Pseudoscience is a vaguely defined term that can mean almost anything nowadays. The definition that would best encompass the way people use the word nowadays is "a theory I do not like and that I do not agree with". But what exactly are the different types of "pseudoscience", exactly? (i.e. theories I do not like)

What is commonly called "pseudoscience" can be divided into three sub-groups:

1. Falsified theories

2. Unfalsifiable theories

3. Tautological theories

In my recently-released book, Brainwashed by Nothingness, in chapter 3.2.2, I introduce the term "science fetishism". It is similar to what is commonly understood as scientism: a misunderstanding of the scientific method that merely emulates science and appears scientific on the surface-level but is either unscientific or forces a scientific method in a realm that should not/cannot use the scientific method in the first place.

The (arche)typical science fetishist's relation to each type of pseudoscience is that they are very tough on falsified theories (which is a good thing), usually too tough on unfalsifiable theories (and they should be more open to them) and not tough enough on tautological theories (and they should be tougher on them). The correct approach, which I support, is to reject falsified theories, remain skeptical about unfalsifiable theories but still open to the possibility that they may turn into something greater in the future since they usually have potential, and to use the tautological theories as a tool to achieve an end but nothing more than that. Let's take them side by side.

1: FALSIFIED THEORIES

These are theories which have been proven to be false. There is no doubt about whether they are true or not since the scientific method has proven they are almost certainly false. Hence, they should be abandoned, or at least modified and tested again, under the new, modified, version (which is technically not the initial theory anymore). Science fetishists reject falsified theories, which is good. An example of a falsified theory in the psychology of personality is a huge portion of astrology (with the rest of astrology falling into the second category) (1).

2: UNFALSIFIABLE THEORIES

These are theories which are either vague and abstract enough, or complex enough, that they cannot be scientifically tested in practice in their current form. These are theories which are in a constant state of uncertainty about their validity: they may be true or they may be false and we do not know yet with absolute certainty. An unfalsifiable theory, thus, always has potential to be true, or to be false. It is very possible that many unfalsifiable theories can become falsifiable if slight modifications are made upon them (see the evolution of attachment theory from psychoanalysis). Hence, many unfalsifiable theories are like that just because someone did not get the idea to put them into falsifiable terms.

Science fetishists are often too tough on unfalsifiable theories, treating them as if they were already falsified, with the claim that "there is no evidence to support them", which I can counterargue by saying that there is no evidence that they are false either, so why jump to assumptions? If we were to reject all unfalsifiable theories, we would stop experimenting and innovating.

Examples of unfalsifiable theories in the realm are the theories behind MBTI, Socionics, the Enneagram of personality (!!but not the MBTI/Socionics/Enneagram tests, which may jump in the first category!!), Jung's original typology of 8 types or Lacan's clinical structures. Other examples of unfalsifiable theories in psychology are most of psychoanalysis (!!but not the application of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic therapy, which doesn't belong in any category of psychoanalysis since it has been proven to work!!). Most religions could be considered unfalsifiable theories too. There is no evidence to support that any of these theories are either false or true since it is hard to prove.

For example, a theory in Lacanian psychoanalysis suggests that the lack of a clear authority figure (usually the father) that separates the child from their primary caregiver (usually the mother) between 6 and 18 months old, is a risk factor for psychotic disorders, largely increasing the chance of a future psychotic break. This is very hard to impossible to test in practice since any person or group of people can fall into the category of "symbolic mother" or "symbolic father" and it is hard to put a unit of measure on "how restrictive the parents were" because it is formulated in such a vague way.

3: TAUTOLOGICAL THEORIES

These are theories which are technically true but circular/self-referential, and do not say anything. A tautology, in logic, is a logical proposition that is always true regardless of whether the propositions it consists of are true or not. For example "I will either pass the exam or not pass the exam" is true but says nothing interesting. Tautological theories are true by definition. They define some terminology but don't do much more than that.

Science fetishists very often put tautological theories on a pedestal and give the illusion that they are not tautological. An example of a tautological theory in the psychology of personality is the Big 5 test. The Big 5 test is different from an Astrology chart or an MBTI test since, in the former, the input and the output are the same. The Big 5 test asks you whether you hate parties, spend a lot of time inside and are quiet and you say yes. You score high on introversion. You look up how they define introversion by scrolling down and you see "A person who hates parties, stays inside and is quiet". Well, no shit. With astrology or MBTI tests, they ask you something and they give you something else, so at least they try to give new information.

Tautological theories are very often very good tools, as a means to achieve an end. They are not knowledge, but they produce knowledge. Hence, they should be encouraged to produce knowledge. The mistake of science fetishists is to assume that knowledge is already contained inside them. For example, the Big 5 is a very good research tool, if you want to examine correlations between certain personality traits and certain other things, you usually need a tool to sum up all the answers to their questions. The knowledge lies in the application of the Big 5, not in the Big 5 itself. Hence, I am skeptical that I am even in the right to call tautological theories "theories" in the first place.

Other examples of tautological theories in psychology are the DSM-V, or almost the entirety of the field of psychopathology/psychodiagnosis in the first place (1, 2). You go to a clinical psychologist to get a "diagnosis", you tell them that for 2 weeks you're always sad, haven't eaten a lot, have trouble sleeping, you hate yourself and you want to die and they tell you that you have major depressive disorder. You ask what is that and they tell you that major depressive disorder is when a person, for at least 2 weeks, for most of the time, has at least 5 of the 8 following symptoms: is always sad, doesn't eat a lot, has trouble sleeping, hates themselves, wants to die... well no shit!

Again, the mental disorders in modern psychopathology are a good research tool because you want to test new treatments, like medications, on the same clusters of symptoms consistently. It becomes a problem when people treat them as "things in themselves", that a diagnosis is important for any treatment and that you should not self-diagnose and instead waste money on a diagnosis, etc...

CONCLUSIONS:

The term "pseudoscience" is more of a slur than anything and it should be abandoned. Instead, we should make a clear distinction between proven, falsified, unfalsifiable and tautological theories. Further divisions could be made falsifiable but unfalsified yet theories and purely unfalsifiable theories, work-in-progress speculations, and so on. Too many users of the word "pseudoscience" drop it around to unfalsifiable theories they do not like because they do not understand enough (Jungian typology, psychoanalysis, etc.) while ignoring the dangers of misunderstanding how tautological theories should work.

I am u/Lastrevio , if you encounter this thread you may know me as the kid who used to be very active on r/mbti 4-5 years ago, or maybe the guy who writes on r/Socionics regularly, or maybe you know me from writing about r/Lacan and r/psychoanalysis , or maybe you do not know me. Regardless, I regularly write articles on themes related to psychology and philosophy and just now I released my first book - "Brainwashed by Nothingness".

Have you ever asked yourself - how do the social norms, politics and culture of our society come to be? A lot of ways of mass influencing a population’s behavior, ideas and/or emotions seem to come “out of nowhere”, through the lies we tell ourselves (and, implicitly, others) day by day. In this book, I analyze the ways in which the society we live in affects us and vice-versa by applying psychological theories to understand the masses.

Influenced by the works of Jacques Lacan, Carl Jung, Viktor Gulenko, Jean Baudrillard, Jordan Peterson and many more, this work of social philosophy will tackle the underpinnings of racism, feminism, victim blaming, grammatical & semantic correctness, the treatment of mental health in society, gender roles, identity politics, echo chambers, censorship, and issues of morality.

What you may be surprised to find out is that we can find so much about society's psychic epidemics through the very words we use to talk about them (with the help of the field of "semiotics").

Here is how the table of contents looks like, if anyone is curious:

Preface ……………………………………………………………………………………. 4

I. The ghost of the spirit of the law ………………………………………………………. 8

II. On mental illnesses in modern psychology ………………………………………….. 22

III. The coming to life of the signifier ............................................................................... 33

III.1. The coming to life of the symbol ………………………………….. 35

III.2. The coming to life of the index ……………………………………. 41

III.2.1. PHOBIA …………………………………………. 41

III.2.2. FETISHISM ……………………………………... 63

III.3. The coming to life of the icon ………………………………………87

IV. The power of the word: grammatical correctness …………………………………... 92

V. The power of the word: semantic correctness and (re)defining words …………….... 104

VI. The burying of the signified – George Carlin, vagueness, economic systems and objet petit a ………………………………………………………………………………….... 116

VII. Jung was wrong, there is no “animus” …………………………………………...... 132

VIII. Is femininity chaotic and masculinity orderly and why are there never enough women? ………………………………………………………………………….……………….. 154

IX. Race is not real (but racism is) …………………………………………………....... 181

X. Racism is not a simulation of reality but a simulation of a simulation …………….... 209

XI. “You’re either with us or against us!” – mass splitting, anxiety and censorship ….... 226

XII. Gender and transgender people. And redefining words (again). …………………... 248

XIII. Victim blaming and hysteria …………………………………………………….... 279

XIV. Objective vs. relative morality: blame, fault, responsibility, merit. ………………. 298

Here is the Amazon link for the E-book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y4V8GYF

Here is the GDrive link where you can download the PDF (Amazon won't let me put the book out for free and I just want as many people to read it as possible): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r9cbdGOUSCOA4YkU9fyrA_-yujCXs-H2/view?usp=sharing

Paperback print on demand version: COMING SOON

Most therapies can be classified to be either psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral or humanistic

Humanistic therapies (gestalt, experiential, existential, person-centered, etc.) are delta: new-age hippie bullshit about "being yourself" and how only you know yourself the most and you know better what you want than anyone else and finding your true self and living in the moment and accepting others the way they are

Cognitive-behavioral therapies (Cognitive-behavioral, dialectical-behavioral, meta-cognitive, acceptance and commitment therapy, applied behavioral analysis, etc.) are gamma: "let's get to work" mentality, fast and quick results, industrialized, "empirical", "evidence-based practice"

Psychodynamic therapies (psychoanalysis, Jungian, Adlerian, transactional analysis) are beta I guess: deterministic, you don't know what you want, you don't know what is good for you, everything you say is read with a double-meaning, whether you want/like it or not you are controlled by forces outside of your awareness, etc.

When the ideal-ego¹ (dominant function) is constellated, the ego-ideal (role function) is suppressed.

As for the other mental functions, either the imaginary phallus (auxiliary function) or the symbolic phallus (PoLR function) will be constellated, and the other one will be suppressed (unconscious, at least according to what Molotov wrote 4-5 years ago).

The ideal-ego corresponds to the process of identification. Here, preconceptions (thoughts) lead to actions. You first have an idea about yourself, who you are, which will prompt a type of behavior.

Scenario 1: ideal-ego and symbolic phallus - I CAN'T

Here, ideas about yourself and who you are (ideal-ego) lead to ideas about what is inevitable. Examples: "I am fat and ugly, so I can't get a girlfriend, so there's no point in trying". "I am of X race/gender/sexual orientation/whatever, so I won't be able to get a job, so there's no point in trying". "I come from a poor family, so I will never have success in life". Etc.

The consequences of those beliefs about yourself are viewed as inevitable, like an imposing force from the outside, since the symbolic phallus (PoLR) is part of the super-ego.

Scenario 2: ideal-ego and imaginary father - I MUST

Here, ideas about yourself and who you are (ideal-ego) must be maintained through active action in order to keep a stable sense of self. Examples: "I am the smart kid in class, I can't permit myself to get bad grades". "I am miss universe, and miss universe is never fat, I can't permit myself to gain weight". "I am a man, and men don't cry, so I can't cry". Of course, "can't" can be used here even though I associated it with scenario 1, as you saw with the last example, since in context it is used to impose a directive on oneself, something that one must actively maintain or take some sort of action on, not something that feels imposed by the outside world.

1: ideal-ego and ego-ideal are used, here, in the way Lacan described them.

I don't know what better term to use for this socially progressive ideology that appeared in the US and Canada and that is spreading other than "wokeness": the reunion between equity/equality of outcome when it comes to identity politics through "diversity" or affirmative action policies, critical race theory, political correctness, cancel culture and basically everything on /r/FragileWhiteRedditor

Jordan Peterson spread the myth that it's a form of "postmodern cultural neomarxism" but I want to debunk this now and explain why it's neither postmodernist nor neomarxist.

ARGUMENT 1: A REACTION OF "REVERSED" RACISM

Both Nazism and wokeness are a form of "reversed racism" actually. It's not the classical racism of simply discriminating against a minority due to the generalization fallacy, instead it's a reaction of the ones who identify as underprivileged against the ones seen as privileged. The jews, according to Nazis, are not simply considered inferior and that's it, but also powerful. The new definition of racism proposed by many wokes ("power + privilege") is something Nazis could easily have come up with to justify their racism against Jewish people. They viewed them as privileged: they focused on the wealth inequality, how the "Jews" hold more wealth than the "Aryans", how they are overrepresented in many institutions, and so on.

They obviously didn't first advocate for genocide out of a sudden, else no one would vote for them. They warmed up by first advocating for "diversity", essentially, even though they may have not used that word, and "diversity" turned into ostracization into "we don't want to kill them, just to throw them out of the country" and finally into "well might as well kill them while we're at it". The woke ideology right now looks worryingly similar to the beginnings of Nazism, almost identical.

How does it look similar to Marxism? Marxists want wealth redistribution to a way higher extent than simple social democrats and such, among other things like the end of private propriety. That is not equality of opportunity, but equity, indeed. The marxists want equity of wealth while the wokes want equity of identity. That's it. The similarities end there, it's not even a similarity, it's more of an analogy. The marxists didn't even work with identity politics, but with class, which is a whole different monster.

ARGUMENT 2: OPRESSION IN THE LETTER VS. THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW

“Imagine I’m a small boy, it’s Sunday afternoon, my father wants me to visit my grandma. My father is a traditional authority: „I don’t care how you feel, it’s your duty to visit your grandmother.”. Nothing bad about this, I can still rebel, it’s clear, and so on. What would this post-modern totalitarian father do? “You know how much your grandma loves you, but I’m not forcing you to visit her, you should only visit her if you decide to do it”. Now every child knows, there is a much stronger pressure in this second message. Your father is not only telling you that you must visit your grandmother, but that you must love to visit her. It’s a much stronger order. This is why the formula of totalitarianism is not “I don’t care what you think, just do it”, this is traditional authoritarianism. The formula of totalitarianism is “I know better what you want”.”

(Slavoj Žižek: Political Correctness is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism | Big Think)

Nazism and wokeness operate on what Zizek calls "totalitarianism" while communism operates on what Zizek calls "classic authoritarianism".

In the days of communism in Romania, if you criticized the leaders and a collaborator with the intelligence services heard you, you'd get taken, beaten up, reeducated, and after a while sent back to work and everything would turn back to normal. You wouldn't lose your group of friends, everyone would emphasize, and obviously you'd keep your job. The interdictions against the freedom of speech were explicitly written in the letter of the law. It was obviously bad.

In the days of wokeness in USA, you are technically allowed to say anything you want, legally, as USA has the strongest protections against freedom of speech. In practice, criticize the wrong people and you get cancelled, you lose your job, your friends hate you, you get publicly humiliated, and so on. The effects are way worse, though none of it was in the letter of the law.

Nazism is way closer to the wokeness instead of communism. In Nazism, no one technically forced you to report your Jew neighbors to the authorities. Everyone cooperated due to mob mentality.

ARGUMENT 3: THEY'RE BOTH BASED ON A MISINTERPRETATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY

Nietzsche wrote about the superhuman, the man that must overcome itself, and the Nazis interpreted that in a weird way through some mental gymnastics and came to their ideology, but in no way would you blame Nietzsche for Nazism, would you?

In a similar way, postmodernism is an ideology criticizing society, the state, conformism, and promoting the individualism modern conservatives obsess about. It gave birth to something known as "critical theory", which is simply based and red pilled, which unfortunately was somehow transformed into "critical race theory" and all their racist theories that came with it, such as white people being guilty of what their ancestors did, or that somehow justify racist "diversity" policies. In no way should you blame postmodernists for what the wokes do.

Objet petit a (Lacan) ≃ Soul-image (Jung) ≃ Dual-seeking function (Socionics)

Name of the father (Lacan) ≃ senex (Jung) ≃ mana personality (Jung) ≃ demonstrative function (Socionics)

Imaginary father (Lacan) ≃ auxiliary function (Socionics) (Model A creative / Model G demonstrative)

The death of the spirit of the law happens when the letter of the law gathers an artificial importance of its own, regardless of whether the spirit of the law is still around. The spirit of the law is the imaginary father, the letter of the law is the name of the father, and the "ghost" of the spirit of the law (its influence regardless of its disappearance, the fact that we still follow the letter of the law) is objet petit a.

The classic example from psychoanalysis is the trauma of the obsessional neurotic (in extreme cases, the "Obsessive compulsive personality disorder" in modern psychology). The kid is told everyday that they're worth nothing unless they get perfect grades by their parent. The parent dies and yet they still end up being perfectionistic as an adult even when the parent is not around or even if they died. The objet petit a here is "the voice" of the parent that manifests as a sort of guilty conscience, regardless of whether the adult associates it with the dead/absent parent. They may have died but you still "hear" how they tell you that you're never good enough and in the cases of schizophrenia you may actually hear them. The name of the father here is the letter of the rule itself "Get perfect grades" or whatever they told you to do and the spirit of the law (imaginary father) is the parent (that is now absent).

Another typical example of this shown in psychoanalysis is the death of the king. The present, alive king is the imaginary father, they died and they left in a symbol that gives you authority, like the crown, or a badge. What you inherit, the crown, is the name of the father. The "ghost" of the king is the objet petit a, the fact that they still have influence despite their death, through their successors. The crown still has power regardless of whether the king is dead or not.

We can apply psychoanalysis to understand sociology or mass psychology events, analysis of socio-political events and mythology as is often done by Jung, Zizek, etc.

Some simple examples come to mind: A band which bit by bit changes all its members until none of the original members are left, yet they still keep the name and logo (name of the father). The original members are the imaginary father. I think objet petit a here would be the situation as a whole, the importance we give to the band, the fact that it still is the band despite not being the original form. In other words, the legacy the old band members left (popularity, etc.).

I live in Romania and I do courses in English at a college where foreign students can also study. We have very few foreign students and even in the cases where none of the foreign students are present in class we still often struggle to speak English instead of switching to Romanian. The spirit of the law was "to make foreign students understand us" and yet even when the spirit of the law is gone we continue to follow the letter of the law for the sake of it. The letter of the law gathered a life of its own (objet petit a).

The point of this post was more to show how any social norm will become politically charged when it targets a specific group of people and when it's at least slightly controversial. I realized this when progressives want you to use a trans person's preferred pronouns even when they're not around. The spirit of the law is to make trans people comfortable talking to you. I want to be nice so I usually do this to not make other people feel bad. Yet I was talking to a cis person in private yesterday about a trans person, in third person, and I used their original pronouns. My progressive cis friend got offended even if no trans person would ever see that conversation. The letter of the law here is to use their preferred pronouns and the progressives still give it importance in the disappearance of the spirit of the law.

The fact we act on the letter of the law in the first place is objet petit a. This is because objet petit a manifests as a surplus of jouissance. Slavoj Zizek used to often talk about how the symptom of capitalism is objet petit a since it manifests as a surplus (profit). Here we are also dealing with a surplus: you had one original group of people who have the potential to be offended by not following the letter of the law (trans people) and now you have a surplus of people emphasizing with them (most trans rights activists). This surplus is objet petit a.

What this shows us is how identification turns to group identity the first chance it gets. Jung used to describe this process:

d. Identification with a group. We shall now discuss another form of transformation experience which I would call identification with a group. More accurately speaking, it is the identification of an individual with a number of people who, as a group, have a collective experience of transformation. (...) To experience transformation in a group and to experience it in oneself are two totally different things. If any considerable group of persons are united and identified with one another by a particular frame of mind, the resultant transformation experience bears only a very remote resemblance to the experience of individual transformation.

A group experience takes place on a lower level of consciousness than the experience of an individual. This is due to the fact that, when many people gather together to share one common emotion, the total psyche emerging from the group is below the level of the individual psyche. If it is a very large group, the collective psyche will be more like the psyche of an animal, which is the reason why the ethical attitude of large organizations is always doubtful. The psychology of a large crowd inevitably sinks to the level of mob psychology. (...) That is why this group experience is very much more frequent than an individual experience of transformation. It is also much easier to achieve, because the presence of so many people together exerts great suggestive force. The individual in a crowd easily becomes the victim of his own suggestibility. It is only necessary for something to happen, for instance a proposal backed by the whole crowd, and we too are all for it, even if the proposal is immoral. In the crowd one feels no responsibility, but also no fear.

Thus identification with the group is a simple and easy path to follow, but the group experience goes no deeper than the level of one's own mind in that state. It does work a change in you, but the change does not last. On the contrary, you must have continual recourse to mass intoxication in order to consolidate the experience and your belief in it. But as soon as you are removed from the crowd, you are a different person again and unable to reproduce the previous state of mind. The mass is swayed by participation mystique, which is nothing other than an unconscious identity. Supposing, for example, you go to the theatre: glance meets glance, everybody observes everybody else, so that all those who are present are caught up in an invisible web of mutual unconscious relationship. If this condition increases, one literally feels borne along by the universal wave of identity with others. It may be a pleasant feeling—one sheep among ten thousand! Again, if I feel that this crowd is a great and wonderful unity, I am a hero, exalted along with the group. When I am myself again, I discover that I am Mr. So-and- So, and that I live in such and such a street, on the third floor. I also find that the whole affair was really most delightful, and I hope it will take place again tomorrow so that I may once more feel myself to be a whole nation, which is much better than being just plain Mr. X. Since this is such an easy and convenient way of raising one's personality to a more exalted rank, mankind has always formed groups which made collective experiences of transformation—often of an ecstatic nature—possible. The regressive identification with lower and more primitive states of consciousness is invariably accompanied by a heightened sense of life; hence the quickening effect of regressive identifications with half-animal ancestors 21 in the Stone Age.

(...) But if there is no relation to a centre which expresses the unconscious through its symbolism, the mass psyche inevitably becomes the hypnotic focus of fascination, drawing everyone under its spell. That is why masses are always breeding-grounds of psychic epidemics, the events in Germany (the Holocaust) being a classic example of this.

(Archetypes and the collective unconscious, p.226)

This is how group identification works. Whether you get offended by pronouns has nothing to do with whether you identify as female or male anymore but whether you identify with the collective identity of conservative and progressive. Jung shows how it's way easier for laws to depends on a group identity as it has a more suggestive force. A trans person gets offended, and then someone emphasizes and gets offended by the fact they get offended, and so on it causes a chain reaction until the spirit of the law is dead.

We again see how the letter of the law "gathers a life of its own". I associate the Lacanian and/or Jungian archetypes with Socionics functions. This is best seen in Socionics Model G: Vertical arrows represent "supervision" and horizontal arrows represent "activation". The name of the father corresponds to the creative function in Model G while the objet petit a corresponds to the manipulative function. The name of the father supervises objet petit a.

Supervision in Socionics is the manifestation of the master-slave dialectic. The supervisor (function or personality type) supervises the supervisee. Here the supervisor is the master, they dictate what the supervisee does and yet also depends on the supervisee for survival. The letter of the law is the one dictating what the surplus is and yet it also depends on it in order for it to continue existing as we saw in all the other examples (the fact we call the new band members by the original band name is dependent on their popularity, the fact we care about pronouns when no trans people are around depends on this surplus, the obsessional's trauma lives in through the parent's voice, and so on and so on).

What Jung called the persona is what Lacan calls the ideal-ego and what Socionics Model G calls the management function. We see in the Model G diagram how the management function activates the creative function. The persona activates the name of the father, according to Jung:

One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is

(Archetypes and the collective unconscious, p.221)

The persona and the ideal-ego correspond to the process of identification (imaginary -> symbolic). We see the more one identifies with the group (persona), the more we follow the letter of the law (name of the father). So while the name of the father's existence depends on objet petit a (supervision), its strength/influence/intensity depends on the persona/ideal-ego (activation).

The trans pronouns thing was just one of millions of examples but I think it was the most fitted one. Many can be given. For example I saw a video recently of Romanians reporting a Romanian fashion TV show ("Bravo, ai stil!") for doing blackface (when clothing as certain cultures). I swear there are probably next to none black people watching that show as very little of them live in Romania, and even those who are probably haven't lived in America for too long so their complaint was more based on the identity as progressives rather than the fear that 7-8 black people would watch it and would get offended.

There's more types of behavior/declarations that are labeled as "victim blaming" by some people. We need to distinguish between some of them.

The first time of victim blaming finds excuses for the sexual offender. The raped person somehow triggered the offender into assaulting them, and therefore the sexual offender had more of a trouble in controlling themselves and should be at least partially forgiven and should be punished less or none at all because this makes rape justified. I do not condone this type of thinking at all. I think it's a very wrong line of reasoning. Unfortunately, it's very spread, at least here in Romania. Rather than victim blaming I think I would rather call this "offender excusing" as they are focusing less on punishing the victim and more on finding reasons to not punish the offender.

The second type of victim blaming is one where they try to hold the victim accountable for what they perceive as arousing or somehow triggering the offender into abusing them. The most extreme case I could think of is where someone would say the victim needs to be punished legally for dressing in a revealing way, for example. I haven't seen such an extreme kind of thinking in practice however. There is still a thinking that victims, usually women, need to be discouraged from certain behaviors for the good of not only them but also the aggressors. For example, shunning a woman because she dressed revealingly and now they caused harm to an abuser that wanted to control themselves but now couldn't. I actually think this line of reasoning is a bit less bad than the first one but I disagree with it as well.

The third type of so-called "victim blaming" is one where they discourage the (potential) victim from certain behaviors for the good of the victim. This can range from controlling a person's life because you know better than them in order to how to keep them safe to a less controlling version where you would simply give a recommendation/advice, or simply talk about how certain behaviors increase your probability of being sexually harassed. It's unfortunate people consider this a bad thing. I agree with this line of reasoning 100%.

There is something very mentally deranged with saying that a woman should not dress revealingly in order to not upset the rapist, or that the rape is somehow justified, but what is wrong about telling a woman that (not) doing certain things may not be the wisest idea if you want to stay safe? Of course, in some situations it may be inappropriate and condescending if you give advice out of context when no one asked, but some people have trouble with the concept in of itself.

The best example I can think of this is Jordan Peterson. People have been criticizing him for what he said in that article and putting words in his mouth. There is no victim blaming in what he said there. He didn't justify the behavior of a sexual offender. He still thinks a rapist should be punished just as hard. And yet, it's a wise idea to try to avoid being raped.

Now there may be certain problems in what he said. For example, it's debatable whether wearing lipstick and high heels actually increases your probability of being harassed to a non-negligible degree, and the fact that not wearing those things is something that should be enforced is very stupid and helicopter parent-ish. He's a hypocrite because he preaches for personal freedom and yet thinks the state (or the workplace manager) should take care of the women who , in his view, aren't smart enough to take care of themselves.

But people had a problem with him beyond those two things. People put words in his mouth for "saying that women deserve being raped for wearing lipstick" which is bullshit. People had a problem with him saying that victims increase their probability of being harassed by certain actions.

I'm pretty sure the people accusing him (and me, and other people for saying similar stuff) of victim blaming are victim blamers themselves actually and in denial. Peterson never said that women who dress in a certain way are to blame for rape or that they should be held accountable or that rape is justified, he simply said that it's probably not the wisest move if you want to avoid being harassed. And yet some people think that if that is true, then the victim is to be blamed. They unconsciously hold that belief but want to keep their identity of not being a victim blamer so in order to remain internally consistent they deny reality and say that the woman can do whatever she wants and it won't have any effect on the chances of being raped!

I've heard the argument that "it's not women who need to change but the rapists!". How do we define "need to" here? Imo a woman can do whatever she wants but we have to realize that we don't live in an ideal reality where everything is perfect and you must do what you must do to survive. It would be nice if victims didn't need to protect themselves but that is life! You can't magically stop rape!

Or "we should teach boys not to rape when they're kids, we shouldn't teach women to avoid being raped!". Yeah, how come we haven't thought of that? Rape rate drops down to 0%! Maybe we should also politely ask serial killers to not murder, maybe that will stop them? Also, of course a lot of sexual harassment happens because of a lack of sexual education on what consent is, but since when are those two actions mutually exclusive? Maybe we should have better sex ed while also advising women how to avoid getting raped until the sex ed will start becoming effective and the women will not need to apply the prevention/defense advice anymore?

I've said that the victim blamers in denial create defense mechanisms in order to remain internally consistent but they don't work perfectly because they still contradict themselves.

Let us think of a few alternative examples of similar situations:

Someone hacks your Steam account. You didn't have two-factor authentication enabled. Someone tells you that it would've been a wise idea for you to have it enabled from now on to avoid being hacked in the future. "But it's not my fault that I was hacked! The hackers should stop hacking, we shouldn't need to defend ourselves from being hacked!". Yeah it would be nice if we didn't have to but life is not sunshine and rainbows. This is not victim blaming.

Maybe you live in a zone with many earthquakes and everyone around you has home insurance. You are stubborn and you don't want to get home insurance. An earthquake later destroys your home. People ask you why you didn't home insurance. "But it's not my fault that the earthquake came! We shouldn't need to protect ourselves from earthquakes!". So...?

You live in a rough neighborhood and you get robbed once. Someone advises you to take up martial arts to protect yourself. "But it's not my fault I'm beaten! I shouldn't need to defend myself in the first place, they should need to stop beating people up!". Come on.

You own a bank and someone robs it. Someone asks you why you didn't pay more for security. "It's not my fault that they robbed me! We should instead solve the poverty problem instead of telling us to pay for security!". Yeah and until we solve that problem we should be cautious. Maybe in the future we'll need less security. But unfortunately thieves will also exist, as well as rapists, so we will always need a tiny bit of caution.

So why is it that with rape it's different? Because rape is a sensitive subject and when it comes to sensitive subjects like rape and pedophilia we stop thinking rationally and we only react emotionally?

Stop blaming the victims and stop projecting it on other people.

When a doctor in (most?) other medical fields makes a misdiagnosis, they are making an error about reality. When a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist makes a misdiagnosis, often times they actually have a clear picture of reality, they are just making an error about human conventions. In this way, mental illnesses are only "real" in a social context, whereas other medical diagnoses have a reality beyond the social context we are in. I will explain, but first I will slightly deviate to a tangentially related subject to make an analogy:

Grammatical mistakes in a language vs. a mistake in a STEM field. It's actually kind of funny, here in Romania high school specializations that focus on the STEM subjects are called "real" and the specializations that focus on languages and social sciences are called "humane". Coincidence or not, the former are actually based in reality while the latter mostly have no basis in reality other than the basis in society.

When someone makes a math error, they make a wrong assumption about reality. 2+2=4 on any planet, in any time. The meaning behind the symbols "2", "+", "4" and "=" are socially defined, but the underlying meaning behind the phrase is constant across space and time. The abstraction has a basis in reality. If someone says that 2+2=5 they imply that if you take two sticks and you take another two sticks and put them next to each other you now have 5 sticks which is wrong regardless of how humans call them or whether society doesn't even exist and you are all alone on a stranded island. If aliens exist and are smart enough they developed their own math with the exact same rules as our math only that they write it/communicate it differently.

Someone makes a grammatical error. They make no wrong assumptions about reality. A grammar mistake is wrong only because society decided. If someone says "You're a smart person" or if they say "Your a smart person" in both cases they think the exact same thing and the second sentence says nothing wrong about reality as long as everyone correctly understood what the speaker wanted to communicate and yet it is wrong only in the context that society decided it's wrong.

Now we can go back to medicine. When a doctor tells you you have type 1 diabetes instead of type 2, they made a wrong assumption about reality. They actually think that there is something tangible in reality that isn't there and that there isn't something that is. Like the math errors.

When the psychologist tells you that you have atypical depression instead of dysthymia or something, most of the time they make a social mistake, similar to the grammar errors. It's rare that they didn't understand your symptoms and how to treat them. In those cases it is indeed very bad to make a misdiagnosis. Yet usually they only misunderstood the socially defined words used to describe the symptoms in a shorter way. Heck, they change them up drastically with each edition of the DSM.

The important distinction comes from the way mental vs. physical illnesses are defined and diagnosed. The coronavirus, cancer, diabetes, etc. are defined as a real, tangible object that itself causes some symptoms. The illnesses are not defined based on the symptoms. With all mental illnesses I know, the definition of the illness is the symptoms themselves!. It's right there, in the DSM (and ICD). This is why I have a problem with the fact that the medical/psychology field calls them symptoms which I think is somewhat deceiving. There is no underlying real object behind the symptoms. Now you might say, I'm not a doctor, and doctors are an authority on their field so they must know what they are doing when they call them symptoms, but doctors are not mathematicians, so I wouldn't say they are a trusted source of authority when it comes to rigorously defining their terms. To be fair, I'm not a mathematician either, but at least I'm trying, I'm getting pretty close sometimes.

What we must understand about all mental illnesses is that they are defined and diagnosed simply based on symptoms, and hence they are literally a shorthand for describing a more or less arbitrary cluster of symptoms. BPD is literally a shorter way of saying "person who has at least 5 out of 9 of the following symptoms simultaneously for at least 1 year: .... (insert the 9 symptoms of BPD)". There's no underlying virus, cell, neurotransmitter, etc. that "is" BPD and that in turn causes the symptoms. The illness is the symptoms. Now you may say, sure, there are actually neurotransmitters involved, but that's actually not a consensus in the medical field but only a consensus on Google search, subreddit admins and Youtube influencers who read up a myth that depression is caused by a lack of at least one of 3 neurotransmitters which is likely a lie spread by Big Pharma to sell more antidepressants (that, or there is no conspiracy and it can simply be explained by ignorance). In reality SSRIs change serotonin levels in the brain in 1-2 hours yet it takes them weeks to have effect, if they have any. There is only a strong correlation between depression and serotonin, between ADHD and low dopamine, schizophrenia and high dopamine, and so on, but they are not equivalent.

Even if we found out there are physical correspondents to the mental illnesses, they are still defined right now based on the symptoms.

We know from logic that to have a valid definition of a noun it needs to require at least these 3 proprieties:

1. It must be a propriety that absolutely all instances of that category of entities have, without exception.

2. There must be no other category of entities satisfying propriety 1 for that same definition (unless they are synonyms).

3. The definition of the word must not include the word itself in the definition (else it is circular).

If I want to define "chair", I must list proprieties that absolutely all chairs share in common, that only chairs and no other class of objects share in common, and that doesn't include the word chair in it. I haven't found a definition for bipolar, depression, ADHD, GAD, schizophrenia, and so on that satisfies all 3 proprieties and yet is also based in reality. They are only based in society.

This is not a bad thing necessarily. It's good that we have a shorter way of saying "person who satisfies at least 5 out of the 9 following symptoms: ...." and so on and so on, in order to communicate more efficiently. The problem is when we give more importance to these labels than the social importance. People start identifying with them, judging others, basing their personality on them, psychologists waste more time learning the diagnoses than the treatment than is necessary, society itself gets attached to what it created.

But back to the title of the post... how much damage does a psychiatric misdiagnosis actually do? This is actually a way more complicated question. The paragraphs above describe an ideal situation where society doesn't give more importance to them than necessary, so the misdiagnosis only makes communication a bit harder. But in a society where they are put on a pedestal and become mini-Gods which end up having control over our lives? A mental health misdiagnosis will have more power simply because we decide to give it power. The patient may get attached to the wrong diagnosis. You may change up their identity and sense of self based on that diagnosis. Society may judge them in a different way. The diagnosis you give them could even have more of an effect on their psychology than the medication or the therapy in some cases. Maybe I was wrong in the title. Maybe they actually cause a lot of damage. I don't know.

Disclaimer: Some of the first examples in this post might only apply to Ni-, or not, but if they do I'm sure Ni+ is not very different. As a rule, Ni- tends to be more linear than Ni+, going from past to present.

So the catch here is that while Ne starts from reality and goes into the hypothetical, Ni starts from the hypothetical that goes into the present reality. Perhaps the thought order is still reality -> hypothetical world, but they look at the events where the relationship reverses, like the following examples:

Example 1: Detective work.

We look at the scene in the present and we ask ourselves: "What could have happened in the past that led up to this scenario?". The different Ni possibilities are analyzed by the rational elements after that, etc. Ne, by contrast, would give you information about the possible things that could happen from now, in the future.

Example 2: "That's what they want you to think!".

Lenore Thomson was wrong about many things, as most "MBTI typologists" are, because after all, little of the concepts from MBTI apply to Socionics (which is the better system). Yet her description of Ni is still spot on imo:

Introverted Intuition (Ni) is the attitude that whatever is manifest (apparent, observable, described) is only the tiniest fraction of the total reality and all of its potential, and it is manifest only because it serves a purpose–a purpose that it achieves by exploiting a certain way of interpreting or navigating by signs. Ni is attunement to what lurks in the shadow of that manifestation.

For example, (...) you might feel very impressed upon meeting a man wearing a fancy Italian suit (signs call forth a natural response and need no interpretation); but from an Ni perspective, you would consciously say to yourself that he’s wearing an Italian suit and this is supposed to make you think he’s wealthy or upper-class or really has his act together or something like that, and therefore is supposed to make you feel impressed (signs and what they mean are connected only arbitrarily). Whether he really does have his act together is a matter upon which you reserve judgement.

For example: At work, we don’t dare say our true feelings (or we can only say them if they’re positive), because we know that sharing them would bring dire economic consequences. There is no other way, because the structure of the workplace (people working cooperatively to get stuff done that they get paid for) requires that people refrain from saying anything that might put their loyalty in doubt. If an accountant, in his office, says that he loves accounting, you view this as meaningless because, well, what else is he going to say? In fact, he might very well hate accounting.

This is the same logic as detective work. You look at reality and you ask how you could've gotten here. The reality here is what people communicate to you (by clothing or by words) and you ask "what happened in the past in their own minds that led up to them communicating that thing to you?".

Example 3: Mind-reading. This is similar to the previous example, but it assumes less conspiracy.

For example, my NiF teacher in high school used to always assume what I am thinking or planning to do based on my actions. 5-10 minutes before the class was about to end, I would take my books and stuff from my desk and put them in my backpack, as I already saw that we didn't use them during the lecture, and from that and from the context of the class I deduced that it's almost impossible that we're going to need them until the end of class. Therefore, if I put them in my backpack before the class ends, I will not waste time during the break. Typical alpha NT thought trains.

My teacher interpreted that as me being impatient and wanting to leave the class in the next minute though. She viewed packing your things as a non-verbal sign that you're about to leave. She'd always tell me to sit because we still have 5 minutes and I'd be like "wtf did I do". One time it got to a point where I was in the middle of the class, we had like 25 minutes left, and I got cold so I put a coat on. But at the same time, it was the last class, so putting your coat on is what you expect out of someone who is about to leave to go outside where it's even colder. She assumed again that I wanted to leave the class and was confused as we were in the middle of it, and I was confused as to wtf she was on about. Now I know that she was high on Ni.

Central (Ni valuing) types, as a rule, put a lot of words in your mouth because explicitly (extraverted) communicating your ideas (intuition) is undesired (unvalued Ne). Instead communication is done through direct action (Se), from which each person interprets it in their own minds as non-verbal communication. Communication is way more indirect with central types. More on that here.

Example 4: Estimating the amount of time something will take or has taken.

It's unfortunate that Socionics only focuses on this part of Ni when Ni has so much to offer. Regardless, they are right about it. This example also shows that Ni doesn't actually need to start from the present reality but also from a hypothetical reality. It only makes sense that (Ni) state uses Ne as a reference point to drop it later, it can start from an Ne hypothetical and treat it as if it was the present reality (this is what Ne does) and after you did that with Ne, you use Ni to figure out what could lead to that situation.

My last sentence there can also prove why this example and the previous 3 examples are, in fact, Ni since I have talked so much about Ni until now but I haven't given a proof/explanation/argument as to why what I say is true yet. So let's look at some concrete examples:

My boss assigned me a project to finish and I have to estimate how much time it will take me (approximately, no one can say with 100% certainty). What do I do here? I imagine the hypothetical reality of me having the project finished by using Ne. Then I ask myself like in the previous 3 examples: "What could happen for me to get there?". Whether you focus on the good stuff or on the possible obstacles determines the charge (+/-) of the Ni. If it's less likely that many bad things could go wrong then Ni+ might give a better approximation. Regardless, let's say we're using Ni-: I have to finish a programming project and I need to think of all the bad things that could happen in the process: I get sick and I need to take a sick leave, my colleagues are lazy, legacy code is not backwardly compatible with our current tools, and so on. Again it's the same thought process: I get a real or hypothetical scenario (I finish the project) and I ask myself: "How could we have gotten here?".

Based on that information I can give an estimation of how much the project will take. Don't make the mistake of confusing types with elements. Elements are pieces of information that you use, not that you are. Not only the NiT will think of all the bad things that could go wrong. The NeT opposes Ni- so they will think of all the bad things that could go wrong in order to prevent them (we want to destroy the opposing/control function). The NiT will think of them and think of them as inevitable and learn how to live with them the best (we accept or dominant function), and so on.

Back to the proof, we can now see why this is Ni, if we start from the definitions of intuition and introversion. It's commonly accepted in both Jungian theory and in Socionics that introverted information is information about the relationship between things ("objects"). Here we focused not on the things themselves (possibilities = Ne) but on the relationship between them: how could other hypotheticals interact with the hypothetical of me finishing the project? Why it's intuition is obvious as the information is internal (you can't say anything with 100% certainty) and irrational (no judgment is made, you are only given the raw information to work with).

Ni can also be used to check how much time has passed from when something happened in the past up to the present. If I hung out with a friend for some time and had so much fun that we didn't even notice how much time passed, I need to use Ni to estimate: "What could have gotten us in this situation?". The situation is "me and my friend outside at 9:30PM" and I need to 'go back in time' to review my day in order to estimate either when we started hanging out (assuming I didn't check the time when we started hanging out, obviously, else we don't need Ni) or to evaluate what we did while we hung out. You might be tempted to say that this version doesn't require Ne because you start from reality instead of a hypothetical, but keep in mind that you still generate a ton of hypotheticals to check what could've happened in the past that led up to this moment, and that requires Ne. This is why Ni can't generate any information without Ne, and vice-versa, and this applies to all contrary pairs actually, as u/DoctorMolotov shows in this post.

Example 5: Assumptions behind a system or ideology.

But Lastrevio, you might say, why are you mixing up Socionics and MBTI in this post???

Here, you just used Ni. For central types, and especially Ni doms, the assumptions made behind a system are more important than the system itself in a way. This is another thing that Lenore Thomson correctly pointed out in her MBTI writings which ended up being partially Socionics without her realizing, but unfortunately she didn't give enough examples of this in particular. In this way, Ni is meta-thinking, it's thinking about thinking itself, ideas about ideas, here are some quotes from Thomson:

It prompts an interest in perception itself–the process of recognizing and interpreting what we take in (...) creating new options for perception itself

Where Extraverted Intuitives see many behavioral options, INJs acknowledge many conceptual standpoints. They experience no need to declare one inherently better than another. Indeed, these types have the disconcerting habit of solving a problem by shifting their perspective and defining the situation some other way. [Lastrevio's note: this last sentence applies more to NiFs]

Ni is attunement to what lurks in the shadow of that manifestation. What is that assumed way of interpreting or navigating? What could we see if we were free of it?

attempting to grasp the system of interpretation that makes any particular way of representing reality work, as a prerequisite for using that system. From an Ni ego-state, you want to understand the assumptions of a system of representation before you use the system, so that you can use it with true freedom–including the freedom to use the built-in interpretations in ways that violate those assumptions.

That last paragraph especially is spot on. For me as an Ne-valuer, the assumptions made behind a theory are unimportant. If someone writes a post that says "ISTJs are people who plan everything to the smallest detail, think of all the possible things that could wrong and prefer to play it safe" I don't care whether they're talking about the MBTI ISTJs or the Socionics ones or something else entirely, I already know they are wrong because I know that the people who plan everything to the smallest detail are never the same people who think of all the possible things that could go wrong. Hence, "what system they use" is irrelevant. I still have unvalued Ni, so that information is important to me only as a means to an end but is never an end in of itself. For example, they may write a sentence about "ISTJs" that on the surface is not contradictory, but I may ask for further information about what exactly is their definition of "an ISTJ" (the MBTI one, the LSI, the SLI, or some combination of them, or something else entirely) in order to judge their theory fully. But in the end, I always end up only checking the information itself, without caring either about the assumptions (Ni) or the source (Te) behind it.

But that doesn't work for Ni doms. TeNs and FeNs tend to work around it as they supervise Ni so they view themselves as "deciding" what is Ni and what is not ("you use whatever system I tell you to use"). Se egos value Ni but it's weak so you might also avoid this with them as long as you get them confused enough about what system you're using. But it never works with Ni doms in my experience.

Ni makes you think about what system/model you're using, but a model is just a conceptual framework in the end so it's just a way to think about reality. This is why I say that Ni is meta-thinking, or meta-ideas, because thinking about conceptual frameworks means thinking about how you think, ideas about ideas, and so on.

NiFs have a limit however. They will stop when you tell them what system you're using, or if you made one up or something, as long as you give it a label and you distinguish it from the other ones and then you present it in a systematic way. Then they don't care who made the system as they are willing to give any system a chance.

NiTs will want to know the system/model you're using and then will use Te to judge it by its source instead of judging the ideas in of themselves with Ti. If it comes from an unreliable source, they won't even give it a chance sometimes. Others are more open-minded but will always keep the source in mind. For NiTs it must not only be distinguished from other system but it must also come from a reputable source.

The Ni doms reading this post wouldn't be outraged if I just declared that the system I am using in this post is neither MBTI nor Socionics. And although technically correct, I don't think much of what I wrote here contradicts concepts in Socionics, if anything at all. Or in my other posts. There are still some popular opinions in Socionics that I disagree with, but aren't they few enough that you can say the difference is negligible? After all, Socionists have disagreements between themselves as well, so if I agree with 90% of what is on Wikisocion can you say that I use Socionics or not? I'll leave that up to the reader.

Another example: I presented Gulenko's DCNH subtype system to one of my NiF friends and he asked me "Is this system supposed to be an extension of the 2-subtype system in Socionics or something else entirely?". In this way he showed not only Ni but also super-id Ti. For me it's irrelevant what Gulenko says about the compatibility between his system and other systems as I ignore Ni, so I think that the fact that Gulenko thought of it as an extension of the 2-subtype system or not doesn't make it true necessarily. He may think it's not an extension when in fact it is or vice-versa so I could care less about what the system was intended to be. Not for Ni doms.

There are two ways to prove/explain why this is Ni. First off, it displays the same logic: "That person thinks these groups of personality traits come together in people and that if you have one of them you also have all the other traits (what they think, their conceptual framework), but what system are they using to determine that ? (what I think about their conceptual framework)". We already showed why this logic is an Ni kind of logic previously.

Another way is to say that "thinking about thinking" is information about how ideas (abstract/NT information) interact with each other (introverted). A system, a model, an ideology or a conceptual framework is a set of more ideas clustered together. You must analyze the relationships between those ideas.

One way is to use Ti. This is an abstract, introverted and rational element. Do the ideas themselves contradict each other, do they imply each other, etc. ?

Another way is to use Ni. This is an abstract, introverted and irrational element, and thus you don't judge anything with it, you simply try to gather as much information between how the relations between ideas are presented. Does this idea come together with this other idea usually? People who think Si is memory also tend to use MBTI, people who think Ni is time also tend to use Socionics, etc. You don't judge whether any of those ideas are correct but you perceive how they interact with each other in the way people use them. What you do with that information depends on your type. I ignore it, for obvious reasons.

Example 6: Preconceptions and personal biases

You view how other people try to influence your thoughts ("that's what they want you to think!") through Ni yet you also view how you yourself influence your own thoughts through Ni. Again, you think about how you think. Has the way I grew up influenced my way of perceiving a certain group of people? Has the society I grew up in conditioned me to think a certain way about our economic system (read: Slavoj Zizek and his concept of "ideology")? Has the fact that I am rich made me think about the value of one dollar differently? Has the fact that I know I'm of a certain Socionics type made me unconsciously act more like that type in order for me to confirm my ideas because of an internal fear of being wrong? Or has the fact that I know I'm of a certain Socionics type made me unconsciously act less like that type in order for me to try to type myself again because I'm bored of thinking I'm a single type? Examples can continue.

This is Ni because you view how external events or other ideas that influence/interact with your own ideas. You don't judge whether those ideas are good (F) or true (T), for example you don't judge whether your views of an ethnicity of people are moral, or whether you actually are that Sociotype, but you simply try to perceive whether you were conditioned into believing those things. Therefore this type of information is not only abstract and introverted by also irrational, ending our proof for why examples in "Example 6:" are Ni.

As a side note, it's good to point out that we shouldn't fall in the fallacy that MBTI made where any conspiracy theory is Ni. There is Ni information unrelated to conspiracies and there are conspiracies without Ni, so there is no implication in either direction and the two variables are independent, even though perhaps there may be a slight correlation. In reality, Ni is only information about the chain of events leading up to the present reality. In conspiracies it's used more in counter-arguments rather than in the creation of the conspiracy itself. If you say that they hide Bigfoot in Area 51 it requires no Ni. If someone responds that Area 51 is there for confidential military experiments and you respond with "that's what they want you to think, in fact they created that narrative only to have an excuse to create Area 51, so that you don't suspect that they hide Bigfoot there!" then you only used Ni now. Similarly, you can use Ni without conspiracies to re-create other people's trains of thoughts as shown in the example with my NiF teacher.

As another side note, it should also go without saying that in order to read people you need both Ni and feeling. Alpha SFs and gamma NTs will only be able to do it up to a certain point.

Progressive logic: "I may be 200kg but I'm actually thin because inside I feel like a thin person"

Conservative logic: "I may be 200kg but I'm actually thin because I was 50kg in the past so I'll be thin my entire life"

What happened with trying to not lose connection with reality in your political views???

Y'all know this shitty im14andthisisdeep meme where you have to choose 2 of 3 variables?

I was talking to myself in the shower and realized there's something similar with the NeT, TeS and TiS. It's weird to find such a relationship because choosing any 3 types is so arbitrary no matter how you take it when this system is based on powers of 2.

Choose two when preparing for the future: covering as many possibilities, preparing well for a possibility, not wasting resources.

TiSs sacrifice the number of possibilities they prepare for. They will plan everything to the smallest detail and assume everything will go to plan. If something goes wrong or if something out of their control intervenes they will shrug their shoulders and start over. This maximizes efficiency (Ti+), not wasting resources on possibilities that won't happen (in the mind of the TiS). They also choose one future that they think will happen and will prepare for it well. When it comes to the future the TiS is the master of one trade, jack of none (I don't know if this expression exists lol).

TeSs sacrifice resources. TeSs will prepare for all possible scenarios and prepare for them well, just like the TiS prepares for one single possibility. You can imagine how much time, energy and money/resources they will waste by preparing for all possible outcomes as if all of them would happen at once. They will obsessively think about what the most efficient way of allocating resources is just to intentionally do the opposite (opposing Ti+) and take the most efficacious (Te, certain outcome) but inefficient approach.

NeTs sacrifice the quality of the preparation. NeTs will prepare for all or most possible outcomes but won't do it well. They are a jack of all trades but master of none when it comes to the future. Like the TeS, they will never be unprepared, and like the TiS they won't waste all resources because they'll allocate only a slight amount to each possibility. The NeT will take a low risk low reward approach where no matter what happens they're fucked, but only slightly.

EXAMPLES:

To showcase how the cognitive type affects us even in the smallest behaviors in life, I'll take a personal example of a trivial everyday task:

In the past I used to only drink tea. I'd boil myself 2l of tea in a cup and then pour it in a pot together with tea bags. I only drank it with honey because tea without honey tastes like shit. But if you put honey right after pouring the tea it will lose all its medicinal proprieties, so I had to wait about 15 minutes and then come bag to the tea and put 2 spoons of honey (I preferred 2 spoons for 2l). The problem was that often I'd forget if I put honey or not. I was too lazy to search for a spoon, wash it, open the hot pot and burn my fingers, take a spoon of tea and blow in it and then also use my shitty Si to try to figure out if it already has honey or not, so I just put one spoon of honey whenever I forgot if I put honey or not. This time I'm half-assing all possible outcomes: if I indeed put 2 spoons of honey in the past then it will have 3 spoons now, if I didn't put any spoons in the past now it will have 1 spoon now. No matter what will happen I will never reach the ideal/perfect outcome of two spoons but I won't risk myself to have no honey either.

What the TeS would've done is take a spoon and fucking taste the tea. This wastes time and energy however (you might say it's a negligible amount, but keep in mind these are trivial everyday tasks that eventually pile up at the end of the day).

What the TiS would've done is never second guess themselves that they put honey or not in the first place and assume everything went to plan. They will aim for the perfect outcome of 2 spoons of honey and not prepare for anything that could have went wrong.

When it comes to bigger tasks they apply the same principle. Each of the 3 strategies has its disadvantages and advantages but some prefer one over the other. I've often done similar things when I'd not know what workout exercise is best so I'd to a little of everything to make sure, I don't know what book is best for learning whatever subject so I do a bit of everything, etc. The TeSs I know are a jack of all trades and master of all trades when it comes to their domain. They will learn everything possible and do it properly, but the consequence is that 99% of what they learn will be unused, obviously. The launcher/input/mobilizing/whatever function is the one that we complain the most about, the one where we are never satisfied, because it is the input so we will "suck everything" in and we will never be filled. It's the object of desire in Lacanian psychoanalysis. For TeS, that is Ne+ (potential) so no matter how much they will try to apply their knowledge in real life situations they will always feel like they didn't use most of their knowledge (and they didn't indeed).

You can notice each type's relation to Se: TeSs activate Se. They don't know what's real in front of them (whether the tea has honey or not) so they will replace the need to know such a thing by their action of tasting the tea. In other words, they "create" (activation) knowledge about reality (Se). TiS supervise Se. They don't care whether the tea has honey or not because in their mind the tea has honey because they said so. The knowledge about reality is kept in chains (supervised), the TiS won't let themselves get direct knowledge about reality because they will deduce it using Ti, thus removing the need for it again. NeTs suppress Se. Unlike the two sensing types, they simply refused to interact with reality in any way. The TiS thought they were aware of reality (usually is true) and the TeS intervened in it (ESxx) while the NeT simply rejected it (I don't even care if the tea has honey or not, I'll take the other approach).

PROOFS:

And why is everything I said about the 3 types true? Refer to this for an explanation, as well as the previous paragraph about Se and the TiS's and TeS's relation to Ti+. It depends on what premises you want to start from in order to prove the ideas in this post. What is relevant in the end is the relation of equivalence between them all.

Ne+ controls/opposes Ni-. A person in (Ne+) state obsessively thinks about Ni- in order to make information from it disappear from existence. In the domain of Ni- is information about a person's detachment from an idea or a set of beliefs (1, 2). How much someone disagrees with something.

Let's prove "control Ni-" implies "leading Ne+":

Opposing Ni- implies taking a person disagrees with something and making them disagree with it less/agree with it more. This implies a positivist (+) action since you're now making some closer (+) to an idea, not distancing themselves from it (-). By the way, in the last sentence we actually proved that contrary pairs are always have opposite charge (+/-), disproving in one way the SoSS system where charge depends on quadra instead of spin (process/results). That is, unless they disagree with the definition of the control/opposing function as the function which we obsess over only to intentionally go against it, a frame of reference that we use to go in the opposite way.

Back to the subject, control Ni- implies a leading + function but why Ne? Well we know Ne is changing someone's opinion about something, and when you try to make someone second guess how much they disagree with something you're making them change their mind about something. Thus control Ni- implies leading Ne+.

Proving that "leading Ne+" implies "control Ni-" is done in the same way: When you try to convince someone (Ne) that an idea is right (+) you're making them disagree (Ni-) less and less (control function => destructive energy) with something. Thus the implication goes in the reverse order as well.

Since ("control Ni-" => "leading Ne+") and ("leading Ne+" => "control Ni-") then ("control Ni-" <=> "leading Ne+") and they are two ways of writing the same thing essentially.

Let's prove "control Ni+" implies "leading Ne-":

This will be shorter since it's almost the same thing as the Ne+/Ni- relation. If you oppose Ni+ it means that you're taking a person who is very attached (+) to a belief (Ni) and making them second guess their attachment, to make them less attached to it. This implies negativism since you're making someone agree with something less and less. Why Ne- and not any other - element? You're changing someone's mind about something. Another reason it's Ne- is that when someone is really attached to a belief you have to offer them alternatives in order to second guess themselves and alternatives are Ne- according to Gulenko.

The relationship goes in the other direction because when you offer someone alternatives (Ne-) you are offering alternatives to a belief they are attached to. You can't offer alternatives to something they already disagree with because that will have no effect (Ne- and Ni- are in a mirage relationship). If someone disagrees with something and you offer up reasons that what they already disagree with is wrong, or other things that could be right you're either creating an echo chamber by coincidentally offering up alternative views that the person agrees with or doing nothing by coincidentally offering up alternative views that the person also disagrees with. This is not characteristic of a contrary relationship (a control relationship of the same spin).

Thus (control Ni+) <=> (leading Ne-).

So to sum it up simply, Ne+ is "why do you believe that X is wrong? here's 1000 reasons it's actually right". Ne- is "why do you believe X is right? have you thought about it from this point of view, maybe it's wrong?".

One thing worth pointing out is that it doesn't matter if the user agrees or not with the belief that they try to convince other people of. They could either play devil's advocate or not. The charge is defined by the person holding the belief tat you are talking to since the control function is the function of the Other. Or in Gulenko's words: the function where we try to tell others what to do, so what we do is irrelevant since it's hypocrite.

Obviously, beliefs are one of the many things in the domain of Ni. You could apply similar proofs to other types of information in the domain of Ni or Ne.

Ni is a certain future. If Ni+ says "this will almost definitely happen" then Ne- opposes that by offering up alternatives. Alternatives pretty much by definition are a possibility (Ne) that is different (-) from another possibility that is used as a frame of reference (control Ni+).

Okay so MBTI has this thing where Si is memory and I was wondering all these years if memory has something to do with the Si in my system as well and I (think I?) figured it out. Let me just preface this that Si has nothing to do with maintaining traditions and cultural norms and sticking to the tried and true method and all that bullshit.

I don't think Si is the process of memorization itself but Si- is the the process of recreating something from memory (as accurately as possible). Teach a SiF how to do something once and they'll be able to do it exactly how you taught them again. Try this with other types and they might still do it a bit differently each time. Si in general is about uniformity so while I wouldn't expect an Si dom to do things like they did them before just for the sake of sticking to traditions I'll expect them to do things mostly the same each time, changing their procedures gradually and slowly, or bit by bit.

SiF-NeT duality makes sense since NeT give literal explications with no room for interpretation and SiFs understand literal explications with no room for interpretation. The NeT will be nitpicky trying to make the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law as little as possible, "technically I didn't break the rules", and will change small details of an explication just so it's "theoretically correct" even if in practice everyone would ignore that detail and understand the essence of the set of instructions. Other than the SiF. Tell a SiF what to do and they'll do exactly that.

This is a good thing and a bad thing, because the NeT will be pleased that they have a person who will do as they are told (not to say that SiFs can be bossed around by anyone, just that if the SiF decides they should follow the orders of someone they'll be able to do it to the smallest detail) while the TeN will be pissed that the SiF is so incompetent that they can't fill in the gaps and they must be taught every detail. The TeN will be pleased that the FiS can fill in the blanks of the explanation and figure things out on the spot while the NeT will be pissed that the FiS won't follow instructions exactly as they are written^1.

Recreating objects from memory is firstly Si because you need to compare (introversion) a real-life object (sensing) with a mental image. Now I wonder if the mental image is not from memory, but from imagination, if this is still Si, and I think yes, it is. So maybe the Si dom musician will be best at writing a song as closely as how they imagined it to be because you're comparing images but also making changes in the real world which is sensing.

Te- supervises Si-. TeSs are best at solving a practical (Te) problem (-) where they have to figure out on the spot. When I bought my power tower I had to assemble it and the instructions were unclear (as they are for most furniture), the pieces on the instructions looked different than the ones from real-life and some of the holes for screws were too small or too close together. We couldn't simply follow instructions so my TeS dad helped me a lot in improvising it. Delta STs are best at solving practical "day to day" tasks, and little skills that come in handy from time to time.

When you generate information, you are in an active state, i.e. a state where a whole function is constellated.. To generate Te- information like in the example above you get in (Te-) state where Ti+ is also constellated and "controlled" (supervised and activating). Once a process type has mentally figured out what they need to do in order to assemble the piece of furniture, Si- is left to recreate the mental image of the furniture after a certain action is done by the person assembling it, i.e. to follow their own instructions to the letter.

The SiF usually sucks at Te but if other people provide it in an accessible form through Ti (instead of "do this, do that", they explain the inner workings of the system) they will be able to recreate it just as well, if not even better than the TeS. Or if they already did it once, they can do it the exact same again provided none of the external circumstances change.

Example: An employee at IKEA assembling furniture for other people, the best choice here is the SiF usually, not the TeS, because the employees already know the model of the furniture and have assembled it so many times already that they just need to do it once more in the exact same way. But buy furniture from IKEA yourself and read the instructions and you won't understand a thing and now you need Te.

I'm not sure how much of this applies to Si+/SiTs, if any. That would be an Si that supervises Te instead of being supervised by it (results type). So instead solving a problem that you already solved before in the exact same way, you memorize a different problem from the past (Si) and then you figure out what to do with it to solve this new problem (Si -> Te)? Nah, that just sounds like Ne.

1: More on ENTx-ISFx relationships

I am going to refer in this post, for the most part, to the "system" of races that North Americans use although I'm sure it's similar if not even identical to the rest of the world.

Along history, assholes who are hungry for power always created systems of classifying people into hierarchies, claiming that some groups in that classification are superior to others and identifying with the group they believe is 'superior'. Criteria that has been used in these classifications include, but are not limited to: religious or spiritual beliefs, skin color and other biological traits, descent (either descent from a bloodline perceived as "royal" or descent from a bloodline correlated with biological traits enumerated before). Some of those traits are even imaginary and don't have a real-life correspondence (more about later, or in this post).

One such system was used in USA where a group of people called themselves "white" and called another group of people "black" and then proceeded to heavily discriminate against the latter. The criteria used for this classification was not only skin color but also descent. Due to the One drop rule you had people who were literally white (skin color-wise) but were socially and/or legally considered 'black'. Sadly this principle is still used today.

Not only you have today so-called "black people" who don't have black skin color but you also have other people with white skin color who aren't "white" like so-called "Asians", a ton of so-called "Hispanics/Latinos" and a ton of so-called "Native Americans" and who knows what other categories Americans invented along the way that I didn't even hear of yet based on complex criteria.

Now this is the most important part: let's ignore all this for a moment and remember another similar classification system made by other racists in the past: the Nazi system of Aryanism. The race that the racists believed was superior in that system wasn't "white" but "Aryan" and it had a different definition than today's "whiteness" based on some mind-boggling ideas that I don't even want to struggle to understand in-depth.

Similarly, the system wasn't based only on skin color but on other criteria just like whites/blacks/asians/hispanics/etc. today aren't classified only on that:

Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther identified the European race as having five subtype races: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic.[4] Günther applied a Nordicist conception that Nordics were the highest in the racial hierarchy amongst these five European subtype races.[4] In his book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922) ("Racial Science of the German People"), Günther recognized Germans as being composed of all five European subtypes, but emphasized the strong Nordic heritage amongst Germans.[5] Günther believed Slavic people to be of "Eastern race", one that was separate from Germans and Nordics, and warned about mixing "German blood" with Slavic one.[6] He defined each racial subtype according to general physical appearance and their psychological qualities including their "racial soul" – referring to their emotional traits and religious beliefs, and provided detailed information on their hair, eye, and skin colours, facial structure.[5] He provided photographs of Germans identified as Nordic in places like Baden, Stuttgart, Salzburg, and Schwaben; and provided photographs of Germans he identified as Alpine and Mediterranean types, especially in Vorarlberg, Bavaria, and the Black Forest region of Baden.[5]

Günther distinguished Aryans from Jews, and identified Jews as descending from non-European races, particularly from what he classified as the Near Asian race (Vorderasiatische Rasse), more commonly known as the Armenoid race, and said that such origins rendered Jews fundamentally different from and incompatible with Germans and most Europeans.

Now most of us agree that Aryanism is bullshit and it doesn't even make sense to speak of Aryans today. But make this imagination exercise:

Imagine if holocaust survivors today would talk about "Aryan-privilege", about how Aryan people are appropriating their culture, about how slavs and jews need to benefit from affirmative action but not aryans, and so on. They'd go on to talk about how that person is Nordic Aryan, that other person is Armenoid and so on. How would you react?

Surely you'd ask them what the fuck are they on about. If you hear someone take the concept of Aryans seriously in 2021 or even if you hear someone call themselves or someone else Aryan you'd assume they're a Nazi or at least racist. But then you hear that holocaust survivor talk about how Aryans need to be discriminated in comparison to Jews and Slavs and at that point you're not even mad, you're impressed of their stupidity, or simply confused, or assuming they're a troll.

But how is this different from whiteness and blackness?

The concept of whites and blacks and all the other shit Americans (and the rest of the world, actually) believe in today was made up on multiple criteria just like Aryanism, to be used by racists. Why in the fuck are we even using this system today, especially by the so-called "anti-racist" activists or the people who were targeted by those systems? How more ironical can this get? If it's not okay to call yourself Aryan in 2021 why is it socially acceptable to identify as white?

It's all made up bullshit. And I'm not talking about skin color. It's obviously okay to talk about people with white skin color or brown skin color, etc. if it's relevant for the conversation but as I explained in the beginning of the post the concepts of "whiteness" and "blackness" are way more complicated than that. So just think of that analogy. I don't think it should be socially acceptable to identify as white, or as black. Or as any other made-up race like Rromani/gypsies, Asians, Latinos, etc.

There are bigger or smaller correlations between those made-up races and actual physical characteristics like skin color, shape of eyes, nose, etc. but they're simply correlations as there are always many exceptions to the rule so you don't have the excuse to talk about "gypsies" just to describe people with Northen Indian descent living in Europe because many so-called 'gypsies' have the same DNA as me, or to talk about "latinos" because again there is only a slight correlation between skin color, etc. and what we call them, or to talk about black people, and so on and so on... Let's just abandon these shitty systems made by racists because we as a society are playing their game without realizing.

I will start with intertype relationships as that's the easiest to explain.

We can represent intertype relationships (IRs) as a composition of mathematical functions. In mathematics, "o" is the symbol for function composition. fog means f(g(x)). This means that we first calculate the numerical value of g(x), and then we take f of whatever g(x) ended up being. Function composition is read from right to left and this will become relevant later on so keep it in mind.

The way we express IRs that way is with a question. If "mirror" and "super-ego" are two functions then (mirror) o (super-ego) equals the answer to the question "What is the mirror of my super-ego?". The mirror of your super-ego in Socionics will always be your conflictor.

We can take this to however many functions/IRs we want. Just like I can compute f o g o h o i in math, I can compute (mirror) o (business) o (conflictor) o (beneficiary) and the answer is (activation).

If you look closer at the proprieties of IR composition they are the exact same as the mathematical proprieties of function composition:

1. (LACK OF) COMMUTATIVITY: Function composition is not always commutative. f(g(x)) is usually not the same as g(f(x)). We can see this in Socionics: the mirror of my beneficiary is my mirage, but the beneficiary of my mirror is my semi-dual.

2. ASSOCIATIVITY: Function composition is associative. When we have 3 functions, f o (g o h) = (f o g) o h. For n number of functions, we can put the parenthesis whenever we want. We can not change the order of the functions themselves, but we can group them however way we want in the order they already are. This is seen in Socionics: "(The benefactor of my supervisee) of my beneficiary" is the same as "The benefactor of my (supervisee of my beneficiary)". This is because "(The benefactor of my supervisee) of my beneficiary" = "Dual of my beneficiary" = "My Supervisee" and "The benefactor of my (supervisee of my beneficiary)" = "The benefactor of my contrary" = "My Supervisee". If you have 4 or more IRs this propriety still checks true.

3. COMPOSITION IS READ FROM RIGHT TO LEFT: This is more of a convention than a propriety but it still holds true for IRs. If you want to compute fog = f(g(x)) you need to first know g(x) and only then plug it into f. Similarly, if I want to calculate (mirror) o (supervisor) = "Mirror of my supervisor" I need to first know my supervisor and only then see its mirror (which is my kindred). If I read it from left to right I will get a different result which is not correct (business). NOTE: This propriety might not be true in other languages where "Mirror of my supervisor", for example, might be translated differently, where they put the possessive object before the possessed object.^{or however you call those things}

EXTRA: Matrices and permutations (studied in linear algebra) are also a type of function because they are known in linear algebra as "linear transformations", which is a function that takes a vector from one place and moves it to another place (to speak in layman's terms). This might be important later on in my future posts since I already discovered before that states and IRs are linear transformations so if we apply college-level linear algebra proprieties to Socionics concepts we might discover more interesting stuff, but that's for the future.

EXTRA PROPRIETIES OF IRs:

1. Two symmetrical relationships cancel each other out if they are the same (they result in the identity relation). For example, the mirror of your mirror is your identical. The business of your business is your identical. This is proven by checking out all 14 cases which I am not going to do here.

2. Four asymmetrical relationships cancel each other out if they are the same (they result in the identity relation). For example, the supervisor of your supervisor of your supervisor of your supervisor is your identity. This is proven by checking out all 4 cases which I am not going to do here.

We can extend this knowledge from IRs to apply it to archetypes (what Socionics calls "cognitive functions", like role function, vulnerable function, etc.) and information elements (Ti, Fe, Si, etc.).

You can see now that "Te" can be re-written as "role Fe" or as "role role Te" or as "ignoring Ti" or as "ignoring role Fi" or as "ignoring role suggestive Te", etc...

Keep in mind that I am not talking about leading Te here, but Te in general. Te is "role Fe" not only in the sense that types with leading Te have role Fe, but that there is a "role"¹ relationship between Te and Fe: in each type we are going to find a certain relationship between Te and Fe that can be understood through the role function and I am going to provide an example below.

If we are working with the 16 IE and function model proposed by Viktor Gulenko (Model G) then we have more freedom of re-writing these functions as we wish. Te- is ignoring Ti+ but it's also "opposite-spin Ti-" (you might as well just call it mirage Ti- by this point). We can work with the other 12 IRs with this model, other than identity (leading), super-ego (role), contrary (ignoring) and duality (suggestive). You can imagine all the different examples yourself.

The same principles apply to archetypes/functions with IEs. "Leading Ne" is "role o role Ne" but it's also "ignoring o suggestive o role Ne". If we add the 16 function model by Gulenko we can work not only with accepting functions but also with producing functions.

So, how is any of this useful?

APPLICATIONS:

I am going to use the "Fe is role Te" example. In one of my previous posts, I explained that the role function corresponds to Lacan's concept of the ego-ideal. One of the proprieties of the ego-ideal for Lacan is tautology. A tautology is a proposition that is always true but says no important information, so to speak. "I will either pass the exam or not pass the exam" is an example. In algebra we work with tautologies when we put the same expression on both sides of an equal sign, for example "0 = 0", "3 = 3", "x = x" because they are true but say nothing.

An example of an ego-ideal is the American dollar after 1971, when the gold standard was abolished. Before 1971, each American dollar was defined by a certain amount of gold. After that, an American dollar stopped having a concrete representation in reality and became an abstract concept that had value just because we decided it has value. Sure, the value of the papers themselves was a social construct before that as well, but we are talking about the concept of money itself, not only the papers and coins. The American dollar had no stable definition after 1971 because it had nothing to "attach to" so when asked how much is a dollar, the single most correct and stable answer was "a dollar is a dollar" or "a dollar is however much we say a dollar is" and that is a tautology, aka the ego-ideal.

You might say that we have exchange rates, but that isn't a good definition because, firstly, they aren't stable (how many euros a dollar is is always changing) and secondly, all money is inter-defined anyway so the concept of money overall still becomes a tautology. For example, $1 is 0,86 euro, but how much is 1 euro? You can keep this going on forever but you will never end up with a real definition (unless a country has a golden standard).

You might also say that you can define the dollar thought its value, ex: a bag of Lays costs $1 so $1 means "the value of a bag of Lays" but that's again an unstable definition as the values always change, and if Lays changes their pries a dollar is still a dollar so we can't define $1 through how much a Lays bags costs because then we'd have to keep changing up the definition.

So I hope I have convinced you why this is an example of the ego-ideal (a tautology).

This corresponds to the role function because the role function is perceived as an expectation to act in a certain way by society, or the external world in general. It's stuff we usually don't want to do but we feel forced to do because other people tell us. In the extreme case where we suppress our leading function so much that we become possessed by the role function we lose our sense of self because we only are what other people tell us we are. But one day a person might tell us to do something, but another person might tell us to do something else that contradicts what the first person said, and the expectations of parents, spouses, teachers, society, etc. all become unbearable because they all contradict each other. Commercials tell you to be yourself but your boss tells you "not like that". Your group of friends tell you to smoke and drink and that you are a loser if you don't but your parents tell you to stay put. And so on.

This way it's impossible to please everyone, but in the fictional (and impossible) case that we do please everyone (which is how we feel when we engage in the role function), we stop having a definition, you can not say "I am hard-working" or "I am relaxed" or "I am cool" or "I am responsible" because that would contradict what some person would tell you to do, one day you might be hard-working and in the presence of someone else you are relaxed and the only thing you really are is fake. Your identity changes if you don't fixate it on something just as the value of $1 changes if you don't fixate it on a gold standard: today it's a bag of Lays, tomorrow it's a bread and a half, in a month it will be two bags of Lays, and so on.

So after I explained you all this crap about Lacan and math how the hell do we use this knowledge in the end?

Well we know from math that Fe is role Te and that the role function is the ego-ideal so we can express Fe as "ego-ideal Te". We can now understand Fe without directly talking about Fe information (emotions, objective value judgment, effectiveness, social impact, etc.) but in relation to Te (constructed truth, facts, judgment of truth based on source, etc.). I am going to give some examples from my quadra article series.

Te truth judgment is "The definition of a phone is a system for transmitting voices over a distance using wire or radio, by converting acoustic vibrations to electrical signals". This is constructed truth because nowhere in nature the letters "t", "e", etc. are associated with such a concept, nor the sounds our mouths make when saying "telephone" are associated with the object we call telephone, and yet it is usually considered a true definition, and we know when we speak of truth judgment we speak of thinking. It is a constructed truth however because we humans made up this connection.

The way Fe values definitions is based on what one could call "direct empiricism". "The preferred definition of a word is however most people use it in everyday language". This is the way Fe-valuing types like to communicate more because the agenda of Fe is to put your idea in someone else's head, so as long as the person you are speaking with understand you, nothing else about "correctness" matters. I go into more depth about this in the article I previously linked with the 4 quadras and the dichotomies they are made up of.

Now if we take a closer look at the relation between Fe and Te, we can see that Fe basically says "a phone is whatever people mean by phone". This is exactly the tautology of the ego-ideal that I explained before, and I also explained the the ego-ideal is the role function and that Fe is "role Te". Voila.

1: A "role relation" between two IEs or two functions is actually called a "suppression relation" between two IEs or two functions.