Aspects of design and reconstruction of meaning

In G. Reynin article titled "A Bit About Information, Its Transmission, and Informational Metabolism.", he defines information as a phenomenon with two facets:

• A clearly measurable formal aspect (form), which can be stored, transmitted, and received.
• A semantic aspect – subjective, ambiguous, and varied in different descriptions of the world.

It also clarifies that during information transmission, the form is transferred, while the meaning is derived by the receiver based on their context.

This distinction is crucial and intriguing, especially when considered in the context of socionics and intertype relationships.

Forms of Information Presentation

Among the available methods for conveying meaning, the following can be highlighted:

• Written or spoken text, carrying both direct and metaphorical meanings.
• Drawings, illustrations, diagrams.
• Intonations, exclamations, interjections.
• Facial expressions and gestures, both voluntary and involuntary.
• Chaotic or organized sounds (music).
• Physical forms (sculpture, installation, etc.)
• Smells (perfumes).
• Tastes.
• Touch.
• Human actions and behaviors, whether single or complex (standing up and leaving, organizing an unscheduled cleaning, changing a hairstyle, etc.).

Not every form can be stored, but each can be transmitted and perceived.

Each form can carry both a superficial (literal) meaning and a deep (contextual) meaning.

There's a popular joke that sometimes a banana is just a banana – a joke about the superficial versus deep meaning. However, when perceiving a form, people often wonder what the other person meant with their words, expressions, actions. Similarly, when conveying meaning, deep messages often include hints and implications, either deliberately or because the implicit meaning cannot be expressed literally.

Socionics Perspective

From a socionics perspective, there is a significant difference in conveying rational and irrational information.

Logical and ethical meanings are more precisely conveyed and received for several reasons:

• The techniques for conveying meanings (speech, writing, controlled intonations, facial expressions, music, etc.) are largely created by human reason, so they encode rational meanings more accurately and are perceived more precisely.
• The accuracy of meaning perception is influenced by the contextual differences between the sender and the receiver, which are well-recognized within rational information: cultural differences, social contexts, different education levels, etc. This allows for adjustments in both conveying and reconstructing meanings during form perception. For example, knowing someone's education level and general development allows us to explain things with varying degrees of depth and generalization. We usually explain things very simply to children.

Intuitive and sensory meanings are harder to convey. Almost everyone has faced challenges when trying to describe a smell or taste or explain an insight.

Body sensations or the external environment are difficult to verbalize, and when extracting meanings from what has been conveyed, distortion inevitably occurs due to the individuality of the sensations. Often, we can't recognize a smell from a description because it smells different to us. We can't perceive space the same way – what feels like a large room to one person might feel small to another.

Intuition is even more complex, as it contains many implicit elements for the person experiencing it, making it challenging to convey anything beyond the insight or realization, which can leave many questions for the receiver if they are not in the same context as the one encoding the meanings.

Within irrational information, each person is in their individual context, shaped by their personal history.

Understanding socionics, we can identify two large contextual groups – sensors and intuitives. Outside socionics, even this differentiation isn't available, leading to much confusion when trying to understand each other.

Even among sensors, different physiologies lead to varied sensations, and the only way to convey a sensory meaning (in the context of sensors, the meaning is the sensation) is to experience it together. "Smell this? Remember this sensation – that's what a rose smells like." This involves experiencing the sensation together and encoding it with a name.

To fully grasp the depth and scale of intuitive insight, one must be in the same context as the person encoding the meanings, both in quantity and quality. This means being aware of the same events and changes and having the same quality of perception of these events. In other words, also being an intuitive person with the same information. In all other scenarios, some meaning will inevitably be lost when perceiving intuitively encoded information.

Depth and Scale of Encoded and Perceived Meanings

People exchange the form of information. The encoded meanings have a certain depth and scale, and the reconstructed meanings have a depth and scale determined by the person's context.

From a psychological standpoint, we can consider the level of intellectual and personality development.

In socionics, the depth and scale of meanings are influenced by the dimensionality of functions processing information in specific aspects.

The dimensionality of a function sets the maximum possible depth and scale of encoded and reconstructed meaning, but not the only possible ones. Each higher-level information processing parameter is formed by summarizing the previous parameter's information, encompassing the meanings of previous parameters.

Simply put, with a three-dimensional function, we navigate not only within the context of a situation but also within the context of norms (second parameter) and personal experience (first parameter). However, with a three-dimensional function, it's impossible to grasp the depth and scale of the globality of the fourth parameter.

These nuances are crucial for understanding the parameters of encoded and reconstructed meanings and potential distortions during the exchange of forms.

When providing information, a person forms a holistic informational message that encompasses meanings from at least a couple of aspects of the horizontal function blocks of Model A (the minimal informational unit), and in reality – the entire Model A. Because the act of providing information occurs at a chosen point in space and time (involving functions processing sensory and intuitive aspects), with some energetic and logical message (involving functions processing ethical and logical aspects).

In other words, even if only logical text is voiced, it is somehow spoken here, now, and to a specific audience, meaning that the voiced text is accompanied by intuitive, sensory, and ethical meanings in the background (context). Returning to the popular joke, it's worth noting that, strictly speaking, a banana is never just a banana.

Furthermore, meaning can be conveyed not only by form but also by the absence of form – lack of response is also a response. A person may choose to remain silent, and this decision is made comprehensively from the context of the entire Model A, with the silence encoded with meaning in the depth and scale of the entire Model A.

From the above, we can conclude that any act of providing information carries the meanings of the entire Model A (all functions in their dimensionality), regardless of how it is conveyed.

The act of perception involves filling the received informational form with meanings from the perceiver's context.

In the act of perception, not only the received form but also the absent form and the overall context of what is happening, as understood by the perceiver (what the person wants to convey with these words, why now, why here, why this audience, why they are silent about something, not reacting to something, etc.) participate.

It is evident that only a person with an identical TIM (Type of Information Metabolism) and possessing the same level of development and awareness can most accurately reconstruct encoded meanings.

In all other cases, the reconstructed information will be somewhat distorted relative to the encoded information.

Distortion will inevitably be triggered by differences in development level and/or awareness. Still, even if we assume these characteristics are equal, distortion will be introduced by the difference in the dimensionality of functions processing information in identical aspects, as well as the different linkage of aspects in blocks (defining the trait of democracy – aristocracy).

When the dimensionality of the function decreases from the transmitter to the receiver, part of the meaning within the identical aspect will be lost according to the missing information processing parameter. For example, a three-dimensional function transmits meanings within the context of a situation, and when reconstructing meanings, a two-dimensional function can only fill the received informational form with the context of norms, while a one-dimensional function can only absorb and compare personal experience.

The reverse situation is very interesting. When the dimensionality increases from the transmitter to the receiver, the form is filled with meanings of a new level, inaccessible to the transmitter. The transmitter, using a one-dimensional function, shared personal experience, while the receiver, using a four-dimensional function, saw a global meaning in it. And if the dimensionality gap is large, the meanings can still be distinguished as one's own and the other's (this is not what they said – this is what I understood). Still, with a difference of 1-2 parameters and not very clear informational form, one can attribute the authorship of their own meaning to another person.

This happens in practice very often. People project their context onto others.

As a result, we observe how ethics catch extroverted logicians with one-dimensional relational ethics in subtle strategic ethical manipulations. If these ethics are unaware of socionics and don't know that ethical manipulations are beyond the competence of one-dimensional relational ethics, convincing them otherwise can be very difficult.

Similarly, logicians catch ethical extroverts in sophistry, in a technique of playing with meanings inaccessible to one-dimensional introverted logic.

It's not always about catching (negative); often, there are inflated expectations, seeing deeper meanings behind the transmitted form than the transmitter has.

Smaller-scale overthinking happens even more often. In my practice of teaching socionics diagnostics, I observe that the most common mistake, which we constantly have to work on, is interpreting the answers of the person being typed. The person being typed says a not very definite phrase – and the beginner wants to specify the form. But instead of clarifying the form with the person being typed and achieving the most detailed and literal wording, the beginner interprets the answer themselves, leading the decryption into the meaning context of their Model A. And they believe that this is what the person being typed meant with their vague phrase. Most often, in such a situation, the person being typed is attributed with one or two parameters of the function's dimensionality in the discussed aspect.

In everyday life and work, such situations also occur quite regularly and lead to misunderstandings and unsynchronized actions.

With frequent contact between the transmitter and the receiver and a sufficient level of reflexivity in the contact participants, the experience of reconstruction mistakes accumulates, and an understanding of the other party's context forms, allowing adjustments in the reconstruction process and less overthinking for the other.

However, the reconstruction of meaning happens within the context of the perceiver's Model A. And even if the transmitter encoded meanings from within a sensory-logical TIM (for example), and the receiver belongs to an intuitive-ethical TIM, the reconstruction will cut off the excessive logical and sensory meanings and add intuitive and ethical ones, which were not in the original meaning.

Undoubtedly, it is interesting to consider all types of intertype relationships in this context in more detail, but that is a topic for another work.

Summary

The nuances revealed allow for a deeper analysis of the processes of meaning transmission – or more accurately, attempts at meaning transmission – in any human communication, particularly in intertype relationships.

They highlight the pitfalls of meaning distortion, which can be crucial in many processes and very important in TIM diagnostics (an example in the article), psychological counseling, training, etc.

These nuances also open new aspects in understanding the formation, filling, and expansion of an individual's informational context – and that is also a separate large work.