Bitcoin and Socionics

Over the past 1–2 years I've learned a lot about Bitcoin. Here I'm going to briefly share a few typings and socionics-related observations about Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community. 

It's not surprising that most vocal advocates for Bitcoin are intuitive types. Bitcoin is intangible and promises to transform the world over time. There are probably more sensing types among miners; cryptocurrency mining is, at the moment, the most tangible aspect of the network and produces immediate real-world rewards.

Among intuitive types, there seems to be a predominance of  types, particularly ILE. Bitcoin is a synthesis of ideas, a conceptual framework, a revolutionary monetary technology, the most thermodynamically sound money known to man. Bitcoin advocates who speak the conceptual language of  seem to enjoy the most attention at this stage in Bitcoin's development.

The best example is perhaps Michael Saylor (ILE, 80% certainty), head of MicroStrategy, the first company to convert its balance sheet to bitcoin in the summer of 2020. Saylor's numerous interviews display unassailable logic, big-picture, first-principles thinking, and a penchant for contrarianism.

From my exposure to Satoshi Nakamoto's writings (the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin), I would surmise that his type was also ILE (50% certainty). He demonstrated a high-level grasp of numerous relevant fields and superb systems thinking and often presented thought experiments.

Bitcoin's most obvious blind spot is . It's all well and good that Bitcoin is the most technically superior form of money and occupies a logical place in the broad arc of history, but what of the state's ability to coerce people into using fiat currency, upon which the centralized state has derived much of its power for over a century? Bitcoiners' arguments tend to look weak in this area. More astute advocates appeal to game theory—a sort of theory of power games or "intuitivized" —to demonstrate how Bitcoin comes to dominate over time despite the fact that it potentially undermines the power of the state.

There also seem to be plenty of  and  types in the Bitcoin community, for example, Saifedean Ammous (LIE, 60% certainty), author of The Bitcoin Standard, arguably the best book on Bitcoin. LIEs tend to be less interested in conceptual frameworks and more focused on how exactly the superior technology works and how it changes economic incentives, as well as historical antecedents. Another prominent figure is Adam Back (ILI, 60% certainty).

Bitcoin has plenty of detractors. I would divide them into 4 camps:

1. Those who are simply not intelligent or informed enough to understand how Bitcoin works and thus write the whole thing off using deeply flawed arguments.

2. Those who are capable of understanding Bitcoin, but have been indoctrinated with ideas incompatible with a deep understanding of Bitcoin, such as: Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), statism, socialism, political populism, leftist environmentalism, social idealism, and conspiracy thinking.

3. Those who more or less understand Bitcoin, but have a deep-seated intellectual realism () and appreciation of power and are skeptical that power structures will cave in to the logic of sound money. 

4. Those who are capable of understanding Bitcoin, but have been seduced by altcoins and haven't taken the time to understand the theory of money.

From my list you can see that the only anti-Bitcoin ideas I have any respect for are those rooted in —how states exert power and control and how concerted state action could slow or stop Bitcoin adoption. For instance, Nassim Taleb (SLE, 40% certainty) is one of very few people who have switched from being pro to anti-Bitcoin, I think because of a perceived naivete of many bitcoiners about the role of power and coercion. 

Deserving of special attention is Craig Wright (SEE, 50% certainty), who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto and has become a pariah in the Bitcoin community, using brute-force litigation to harass prominent bitcoiners for personal gain. A textual and particularly socionic analysis of Wright's and Nakamoto's writing should make it clear that the two have very different thought patterns and ethoses. 

Among friends and family, I find  types to be very receptive to Bitcoin. They need very little encouragement to make an investment and tend to apply the simplest heuristics ("this is like buying Apple or Facebook stock 10 years ago") while not taking on high levels of risk.  types typically need to see the big picture first. LIEs also seem highly receptive, and SLEs moderately receptive. 

The only types I've gotten pushback from have been SEE and ILI—the SEE because of the intangible nature of Bitcoin and the ILI for one of two reasons: either because of a deep-seated bias against anything that sounds like evangelism (anti- bias?) or resistance to doing something before first understanding it fully. I know other SEEs who are into Bitcoin and cryptos in general, but their focus seems to be more on short-term gains rather than Bitcoin as a transformative idea.

What's interesting about Bitcoin is its non-partisan nature. There are plenty of liberals and conservatives among prominent advocates, though conservatives seem to dominate somewhat (60-40?). That said, there is a subset of bitcoiners among so-called "Bitcoin maximalists," or "maxis," who have a distinctly us-versus-them mentality. There seem to be a lot of  and  in this camp, with some outright online bullying of altcoiners and no-coiners. This is where much of the "intolerant minority" resides that Nassim Taleb writes about in Skin in the Game. Maxis could, over time, evolve into a Bitcoin-centric political force that prioritizes principles above profit and unity above individual experimentation.

In summary, Bitcoin is an intellectual feast with a very deep rabbit hole that will make you rethink your views on politics, technology, economics, and psychology. If the  guys are right, the sooner individuals, companies, and countries adopt Bitcoin as their reserve asset, the more they stand to profit. 

Ex-ex-socionist?

A recent conversation with a Russian girl who's into socionics (the first such conversation in several years) made me aware of the possibility that I may have gone too far in my rejection of socionics. Since then I have been thinking about types a lot and trying to find the baby in all the bathwater I'd thrown out. It seems to make sense at this point in time to identify the subjectivity in my rejection of socionics, remove it, and see what's left.

Of course, my "adherence" to socionics was also highly subjective before that. I placed high expectations on socionics and believed I could use it to solve my personal issues. Disillusionment with this possibility along with an intellectual dismissal of the theory brought me to the anti-socionics position I've held for several years now.

The ups and downs of illusion

One of the things I think about a lot these days is separating actual events/facts from mental/emotional speculation around the subject. Elation and suffering come from mental speculation, not from facts.

Let's arbitrarily suppose that socionics' actual value is +5 ("potentially somewhat useful"). Yet there are different schools of socionics, most of which play up the value of socionics. Classical "Aushra" socionics, for instance, values socionics around +15 — way above its actual value at the present. Such was my fate that I learned about socionics from a school that played socionics up to +20 ("superpower" and "happiness through dualization"). On top of this I had my own private aspirations around socionics, which added an additional +20, making +40.

So here my mind has this +40 energy around a subject which only deserves +5. Over the years the illusion starts to erode: +35... +30... +25... +20... Eventually I consciously realize that the value of socionics is far below the +20 or +15 I'd assumed, and my personal aspirations around the subject were not to be realized. Those aspirations evaporated, and my assessment of socionics turned negative — to perhaps -5 ("a few key insights, but otherwise a waste of time"). But my mind overplayed this as well, putting perhaps another -10 onto that assessment. In a way, socionics had "hurt" me personally, or something like that.

This overshoot became clear to me in the aftermath of that conversation. I now feel ready to discard my negative mental position around the subject and take a fresh look. I think I'm able to treat socionics as the modest +5 it is, and leave it at that, without it having any importance for my self-identity.

The model above can be used to think about people's mental positions on a wide variety of subjects. As soon as an issue becomes "important" to us, we start playing it up and adding layers of mental speculation. If the subject becomes part of our self-identity, the layers can become exceptionally thick, like my +40 assessment versus the +5 that socionics actually merits.

How would I answer these questions today (8/22/2018)

What is socionics?
Socionics is an invented construct that divides people into types. It is not the "real truth" about people and how they function. Countless other constructs exist or could be created, and each illuminates its little section of reality. It's unlikely that any two constructs (typologies) have a 1-to-1 correspondence, and they don't need to.

When does socionics seem to "work?"
In my experience socionics seems to have the most explanatory value when applied to your immediate environment without trying to corroborate results with other socionists. You will be able to clearly type some percentage of your acquaintances (say, one-third), will have hypotheses for another third, and will be clueless about the last third. Among the one-third typed, everything will seem to fit neatly. Introducing other socionists into the picture to get their opinion will typically decrease, not increase clarity.

As a rule, roughly one-third of people will be easily typeable from the perspective of any one socionist. Furthermore, roughly one-third of all people will be broadly recognized by the community of socionists as being a certain type (the other two-thirds are out of luck and will have their types debated endlessly to their face and behind their back, which rubs some people the wrong way). These two sets of one-thirds overlap only partly. Each socionist will treat himself as being "somewhat typical" of his type, even if he belongs to the two-thirds whose types are unobvious to socionists at large. Thus, the clarity that one gains in one's immediate social environment can quickly become elusive. At least that's my experience.

What is socionic type about?
Type is part of the deep ego structure of an individual and seems to have some roots in physiology as well. It seems to only superficially describe temperament, which varies quite a bit among people of the same type. If socionics is about temperament, it doesn't do a very good job of it, and a better typology could be devised.

Socionic type can also be transcended to some degree, which is usually overlooked. Even deep ego structures can potentially be examined and disidentified with. The fact that somebody rubs you the wrong (or the right) way is probably a result of both ego structures and physiological factors:

Examples:
1) You very much like X, while they dislike X, which hurts your feelings (superficial ego structure).
2) You consider yourself an X person, and they don't have much respect for X people (deeper ego structure).
3) You need regular time alone to calm down and regenerate, and the other person responds to your withdrawal by trying to reengage you, sapping your energy (combination of habit and physiology)
4) You don't like someone's voice timbre, smell, etc. (mostly physiology)

The immediate cause of a positive or negative reaction to another person can probably never be explained by socionics. However, a pattern of reactions might be — to some degree...

So, I can't take any of the following statements seriously:
- "somebody said something that offended my X function"
- "I like her because her X complements my Y"

One of the pitfalls of socionics and all self-definitions is that they can be used to build up a fixed self-identity as an "X person." From a spiritual perspective this is not helpful and keeps one stuck in certain patterns. But this is a potential pitfall of any diagnosis or category. It's not an inherent shortcoming of socionics.

I realize I haven't answered the question. I don't really know what socionic type is. But sometimes it's there, and you just see it.

What about Model A? Functions? Information aspects?
I don't take it very seriously. These are interesting invented constructs, but I don't think they are a very good explanation of how the brain works and why interactions take on certain qualities.

What about the idea of information metabolism?
It's clear that the brain needs different types of experiences, states, and impressions to function well — in addition to the right food and other physiological inputs. It's also clear that different people often need different kinds of inputs. But I wouldn't say that Model A accurately describes these differences. Furthermore, the inputs are highly trainable. For instance, I've trained my brain to respond to hiking. Another person of the same type as me will not get the same kinds of impressions from the same hikes if they have not trained their brain the same way I have. Training trumps type.

What about intertype relationships?
I spent over 5 years in a relationship with an ILE (I am, presumably, an IEE) and was convinced she was my dual. During this period I created Socionics.us, wrote a few hundred articles and posts on socionics, was active on the16types.info, organized socionics meetups, and gave two talks at socionics conferences in Kiev. Hahahahaha, the irony.

Would I have enjoyed the same kind of relationship with any ILE? Of course not. The same goes for dual relations. It's all very individual. Perhaps only about 20% of relationship quality could potentially be explained by socionic types. That's not very much.

What are some of the confounding factors?
Intellect, pheremones, physical attractiveness, sensitivity levels, compatibility of deep ego complexes, etc. etc.

How is socionics useful?
Realizing that most of what happens between you and other people is automatic — beyond your control at this point in time. Realizing that things can work out with some people with little effort, and with others with a great deal of effort.

Would I go around typing people or talking about socionics?
Not at this time. Maybe in the future if I figure out how and why to do it.

Do I type people?
Today I sat down and made a chart of the types of some of the people I have interacted with over the past 7 years. It turns out I'd been registering types on a subconscious level during this time.

What significance do I assign to this chart?
Very little. But it's still interesting. Occasionally it reflects observable real-life relationships.

Do I have a type?
I guess. But I don't really care to prove it or disprove other versions. I don't even like talking about my self-identity these days because I don't take it seriously anymore. When talking to my Russian friend, I even refused to tell her what my type "used to be." I probably went overboard. The reason for that was to avoid any identification with a type. In fact, as soon as she stated her own type, I noticed that my perception of her shifted immediately, and I didn't like the feeling.

Do I prefer a certain type of women?
My preferences for physical and psychological traits are quite distinct at this point. Few of these preferences can be associated with socionic types. If the traits are present, I may become interested, and compatibility appears to be objectively higher, regardless of socionic type. I assume there are good psycho-physiological reasons for these preferences which are totally removed from my own type.

Do I favor dual relations?
I would say yes. Not long ago I finished a very nice 2.5-year relation with a dual (presumably, but who knows?). But some things were lacking. Would I have had a similar quality relationship with any dual? Of course not. My ideal relationship would be like my recent one with a few things added. But much of what made that such a good relationship was my own personal growth and improvements in my life circumstances. The relationship would not have been nearly as good 10 years ago.

Am I drawn to members of my own quadra?
To a slight degree, yes, but it's far from obvious. It's always something non-socionic that serves as the basis for friendship, such as a shared interest or pastime or some psycho-physiological commonality (mutual liking). I've never made friends with someone just because they were of a certain type or quadra. That never worked for me. The only same-quadra people I"ve made friends with were quite like me in terms of values, interests, and temperament — just like friends from other quadras.

Socionists Discover New Function

Socionists Sulimenko and Gornobakhov from the Novopetrovskiy Institute of Applied Socionics Studies have discovered a new element of information metabolism missing from the original Model A. The function is denoted as a black (extraverted) or white (introverted) pentagon and is claimed to resolve difficulties of type identification and inconsistencies in the expression of Intertype Relations which have hitherto beguiled the socionics community.

"The immediate effect of our discovery," states Sulimenko, "is that the pantheon of information metabolism types is extended from 16 to 25. This will, no doubt, cause our colleagues quite a bit of inconvenience at first. But we hope that the overwhelming logic of this new addition to socionics theory will soon convince the skeptics."

Not only are there now 25 sociotypes, but 25 intertype relations as well. As Gornobakhov explains, "Not all so-called 'dual relations' under classical socionics theory manifest all the qualities of such. As it turns out, 36% of these relationships are not actually 'duality,' but belong to one of two newly discovered relations which mimic duality in certain dimensions, but exhibit incongruencies of energy exchange which the previous socionics model was powerless to describe."

Some socionists have brushed off the discovery, explaining that a fifth function would mean 32 types (2 to the 5th power), not 25. Alesya Filiminova writes, "Evidently [Sulimenko and Gornobakhov] are talking about a complete restructuring of the socionics model, which has always been steeped in a dichotomous approach. Do they intend now to throw out all the dichotomies which have served as reliable landmarks for type identification? Or are we now to use 'pentachotomies' instead? We are rapidly approaching a level of complexity which the average socionics 'user' can scarcely aspire to apply, much less comprehend."

Others welcome the discovery. "I'd always known there was something missing from the standard socionics model," says Real-World Socionics founder Janus Ostrakovsky. "Other socionists would type me as an ILE, ILI, or even LII or LSE, but I could never fully identify with any of these types. Furthermore, my system of informational interactions with those around me was often in total contradiction to what was predicted by the theory. The notion of a fifth function could solve quandaries like this which are experienced by myself and many of my associates."

The researchers have promised to publish a detailed description of the function as soon as possible. 

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.

Why this Blog is Now Called "The [Ex-]Socionist"

A major shift in my views on personality and relationships has been gathering steam over the past 6 months, with several years of prehistory coming before that. I am preparing a special article on the subject, but will lay out the main points and factors here.

Basically, what has changed is that I've gone from generally viewing personality and especially relationships within a socionics framework, with caveats, to viewing things from an entirely non-socionics perspective, with occasional mental exercises such as, "is there anything typically socionic about this situation?"

Compared to where I was coming from 8-11 years ago, this is a spectacular shift. But it has come on so gradually — except for the last part — that it's been barely noticeable. Earlier this year, I was still pretty sure I was interested in completing some socionics projects, such as making an online test and perhaps putting together some compilation of essays. But now I am almost certain that my work in socionics is done for good.

That said, my Socionics.us website will be preserved in its current entirety and moved to a sub-section of another of my websites, TryUkraine.com.

Problems with socionics

What made me stick with socionics up till earlier this year was the conviction that, despite an increasing number of caveats, the "core" of relationships was still determined by socionics. This conviction was based mostly upon my experience of a set of very meaningful relationships in my own life, which I attempted to extrapolate — carefully — to those of other people. This summer and fall, I realized that I could have been wrong about one of those key relationships. I had always typed this friend as SLI despite her self-typings of alternately IEE and ILE. Then a friend got to know this person as well and disagreed strongly with my SLI typing (which already didn't matter as much to me anymore). As I looked at things through his eyes and saw a fairly convincing case for another type, I could feel it was time to leave socionics behind.

If she was indeed ILE, then it was ridiculous that I had had my major "dualization" experience with her — upon which I had based my understanding and descriptions of the process that have helped other people looking for the same thing in their lives. If she was indeed SLI, then it was ridiculous that I was the only person out of a fairly diverse group who could see it. Either way, the situation was entirely ridiculous and discredited socionics.

Shortly before this, I had finished rereading Richard Feynmans book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! While reading, I had asked myself wryly, "what would Feynman have thought of socionics?" Feynman wasn't particularly perceptive when it came to psychology, but he had a very good B.S. meter. In one of his stories, he recalls his participation in a philosophical debate where the concept of an "essential object" was put forth, but none of the participants could produce a definition of what an "essential object" was, and so it could not be decided whether X was an "essential object" or not (read this short summary of Feynman's attitudes on philosophy). I couldn't help chuckling about this, since it is so reminiscent of socionics terminology (what does "inner statics of objects" mean? is X an example of extraverted or introverted logic? etc. etc.).

Granted, Feynman's attitudes on philosophy were no doubt rather extreme and misguided, since out of the mental exercise of philosophizing sometimes — occasionally — come ideas that flower into scientific fact and theory. However, there is no doubt that Feynman would have thrown socionics in the garbage heap of undefinable philosobabble after 3 or 4 questions posed to even the very brightest of socionists.

At the time I read this book, Feynman's invisible voice resonated powerfully with me. One of the reasons for this is that I had spent many months preceding it absorbed in modern research about the body and brain. The things science has taught us about ourselves over the past decade are truly amazing, and we are on the cusp of learning even greater things about where we come from, how we differ, and how our common neurophysiology operates.

Contrast that to the scientific output of socionics (none, basically). The main texts and premises were laid out in the 70s and early 80s and since then have been discussed to no end in a distinctly philosophical vein, with each socionist making tentative, non-confirmable, and non-transferrable conclusions based on personal experience alone. The "practical application" vector of socionics is following down the exact same path of Myers-Briggs Typology (whose influence, I believe, is already waning): personal counselling, forays into organizational management, courses for those who want to learn the typology, and of course numerous self-help books that all say roughly the same thing (and some splinter groups who mean slightly different things with the same terminology).

Meanwhile, a very large portion of mental energy in the socionics community is devoted to analyzing the community itself, which I view as a dangerous intellectual trap: such analysis appears promising, but ultimately is a waste of time and energy and actually stems not from the truth-seeking instinct, but from the "I'm right and everybody else is wrong" self-assertion reflex. It shouldn't be engaged in too much to avoid self-poisoning. A few years back I was gifted perhaps the fattest book on socionics ever written (in Russian, of course), titled, The Smile of the Cheshire Cat, or the Possible and the Impossible in Socionics, which was basically a study of how socionists think about socionics, and whether their views were substantiated or unsubstantiated, in the author's opinion. I wonder how many people got through this book.

I have been acquainted with the socionics community long enough (12 years) to see how people's socionics "careers" have taken shape. I have to admit that I would not want to be in their shoes. Those that are still with it seem (to me) to be at an intellectual dead-end, trying to continue extracting some kind of revenue and recognition from what they have invested their entire adult lives for, and still doing the same things they were doing 10 years ago with little discernable progress. And it's not as if you can easily "switch careers" from socionics to some other field — say, stand-up comedy or business management. Those socionists that have left seem (to me) to have wasted years of energy doing... what? It's hard to pinpoint any concrete benefits from "doing socionics," unless it directly enabled positive relationships or tangible personal growth. In contrast, in more practical fields you can learn something, apply it immediately, and experience the benefits or lack thereof. Most or all of the benefit of socionics, in my opinion, comes from a few broadly useful realizations about people and their interactions that one tends to pick up very early in the game.

I also used to think that socionics would take hold in the West or East and develop basically along the same lines as in the former USSR. I no longer think this is the case. It is now very clear to me that modern psychology and neuroscience are developing along a very different path than socionics, and there will be little or no convergence. The scientific research coming out now is exciting and promising enough that it is capturing people's attention and imagination, and they are becoming less and less prone to take interest in more theoretical, less research-friendly perspectives such as socionics. The further neuroscience progresses, the weaker pre-neuroscience theoretical approaches like personality typologies become.

Also, I see no hint that psychology is discovering the kinds of discrete categories of people that socionics talks about, or that research on human interaction is tending to see things in an "information metabolism" perspective. Rather, we're seeing more and more research into hormones, attraction, relationship building, genetic difference vs. similarity, concrete predictors of relationship success, etc. And individual differences are almost always proving to be points on a continuum rather than lightswitch-type categories (either on or off). At least for the moment, science is definitely not moving towards socionics. My nose for trends tells me that the future is not with abstract or philosophical approaches to psychology (e.g. typology), but with our rapidly advancing understanding of the actual physical processes that shape the nervous system and human behavior.

On top of this, as I considered the types of other people close to me, I realized that, in many cases, I was no longer sure of their types. Rather than thinking that this was a temporary moment of reevaluation, I have come to see this as typical. When people are psychologically closer than a certain point, "contradictions" in their personalities become more and more apparent, making their types harder to identify. I see this is a big problem; it really shouldn't be this way if socionics is indeed accurate.

On a final note, my research into physiology, health, and lifestyle has led me to see many traits increasingly on a "better/healthier — worse/unhealthier" scale rather than in an "all traits are created equal" vein, which was partly inspired by socionics and partly due to my own egalitarianism. "Weak T" or "weak sensing," for instance, really is probably best seen as a weakness, and not as "the flipside of your strengths," as I would have emphasized in the past. Improve nutrition and lifestyle, and many of these weaknesses can go away, at least in part. It's often not the best approach to assume — as socionics suggests — that such weaknesses can only be compensated for through other people (e.g. complementary types), though there is merit in that idea.

That covers most of what I wanted to say. I will write more on these subjects later, and this blog will continue to live on.

Why Socionics Is Awesome

Amidst all the angst of the socionics community and my own frequent critiques of socionics as a half-baked system not particularly conducive to scientific progress, I sometimes forget my own personal experience of socionics, which is that… socionics is awesome.

So, lest I be mistaken for another disgruntled ex-socionics junkie, let me lay out the ways in which socionics has been an extremely worthwhile and positive school for me.

1. Socionics can easily be used to improve quality of life. For over a year after learning about socionics (age 23), I experienced virtually no interpersonal distress for the first time in my conscious life. Granted, much of this was due to the fact that I was in a constant state of private intellectual discovery and thus was not as sensitive as usual to real or perceived negative interpersonal situations (disagreements and conflicts, loneliness, lack of acceptance, social awkwardness, etc.). But mostly I attribute it to the fact that I had begun applying a constructive, socionics-based approach to managing my emotional and social life, consisting of: 1) a recognition that my emotional state is less the product of my own making than the result of my social interactions; particularly 2) the quality and depth of my connections to people of various personality types; specifically 3) whether I am too emotionally connected to the wrong types or too distant from the right types; suggesting that 4) emotional life can be improved by reducing emotional investment in one set of people and increasing investment in another set.

At first this required a kind of willful restructuring of my interpersonal connections, but eventually it became second nature. This formula clearly works — if it is not too compounded by other issues. I consider it one of the most important life skills, right alongside things like learning to provide for yourself and manage money, avoiding addictions, and taking care of your physical health. Some people are raised with one or more of these skills and may never appreciate what it takes to acquire them through conscious effort. Like these other life skills, keeping your interpersonal life in order requires a certain amount of self-love. No one else is going to do it for you.

Over time my understanding of what kinds of people are "right" or "wrong" for some kind of emotional interdependency has grown to include a lot more than simply socionic type. But the foundation for this skill was laid by socionics.

Positive relationships, particularly intimate ones, impact one's life in a variety of ways. If you have an idea what you're looking for — even if it's as simplistic as "a dual relationship" — that probably increases the chances that you'll find it. I'll never know how much of my romantic success or failure has been due to socionics, but I consider myself quite fortunate considering where I was coming from and what I have experienced so far in life. It could have been a little bit better, but it could also have been far, far worse.

2. Socionics is a secret weapon. My own socionics schooling — which included ruminating over the writings of Augusta (other authors' writings seemed dull in comparison), large amounts of introspection, studying my reactions to people, observing them closely and trying to identify their types under the guidance of a skilled but imperfect teacher, over a hundred hours of poring over photographs trying to recognize personality traits in facial features and expressions, and eventually meeting other socionics aficionados — brought to my awareness many things that had previously been unconscious. At the time it felt like I was acquiring a secret weapon that made my responses to the outside world less blind or mechanistic than other people's. When I realize at what level most other people think about the people around them, using conventional descriptors such as "nice," "good," "dull," etc. and assuming the superiority of their own psychological makeup, I'm eternally grateful to have undertaken a serious study of people and relationships and to have a more objective understanding of why I experience different feelings towards people.

Socionics also makes it easier to recognize and take advantage of numerous "shortcuts." Having a feel for someone's type (or at least elements of their type) allows you to build beneficial relationships quicker than otherwise, particularly if you have accumulated a large body of experience dealing with people of different types. Knowing that there is someone you will be able to confide in and rely upon to some degree may encourage you to take that risk and move to a new location that you feel will be better for you. Or, you may more quickly realize when you are in a bad situation due to the types and prevailing culture of a group you have landed in. A knowledge of socionics provides a more sophisticated feel for how much and in what ways you may be able to rely on someone and, in turn, be useful to them. This can help in choosing employers, partners and assistants, hobby groups, and roommates, not to mention romantic partners.

The caveat is that spiritual and interpersonal choices work best when they are based foremost upon feelings, not mental concepts, so it is very important that you develop an understanding of socionics that is congruous with and highlights your actual emotional experience rather than letting ideas about what you "should be" experiencing according to some interpretation of socionics take precedence over your actual feelings. This one caveat basically encompasses all the potential negative side-effects experienced by so many socionics aficionados. This is a complex problem not at all unique to socionics, and I no longer blame socionics for it. When a school of fish changes direction, it could be said that only the lead fish — the one with the strongest internal compass relative to herd instinct — is following her "true instincts." For whatever reasons, the other fish choose to repeat her movements instead of trying to access their own internal compass — at least, until a greater stimulus (e.g. predator) comes along, temporarily overriding the imperative to "follow the fish in front of you." The issue of negative side-effects of socionics is actually a fundamental and intractable "internal compass vs. external suggestion" problem. It's probably best dealt with individually by strengthening the internal compass (as if it were that easy!) and distancing oneself from the source of suggestion, if necessary. But if a person is able to do this at all, they probably didn't have much of a problem to begin with! Suggestibility exists, and it serves a function for the individual and for society. If people were insusceptible to suggestion, there would be no person-to-person learning.

3. Socionics can trigger a cascade of new intellectual pursuits. Before socionics I had less than a layman's understanding of science and hadn't seriously grappled with its big ideas. I had developed a theologically centered worldview that was clearly at odds with reality and insulated me from scientific and philosophical thought. As imperfect a scientific theory as it is, socionics suggested to me a simple universal principle that gradually undid my entire worldview: all things have their causes. I realized that up till then I hadn't really concerned myself with the causes of things, but had gone around in mental circles trying hopelessly to live up to acquired religious ideals. At first I applied this cause-and-effect idea to the emotional and interpersonal sphere (see #1), but soon began examining everything in its light. I became fascinated by thinking about phenomena divorced of moral judgments and reflecting on the likely material causes of things, eventually formulating my interest as follows: I want to know what is, not what is supposed to be. Later I formulated: the rejection of faith as a guiding principle is the very foundation of science. There's no good reason to have to stop asking "why?" — at least inside yourself — when you reach things that you or anybody else would like to be true but actually have no compelling reason to believe.

Through socionics I became interested in psychology and got a minor in the field. A couple lectures into psychology, I realized that the foundation of modern psychology was evolution. So I began reading about evolutionary psychology to mine it for important ideas, and soon read Darwin's Origin of Species for background, gaining a great admiration for scrupulous rational thought. Then I did quite a lot more reading on evolution, biology, memetics, and the philosophy of science. I literally felt my mind expanding; I could think thoughts that just a few months before had been totally out of reach. Later I would learn to appreciate philosophy in general and read widely in esoteric spirituality. Once I began developing Socionics.us and Wikisocion, socionics became a springboard for learning more about art, music, and history. All this careful thought and reading greatly stimulated my intellectual life and contributed to me later becoming a writer.

Oddly enough, I've never met anyone who experienced anything quite like this as a result of learning about socionics. To many people it sounds as strange and counterintuitive as a waiter becoming a fighter pilot as a result of ballet lessons. Clearly, my particular intellectual response was determined by the mounting tension between my acquired religious worldview and my natural disposition. Nonetheless, I will never forget that it was socionics that opened the floodgates.

4. Socionics encourages and rewards braininess. Sure, there are plenty of people in socionics with personal problems; that's what brings most people to it in the first place. There's nothing shameful about that. Why would you ridicule scrawny or overweight people who go to the gym? But most people who get into socionics are also smart, and it can become a kind of social refuge for brainy people who lack community. It's okay to be smart in socionics, to speak (write) using nerdy terminology, to defy conventional wisdom and present your own wacky ideas to be shot down by others whom you can call names like "conservative" and "orthodox." Sure, there are some people who just pretend to be brainy (just as there are people at the gym who pretend to be buff), but at least the community culture rewards braininess due to the nature of the subject. When I first got in contact with the Ukrainian socionics community, particularly publishing or researching socionists rather than aficionados, it was the first place I had been where you could be as brainy as you wanted. All the communities I'd experienced before that — even my high-achiever high school and university — still had this attitude like, "Hey now, don't get too brainy on us here, hahaha." Through socionics, I've met some really intelligent people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. This has been really valuable to me. Since then, I've found a few other places where braininess is accepted and rewarded, but socionics was the first.

5. Socionics opens the door to higher levels of objectivity, helping to weed out typocentrism and other kinds of biases from one's worldview. It allows you to see, as William James says in Pragmatism, that each man's philosophy is merely a justification of his native disposition. We will likely continue to act in typocentric ways, but at least we can begin to remove biases from our conscious values and worldview, granting other people the possibility of living a legitimate and dignified life according to our own definitions, though we choose to live differently. A study of socionics clearly suggests that 1) there are different legitimate life strategies, each with its potential pitfalls, 2) no type-determined trait can be considered a defect in any sort of intellectually honest way (i.e. such a defect is in the eye of the beholder), and 3) many of the things that bug us in other people are outgrowths, or extreme expressions, of fairly typical and basically benign qualities, thus 4) the "defect," if any, is in the disbalance or misapplication of traits, not in the underlying traits themselves. From these thoughts it seems natural to conclude that 1) each set of traits has its place and its purpose, 2) your own traits may "feel" superior, but only in some abstract ideal sense, as natural selection has decided otherwise by not granting them to everybody.

For me, these realizations have encouraged me to look beyond what works only for me and people like me and look for formulas that are more universal. At some point, I realized that philosophical acceptance of other temperament-determined strategies could itself be considered an extreme viewpoint, given that rejection thereof is a far more common occurence. Most likely, I am in fact less philosophically accepting than much of my writing suggests, and militant promoters of a temperament-specific philosophy are actually not as militant as they appear. In certain situations, I might turn out to be more vehement than them. At any rate, thanks to socionics I am able to think about these things much more clearly, recognizing potential biases as they crop up in myself and others.

So, there you have it. Socionics is awesome! Despite the lack of empirical studies and other flaws, and despite all the caveats and pitfalls. Probably, after reading this article, you will have realized that each person's response to idea systems is highly individual.

Reflections on the Value of Socionics

A Ukrainian friend mentioned today that he had discovered my socionics website on the web when trying to find my contact information online.

- "Oh God," I answered, rolling my eyes with a laugh. "I swear that's not me!"

- "So you've recovered now?"

- "Oh, for sure. 100%. Getting over socionics is a greater achievement than learning it in the first place."

- "Yeah, socionics is quite a potent Trojan."*

* My friend is a software engineer and obviously chose his metaphor carefully. "A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but (perhaps in addition to the expected function) steals information or harms the system... A destructive program that masquerades as a benign application. Unlike viruses, Trojan horses do not replicate themselves, but they can be just as destructive. One of the most insidious types of Trojan horse is a program that claims to rid a computer of viruses but instead introduces viruses onto the computer" (from Wikipedia).

Some more excerpts from our conversation:

- "Socionists spend so much time talking about how to develop socionics and overcome stagnation, but the problem is not in the people or their resources, but in the fact that socionics originated and developed as a philosophical school."

- "It lacks experimental repeatability. You can spend years studying socionic phenomena and report your conclusions to other socionists, but there is no way they will be able to build upon your results."

- (Him) "Did you know there's a socionics club that meets here every Friday? I attended for a while some years ago. It was always either dismal, very dismal, or hopelessly dismal."

- "People learn a new language to be able to think about and discuss socionics, but soon they find that they can't talk to other people anymore because they don't know socionics speak."

- (Him) "I learned about socionics in 2005 and for the next year and a half basically disappeared from society. I finally realized I was free when a girl asked me what type I was and I said, 'I don't know!' At that moment I realized I didn't care anymore."

- (Me) "At this point I have no internal need to discuss socionics with anyone. Now I can easily go for a year or more without mentioning types or the 'S' word."

- "Socionics frees a person from one set of delusions, only to replace them with new ones."

- "It gives people a way to justify their own shortcomings and failings. And it leads to new types of chauvinism."

Note that at this point in the conversation we risk falling into "delusions of disgruntled ex-socionists." Sometimes negative experiences can cause people to lose all objectivity in their criticism of whatever they have left behind. In socionics, this negative experience is usually acquired at online socionics forums or at socionics clubs, schools, or conferences when a) fruitful discussion or consensus fails to materialize (due, of course, to "stupid" or "dogmatic" people) or b) there are serious disagreements about people's types, particularly that of the disgruntled person (due to "incorrect typing paradigms"). It can be hard to get over the bad experiences and gain a more objective and moderate perspective, because it means rising to a higher level of understanding than the level one was at when the bad experiences occured. That may take years and multiple major life changes.

Our conversation continued:

- "At the same time, socionics has an unmistakable kernel of truth in it — the observation that interactions with different people tend to be quite different."

- (Him) "For me, the notion of complementarity was the most important thing I got out of it."

- (Me) "And I became very attentive to people's personalities. I don't just mean their types, because once you know 20 people of the same type you start paying attention to all the things that make them different."

So it's obviously not all bad after all! In my case, I would say socionics has been more positive than negative. It was like serving in the army. You go through some hard training and earn some battle scars, but come out (hopefully) wiser for it and perhaps more of a "real man." But many people's experience of socionics is more like joining a cult; instead of performing your service and returning to the real world, the socionics community becomes your primary social outlet, socionics lingo becomes an involuntary part of your thought and speech, and you lose your desire to connect deeply with people outside of the socionics community (or try to draw them into it in order to be able to connect with them).

I sometimes wonder if the universally applicable "kernel of truth" within socionics can be separated from the parts that seem to engender negative experiences, or if the two are inextricably connected.

Now that I am "beyond socionics," I could easily imagine training another person to observe other people's expressions of personality and individuality, as well as their own responses to these expressions, without resorting to a single socionics term — even hidden terms (i.e. by replacing a "foreign" socionics term with a more familiar word). I think a person could learn to recognize and develop potentially fruitful relationships and gain more social confidence through this type of training. I can't imagine that it could have any negative effects at all. But would something important be lost with all the categories removed?

Products of Our Time

(reposted from my personal site because I think this is somewhat relevant to this blog)

We are products of our time — unwitting manifestations of processes that are difficult to recognize due to the small timescale of a human life.

We grow up in cultures that form our basic attitudes, which some people begin to question in early adulthood. But where does culture come from? Many elements of culture "just evolve," much like languages, in a kind of self-reinforcing way.

Ultimately, no all-encompassing answer can be given to questions such as, "why do men wear ties to work?" A satisfactory answer would have to include the history of labor and clothing, the economic factors affecting this history, and a scientific discussion of the psychological and biological basis of conformism. Even then, there's no guarantee that we've actually found an answer. There's no guarantee that if we rewound history and started the game over, by the year 2000 men would be wearing ties to work. In the rerun, some "butterfly in Texas" could flap its wings a little differently, and in the end men would be wearing turtlenecks with stripes down the front instead of collared shirts and ties. If a whole flock of butterflies flapped their wings, maybe today men would all paint their fingernails, grow pointy moustaches, and wear kilts.

But there are other, more significant, elements of culture that are much less arbitrary and have traceable material causes. I would like to discuss a few of these causes in this essay: urbanization (overpopulation), information technologies, and fossil fuels.

1. Urbanization/overpopulation

We are products of overpopulation. Most of us spend our lives surrounded by strangers and packed into urban centers — conditions very different from those in which our species evolved. Higher population density translates into more complex social structures and societal institutions, as well as more information in general. This greater complexity takes more time to understand, and more information must be assimilated before one can become a "productive member of society," so we study longer and delay creating families later. Equipped with a strong exploratory instinct, in urban conditions people can't help investigating all the options, finding out what there is in society, what goods are available, getting to know more people, and trying out more things. All these actions "distract" us from reproduction. We extend our education, pass more time investigating options before settling down with a career, and spend years picking and choosing among potential mates before finally creating a family.

Overpopulation also causes an underlying stress related to continual interaction with complete strangers. We develop conventions for formalizing superficial interactions with strangers in order to reduce stress. These include handshakes and other forms of greetings, etiquette, and conversation patterns. Once surrounded almost exclusively by close community, Homo Sapiens now spends a great share of his time among strangers. This leads to conventionalized interaction, ignoring, and avoidance. People whose natural shyness would be easy to overcome in a communal environment find themselves easily isolated in an urban setting. Even naturally gregarious people find themselves susceptible to feelings of isolation as nobody has time to spend with them.

Reproduction begins to lose its value and allure in an overpopulated society. The economics gradually change to favor small families and even bachelorhood. Land, infrastructure, and education costs rise, requiring people to spend more time working to pay their own way and, consequently, less time working to feed dependents. Children become progressively more expensive and less useful to their parents.

Despite the rising costs and risks of reproduction, the reproductive instinct remains as strong or nearly as strong as ever (due to mild chemical suppression). Furthermore, continual contact with attractive strangers provides constant low-level sexual stimulation. In addition to developing anti-contraceptives, society channels this energy into increasing autoeroticism and voyeurism (viewing sexual behavior but not engaging directly in it yourself). Nonreproductive sexual behavior is increasingly accepted and encouraged, with a plethora of goods and services available to make it easier. This ultimately serves to lower reproductive pressure and hence population. So-called moral decay, then, actually serves the noble purpose of reducing population pressure.

Population pressure is also reduced through increasing acceptance (prevalence?) of homosexuality and by the rising prevalence of psychological problems inhibiting the formation of stable relationships. The causes of relationship problems at first glance appear unrelated to population density, but I would argue that they are by-products of urbanization. Commitment avoidance, for instance, traces to societal complexity and an overwhelming amount of information and opportunities. Emotional intimacy problems probably trace to excessive contact with strangers and insufficient contact with family. In addition, modern urban life presents difficult financial and career decisions almost unknown to previous generations.

2. Information technologies

We are products of the telephone, TV, and Internet. Increasingly effective communication technologies have allowed us to maintain increasing interconnectedness despite increasing isolation. Thanks entirely to telephones and, later, the Internet, each individual now maintains a staggering network of instantly available contacts, many of whom he will never see again in his life due to the vastly increased mobility of individuals (thanks to fossil fuels — see below).

As a result of increasing access to information, modern urbanites are now incredibly knowledgeable about things that have little to do with their personal circumstances. Our innate curiosity receives outlets that previous generations couldn't have dreamed of. Any question can be answered, any fact discovered, with just a few mouse clicks. A side effect is impatience with lack of knowledge — our own or others'.

Quick and easy means of communication favor short, spontaneous interactions. Messages become shorter and generally more mundane. Gone is the art and practice of letter writing. We lose our sense of distance; each friend or contact with Internet access becomes equidistant. Eventually all our friends are "contacts," and all our contacts are "friends."

A result of the growth of information technologies is information overload. The TV has more channels than you can watch simultaneously, and TV programs run round the clock. Everyone is available at the same time via phone or Internet. The Web never sleeps, and its content never stops growing and changing. Our biology predisposes us to become "information exchange junkies," and it's easy to become a genuine addict with information "fixes" so easy to obtain.

As a result of all this information, we're spending less time than ever on physical pursuits, and our minds are often overstimulated while losing some ability to focus. The more information there is, the less time we spend digesting each portion of it. A bit of depth is sacrificed to breadth. But the new breadth is incomparably vaster than the old.

Information technologies also feed our increasing autoeroticism and voyeurism by offering personal sexual and emotional adventures whenever we want through online pornography, chat rooms, and socializing. This can translate into decreased motivation to pursue person-to-person sexual and emotional contact, which contributes to the depopulation trend described above.

3. Fossil fuels

Fossil fuels are the reason why widespread urbanization (overpopulation) and the development of information technologies were possible in the first place. Fossil fuels have also produced their own unique set of unique culture-forming circumstances, described in my article on fossil fuels and their influence on communities and health. The main derivatives of industrialization are sedentarism, individual mobility, and rootlessness.

It's hard to fathom how much our attitude towards our bodies has changed as a result of industrialization. Our bodies have become basically irrelevant to our professional success. Healthcare has become institutionalized as a result of industrialization, urbanization, and advances in medicine and is no longer the full responsibility of the individual. At the same time, our outward appearance is still important for developing relationships, perhaps more so than ever now that we spend so much time among strangers.

The functionality of the body — that is, its ability to perform various tasks — is no longer of much economic significance. Those who continue to develop their bodies do so more for aesthetic than for practical reasons. Freed from the constraints of daily physical labor, the body has become a kind of art form to be honed and looked at by others, or simply be kept hidden under a layer of clothing. At the same time, industrial society presents formidable obstacles to maintaining a physically healthy lifestyle, and many people are unable to keep their bodies in good aesthetic shape. Orthodontics, cosmetics, and clothing today allow one to make a good impression despite an undeveloped physique.

Mobility — made possible by liberal capitalism and modern transportation infrastructure — allows us to choose from a greater number of life options than ever before. Not only can one choose from a plethora of professions, but one can also live almost anywhere one wants. More options means more time needed to make choices. Mobility contributes to delays in reproduction and increased social isolation mentioned above. Society-wide effects of mobility are discussed in the article linked to above.

One of those effects is widespread rootlessness. People who can go anywhere they want tend to have weaker ties to place. Furthermore, national culture becomes more uniform through deep-level cultural interchange facilitated by large-scale movements of people. A rootless person becomes, statistically speaking, more cosmopolitan, less devout, and less patriotic with regard to his land of birth. On the other hand, the personal benefits to be gained are often irresistible: professional opportunities, economic gain, and adventure.

Conclusion

Urbanization, overpopulation, information technologies, industrialization, and fossil fuel-derived mobility have formed a new kind of person — the individualistic, independent yet financially indebted, information-consuming, erudite, autoerotic, voyeuristic, morally decadent, rootless, highly mobile yet sedentary, aesthetically physical, emotionally isolated but socially connected Modern Urbanite.

This process is taking place across the entire globe and has reached an advanced stage in places as diverse as New York, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Shanghai, Moscow, and Sydney. Chances are, if you're reading this, a good two-thirds or more of what I've written applies to you.

Socionics on the PCT

Some of my readers may know that I spent the summer hiking the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail), a 2660 mile long trail through the great coastal ranges of the West that starts at the Mexican border and ends at the Canadian border. My journey lasted over four months and provided ample time to reflect on many different things, including socionics and other psychological topics. Here's my write-up of the adventure, if readers are interested. 

I began the trip alone but quickly met dozens (actually, over 100) of other long-distance hikers who began the same day I did. I noticed that while I was in the stage of just getting to know people, the mere half-thought of trying to guess their socionic types was revolting to me. This continued for quite some time; I actually began to wonder if perhaps socionics had finally lost all relevance to me. People's types clearly weren't important to me. I needed to make some friends and alliances quickly, and doing so based on instincts and largely unconscious criteria is the best way to do that. 

However, in just a couple cases, a kind of "deja vu" sensation would strike me when found myself talking to someone in a very familiar and intimate way. "Probably, this is a dual," I would think, particularly after noting some common SLI traits such as practical-mindedness, an affinity towards animals and the natural world, an ability to simultaneously bring out both my intellectual and my comical sides, etc. In all other cases, however, I didn't care to even think about socionics. 

At first, I found it a challenge to connect with other thru-hikers (the standard term for long-distance hikers). I didn't know what to talk about and was turned off by many of them, especially those who quickly banded together in groups or seemed to focus too much on smoking or drinking. I was quite often lonely and keenly felt my lack of belonging to any group. Events near the start of the hike had also put me days behind all the people I had begun to make friends with, so what few connections I had made were promptly lost for the time being. 

After a few weeks, things began to turn around. The "herd" had had the chance to spread out a bit, and the number of thru-hikers in my immediate vicinity dropped to a low enough number that I was starting to recognize people I had met before. No longer did I feel I was trying to break into a hopelessly large group of people; instead, I was seeing individuals with whom I might or might not have something in common. 

Somehow, I gradually learned how to talk to other thru-hikers. Over the next few months, starting a conversation became more and more natural, and just a month or so into the hike, I was able to dispense with all typical formalities when meeting other thru-hikers. Introductions were shortened and often just skipped over until the end of the conversation, and I (and other thru-hikers) would begin expressing our true thoughts and feelings almost immediately, even if we had never met the other person before. So, a conversation might go like this:

- Hello.

- Hi. You must be a thru-hiker.

- Haha, of course. How's your hike going?

- It's going great. I just had the most awesome experience...

etc.

This openness and spontaneity would also often carry over onto interactions with day-hikers, weekend hikers, and people in trailside towns. Needless to say, it brought a freshness to conversations that I had rarely experienced before outside of close friendships. I hope it stays with me. It feels like a more harmonious state of mind that is less concerned with appearances and conventions and more centered on emotional experience and realizing one's personal desires. 

After a month, I was more or less at the front of the pack and had just a dozen or two other hikers in the vicinity. I soon built up a history of interaction with almost all of them and felt comfortable (though in slightly different ways) with each of them. At some point, the thought of identifying their types occurred to me naturally, and the typings came easily. From here to the end of the trip I was able to identify the types of people around me with fairly little effort, provided I had time to have at least a few good conversations with them.

What I found was that every, or almost every type could be found among thru-hikers, even though, on the whole, most thru-hikers shared a pretty specific set of traits: intelligent, articulate, individualistic, liberal, anarchistic, agnostic or atheist, interested in natural science. Yet these same general traits could be found among many different types. There were also differences between hikers at the front of the pack and those who were in the middle of the "herd." Those at the front tended to have even more of the listed traits, and also to have a more serious attitude about their hike, having generally done more planning, training, and more careful gear selection. 

The only types I do not recall meeting (but could easily have missed) are EII and LII. Unexpectedly, I discovered an apparent predominance of irrational types -- as much as 2/3 of the thru-hikers I got to know. Among these, base  and  types seemed most common. Irrationals seemed to be very flexible in their group alliances and more prone to join up with or ditch someone on the spur of the moment, whereas rationals seemed to hike much longer with the same person, or to even do the entire hike without ever teaming up with anyone for more than a few hours, because they would not adjust their pace or schedule for anyone. Irrationals, on the other hand, tended to fall out of spontaneously formed groups not because of their rigidity and singlemindedness, but because of their ever-changing sleep schedule, daily mileage, eating habits, hiking speed, etc. I myself was a perfect example of this, never permanently settling on any particular hiking style. Instead, I tried to learn to adjust my speed and schedule to what my body felt like doing rather than try to have my body do what I decided it ought to do.

I met many people who seemed to be "typical" representatives of their type ("typical" is in quotation marks because anyone is atypical when viewed from a certain angle), such as ESEs who welcome vast numbers of thru-hikers into their homes and treat them with great hospitality and unwavering good cheer, or a voluptuous, husky-voiced SEE girl whom others assumed (wrongly) was "sleeping her way" down the trail. However, even more common were the openly atypical: an oldish ILE with a very muscular, chiseled frame, an effeminate LSE male, a rail-thin ESI girl with incredible speed and stamina, etc. Who's to say what is typical and atypical in socionics, though? What I mean to say is that while there is certainly -- theoretically, at least -- some elusive set of "core" traits for each type, experience with real people constantly whittles away at any preconceived notions about what the types should look like, what things they should be interested in, what talents they should have, etc. 

I found that in the setting of a long-distance hike, type did not seem to be as important for establishing a connection with someone as shared attitudes and shared hiking styles. Simply for practical reasons, another hiker who walks the same pace you do for the same amount of time each day will be easier to connect with than one who hikes faster or slower, no matter how psychologically compatible he is. If another hiker has chosen to use ultralight gear, like me, that automatically gives us something to talk about. Furthermore, by this time in the hike we have all been through so many similar joys and tribulations that there is enough material to talk about with nearly any other thru-hiker for at least an entire day. 

This and other thoughts left me in a quandary. I still don't know to this day whether socionics is at all worth promoting. To so strongly oppose faith-based worldviews on philosophical and psychological grounds and then promote socionics seems hypocritical; as no proper proof of socionics' claims exists, adherents must take large portions of it on faith, which spawns a culture in which people declare things as if they were true and easily forget that no one actually knows for sure that they are. Socionics' proper place in science is as a conjecture -- a hypothetical answer to the questions "how do people differ?" and "why are some relationships good and some bad?" To promote socionics as something much more than a conjecture would be intellectually dishonest of me. At other times, I would think about approaching the subject in the spirit of classical socionics, but with copious reminders that this is just a hypothesis that remains to be proven. Still other times I would think, "to hell with socionics!" and prefer instead go back to square one -- the basic questions of personality and interaction -- with a purely empirical approach, speaking of socionics only in a critical light.

Some of the books I read or listened to this summer during my hike have strengthened my interest in the third approach. For instance, I have read William James' famous work The Varieties of Religious Experience and was quickly convinced of the superiority of the strictly empirical method of study, applied with unwavering neutrality to even such subjective phenomena as religious experience. Certainly that same kind of thinking could shed much light on the muddled topic of individual differences and varieties of interaction. I have read (listened to) Nietzsche's The Antichrist and have reflected upon the general effect of socionics upon the human spirit: is it something that strengthens the spirit -- the "will to power," as Nietzsche would put it -- or weakens it? The answer seems to be that it largely depends on the person; socionics can be a tool to achieve a useful end, or a means to reaffirm one in one's weaknesses using a whole new set of excuses clothed in fancy technical jargon. Yet I can't help thinking that there is something in socionics that generally spawns weakness. Perhaps it is the tendency it brings to analyze what must be lived -- to apply conscious thinking in place of instinctive doing. Surely this cannot be an effective formula for augmenting one's personal power. Unless, that is, the student of socionics previously suffered specifically from a lack of mental analysis regarding himself and his interactions. 

In a word, I'm more uncertain than ever about what to do with socionics. I don't know if there is much personal value left in it for me. My hike left me with a resolve to promote ideas of real importance, such as routes to achieve greater personal freedom and happiness, reconnect with the natural world, and increase overall fitness and health while reversing our society's runaway consumption. Now, socionics appears to me to be an intermediate step towards something greater, a temporary training ground for bigger and better things. If socionics were widely accepted as the final answer, our world would quickly become intolerably stuffy and restrictive. 

 I find myself increasingly drawn to wholly suspend socionic categories in my analyses of things, because there is more to be learned that way (for me at least). And yet, socionics has trained me to pay close attention to psychological phenomena in the first place. 

Brain Chemistry and Typology

Evolution of typologies and thought systems in general

It seems that brain chemistry is the current typological fashion, somewhat like the concepts of "information" and "information processing" in the mid-20th century. The idea of personality types is ancient, but with each new period of philosophical or scientific development it seems that the types are reformulated in contemporary terms, leading to an evolution and inevitable drift of the types themselves through cumulative subtle changes in descriptions and emphasis. 

Today a dominant philosophical/cultural trend is the increasing scientific understanding of how the brain functions. More and more, you hear words like "serotonin" over the church pulpit and in everyday conversation. Typologists realize that in order to remain culturally relevant, they need to somehow respond to the dominant trends in psychology and philosophy, much like the Pope feels pressure to formulate some sort of official stance on issues such as AIDS and climate change. 

An important effect of the need to remain culturally relevant is that thought systems evolve to encompass ever more phenomena. For instance, sects founded on a few narrow doctrinal principles over time expound views on virtually all culturally relevant matters. Or, limited typologies such as the forerunner to the Enneagram gradually evolve into general typologies of personality. If there's a greater market for a system of general personality types than for a system of, say, vices and how Christian hermits can overcome them, then why not try to break into that market? If other typologies offer relationship descriptions, then why don't we add some on, too? These are classic examples of memetic competition among overlapping thought systems. 

Personally, I am most sympathetic to science and less so to thought systems based on imagination and mental constructs. I feel that science memes are more lasting and tend to build on each other and generate permanent, tangible progress, whereas other kinds of thought systems basically run around in circles with a periodicity of 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years, or whatever with almost no innovation. When innovations in thought systems do occur, it seems to often be the result of an "injection" of scientific, or factual knowledge. But I digress... 

Typological applications of brain chemistry

If any readers are aware of other typologies that have attempted to link brain chemistry to personality types, please leave me a note. 

1. Helen Fisher's types (discussed in depth in previous post) -- based on neuroscience from the outset, but with the choice of four types possibly influenced by millenia-long typological traditions. Uses 2 neurotransmitters (dopamine and serotonin) and 2 hormones (testosterone and estrogen).

2. Enneatypes. See article "The Enneagram and Brain Chemistry" which links the 9 enneatypes to 3 different neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, and norepinepherine) and 3 different levels thereof, which technically produces 27 types, but only 9 are given. 

3. Keirsey Temperaments. According to a poster at the enneagraminstitute.com forum, the book The Edge Effect "ties in neurotransmitters in the brain with the four Keirseyan temperaments (NF, NT, SP, SJ). Naturally, that means he focuses on four neurotransmitters: acetylcholine, dopamine, seratonin, and GABA."

To further quote this poster ("Patrick"), "I did a little Googling, and it seems there are actually ten or more known neurotransmitters. But of course fans of four-type systems will pick four, and enneagram fans will go for three or nine." Exactly my thoughts. While we like the idea of there being 2 x 2 (4) or 3 x 3 (9) or 4 x 4 (16) combinations because it makes for much easier subcategorization, it is unclear whether nature actually needs us to have such a tidy number of important neurotransmitters rather than, say, 6, 11, 17, or 26. 

The attempts to link the Enneagram and Keirsey temperaments strike me as amateurish, and the article linking Enneagram to neurotransmitters seems to suffer from trying to immediately relate new entities (neurotransmitters) to existing thought structures (Enneatypes) without learning about the new entities in sufficient detail first. Lofty language such as "We hereby propose a theory of personality whereby high, medium, and low activity of each of these three neurotransmitters systems are distributed in an enneagrammitically logical way" only serves to cement that impression. But this is, of course, just a hypothesis, and hypotheses are often like that. 

In any event, attempts to link type and brain chemistry will probably grow more sophisticated as more information from research becomes available. 

Prospects

Right now, many people are testing the waters by suggesting hypotheses about the correlation between brain chemistry and personality types. Based on my experience studying religions and the history of their interaction with science, I would predict that either the neuroscience ends up radically changing the typology, or the typology abandons attempts to correlate types with brain chemistry altogether. Ultimately, typology and neuroscience are driven by different and often incompatible approaches; one has a system in mind and needs "meat" to put on the bones of that system, whereas the other has no system in mind, just a collection of observed facts, and begs some systematic explanation. In practice, it seems, typologies are rarely willing to give up their systems, nor science -- its facts. 

For a perfect illustration of this quandary, read the article "Enneagram and Science" at wagele.com.

Faith in Socionics: How to Take Someone Else's Word for It

When I was 23, I abandoned the faith-based worldview of my youth and began to subject everything I thought I knew to rational standards of knowledge, such as how do I know that? and what hard evidence exists to support that belief?, and if I would find a belief to be untenable, I would ask myself where the belief had come from and why it existed in the first place if it were untrue. 

When I got into socionics, I found both answers to personal questions that had (in my opinion) a rational and supportable basis, and also elements of faith that I found disturbing. I thought the faith-based elements were the doings of individual teachers of socionics rather than something inherent to socionics itself. For instance, my teacher insinuated to me that his group's method of typing was the only accurate one, that they were better than everyone else, and that there were grave risks to be had if one got involved with socionists who did not have their unique skills. I had no way of knowing whether that was actually true or not, and my teacher assured me that over the course of time I would realize all these things for myself. That all smacked of the religious worldview from whence I had come, and I would challenge him on these points for several years, to no avail. 

As I got to know more socionists and learned of different groups in the community (in the Russian speaking world), I eventually gained an accurate, and quite different perspective: I had been studying with people who were peripheral members of the community and viewed as semi-authoritarian quacks by other socionists who had dealt with them. It took a long time for me to overcome the negative programming I had been given regarding the socionic mainstream, and see that the mainstream was actually moving along in a healthier, more rational direction than those I had studied with. 

The group I speak of was not unique. Similarly dogmatic socionists with a siege mentality could be found in many places, and some were quite prominent on the web. Their concept of socionics was always significantly different than that of the mainstream. I don't mean to suggest that the mainstream view is necessarily the correct one; however, my experience showed that peripheral socionists with authoritarian tendencies had less rational and more idealized or illogical views of socionics. A certain charisma to these socionists helped them instill in their followers the faith necessary to overcome the doubts that would naturally arise. Those that lacked charisma or other necessary qualities simply had no followers, but wished they had.

To illustrate how a dogmatic, faith-based mentality develops, imagine you believe that 90% of people are intuiters, and that the holy grail of duality is accessible to only a tiny minority of the population. This would require a modification in practice of how the intuition/sensing dichotomy is applied, and members of your school would inevitably encounter opposing views on the matter when exposed to other schools of thought. So, you instill them with the belief that other schools are "way off," that they have "no practical experience, just empty philosophizing," etc. This creates an "us versus them" mentality for those who stay in your school (those who disagree, leave). Your unusual views place you in constant opposition to stray outsiders who decide to come and argue with you a bit. When asking for proof of your typing method, you say, "well, first you have to learn it; once you begin to apply it, you'll see for yourself that it works. I'm not here to prove anything; try it for yourself." If they continue to criticize, but never try to learn the method, you simply call them closeminded and other bad words, and the feeling grows within your community that everyone else is "dogmatic," thus bonding the community even tighter in the face of a hostile environment.  

People can grow up in these environments and take years to come to see that they were falsely programmed. In many cases, that realization never comes. When it does, it creates a strong backlash. 

So, we find many teachers of socionics invoking -- overtly or covertly -- faith among their audiences. Is this the problem of those individuals, or of the field as a whole? 

I'm inclined to believe it's characteristic of the field as a whole. Really, nothing in socionics is provable in the scientific sense of the word. Only the most basic of observations are indisputable, such as the fact that relationships tend to differ quite a bit, that getting close with certain people tends to bring negative consequences, while with others you experience positive changes. Also, people with whom you may have difficulty interacting often have positive relationships with others. Finally, the mundane observation that people are very different and have different natural inclinations. 

None of socionics' original constructs, however, are indisputable (this does not imply they are incorrect). Nothing about types, dichotomies, or the socionic model of the psyche can be demonstrated scientifically. This means that people must accept the constructs because they seem to make sense, rather than because they have been proven. 

As a result, people find themselves believing (assuming to be true without having adequately tested it) that relations between certain types will have certain characteristics, that dual relations will be the best, that they will get along better with certain kinds of people, etc. Having just a bit of experience that appears to confirm parts of the theory, they will take other people's word for the rest of it. They will say to other people, "there's this theory that describes relationships between types. It says that... ", thus passing on the socionics meme without having submitted it to rigorous testing. Because of the difficulty of objectively determining types, rigorous testing can only take place on an individual basis and takes years and years of experience. Meanwhile, the socionics meme marches on, passed along by people who think it makes sense, but are unable to confirm or disprove it. 

There are many people in the socionics community, such as myself, for whom socionics has answered many questions about personal relationships. For us, socionics provided an explanation for our actual experience. For many others with less experience, however, socionics is received as a "neat system to learn more about myself and others." For the first group, there's not too much faith tied up in their study of socionics, but there is for the second. The assurances of the first group that "it works" then stimulate belief among the second group, who don't have enough experience of their own to know either way. 

Whether or not socionics phenomena actually "work" or not is irrelevant in a way; I think putting yourself in a position where you are taking other people's word for something can weaken you psychologically, especially if you are taking people's word for something as intimate as your own personality, potential, and relationships. Basing personal choices on unproven psychological theories rather than personal experience and impressions can narrow your possibilities. Also, such an environment can easily give rise to authoritarian leaders who tell weaker individuals what to think about themselves, their potential and relationships, and about other people. 

I wish I could say there were some easy trick to avoiding placing faith in socionics, but I don't know of any. Perhaps with this and subsequent posts I can help sow some seeds of healthy skepticism. 

Sociopsychological Realms

I'm continuing the digression from socionics with a very important and interesting topic that relates to social psychology, personal development, and integral socionic types.

I'd like to talk about formal and informal communities of people that exist for some purpose. I don't know if there is a name for these things in psychological literature. Thinker Igor Kalinauskas calls them "sociopsychological realms" (my translation). This is a somewhat broader concept than religions and teachings, which I discussed earlier. It can also include communities that don't have a strong ideological or spiritual component, such as the community of boxing or the community of foreign service diplomats. Even families and closely-knit groups of relatives form such communities. And, within large communities you will always find smaller-scale communities with unique variations on the overall community culture.

People within such communities share a common purpose, common experience, common values, and a common basis for humor and mutual understanding. Strangers from the same sociopsychological realm easily find a common language with strangers from their community and tend to find them quickly in the mob. Certain attitudes, words, appearance, or demeanor give them away.

One's belonging to various sociopsychological realms has a powerful influence on one's self-concept. The "skeleton" of self-concept seems to be one's awareness of belonging to various social groups, with the "flesh" being one's awareness of how one differs from other members of these groups. (This is just my personal definition, though!).

Belonging to certain sociopsychological realms shapes one's values and behavior, but personality also influences one's choice of communities. People with physical, mental, and personality traits that differ significantly from the norm have a higher chance of ending up in a sociopsychological realm that embraces those traits than do people with an average degree of these traits. In the criminal community, you will find a higher frequency of antisocial individuals than in the population at large, but not all antisocial people end up in the criminal community. Likewise, not all people in the criminal community are antisocial. It is simply a statistical tendency.

If you are a member of a sociopsychological realm that devalues intellectualism, the chances of you leaving it are greater the more intellectual you are by nature. However, you will still encounter many "flukes" - for instance, highly intellectual people in communities that shun intellectualism, meek and unabrasive people in communities that welcome aggression and brute strength, etc. Going back to statistics, even people who are two standard deviations or more from the norm on the bell curve still make up 5% of each population.

That is, just because you are an abrasive, aggressive, and possessive individual by nature does not mean that we will necessarily find you in the sociopsychological realms of top managers, compulsive gamblers, or football players. We might find you in the community of Born-Again Christians, Cultural Catholics, opera singers, or... socionists.

Nonetheless, the chances of you rising to the top of the ladder and becoming a formal or informal spokesman for the community is higher in sociopsychological realms that are built upon traits that are innate to you. That is why someone like Mike Tyson is a boxing icon and Richard Dawkins is a symbol of Neodarwinism, and not vice versa. It seems important to self-realization to be a member of at least one sociopsychological realm where you can rise to prominence.

Boundaries of sociopsychological realms
Boundaries are a very important characteristic of any community. Any purpose that unites people also implies boundaries between the community and the rest of the world. If you and I are both fans of stock market investment, getting together to talk about our common interest does not yet make a community. But if we make a pact to work together in some way and achieve some joint goal, we have taken the first steps towards creating a small-scale sociopsychological realm. If we involve others in our activities, form a company, and articulate our company goals and philosophy, internal discipline, and work methods, a community is born that has clear boundaries, goals, and values.

As boundaries solidify, so does community spirit. Our community is better than others (or else why would we be in it?). Our competitors are our enemies. Friction arises as our community rubs up against that of others, even if these "neighboring" communities are remarkably similar to our own. Snowboarders are skiers' worst enemies - not rugby players or country music lovers!

Internal boundaries
In decent-sized communities, there are usually sub-communities or different "schools of thought" within the community that vie for dominance. This mirrors the biological world, where intra-species competition is often no less fierce and brutal than competition between species. Many communities end up finding the "enemy within" - people whose behavior seems to endanger the community mainstream. In any event, every sociopsychological realm has its idea of "bad behavior" that must be fought. In a religious community, this may be insufficient religious devotion, inactivity, indifference, or incorrect interpretations of scripture. In a mountain biking community, it may be people who buy cheap bikes or ride too slowly.

Each sociopsychological realm tries to submit its members to some kind of internal discipline.

Community ideals
Each sociopsychological realm has its "heaven," "hell," and "patron saints." Heaven is the ideal outcome of one's activities in the community. Hell is the lamentable situation people outside the community often end up in. Patron saints are the community's idols.

I'm not an expert on boxing, but in the boxing world heaven would probably be becoming a boxing champ and continuing on as a trainer of successful boxers. Hell would be the wimpy and listless life that most of the rest of humanity lives. Mohammed Ali is a patron saint.

In socionics, heaven is having a crystal-clear understanding of socionic concepts and models and being able to apply them to various situations. Also, typing well and quickly, maybe publishing some books and teaching courses, and making a name for oneself in the socionics community. Hell is the state of ignorance and bad relationships that many people who don't know about socionics endure. Patron saints are Gulenko, Augusta, etc. - whoever you read with the greatest pleasure.

In most religions, these concepts take on a more concrete meaning, but the general idea is the same, isn't it?

Choosing and switching sociopsychological realms
Some communities we just "fall into" by virtue of being born in a particular country and into a particular family with particular political, religious, and professional values. Others we grow into as we mature and develop particular skills and interests. Abandoning a sociopsychological realm and joining another one is a major event that does not happen that frequently. When it does, it is accompanied by a major shift in self-concept, values, and even behavior.

Often, these switches are a good thing, especially if one moves from a community that resonated less with his innate traits to one that resonates more with them. This can be a landmark experience of "finding oneself." Living outside of any sociopsychological realm seems to be impossible, and if one leaves one realm, one inevitably finds oneself in another, even if it is less clearly defined.