59 replies to this topic

[Ashton]

Tom, on Jul 3 2009, 08:36 AM, said:

It's not a lack of self-awareness or a matter of actions (what I'm talking about anyway)... It's more of a conceptual ineptitude, or an obvious flaw in logical process, lack of logical process, etc. Like, what I'm talking about is how people use non-reasoning in concepts more than actions. Which isn't to say that I don't find it infuriating when people don't think before they do things and end up fucking shit up, I do. But I'm talking about more specifically in like conceptual/philosophic argument/discussion, or mental framework, when people just think they "know" things, and they don't.

Oh ok. I would find that annoying too—someone saying/thinking they "know something" when they really don't. But it depends on the person too. Because when some people say that they "just know something," I'll take them at their word because I've sized them up enough to know that it's true.

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I just don't care unless they totally fuck shit up, hurt someone, etc. Like, if I'm there watching and I see maybe a way someone could cut back on all the time/energy they're wasting, etc., I'll offer (what I think, anyway, are) helpful suggestions for the benefit of the party doing whatever it is that they're doing. And this seems like total 8 Ej-ness without question. Jake always flaps his bullshit yap about how it's "so Te", but I've known basically any type that's an 8 to do this.

I don't know what it would be related to. If I know a better way to do something, I can't imagine not suggesting it to someone.

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Ok, so I basically couldn't read that first paragraph it was so annoying lol.

What was so annoying about it?

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Also, I can't understand how people can be so thick. Determinism does NOT, in any way, limit "free will". All determinism says is that every action causes every action superseding it, that action causes the actions after that, all actions lead into each other, and, most importantly of all: everything that will happen, will happen, unquestioningly and with one outcome. What that means is that what will happen, is going to happen. End of story. A=A. That doesn't mean that you're forced to make some particular decision, some particular action, etc. It just means that that thing in the future that you're going to do, you'll do. Determinism makes no claims as to what this future is, only that no matter what it is, it will be.There's absolutely nobody pulling the strings behind the curtain, and I, for one, do not believe that the "big bang" was the beginning of all shit. Shit was always here, but in different, changeable forms. A small part is the big bang, etc. and I can explain more outside of this medium if you like . Anyway, you're an absolute fool if you think that all those minute, chemical reactions in your head are somehow not the result of your DNA and your stimuli, not some mangled concept of "freewill". Anyway, the point is that you can have only one future without it being predetermined you piece of shit.

Dude, if all the minute chemical reactions in my head are the wholly the result of my DNA and environmental stimuli, then the idea that I have any kind of choice in any situation, is nothing but an illusion. You're being guilty of the kind of conceptual inconsistency you decried in the first quoted paragraph of this post.

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lolz nope, I'm just 8w9.

Most likely. You just seem to change your mind a lot and it's odd.

[ArchonAlarion]

Ashton, on Jul 3 2009, 09:33 PM, said:

Dude, if all the minute chemical reactions in my head are the wholly the result of my DNA and environmental stimuli, then the idea that I have any kind of choice in any situation, is nothing but an illusion. You're being guilty of the kind of conceptual inconsistency you decried in the first quoted paragraph of this post.

More pertinently, if QM suggests true random at the sub atomic level it does not follow that we exercise "free will"

Free will is an alternative to both cause-effect and true random, therefore unless you have some third mechanism in mind, micro randomness/trends -> macro cause-effect would not create freewill.

So you still have choices in a sort of abstract sense, but if QM is right then they are random-deterministic. This would allow alternate realities (pretty sweet), but they are random still.

[Ashton]

Tom, on Jul 2 2009, 10:34 AM, said:

I mean more in a sense of correctness, or following strict, logical "rules". I was going to say "following strict, physical laws", but that sounds so much like "I value Ti, so there ", that I figured it best to say something more neutral.

The words 'reasonable', 'sensible', 'consistent', or even 'well-defined' might have been decent candidates. I avoid invoking the word 'logical' unless the subject of discussion is specifically about something entirely abstract—like deductive philosophy, mathematics, computer science, etc. I consider that the word 'logic' has no business being used in reference to anything non-abstract. Any logic is founded upon certain axioms and composed of certain rules for deciding what is or is not valid. At present, there exists no system of logic which 100% reflects observable validity in the real world. If such a system existed, science would be out of a job. In it's place you'd have some "Fundamental Theorem of the Universe" from which you could derive anything and everything that is possibly knowable about reality at any point in the past, present, or future.

There was an effort in the early 20th century to axiomatize the laws of physics and turn it into a systematic logic. But most everyone in the know over the past 100 years or so—except maybe deluded old Einstein—have long since concluded that this sort of thing would be impossible to do.

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Ah ok lol. Well, the "divine plot" business may be entirely unrelated to Ni, then . But I always thought of it in a way somewhat like you described, except with a monitor or will for the change in this symbolism (as opposed to Fi, which would have to change the whole system to see that, I'd think). I don't find that particularly upsetting, though, and I might even say that I find it rather interesting. To be honest, how I visualize Ni is much the same way that I visualize Ne, but with more the properties of Si. Like, where Ne is like an enveloping membrane of essential "thing" (moderately described as a "bubble of shifting essence" lol) which Si swims around in (in several different parts, giving form and shape) Ni is the swirling, surrounding essential properties of the "thing" given shape and direction by Se. I find it surprising (from an outside perception of my thought; that is, looking at the process/conclusion as an observer), but I usually think of the static elements as the "driver", at least as far as the perceiving elements are concerned.

Yeah, that sounds more or less like how I see it.

I think / and / have a lot to do with a person's orientation towards abstract vs. concrete information. Though I admit that the use of these words itself poses a problem. Because of this information divide, we’ll often have different estimations on what exactly constitutes “abstract” and “concrete.” / would concern “abstract” information, / would concern “concrete” information.

In a broad sense, / could be considered ‘context’ functions (Dynamic Fields, xFD)— = ‘abstract context’, = ‘concrete context’. / could be considered ‘content’ functions (Static Objects, xOS)— = ‘concrete content’, = ‘abstract content’.

In pure form, xOS information would exist as nothing more than endless arrays of scalar data bits about various attributes of different objects. In pure form, however, it would be impossible to tell which attributes or what objects are being referred to. New data is constantly added as perceptual impressions occur, but each incoming wave is just as unrelated to whatever came before it (similar to how Jung describes neurotic EP temperament). Without a context, nothing ever gets sorted or organized, it's just an aggregate morass of data. Data [content] without context is meaningless. Which is where the xFD functions come to fore, to provide the context necessary to make sense of the content. And of course, context without content is equally meaningless. Without any content to bind itself to, context is unhinged, free-floating, and void of substance (similar to how Jung describes neurotic IP temperament).

So with / you have concrete content within an abstract context. Tangibles and material events approached, understood, and communicated in the terms of ideas and concepts. With / you have abstract content within a concrete context. Ideas and concepts approached, understood, and communicated in the terms of tangibles and material events.

[Ashton]

ArchonAlarion, on Jul 3 2009, 09:19 PM, said:

More pertinently, if QM suggests true random at the sub atomic level it does not follow that we exercise "free will"

Free will is an alternative to both cause-effect and true random, therefore unless you have some third mechanism in mind, micro randomness/trends -> macro cause-effect would not create freewill.

So you still have choices in a sort of abstract sense, but if QM is right then they are random-deterministic. This would allow alternate realities (pretty sweet), but they are random still.

Assuming that the mechanism of free will operates or intervenes at the micro-scale level of quantum mechanical events. This may or may not be the case. Bear in mind that there are other ways to achieve non-deterministic behavior without invoking QM. For instance, free will could be an agency generated on the macro-scale level in some way outside the etiological scope of QM as an emergent property of brains possessing sufficient organic complexity, such as human ones.

Regardless, most quantum mechanical systems behave in a stochastic way—you can analyze their behavior statistically and calculate the probability trends, but you can never predict them precisely with 100% certainty because of that inherent element of randomness (which is only one part of the story). So all you can say is something on the order of, “there is a P(X) probability that for any given measurement, we will find particle α at these (x,y,z) coordinates of the system under conditions ABC.” They don't behave in a purely random manner in the way you might be thinking of 'random'. If that were the case, not even statistics would be of any use. Any set of the measurements on the system's state would only yield complete noise with no patterns or trends whatsoever. And if your assumption were true, then yes this would also mean no free will. But this isn't quite how it works.

The Schrödinger wave-function representing the probability distribution of a typical quantum system is only 'collapsed' into a discrete state via an act of measurement. Any act of measurement necessarily entails an act of observation by an observer—i.e. someone has to be on the other end of the measuring instrument (be it their eyes, a ruler, an interferometer, a SQUID device, etc.) to tell what the measurement results are. Whatever happens before this point is beyond the realm of empirical science. It might be worth noting that there are some physicists who take very seriously the idea that wave-function collapse is a phenomenon that is, in part, mediated by the observers themselves—i.e. “It only exists because someone looked at it. If nobody was looking, it wouldn't exist.” I'm not promoting this position, though to it's credit it does make a hell of a lot more sense than String Theory.

Anyway. I mention all of this in order to bring up the Quantum Zeno Effect, whereby it appears that repeated acts of measurement on a quantum system essentially 'freeze' that system in some given state (sidenote: this would also mean that acts of measurement are not independent events, which is a necessary condition for true randomness). At the synaptic level of neurological activity, you would have micro-scale quantum interactions occurring involving the electron particles which constitute action potentials. For example, Electron tunneling of nerve axon membranes is a very real possibility here. The dynamic integration of all action potentials occurring across the neural landscape of the brain results in what we observe as brainwave patterns when someone's skull is wired up to an EEG. We can reasonably infer that these patterns in some way correspond to our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, attention, etc. An entire mental state could be derived from some superposition of these many wave patterns. It may be that what we call free will occurs by way of a self-induced Zeno Effect. An instantiation of free will could be likened to an act of measurement upon a quantum system—in this case, the electrical activity of one's own brain. Whenever you exercise metacognition or self-awareness, you are essentially conducting an act of measurement upon your own mental state. Repeated 'measurements' in this way—such as making yourself concentrate on a task, thinking about a choice, or focusing on a desired mood—could 'collapse' and 'freeze' a sufficient cumulation of the quantum systems representing synaptic electrons, enough to make action potentials occur that would have otherwise been deterministically impossible, and modulate brainwave activity just enough to offset the mental state to a new value. Edit: Nevermind, it looks like some physicist Henry Stapp already thought of something like this.

Sustained concentration over time on a certain task, thought, state of mind, or what have you, also appears to induce neuroplasticity—this is the basis for learning, conditioning, and habit-forming. That is, your brain itself is physically altered by whatever you continually pay attention to. As you know, if you pay attention to something long enough, you no longer have to actively pay attention to it and it becomes largely automatic. Depending on the kind of information, this is because neuroplasticity has kicked in and rewired the necessary synaptic connections and dendrite branches, grown new neurons, and modulated some key neurotransmitter levels. In such a way that ergo made this information some passive part of what you call your mind: Be it a piece of stored knowledge, a physical reflex, a habitual thought pattern, a conditioned outlook, etc. These kinds of mental phenomenon can actually be readily understood in a causally deterministic sense—incidentally, they are also exactly the sorts of phenomena that comprise the vast majority of our mental activity; most of what we do and think, is done without high exertions of conscious attention and there's good reason for this. If that were not the case, then largely automated processes like driving would be hazardously overwhelming; conscious attention handles information too slowly and narrowly to deal with all the relevant variables—new drivers tend to be over-attentive because they're consciously trying to attend to too many details that the brains of experienced drivers have learned to automate or filter out altogether. There's a great book called The Mind & The Brain by Jeffrey M. Schwartz M.D. which discusses scientific research on the interrelation between attention and neuroplasticity. The interesting conclusion of the research, was that they never could figure out where exactly in the brain that the faculty for choosing what to pay attention to was located. Vastly oversimplified paraphrasing: One could empirically see and map out the tangible changes which occurred in the brain's topography over time from sustained attention towards a particular end. More immediately, when looking at the brain activity of a subject, one could even get a clear identification of what stimuli that individual was paying attention to during an experiment— if shown some set of objects and it's observed that some particular section of the visual cortex had a high density of bloodflow, you would be able to infer what object they were paying attention to. If the focus of attention changed, the observed brain activity instantly changed along with it to a mental state corresponding to some other object. The causality here is straightforward and deterministic only up to this point. Determinism breaks down and things get weird when attempting to answer the question of what in the brain is making the operative decision vis-á-vis what to pay attention to and is changing the focus of attention to that. The new mental state corresponding to attention on the new object will look to just transpire out of nowhere for no deterministically causal reason or influence that could ever be accounted for in any of the experiments. Whatever is making those decisions, is something that seems to behave in an non-deterministic manner that very much looks and acts like what we would call free will.

[Tom]

Ashton, on Jul 3 2009, 09:33 PM, said:

Oh ok. I would find that annoying too—someone saying/thinking they "know something" when they really don't. But it depends on the person too. Because when some people say that they "just know something," I'll take them at their word because I've sized them up enough to know that it's true.

Oh, no. I never take anybody at their word in the case of "just knowing something."

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What was so annoying about it?

Oh lol; it wasn't so bad, just boring and made me feel like I had to explain shit to you.

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Dude, if all the minute chemical reactions in my head are the wholly the result of my DNA and environmental stimuli, then the idea that I have any kind of choice in any situation, is nothing but an illusion. You're being guilty of the kind of conceptual inconsistency you decried in the first quoted paragraph of this post.

Those decisions you make are choices. Just because you, based on the ways you're put together and all the things that have made you react (chemically or otherwise lol) in certain ways, make a certain decision, doesn't mean it was made for you. I mean, yes, technically I suppose it is "made for you", but you have to remember what you actually are. You are nothing more than those reactions. So you do make the choice, it's just another reaction.

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Most likely. You just seem to change your mind a lot and it's odd.

I'm just looking for the truth.

Ashton, on Jul 3 2009, 11:49 PM, said:

The words 'reasonable', 'sensible', 'consistent', or even 'well-defined' might have been decent candidates. I avoid invoking the word 'logical' unless the subject of discussion is specifically about something entirely abstract—like deductive philosophy, mathematics, computer science, etc. I consider that the word 'logic' has no business being used in reference to anything non-abstract. Any logic is founded upon certain axioms and composed of certain rules for deciding what is or is not valid. At present, there exists no system of logic which 100% reflects observable validity in the real world. If such a system existed, science would be out of a job. In it's place you'd have some "Fundamental Theorem of the Universe" from which you could derive anything and everything that is possibly knowable about reality at any point in the past, present, or future.

There was an effort in the early 20th century to axiomatize the laws of physics and turn it into a systematic logic. But most everyone in the know over the past 100 years or so—except maybe deluded old Einstein—have long since concluded that this sort of thing would be impossible to do.

But I do think that way. Everything has to follow a logical, mathematical system. Everything. Even at the most random levels, there exists math (defined by humans or otherwise) to describe the occurrence. That's the whole point of math, and the reason math exists at all. Math is so great because it's a system of actual definition and description. It's a language, if you will, to categorize and describe all things. There's nothing math can't describe, because everything actually exists. Even those "internal" processes are really happening when you feel them or "know" them because they're just a jumble of chemicals and reactions. Sure, we're a bit off yet from deciphering which exact things those are, but we'll know soon, if not eventually. The fact is that for something to exist, it must actually exist. And everything (everything at all) does exist, in varying forms; sometimes even just as a certain combination of reactions that make you feel a certain way or remember a certain image. That system does exist. It's called Math.

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Yeah, that sounds more or less like how I see it.

I think / and / have a lot to do with a person's orientation towards abstract vs. concrete information. Though I admit that the use of these words itself poses a problem. Because of this information divide, we’ll often have different estimations on what exactly constitutes “abstract” and “concrete.” / would concern “abstract” information, / would concern “concrete” information.

In a broad sense, / could be considered ‘context’ functions (Dynamic Fields, xFD)— = ‘abstract context’, = ‘concrete context’. / could be considered ‘content’ functions (Static Objects, xOS)— = ‘concrete content’, = ‘abstract content’.

In pure form, xOS information would exist as nothing more than endless arrays of scalar data bits about various attributes of different objects. In pure form, however, it would be impossible to tell which attributes or what objects are being referred to. New data is constantly added as perceptual impressions occur, but each incoming wave is just as unrelated to whatever came before it (similar to how Jung describes neurotic EP temperament). Without a context, nothing ever gets sorted or organized, it's just an aggregate morass of data. Data [content] without context is meaningless. Which is where the xFD functions come to fore, to provide the context necessary to make sense of the content. And of course, context without content is equally meaningless. Without any content to bind itself to, context is unhinged, free-floating, and void of substance (similar to how Jung describes neurotic IP temperament).

So with / you have concrete content within an abstract context. Tangibles and material events approached, understood, and communicated in the terms of ideas and concepts. With / you have abstract content within a concrete context. Ideas and concepts approached, understood, and communicated in the terms of tangibles and material events.

I think you're quite right about the vast majority of this, if not all of it. I only find the last paragraph a bit off-putting (or, rather, not complete and a bit.. unfinished?). I think this is because I generally think of the Judging elements as contextual, where the Perceiving elements are more entirely content-oriented. Like I usually think of a quadra's "P" functions as the way it views content, and its "J" functions as the context it puts this content in. Perhaps with only each other they work in the way you describe (and this makes a deal of sense, and I believe it true), but I think, on the whole, they act together, forming their own compliments.

I think all four Perceiving elements are ways to view content. / work in conjunction to form content, in the similar, but reversed fashion that / does. Without both, you don't get the whole picture, and I believe that's the point (as well as being another reason I find Model X an altogether better system). The same, I believe, is true of all four Judging functions, with the obvious exception that these are the context functions. And perhaps within these the field elements give context and the object elements provide content.

And, in fact, this is probably another reason that while Perceiving temperaments tend to look across field/object for agenda, Judging temperaments stay within their own compliment. The "judgers" keep content/context, giving them a fixed, directed quality, while the "perceivers" are constantly trying to change their content/context, giving them an aloof sense of separated non-focus. Maybe yes? lol @ responding to this post being an eye-opener.

*Edit: Odd-ass coincidence? All "content" functions would seem to be object, while all "context" functions appear to be fields. Seems a bit obvious when you think about it, but, of course, good to say. Well, this is the case when talking about particular complements, that is. Otherwise it's P=content and J=context. Also obvious, also good to say

[Tom]

Oh, and in response to your most recent post about QM and freewill, those "emergent properties" must still be a long-term after effect (or just direct effect when you think about it) of those starting random occurrences/microbes/etc.

*Edit: And are, in fact, just the sum of all those things.

**Edit: As those trends are a result of tendencies of chemical reaction.

***Edit: And anyway, all that crap is pretending that the universe only exists as it can be observed. Which would be fine if it were in any way true. The "stuff that happens before the point of observation" still occurs, exactly as if it were when being observed. That is the meaning of empirical science. Still, basically everything you've said about this (or I've read about this) still crumbles at the same point. All of those micro-actions are still existent, and the sum of all of these smaller bits still result in the larger bits, which still result in the largest bits of your brain. All the world, everything, and you are, is a vast pool of reactions, trends or otherwise. Because something happens, generally, in a certain way is totally irrelevant to a concept of "free will". Freewill is free will because you are those reactions. You are your DNA and the form your DNA maps out based on its inherent mapping and those stimuli which make it react/change/grow/evolve in different ways. Memory, thought.. All of this is based on all of that. This argument is rather useless, because it ends up saying the same thing. You have "freewill". The QM you're talking about makes an unnecessary separation as a form of cop-out to try and explain something they "feel" must come from something else. But it overlooks that you're still only your body. I believe Nietzsche put it best in Thus Spoke Zarathustra when he said, "Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and the soul is only the name of something about the body."

[Ashton]

Tom, on Jul 4 2009, 11:15 AM, said:

Oh lol; it wasn't so bad, just boring and made me feel like I had to explain shit to you.

Dumb.

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Those decisions you make are choices. Just because you, based on the ways you're put together and all the things that have made you react (chemically or otherwise lol) in certain ways, make a certain decision, doesn't mean it was made for you. I mean, yes, technically I suppose it is "made for you", but you have to remember what you actually are. You are nothing more than those reactions. So you do make the choice, it's just another reaction.

Okay, you're seriously not processing something here. In a strictly deterministic universe, whatever choices there were to “make” were already “made” ~13.7 billion years ago at the point of the Big Bang, which presumably set whatever the initial conditions of the universe were. If Determinism were true and we knew what those initial conditions were plus all the laws governing the causality of the universe, then everything that ever has happened or will happen at any level in the universe, could be predicted with flawless precision. Everything that has ever happened or will happen, was going to happen anyway precisely as it did at this specific time in this specific place, as the result of a long and complex chain of matter/energy interactions which were set in motion by the Big Bang. Chance would not exist, risk and probability would only be a reflection of man's ignorance about the workings of the universe, and choice would be an illusion. No alternate possibilities would be permissible for any event whose outcome occurred at any time, ever. Let's say you commit an act of murder. In a nutshell then, your act of murder was no real choice, but simply another link in an unbroken chain of causation which was necessitated to occur because of the specific causal configurations of events at every point in time antecedent to your act of murder, i.e. in a figurative sense you'd have something like:

Big Bang -> protons and neutrons appear -> hydrogen forms -> a cloud of combusted gas somewhere in what will later be known as the Milky Way gives birth to the Sun -> lower temperatures allow heavier matter elements to appear and various space debris condense into planetoids -> a molten ball of rock appears that we call Earth -> the surface of Earth cools sufficiently to allow formation of a crust and atmosphere -> unicellular life appears through some spontaneous interaction of organic molecules -> photosynthetic multicellular organisms appear and turn the atmosphere oxygen-rich and give rise to an ozone layer -> vertebrate animals appear during the Cambrian Explosion -> proto-amphibians walk on land -> first dinosaurs appear -> non-avian dinosaurs die out -> common primate ancestor to homo sapiens appears -> Australopithecus lives -> Homo Erectus thrives -> Pleistocene Ice Age -> last Neanderthals die out somewhere on the Iberian peninsula from genocide by Cro-Magnons -> first cities built in the Fertile Crescent -> Great Pyramids constructed -> Code of Hammurabi written -> city of Rome founded -> Battle of Thermopylae -> Socrates drinks hemlock -> Alexander the Great conquers the known world -> Rome wins Punic Wars and sacks Carthage -> Julius Caesar assassinated -> Christ crucified -> Pax Romana -> Constantine converts to Christianity -> Atilla the Hun cuts a swath of destruction -> last Roman Emperor in the West deposed -> Dark Ages -> Charles Martel defeats Islamic horde -> Crusades -> Genghis Khan -> Fall of Constantinople -> New World colonization -> British Empire forged -> Treaty of Westphalia -> American Independence -> Industrial Revolution -> Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House -> light bulb invented -> automobile invented -> airplane invented -> WW1 -> Great Depression -> WW2 -> Manhattan Project -> Cold War -> Moon landings -> Fall of Saigon -> personal computer invented -> Internet goes public -> Tom's parents meet -> Tom is born -> Tom grows up -> Tom goes crazy -> Tom kills Archon.

The actual, real chain of events would be far more detailed and specific than this of course (duh). But the point is, at no link along this chain of events did a 'choice' occur. Everything that happened was going to happen anyway and none of it could not have happened anyway. In the final analysis, to pin down an accountable culprit for Archon's death, you would have to trace the chain of causation all the way back to the point of the Big Bang and the initial conditions of the universe. It was already determined 13.7 billion years ago that Archon was going to be murdered at the hands of Tom. But you can't really blame Tom for being a homicidal bastard nor Archon for being a dumbass who got killed. They're just hapless organic automatons animated by the deterministic puppet strings of causal interactions between matter and energy like everything else in the universe. Ultimately, if you want to blame anything, you'd have to say that it was really the Big Bang that killed Archon.

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But I do think that way. Everything has to follow a logical, mathematical system. Everything. Even at the most random levels, there exists math (defined by humans or otherwise) to describe the occurrence. That's the whole point of math, and the reason math exists at all. Math is so great because it's a system of actual definition and description. It's a language, if you will, to categorize and describe all things. There's nothing math can't describe, because everything actually exists. Even those "internal" processes are really happening when you feel them or "know" them because they're just a jumble of chemicals and reactions. Sure, we're a bit off yet from deciphering which exact things those are, but we'll know soon, if not eventually. The fact is that for something to exist, it must actually exist. And everything (everything at all) does exist, in varying forms; sometimes even just as a certain combination of reactions that make you feel a certain way or remember a certain image. That system does exist. It's called Math.

Math is a useful tool to describe patterns in a universal language. But it's nothing special beyond that and I don't really see where you're going with this. What you get out of it depends on what it's being used for—you can describe a whole lot of nonsense in a very mathematical and logically consistent way, too.

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I think you're quite right about the vast majority of this, if not all of it. I only find the last paragraph a bit off-putting (or, rather, not complete and a bit.. unfinished?).

Yeah, it's not. There's a lot more I could say, just not sure how to say it quite yet.

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I think this is because I generally think of the Judging elements as contextual, where the Perceiving elements are more entirely content-oriented. Like I usually think of a quadra's "P" functions as the way it views content, and its "J" functions as the context it puts this content in. Perhaps with only each other they work in the way you describe (and this makes a deal of sense, and I believe it true), but I think, on the whole, they act together, forming their own compliments.

I think all four Perceiving elements are ways to view content. / work in conjunction to form content, in the similar, but reversed fashion that / does. Without both, you don't get the whole picture, and I believe that's the point (as well as being another reason I find Model X an altogether better system). The same, I believe, is true of all four Judging functions, with the obvious exception that these are the context functions. And perhaps within these the field elements give context and the object elements provide content.

I'm not sure yet how the J fxns interplay in all of this. In general, I conceive of xOD fxns as ones which estimate “causality.” as 'external causality', as 'internal causality'. xFS fxns would be ones estimating the overall “coherence” of someone or something. as 'external coherence' and as 'internal coherence'.

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And, in fact, this is probably another reason that while Perceiving temperaments tend to look across field/object for agenda, Judging temperaments stay within their own compliment. The "judgers" keep content/context, giving them a fixed, directed quality, while the "perceivers" are constantly trying to change their content/context, giving them an aloof sense of separated non-focus. Maybe yes? lol @ responding to this post being an eye-opener.

Hmm. Yeah, that's an interesting idea actually. Thanks.

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*Edit: Odd-ass coincidence? All "content" functions would seem to be object, while all "context" functions appear to be fields. Seems a bit obvious when you think about it, but, of course, good to say. Well, this is the case when talking about particular complements, that is. Otherwise it's P=content and J=context. Also obvious, also good to say

Well I don't know. I do think that xOD are attuned specifically towards object/content-like information. And xFS towards field/context-like information. Of course this isn't the whole story, since would form a basic feedback loop with , and would do so with . Having this exchange in place is vital, which is probably related to why duality is optimal.

[Ashton]

Tom, on Jul 4 2009, 11:20 AM, said:

Oh, and in response to your most recent post about QM and freewill, those "emergent properties" must still be a long-term after effect (or just direct effect when you think about it) of those starting random occurrences/microbes/etc.

*Edit: And are, in fact, just the sum of all those things.

I never said they weren't caused by something. All I said was they're an example of non-deterministic behavior. You can still have causality without it being deterministic causality. Determinism and Causality aren't the same things and you may be confusing them? Causality is the idea that every effect has a cause which makes that event come to be. Determinism is the idea that every event is caused by an unbroken chain of events which preceded it in occurrence.

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**Edit: As those trends are a result of tendencies of chemical reaction.

There's more going on than just this.

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***Edit: And anyway, all that crap is pretending that the universe only exists as it can be observed. Which would be fine if it were in any way true.

That's not what it's pretending at all. It's about not making assumptions beyond what is actually observable and measurable.

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The "stuff that happens before the point of observation" still occurs, exactly as if it were when being observed.

No. We don't know that, and as far as we presently understand, it's not even empirically knowable. You have something like a Black Box or Plato's Cave problem going on: We infer that quantum systems do indeed evolve in an unobserved state and we can model these evolutions accurately, it appears. But there's no way to really verifiably know what exactly is going on prior to observation. We only see the outputs of the system—the results of a measurement act on the system—but we cannot lay bare before our eyes the actual, ontological inputs which presumedly exist as a part of that system in it's unobserved state. In general, this is all part of the Measurement Problem. If you were actually able to prove what you've just claimed here, you'd win about a dozen Nobel Prizes for accomplishing something that legions of the best and brightest minds over the past century could not, despite all of their dedicated and ingenious efforts.

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That is the meaning of empirical science.

The 'meaning' of empirical science, is not making assertions about what is true, when those assertions can't be corroborated by observation.

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Still, basically everything you've said about this (or I've read about this) still crumbles at the same point.

Sloppy logic.

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All of those micro-actions are still existent, and the sum of all of these smaller bits still result in the larger bits, which still result in the largest bits of your brain. All the world, everything, and you are, is a vast pool of reactions, trends or otherwise. Because something happens, generally, in a certain way is totally irrelevant to a concept of "free will". Freewill is free will because you are those reactions.

And as I explained in the preceding post you didn't pay attention to, even the larger bits of the brain—the very neurons and aggregations of neurons composing layers of the cortex and such—would be susceptible to effects of neuroplasticity mediated by conscious attention. The brain is physically altered—it's very matter and chemistry—in response to whatever we pay attention to. And it appears, that for all intents and purposes, we are quite free to pick and choose what we pay attention to on a moment by moment basis. Over time, one could choose to deliberately modify the chemical and material infrastructure of their own minds by repeatedly paying attention in certain ways that would modify the brain towards the desired end. In the book I mentioned for instance, they speak of successfully treating persons with OCD, depression, anxiety, etc. in this way.

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You are your DNA and the form your DNA maps out based on its inherent mapping and those stimuli which make it react/change/grow/evolve in different ways. Memory, thought.. All of this is based on all of that.

It's a bit naive to say that anyone "is their DNA." DNA contains the instructions for building an organism in a certain way that possesses some given properties and parameter values for various physiological set points. But for the most part your DNA doesn't cause you to have certain thoughts or remember certain things. My DNA is the reason I'm a human, it's the reason my body has and can create neurons, and it's the reason those neurons can produce certain neurotransmitters because my DNA contains the code for building the relevant proteins. But I doubt my DNA directly causes me have to have certain thoughts or memories. It only produces the structures necessary for me to have thoughts or memories at all. What thoughts and memories I use those structures for, would ultimately be up to me as a free-willing agent.

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This argument is rather useless, because it ends up saying the same thing. You have "freewill".

Okay, great. You may as well acknowledge you're not a Determinist then.

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The QM you're talking about makes an unnecessary separation as a form of cop-out to try and explain something they "feel" must come from something else.

Uh, are you honestly going to assume that you know the motives of people 1) You've never heard about, 2) Whose positions and arguments you've never looked into, 3) That have backgrounds and credentials you've never seen, 4) With no understanding whatsoever of their personal character. What, are you going to pull a "I just know" line?

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But it overlooks that you're still only your body. I believe Nietzsche put it best in Thus Spoke Zarathustra when he said, "Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and the soul is only the name of something about the body."

So? Just being a body doesn't mean you can't have non-deterministic causality going on within it.

[Tom]

Ashton, on Jul 4 2009, 11:30 PM, said:

Okay, you're seriously not processing something here. In a strictly deterministic universe, whatever choices there were to “make” were already “made” ~13.7 billion years ago at the point of the Big Bang, which presumably set whatever the initial conditions of the universe were. If Determinism were true and we knew what those initial conditions were plus all the laws governing the causality of the universe, then everything that ever has happened or will happen at any level in the universe, could be predicted with flawless precision. Everything that has ever happened or will happen, was going to happen anyway precisely as it did at this specific time in this specific place, as the result of a long and complex chain of matter/energy interactions which were set in motion by the Big Bang. Chance would not exist, risk and probability would only be a reflection of man's ignorance about the workings of the universe, and choice would be an illusion. No alternate possibilities would be permissible for any event whose outcome occurred at any time, ever. Let's say you commit an act of murder. In a nutshell then, your act of murder was no real choice, but simply another link in a chain of causation which was necessitated to occur because of the specific configuration of events antecedent to your act of murder, i.e. in a figurative sense you have something like:

lol No! I know that! It's you who don't get what I mean!

lol What I'm saying is that even though the entirety of the situation is "planned out" due to every action interacting with every other action, etc., all of what you do is still what you want to do. It's still your freewill. What you do is theoretically predictable with enough surveillance/knowledge, yes, but what you want (what your "freewill" would choose to do) is what you actually do. And this is because you are your body, and you are those little reactions your body has to stimuli, and these things do what they are deterministically "bound" to do. But that IS your freewill. Sure, you feel like that means that everything around you is an illusion, and it is. That's why it's called subjective reality. But you also have to remember that you live and experience in the third dimension, not the fourth, and your actions are as your body (you) perceives them at one, singular point in time, without infinite knowledge of the rest of everything before and after. Your body doesn't (at least your DNA+synapses don't) understand that all actions flow into each other. Your entire existence was, yes, foreseeable 13.7 billion years ago, and long before that. That doesn't mean that you don't act as you would of freewill now. Just because you will do what you will do, and all that has happened has happened in the only way it possibly could, doesn't mean that freewill is excluded. The universe has no freewill, so on the grand scale it may seem like an illusion (and it sort of is), but that "illusion" of freewill is still just your body reacting to stimuli/changing within itself. And that same body doing those same things is you. That is your freewill. I know that you think this means that you have no choices, etc., but you do. You certainly do. You just need to understand that those thoughts that you have, and the decision-making process is part of some underlying singular track of events. Nobody's telling you how it ends, and no one else made that decision long, long ago. You make that decision now. But making that decision, that's a bodily function. You are your body, and your body is your intellect. Just because someone could have theoretically determine your exact actions billions of years ago or billions of years from now because there's only one possibility, doesn't mean you didn't make that decision. You did. You have. You will. You always will have done so. You still call the shots. What you do and why you call the shots that way, well, that's a reaction to stimuli.

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Big Bang -> protons and neutrons appear -> hydrogen forms -> a cloud of combusted gas somewhere in what will later be known as the Milky Way gives birth to the Sun -> lower temperatures allow heavier matter elements to appear and various space debris condense into planetoids -> a molten ball of rock appears that we call Earth -> the surface of Earth cools sufficiently to allow formation of a crust and atmosphere -> unicellular life appears through some spontaneous interaction of organic molecules -> photosynthetic multicellular organisms appear and turn the atmosphere oxygen-rich and give rise to an ozone layer -> vertebrate animals appear during the Cambrian Explosion -> proto-amphibians walk on land -> first dinosaurs appear -> non-avian dinosaurs die out -> common primate ancestor to homo sapiens appears -> Australopithecus lives -> Homo Erectus thrives -> Pleistocene Ice Age -> last Neanderthals die out somewhere on the Iberian peninsula from genocide by Cro-Magnons -> first cities built in the Fertile Crescent -> Great Pyramids constructed -> Code of Hammurabi written -> city of Rome founded -> Battle of Thermopylae -> Socrates drinks hemlock -> Alexander the Great conquers the known world -> Rome wins Punic Wars and sacks Carthage -> Julius Caesar assassinated -> Christ crucified -> Pax Romana -> Constantine converts to Christianity -> Atilla the Hun cuts a swath of destruction -> last Roman Emperor in the West deposed -> Dark Ages -> Charles Martel defeats Islamic horde -> Crusades -> Genghis Khan -> Fall of Constantinople -> New World colonization -> British Empire forged -> Treaty of Westphalia -> American Independence -> Industrial Revolution -> Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House -> light bulb invented -> automobile invented -> airplane invented -> WW1 -> Great Depression -> WW2 -> Manhattan Project -> Cold War -> Moon landings -> Fall of Saigon -> personal computer invented -> Internet goes public -> Tom's parents meet -> Tom is born -> Tom grows up -> Tom goes crazy -> Tom kills Archon.

The actual, real chain of events would be far more detailed and specific than this of course (duh). But the point is, at no junction along this chain of events did a 'choice' occur. Everything that happened was going to happen anyway and none of it could not have happened anyway.

I can't believe you wrote that whole thing out

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Math is a useful tool to describe patterns in a universal language. But it's nothing special beyond that and I don't really see where you're going with this. What you get out of it depends on what it's being used for—you can describe a whole lot of nonsense in a very mathematical and logically consistent way, too.

But it's more than that, to me. It is that universal language. As a description, it's perfect. Just as the words "my desk" create an exact thing in my mind, so does Math describe the entirety of everything. There is nothing beyond what Math can describe. There is no such thing as "nonsense", but you can surely describe whatever you meant. "Math" isn't some wrench you pick up and screw around with, some tool used at random. Math is the underlying system (or, rather, the description of such a system) which constantly exists as all things.

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I'm not sure yet how the J fxns interplay in all of this. In general, I conceive of xOD fxns as ones which estimate “causality.” as 'external causality', as 'internal causality'. xFS fxns would be ones estimating the overall “coherence” of someone or something. as 'external coherence' and as 'internal coherence'.

It's interesting that you put it this way. It seems to me that these are better descriptions, because "causality" implies a linear association ("dynamic subject", let's say), while content is more of a "static subject". Similarly, "context" implies something minute or exact, or perhaps some dynamic event (so we can call it "dynamic setting"), while "coherence" implies something more eternal and more broad ("static setting"). Either way, it would still seem that all object functions are some kind of subject-involved, while all field functions are some kind of setting-involved (though I think content and context are better words for what I'm describing, I'm trying not to be at all confusing lol). Blah blah blah, the balance of the psyche, blah blah blah. From here it seems almost too intuitive to continue writing down. Or too obvious, maybe. Anyway, I like those words .

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Well I don't know. I do think that xOD are attuned specifically towards object/content-like information. And xFS towards field/context-like information. Of course this isn't the whole story, since would form a basic feedback loop with , and would do so with . Having this exchange in place is vital, which is probably related to why duality is optimal.

Right.

Anyway, I think they act differently when all together (by this time I mean the quadral level, obviously), the Perceiving elements being content and the Judging elements being context. I'll think it through more.

[Tom]

Seriously, Ashton, if you don't believe that, through empirical evidence, we can know that shit goes on outside our little bubbles of perception, than we know nothing about QM at all because it's only through empirical evidence that we do.

You don't understand that shit-cosmic-foam is still (if it exists, which we only know empirically if at all) just a smaller part of you. Damn. You. Ashton.

*Edit: lol I can't even believe you.

[Ashton]

Ugh god fucking damnit I hate when my browser crashes during the middle of writing a reply.

Tom, on Jul 5 2009, 09:33 AM, said:

lol No! I know that! It's you who don't get what I mean!

lol What I'm saying is that even though the entirety of the situation is "planned out" due to every action interacting with every other action, etc., all of what you do is still what you want to do. It's still your freewill. What you do is theoretically predictable with enough surveillance/knowledge, yes, but what you want (what your "freewill" would choose to do) is what you actually do. And this is because you are your body, and you are those little reactions your body has to stimuli, and these things do what they are deterministically "bound" to do. But that IS your freewill. Sure, you feel like that means that everything around you is an illusion, and it is. That's why it's called subjective reality. But you also have to remember that you live and experience in the third dimension, not the fourth, and your actions are as your body (you) perceives them at one, singular point in time, without infinite knowledge of the rest of everything before and after. Your body doesn't (at least your DNA+synapses don't) understand that all actions flow into each other. Your entire existence was, yes, foreseeable 13.7 billion years ago, and long before that. That doesn't mean that you don't act as you would of freewill now. Just because you will do what you will do, and all that has happened has happened in the only way it possibly could, doesn't mean that freewill is excluded. The universe has no freewill, so on the grand scale it may seem like an illusion (and it sort of is), but that "illusion" of freewill is still just your body reacting to stimuli/changing within itself. And that same body doing those same things is you. That is your freewill. I know that you think this means that you have no choices, etc., but you do. You certainly do. You just need to understand that those thoughts that you have, and the decision-making process is part of some underlying singular track of events. Nobody's telling you how it ends, and no one else made that decision long, long ago. You make that decision now. But making that decision, that's a bodily function. You are your body, and your body is your intellect. Just because someone could have theoretically determine your exact actions billions of years ago or billions of years from now because there's only one possibility, doesn't mean you didn't make that decision. You did. You have. You will. You always will have done so. You still call the shots. What you do and why you call the shots that way, well, that's a reaction to stimuli.

So what you're saying is:

Whenever a person makes a decision, the expected value of that decision always corresponds to the sole possible deterministically-bound outcome, which is derived from the overall relevant biochemical activity and other tangible interactions comprising that person’s physical body (which is synonymous with who/what that person is). Our conscious minds often mislead us to believe that we possess an agency of choice in the decisions we make, since it appears to our minds that there is some volitional act by us involving conscious discrimination between a set of possible choices, and that ultimately one of these choices is freely self-selected by us as the value of our resultant decision. However, any instance of perceived choice is actually an illusion because the conscious mind is epiphenomenally closed—mental events can be influenced by physical events, but mental events cannot in turn influence physical events. At the ontological (actual/physical) level of causation, no such thing as choice could ever occur because there were never any alternate outcomes competing for manifestation in the first place—the result of any decision is always defaulted to the sole possible deterministically-bound outcome. Decision outcomes that were already predetermined to happen billions of years ago at the outset of the universe, and will occur by way of a specific chain of causal events in a specific location at a specific time. Regardless, when a decision happens, the individual making that decision is the very causal agent which makes that decision come into being as an operative part of reality, and experiences the accompanying subjective illusion of having exercised an act of free will, etc. Nothing else at any point in time besides the individual makes that decision tangibly happen into existence.

Am I misunderstanding anything here?

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I can't believe you wrote that whole thing out

Lol, it wasn’t that big of a deal. No more than 10 minutes of typing up historical events off the top of my head. It was meant to be amusing (though there is a point to it as well).

Respond to rest later.

[Tom]

.....and.....

[Ashton]

Tom, on Jul 8 2009, 10:31 AM, said:

.....and.....

And what? I asked you a yes/no question.

[Tom]

Oh lol.

Well, a little bit, maybe. I think you get something of the jist.

I said "....and...." because you were like

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Respond to rest later.

.

Soooooooooo.....

[Tom]

I've actually changed my mind quite a bit since I wrote that... Or thought more and made better decisions as to what represents what, anyway... But I suppose it still stands, for the most part. What I really seem to be ranting about for the most part there is -valuing 4s in general, though usually adds into that mix. Also, that bit about the movie theater is probably just failed in my mind, to be honest.

Probably a better way (and certainly a more straightforward way, if you catch the meanings) to think about it is this:

is like a current. is what gets pushed by said current. So if we imagine as a boat on some river or something of the like, is the proper breeze or current that envelopes the ship and brings it home safely, or rather makes the voyage suitable and enjoyable to the crew, etc. is more like a baseline on a heart monitor. is the blips. Where / is flowing and continuous in its method, / is the sharp, differing outburst of environment. Where / is about doing, action, the exciting, and the pulse of action, / is about the continual flow. / isn't about doing, it's about being, in a way that most / valuers don't usually see, and if they do it's usually as something boring and insipid. But it really isn't to us. is like bright pinpricks of inspiration, and is the comforting force that carries it along in its favored direction in its favored way. / works similarly, though in a way that seems disruptive and vagrant to / valuers.

The polr really comes into focus subtly here; it seems almost as if I can sense in people like it's some fell storm on the horizon. It really feels irksome and generally picks up (in my mind) as a sense of unease, like some bad static (radio-wise, not socionics-wise). It makes me uncomfortable and sets the tone for , which is almost always disruptive and even destructive of the environment I (and other caregivers) try to create.

It's actually an odd occurrence, but lately it seems that / bothers me more in general, open terms, though it's more frustration than anything. / makes me feel more uncomfortable, I think.

That's a bit more clear and closer to reality in my opinion, so I'm sorry to have possibly misled before and please replace (or add to) those thoughts with these.

[Tom]

Well yes and no. All out-of-quadra functions are uncomfortable, and each one changes the specific relation. However, I think the main issue here is that functions are generally (at least in Model A) thought of as singular, when this isn't the case at all. People work more in compliments than anything else. goes with , and so forth; both combine to make a whole image.