You mentioned Myers-Briggs types and “the idea that either I was crazy, or everyone else was.” I think I had a similar experience but with a different analysis of the MBTI classifications. It was Personality Type: An Owner’s Manual by Lenore Thomson and there is a wiki discussion here.
I found the scientific basis fairly flimsy. She connects the 8 cognitive functions to various regions of the brain—left and right, anterior and posterior—but it seems like a just so story to me. However, I have found it immensely useful as a tool for self-improvement.
The main insight I got from it is that while other people are crazy, they are crazy in a fairly well-defined, reproducible way. Other people see things completely differently from you, but it’s fairly internally consistent and so you simulate it on your own hardware.
There are two ways I think about this:
One, your brain is is trying to constantly make sense of all this sensory data that comes in. So it determines that one part is the signal and one part is the noise. It tries to minimize the noise and focus on the signal. But then you realize there is a whole other signal in what you thought was noise and there are people tuning into that and think your signal is actually the noise. If you then turn into that signal, you can understand what other people have been listening to the whole time
The other is, we are all playing 8 board games simultaneously, where if we roll the dice our piece moves that amount in each of the games. In order to make sense of this, we focus on one of the games, trying to forget about the others, and try to win this one. But other people are focused on trying to win a different game. So when they try to talk to each other about who is winning, they completely talk past each other. But when you realize that someone thinks he is playing a different game and you figure out what it is, you can have a much more productive conversation/relationship.
But other people are focused on trying to win a different game. So when they try to talk to each other about who is winning, they completely talk past each other. But when you realize that someone thinks he is playing a different game and you figure out what it is, you can have a much more productive conversation/relationship.
This is an important insight. I’ll add that sometimes being able to understand the different way people think can simply allow us to realise that it is more productive to have no (or minimal) relationship without judging them to be poor thinkers. Judging them not to be ‘thinkers’ in your original sense at all can be a lesser judgement than concluding that they suck at it.
Thanks—that’s a lot more use than I’ve made of the system.
Does it make sense to think of yourself as crazy to the same extent that people of other psychetypes are?
Links need to be in a system called Markdown rather than the more usual html—the details for them are at the help link in the lower left corner that shows up when you start writing a reply.
If you take crazy to mean ’acting, thinking or feeling in a way disjointed from or opposed to reality - , I’d say it makes a lot of sense to think of yourself as just as crazy as anyone else (and it reduces the incidence of giving your own feelings and thoughts undue importance, IME.)
Does it make sense to think of yourself as crazy to the same extent that people of other psychetypes are?
I don’t think so. The term captures how radically different the another types are from your own. It’s about relative distance between you and others, not an absolute quality.
You mentioned Myers-Briggs types and “the idea that either I was crazy, or everyone else was.” I think I had a similar experience but with a different analysis of the MBTI classifications. It was Personality Type: An Owner’s Manual by Lenore Thomson and there is a wiki discussion here.
I found the scientific basis fairly flimsy. She connects the 8 cognitive functions to various regions of the brain—left and right, anterior and posterior—but it seems like a just so story to me. However, I have found it immensely useful as a tool for self-improvement.
The main insight I got from it is that while other people are crazy, they are crazy in a fairly well-defined, reproducible way. Other people see things completely differently from you, but it’s fairly internally consistent and so you simulate it on your own hardware.
There are two ways I think about this:
One, your brain is is trying to constantly make sense of all this sensory data that comes in. So it determines that one part is the signal and one part is the noise. It tries to minimize the noise and focus on the signal. But then you realize there is a whole other signal in what you thought was noise and there are people tuning into that and think your signal is actually the noise. If you then turn into that signal, you can understand what other people have been listening to the whole time
The other is, we are all playing 8 board games simultaneously, where if we roll the dice our piece moves that amount in each of the games. In order to make sense of this, we focus on one of the games, trying to forget about the others, and try to win this one. But other people are focused on trying to win a different game. So when they try to talk to each other about who is winning, they completely talk past each other. But when you realize that someone thinks he is playing a different game and you figure out what it is, you can have a much more productive conversation/relationship.
This is an important insight. I’ll add that sometimes being able to understand the different way people think can simply allow us to realise that it is more productive to have no (or minimal) relationship without judging them to be poor thinkers. Judging them not to be ‘thinkers’ in your original sense at all can be a lesser judgement than concluding that they suck at it.
Thanks—that’s a lot more use than I’ve made of the system.
Does it make sense to think of yourself as crazy to the same extent that people of other psychetypes are?
Links need to be in a system called Markdown rather than the more usual html—the details for them are at the help link in the lower left corner that shows up when you start writing a reply.
If you take crazy to mean ’acting, thinking or feeling in a way disjointed from or opposed to reality - , I’d say it makes a lot of sense to think of yourself as just as crazy as anyone else (and it reduces the incidence of giving your own feelings and thoughts undue importance, IME.)
Upvoted for giving technical help.
Fixed.
I don’t think so. The term captures how radically different the another types are from your own. It’s about relative distance between you and others, not an absolute quality.