my feeling of well-being for that day based on all the separate aspects. I also commented on specific things that influenced my well-being over that day. 

While this exercise was initially begun to get control over my physical health and was later expanded as an engaging intellectual exercise, it has served to help me dedicate a bit more of my attention to maximizing my own happiness as opposed to pursuing other goals. In my case, this is a much-needed shift. Now I can see how my quality of life has slowly been improving as a result. (Or at least so it seems at the moment. Like chronic dieters, maybe I'll just abandon the entire process when something really bad happens, then resume tracking when the worst is already behind me.) The act of consciously observing something changes behavior. At the same time, I note that I consistently do things, or allow things to happen, that hurt my feeling of happiness. 

For instance, virtually every time I make a move between countries, I have a depressed sense of happiness for at least several days before and after the move due to the stress of finishing up last-minute business, packing, losing sleep, being packed together with unfamiliar people for many hours, and figuring out my life in the new location. Yet I continue to do this time after time, believing that the stress is worth it because of some other more important objective. 

As I become more and more aware of what exactly is affecting my level of happiness, I increasingly gain the ability to make choices about whether or not to submit myself to different things whose effects on my happiness are now well established. I also spend more time thinking about whether there is some way to "tweak" things so that the same stimulus won't have a negative effect. And I've begun to place more value on things that have clearly been shown to enhance happiness, treating them like food or medication that needs to be taken in certain amounts on a regular basis. 

Now, if I can only get other people to start taking their own happiness more seriously, then that will raise the prestige of this activity and I can use my expertise in pursuing happiness to achieve greater biological success...