4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

[Riggerjack]

IOW, just constructing the list/boundary of what the needful "chores" might be is towards Top-Down.

It is top down if you approach it from top down. If constructing the list consists of "customers buying the service provided for the price bid", it instantly goes P2P.

Mature adults can eat what they choose, and have sex with who they choose, or restrict themselves, as they choose. They can cooperate, compete, and communicate.

What term would you like to use for those who can't meet the above standards of mature adult? They exist, in plentitude. Let's call these people the general public.

One could create a set of rules to reduce the harm the general public inflicts one the environment one is creating. There are lots of these rules in existence already. One could choose from many existing rulesets.

Or, one could create an environment that attracts mature adults, and over time filters out the general public. This environment would encourage adult-adult interfaces, and discourage parent-child interfaces (using the child-parent-adult model of transactional analysis).

What are these rules? I don't know. I expect they are chosen by the people I team up with. I'm not looking for followers to follow a path I blaze. I'm looking for cocreators who want to live in a world of their own choices, prepared to change the rules they live by to tune for best results, as judged by themselves. Those people are not the general public.

If you are drawing membership from this group or similar, one of the first issues to resolve would be whether the meal and food production plans/design would be towards vegetarian or meat-eater.

Well, again, we disagree on where to start. How much food prep is communal seems to come first. Mrs riggerjack is looking forward to a commercial kitchen for group meals and food preservation. I'm looking forward to a coordination system with a pricing/bidding system where preferences can be expressed in finer detail than vegetarian/carnivore.

Some people are good about not pissing where they drink and/or creating unnecessary drama. Others not so much.

Agreed. I am not as good at this as I would prefer. I would hope that when I created unnecessary drama, others would cut me some slack, and allow me to make amends. Developing the means of correction is a task appropriate to a group of mature adults with a goal to achieve.

So before making the rules, comes forming the group of people willing to define the rules they would choose to live under.

[daylen]

Sounds like you're trying to keep a top spinning on a boat in a hurricane. Hard to isolate from the general public, juvenile energy, and human lineage continuation.

[Riggerjack]

The co-op model with which I am familiar is that there is a buy-in financial share purchase for each member, a monthly maintenance fee for each member, and a required weekly/monthly/annual work contribution from each member.

I don't know if a co-op is the right structure. But there are far more advanced capitalization options available:
https://jrwiener.com/cooperative-equity ... -together/

His blog is full of various co-op related financialization information.

But I don't know if a co-op is the right structure. In my mind, that would be a decision made by a group that does not yet exist, based on their needs and information provided by experts.* I'm not even confident that I could sketch out the full range of business/corporate/charitable structures, let alone identify the possible synergies each could bring.

What I want, is something like a checklist of all the decisions needed to take a mod from something in my head, to an occupied reality. Each checklist item then needs to be examined to find the full range of options. Taking a step back from each decision, to really look at all the options is a good way to look for synergies.

From this, a form of "formation flow chart" can be created, a recipe for making a skunkworks for Adam's tech base is developed**. A map of all the decisions, along with a summary of the reasons we made those choices.

So that when the next project starts, (let's say a music mod, based on the theme of pirate captaincy, rather than eco skunkworks) the full range of options is already mapped out. A blazed path through those options also exists.

When the pirate captain mod gets started, they have a working mod and the recipe used to make it, to use as a guideline. But the priorities of pirate captaincy are very different from the priorities of an eco skunkworks. Having all the options already laid out allows for easy modification of the formation recipe.

Having both an eco skunkworks and a pirate captaincy gives us the means to compare/contrast. To better understand the secondary/tertiary effects of these formation decisions, as each mod grows.

Sounds like you're trying to keep a top spinning on a boat in a hurricane.

I see oceans, hurricanes, boats, and people spinning tops. I imagine, if I looked long enough, I could find what you describe, but it's hardly typical.

Consider Ebay. Millions upon millions of transactions, all over the world. Who coordinates all that activity? Nobody. Software provides an interface for self interested parties to interact for mutual self interest. Craigslist allows P2P activities of far greater variety, still without a coordinator. These are decades old technologies.***

People are capable of amazing things, given the right opportunities, in a format they can use.

I have talked in detail about property development. Property development is an entire industry, currently. What will it be like when it's a P2P platform? If one were interested in building that platform, wouldn't mod recipes be the exact information one would want to streamline?

Hard to isolate from the general public, juvenile energy, and human lineage continuation.

Well, no. In rural areas, isolation is the default.

So change your mindset from exclusion to attraction. To creating a scenius, or rather, many.

I want to attract people who can help me. I want people who will volunteer, I don't want employees. I want people capable of acting in their own enlightened sense of self interest. I want those people to be encouraged by their social network, who see this new environment as worthy work.

Toward this end I have tried to describe an attractive environment, an alt-building club. I expect the people attracted to this idea to have their own ideas about exclusion. And they will get a chance to practice them when deciding who is "on the team", in which capacities. Again, when forming a camping club. And yet again, as the project grows.

https://www.headspace.com/mindfulness/t ... ty-mindset

In one way I'm trying to describe creating a community around a local, created abundance. How to import the capital to make effective use of natural resources and locally produce goods that would otherwise be imported. How to turn these resources back into financial capital. Creating the infrastructure of local abundances.

The rules needed by such people, in such a place, are very different from the rules we have developed anywhere else, and this is part of the attraction.

As I said in the Covid IQ loss thread, I think we have far more high IQ people than we have need for.

As shown in the stereotypes (130+ coo-coo bananas, etc), I don't think my culture is very compatible with high IQ. The differential between challenges and rewards is often crippling. The farther one diverges from mean, the more resources it often takes to keep functional.

To me, this signals opportunity. There are a lot of high IQ, poorly networked people out there floating around, dissatisfied with the environment they are in.

I would think the opportunity to design their future environment from the ground up, would attract such people. The challenge of creating a culture where they could maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses requires the broadest palette possible.

I think there is an abundance of high Kegan level people (who are probably more networked) who would like to pursue the same goal, from a distance, perhaps from their armchairs...

Whatever your measurement, there are some far more advanced than others. I want the rules to attract these advanced people (and/or those with the capability of advancement), with enough compromise to avoid offending their significant others. An environment with enough challenges/opportunities to go around/not merely the central challenge.

What rules allow maximum contribution from both those on-site, and off-site? Those rules will have to be worked out, and then modified many times, I think.****














* Though once again, I will point out that I'm bringing this up on a forum with several lawyers. This expertise is available here, if any are interested.

**Because an eco skunkworks is what I want. I want to live amongst people actively developing and dispersing Adam's tech base. I leave much open, to leave room for their preferences. I am confident that the rules we choose to govern ourselves, would be better than any rules I could choose, to govern them.

*** look at the severely restricted amount of data used per transaction in these platforms. Like we're still in the 90's with lightning fast 14.4k modems...

**** This rules recipe also seems like it would be useful for the creation of a P2P property development platform...

[daylen]

Look at it like the mixing of fluids. A subcultural attractor/repulsor forms a pipeline to general culture across which mixing can occur. Over years, decades, lifetimes.. subcultures have a difficult time retaining their identity unless they are big enough to internally regulate lineage continuation. Not saying it is impossible and current technology definitely helps but this is not an easy project by any means. Which makes it interesting!

Kids are the future so attracting them and keeping them around to help continue subcultural projects may be good idea. Plus they can help loosen up subcultures a bit making them more dynamic and adaptable.

[7Wannabe5]

Craigslist allows P2P activities of far greater variety, still without a coordinator. These are decades old technologies.***

One of the founders of Craigslist (an INTJ, close to doppelganger of Jacob) was one of the co-presidents of the co-op I lived in. He was one of the older members of the co-op, and I remember having a conversation with him one day in which he told me he wasn't going to move out of the co-op until he could find an apartment on the physical apartment posting boards which was renting for less than (insert extremely low price for apartment for era/location.) Therefore, the invention of Craigslist was almost entirely in alignment with Jacob's later ERE 21 Day Makeover advice to simply go on Craigslist and set maximum price for apartment to (insert extremely low price for apartment for era/location.)

The other co-president of this co-op was an eNTX who was one of the first kids put on Ritalin for ADHD (later ran his own import/export business.) He hung out in the public areas (including the large darkened room in which Star Trek was somehow broadcast on the TV 24/7) more, so handled more of the social problems than the Jacob-doppelganger. Surprise, surprise, the co-presidents were also the two tallest males who lived in the co-op. He thoroughly annoyed me by chastening for my sexual behavior on one occasion, but I think this was just due to the fact that a friend of his whom I briefly dated was talking disrespectfully about me, because he totally failed to perform on the one occasion we attempted sexual interaction, even though I was too kind to tell anybody about his failure to perform

The co-op was located in The Most Educated City in the U.S. and was inhabited by a lot of townies (adult children of academics associated with the university) as well as current students of the university. So, the membership fairly well resembled the membership of this forum, although the co-op membership included more Fine Arts/Humanities types, and fewer Engineer/Tech types. It was a lot of fun. One time a group of females who lived in the co-op organized a Summer Solstice party and we put out a sign on the lawn advertising that we were seeking male virgins, but then we were too wasted on the Scarlett O'Hara cocktail recipe we found in the "Joy of Cooking" to remember what we planned on doing with them.

What I want, is something like a checklist of all the decisions needed to take a mod from something in my head, to an occupied reality. Each checklist item then needs to be examined to find the full range of options. Taking a step back from each decision, to really look at all the options is a good way to look for synergies.

I may be not grokking something, but this still reads pretty much like the definition of intelligent top-down design/analysis. Since you are interested in modularity, you might want to take a look at "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction." , Alexander. Then, also Hanzi Freinacht, in "The Listening Society" on why "A Pattern Language" and similar plans, such as Illich's "De-Schooling" won't/don't work. Bottom-up design would look more like starting with the Observation principle of Permaculture. In simple terms, going out to the site or interacting with the group of humans to see what resources, patterns, stocks, flows, synergies, etc. already exist. One possible outcome of Bottom-Up Observation could even be the decision that the project is unnecessary or unwarranted.

[karff]

With respect to the original perspectives discussion, what is on the other side of the differentiation/integration cycle at each stage of development/perspective-taking?

Because, when you form a new mental concept, you have to do both. If you look at a bowl of fruit, to differentiate apples and oranges, you have to integrate the features of an orange. To integrate the concept of an orange, you have to differentiate its features from other fruits.

So, when the self becomes differentiated, gaining a new perspective, what is being integrated? And vice versa, in the next stage.

[jacob]

So, when the self becomes differentiated, gaining a new perspective, what is being integrated? And vice versa, in the next stage.

Additional perspectives.

Usually these are mapped out in a hierarchical way so that each stage "transcends and includes" the previous perspective(s).

Kegan's map is very simple and runs on a social-relations vector.
Kegan2 includes your perspective on the group(s) you're part of. (1st person perspective)
Kegan3 is Kegan2 but also the groups' perspective on you. (2nd person perspective)
Kegan4 is Kegan3 but also your different perspectives on different groups depending on which group you're in (3rd person perspective)
Kegan5 is Kegan4 but also also a metaperspective on yourself and how you come to see those perspective in the different groups (4th person perspective)

Warning: Don't confuse e.g. third person perspective with simply watching two other people talk to each other. A key point is the ability to "see it while you're in it". (Like, you're in a group and talking to each other. Would you see and actively behave according to how a passerby or boss or whatever would see your group?) Taking a third person person means being able to see how e.g. the group's perspective on you changes depending on where you are, e.g. at work the group sees and treats you like an accountant, whereas at home, you're seen as partner or parent or child, ... AND that those perspectives are different and so you behave accordingly. Most professionals quickly learn how to "be professional"---indeed that's pretty much what Kegan4 means in the vernacular, but many don't learn or constantly forget and so they're at Kegan3.

Add: It may or may not be helpful to think of additional perspectives as additional dimensions ala Abbott's Flatland novel. E.g. 2D flatlanders see the world in terms of points and lines but they don't see themselves as squares or circles (they can infer it but this doesn't come easily---similar to how Kegan2 might infer that the group doesn't like him but remains unable to see how he comes across to others). A 3D character would be able to step "up" and see the 2D aspects of the world, that is, like triangles, squares, etc. And so on.

Each stage theory tends to focus on something differently. For example, MHC concerns depth of coordination in task analysis. Start with the concrete. Some only see that (idiots and demented people, also the typical 3-4 year old). Most are able to abstract concepts (for example "redness") out of the concrete and think in those terms instead. Much ancient philosophical discussion (e.g. Plato) concerned whether abstractions (redness) were just as real as the concrete (red apple), but I digress. Now some can also abstract the abstractions and think formally and analytically (this is already going beyond Plato's metaphysics... humans are a bit more insightful than they were almost 2500 years ago) And some can coordinate the analytic into systems (this is a very recent 20th century perspective). Again, each new stage integrates or coordinates everything from the former stage. In more concrete terms, in order to learn and effectively do multiplication, it is necessary to learn addition, and in order to learn that, it is necessary to learn counting, and in order to do that it is necessary to learn numbers, and in order to do that it is necessary to learn to associate those numbers with the amount (an abstraction) of items in a group (e.g. 3 apples in this pile).

Arguing whether "theory is useless compared to 'just doing it'" is a recurring theme on the forum. Yet theory is simply a way of seeing or experiencing the world with the mind just like one experiences the world with the eyes and ears and so on. It should be clear that different minds see either far less or far more depending on what or how much they've integrated. IOW, it depends on which stage they're on. Not metaphorically different from having better eyesight and seeing everything in sharp vivid details vs seeing the world as a blur and believing it is so (there are unfortunately no corrective glasses to put on the brain).

It's easy to dismiss this kind of theorizing as something that "everybody obviously understands". Perhaps they do understand when it's being pointed out explicitly, but often such a claim to understanding does not translate into how they actually behave. Where theory is helpful is to see the non-obvious. For example, that others may be completely blind to perspectives that are obvious to you or vice versa. It illuminates someone's ignorance of perspectives. For example, politically some people are seemingly incapable of changing their vote from one party to the other because their perspective is strongly 2nd person (Kegan3). IOW, they can not for the life of them see any alternative to being known to their group as a "lifelong XYZ voter". Or, to stay with generalized political examples, an example of the opposite would be someone who is incapable of understanding the consequences of enacting their beliefs into law until that law affects them personally, because they simply don't see the law-system as something that applies to everybody including themselves and not just something that punishes other people (Kegan2). Conversely, Kegan4 would understand or even think it obvious that the consequences of a law would apply differently depending on the circumstances of the offender and the offense like intent, criminal record, etc. The distinction here being that Kegan4 believes that such extenuating circumstances should apply to everyone (within the 3rd person limitations) whereas Kegan3 simply believes it's "unfair" when it happens to them.

I should also note that "gaining perspective" is kinda similar to what kind of mental software one has installed. It's not something that builds naturally with age, nor something that is conditioned on mental hardware like IQ. A high IQ may be required for more complex perspectives but it is not a sufficient condition. If there's a correlation, it's vague or incidental/latent. Highly intelligent Kegan2s and Kegan3s walking around is more common than not... but there are almost surely no Kegan5 morons.

[7Wannabe5]

As part of my experiment in taping Common's Model of Hierarchal Complexity to my math tutoring clipboard, I made some weak attempts at determining if I could predict math learning potential from level of social sophistication, because most humans are more inherently interested in social relationships than the study of math. For example, if a child relates an anecdote such as "James performed the same funny prank that Eric performed, but nobody laughed when James performed the prank, because James doesn't know that it isn't funny when he does it." I might conclude that she should at the very least be capable of performing a two-step story problem or maybe even understanding that the commutative property applies to addition but not subtraction. I might also conclude that James would be less likely to perform at that level in math, but I would temper this with likelihood that James may have problems with social cues in particular and/or may exhibit more developmental sophistication in his math functioning than his social functioning. I think this is something that is changing in our culture, but not very long ago it used to be a known problem in mathematics education that girls start applying their interest to social mechanisms at an earlier age than boys, so they would often become "lost" to math in middle school.

Commons developed the Model of Hierarchal Complexity shortly after taking a course in Abstract Algebra (sometimes known as Modern Algebra) which was outside of his field. Since Abstract Algebra was the math course I most enjoyed in my undergraduate career, I became curious about how many humans might have even vague thirty years ago memories of the terms such as "homomorphic" that Commons makes use of in his model at Level 13: Metasystematic and it's definitely less than 1% of the population. The field of Abstract Algebra was roughly developed from 1801 Gauss to 1920 E. Noether. Both Charles Sanders Pierce (the primary philosopher of pragmatism) and his father Benjamin Pierce made many contributions to the field of Abstract Algebra. However, although Boston/Harvard men, they were both also renowned as outspoken anti-abolitionists in the Civil War era. This is rather interesting, because Wilber directly places the Metasystematic (Abstract Algebra) level in the Commons model as consistent with the Green Pluralistic Post-Modern level in his Integal model, and Wilber also assigns the moral level of development that brought an end to slavery worldwide to the Orange Modern Rational Egoic level in his Integral model. So, it seems like the Moral line of development can overtly function at least two or three levels of abstraction below the Mathematical line of development within a given human. In fact, Pierce made use of the "obvious" superiority of the white race for creating examples to explicate the unreliability of logic for the benefit of his students. So, this is why I was caused to question the re-integration of pragmatic philosophy at the level of the post-post-modern AKA metamodern AKA integral level of development; pragmatism tends towards accepting that which is currently and formerly evident (seen in Wilber's AQAL Upper Right or Lower Right external/objective quadrants) as given.

Sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there. I was going to also communicate that in a number of the examples of applications of Commons' model in testing humans, there seemed to be a confusion or confounding of abstraction in terms of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th person with degrees of separation in the network. For example, "What will the Chief think/feel when he learns that I am having sex with the husband of his sister's best female friend?" is sometimes regarded as 4th or 5th person perspective. And although it is the case that some of the greatest mathematicians have described their process as Intuition, this is not the same process as the simpler social intuition that most humans would apply to answer this sort of social network problem. Although, it is also the case that the successful practice of polyamory is generally deemed to require at least borderline of formal/systemic level of social abstraction/functioning, because there will be a minimum of 7 social entities to consider rather than the usual 3 for a dyadic pair-bond, although this may be functionally reduced with a hub and spokes configuration such as solo polyamory may provide. In fact, this is why it is my contention that most modern/post-modern humans are already functionally polyamorous even if only one of their relationships is currently sexualized. Simplest example being that when you come to see yourself as a "professional" at work (Kegan 4 = self-authoring Modern) you may also see yourself as having a non-sexualized "work-wife" or "work-husband" of either sex/gender. And this is notably different than the relationships within the primarily same sex/gender work groups that exist in Traditional societies. Concepts such as " spouse as best friend" intermediating these levels.

[karff]

As part of my experiment in taping Common's Model of Hierarchal Complexity to my math tutoring clipboard, I made some weak attempts at determining if I could predict math learning potential from level of social sophistication, because most humans are more inherently interested in social relationships than the study of math.

And how did it go? Did you find any correlations?

Kegan's map is very simple and runs on a social-relations vector.
Kegan2 includes your perspective on the group(s) you're part of. (1st person perspective)
Kegan3 is Kegan2 but also the groups' perspective on you. (2nd person perspective)
Kegan4 is Kegan3 but also your different perspectives on different groups depending on which group you're in (3rd person perspective)
Kegan5 is Kegan4 but also also a metaperspective on yourself and how you come to see those perspective in the different groups (4th person perspective)

Are you saying that each k-level corresponds to the numbered perspective below? As in, k2 is 1st person? Or that k2 is 2nd person because it includes the 1st person?
I would think that k-levels and perspective numbers would be the same.
k1, 1st - "I", nothing else
k2, 2nd - "I" plus "you" (as k2s have developed a theory of mind - spatial perspective-taking, but not conceptual)
and so on.

Arguing whether "theory is useless compared to 'just doing it'" is a recurring theme on the forum. Yet theory is simply a way of seeing or experiencing the world with the mind just like one experiences the world with the eyes and ears and so on.

You can see things with theory that can never be experienced with the senses. In many fields, those who cannot think in (permanently) invisible relationships hit a wall and can go no further.

I should also note that "gaining perspective" is kinda similar to what kind of mental software one has installed. It's not something that builds naturally with age, nor something that is conditioned on mental hardware like IQ. A high IQ may be required for more complex perspectives but it is not a sufficient condition. If there's a correlation, it's vague or incidental/latent. Highly intelligent Kegan2s and Kegan3s walking around is more common than not... but there are almost surely no Kegan5 morons.

So, minds come preloaded with the particular abilities to reach a particular level, but not go further? And this is independent of IQ?

[jacob]

Are you saying that each k-level corresponds to the numbered perspective below? As in, k2 is 1st person?

Yes, but it's just an idiosyncratic naming convention like how the first floor is the ground level in the US but the first level above ground in continental Europe. Or how C programmers start counting from 0 and normal people start counting from 1. It doesn't matter. It's just a convention. I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but this distinction is NOT important to the point I was trying to make. I recommend starting with https://www.amazon.com/Evolving-Self-Pr ... 674272315/ to go further. After than read In Over Our Heads.

So, minds come preloaded with the particular abilities to reach a particular level, but not go further? And this is independent of IQ?

I posit that minds are preloaded with a particular ability to reach a certain level but after that they struggle to go further depending on their level of mental ability. They can go a bit further with scaffolding but going further they regress back on their default state. How far any mind CAN GO is dependent on IQ but how far any mind ACTUALLY GOES likely depends more on their personal life-experiences. Did they expend their IQ learning other perspectives or did they use to to defend their own perspective.

[7Wannabe5]

And how did it go? Did you find any correlations?

Well, it was not exactly a perfect experiment, but I did have a total of around 50 students from age 5 to 22 (and also very briefly one guy in his 50s working on financial math for MBA), whom I worked with in groups of 1 to 3 from 1 to 4 hours per week. I also was able to observe the functional math level of some of the other teachers and tutors. So, the range was from nominal MHC 5 (able to match, learning to count)to early systematic (high school level Algebra 2/Analysis/Calculus.) And my conclusion was that it does correlate fairly well if there isn't also any sort of obvious, specific impairment. (Obvious examples being that I did tutor a couple kids from the consolidated high school program for autistic students whose social functioning was far below mathematical ability, and one of my fairly socially savvy six year old students who reversed all of her numbers in every possible way a number can be reversed, and a second grader who couldn't decode reading at all, but could do two step story problems verbally offered if given a period of silence in which his mental gears could revolve. )

However, it was usually easiest to detect/correlate with the youngest students. For instance, one of the lowest performers who came from a deprived situation and was also sent to kindergarten at age 4 was my only student who did not pass the test for second person perspective which is the ability to comprehend that when she is looking at the front of my hand held up then "I" am looking at the back of my hand. The MHC 5 nominal phase is associated with the Magenta Magic-Impulsive phase in Wilber's Integral model, and I have observed that magical thinking will interfere with the learning/demonstration of even very basic math skills such as ordering numbers, because anything used to represent the numbers is granted animism. In some ways this can also sometimes reveal a right/left brain preference as described by McGilchrist. For example, a bright 5 year old who should still be in a play-based kindergarten rather than an academic kindergarten might say something like "Mr. Six wants to be next to Mr. Two because they are best friends and they are going to have a slumber party together, but Mr. One will not go to the slumber party because he is afraid of monsters." About half way through the year, one of my students who was still lost in the world of magical imagination in this manner fairly suddenly gained access to his "left brain" which he almost used an entirely different voice to express, switching from almost sing-song to more like robot in the basement, and then he very rapidly advanced to grade level in math. Of course, it is easier to detect this kind of thing in a child who is also towards the very talkative.

With my older students, the problem is that many of them have learned so many layers of scaffolding that they are now taking math classes that are quite a bit above their actual conceptual level (the consistent draggers), and then there are others who have the chops, but they have been sleep-walking through math class for a few years (the intermittent poppers.)However, I did have a few students from a private Islamic school who were functioning at early systematic and they were fun to work with, because their verbal and social levels were similar to their math level. They would pose questions that were somewhat interesting and challenging for me (let's assume that my math level is a somewhat rusty and degraded due to age metasystematic) to answer (as opposed to the not entirely infrequent "Oh fuck, how do you do this kind of problem again..." that I sometimes exhibit when a kid randomly on the spot presents me with something like an assignment based on arcane Euclidean construction or some topic/method that you never see again once you have taken calculus.)

ETA: One of the ways this sort of thing was exhibited in the IT/Data graduate program I recently completed was in the realm of database normalization which is likely a pretty good measure of MHC task achievement. Some of my classmates could not "grok" normalization, and I would like to be able to correlate this with those who were most interested in the topic of cyber-security, but that is likely reflective of my bias due to the fact that I had very little, least interest in the topic of cyber-security (blech, boring.)

[karff]

Yes, but it's just an idiosyncratic naming convention like how the first floor is the ground level in the US but the first level above ground in continental Europe. Or how C programmers start counting from 0 and normal people start counting from 1. It doesn't matter. It's just a convention. I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but this distinction is NOT important to the point I was trying to make.

Got it. If one were wanting to construct an actual grammar referencing development levels, the naming convention would be better altered to avoid confusion.

For example, a bright 5 year old who should still be in a play-based kindergarten rather than an academic kindergarten might say something like "Mr. Six wants to be next to Mr. Two because they are best friends and they are going to have a slumber party together, but Mr. One will not go to the slumber party because he is afraid of monsters."

That's interesting. I had ordinal linguistic personality synesthesia when I was younger. Not the same as animism, and it didn't hinder my ability to do math. The personalities of the numbers were related to their function in the number system.
Multiples of ten were leaders, take charge types, with 100 basically being the king of numbers. Numbers with a large number of factors like 8, 12, 64 were robust and busy. Prime numbers like 17, 29 were aloof, elegant. 5, and it's multiples were lieutenants of the leader 10 multiples. All odd numbers had a slightly colder personality, while all even numbers had a slightly warmer.
As this was synesthesia, I had no conscious control of it, like people who see colors when they hear sounds. It was like observing a person's personality. I never made up stories about the numbers. Their personalities were based solely on how I observed them "behave" within the number system.

[karff]

I posit that minds are preloaded with a particular ability to reach a certain level but after that they struggle to go further depending on their level of mental ability.

Do you think there is a specific ability to get to a particular stage? Why people get "stuck" in stages, and why young kids sometimes exhibit features of advanced stages?
As in, the ability to get to stage 3 is a completely different cognitive ability than that to get to stage 4?

[7Wannabe5]

Their personalities were based solely on how I observed them "behave" within the number system.

Yes, and this is very different from a generalized tendency to "animate" the world. My DS34, who is INTP with a tendency towards OCD, had similar tendencies, but related to pattern and letters. In my moments of irrational Mom-guilt, I sometimes beat myself up for teaching him to read at too young age, but the interest seemed to be his own. If he was jumping up and down and yelling on the bus at age 2, I could point to a sign, and he would quiet down and focus examining the letters. He had a giant collection of matchbox cars inherited from an uncle when he was pre-verbal toddler, and he would arrange them in patterns that I couldn't discern, and then match them to cars on the road with freakish accuracy. This eventually developed into some kind of strong TiSi loop that allowed/caused him to memorize swaths of staff related to the fields in which he was interested, such as linguistics, classical era history, and geography. One funny thing (in retrospect) is that he went through his "fundamentalist" /rigid phase of development fairly young, but applied it to spelling. He was incapable of exhibiting tolerance for other humans who made spelling errors. In his mind/worldview, they were irredeemably "stupid and wrong", and this belief resulted in physical fights with other students and disrespectful comments made to teachers, causing me a decent bit of parental grief. Actually, it just now occurred to me that he stopped behaving as self-appointed Spelling Czar around the same time he started reading college level books on the topic of linguistics, so it was almost like the literal literal abstraction level directly corresponded with a more liberal literal worldview.

[jacob]

Do you think there is a specific ability to get to a particular stage? Why people get "stuck" in stages, and why young kids sometimes exhibit features of advanced stages?
As in, the ability to get to stage 3 is a completely different cognitive ability than that to get to stage 4?

Are we still talking Kegan or are we talking pretty much any of the many development stage models? There's one for almost every imaginable functionality:

Kegan - Socializing
Loevinger/Cook-Greuter - Life focus/direction
Torbert - Leadership
Piaget - Education
Commons MHC - Task-analysis
Fowler - Religion
Dreyfus - Skills
ERE CCCCCC - Skills (more general than specific)
Wheaton - Ecology
ERE Wheaton - Personal finance

In general, I think stage-transcending is a question of "preparation meets opportunity". People get stuck because, frankly, we live in a world that doesn't generate many opportunities to transcend beyond the level of "functional worker/consumer/nuclear family). Indeed, discussing any of this stuff is borderline taboo for a lot of people (this is part of why I find the topic so delectably irresistible). This taboo is partially because we swim in postmodernist water where the suggestion that some people know better than others (as opposed to just having their own unique peculiar insights) is taken to imply that "some people ARE better than others", which is anathema in our culture.

I like Dabrowski's "positive disintegration"-framework. Basically, transcendence happens when 1) a person is put into a situation that causes tension and anxiety; and 2) they're shown a way out of it that requires tying everything they already know together in a new way.

Now, if 3) they have the smarts/insight/intellectual and/or emotional intelligence to do that, congratulations, they just "included and transcended".

OTOH, if they don't they'll most likely deem the challenge hopeless and regress to a more comfortable worldview. You commonly see this when people FIRE, fail to find meaning outside an externally given achievement structure, and go back to work.

A key point though is that these opportunities for "including and transcending" come very rarely to most people in the current way we're arranged the world.

The fact that some young kids exhibit features of advanced stages is better explained by the fact that even old adults and even despite being in senior positions not too rarely exhibit features of rather early stages. There is a not insubstantial number of grown-ass humans walking around with approximately the same reasoning and/or emotional skills as the typical 13 year old. This is perhaps one of the grater albeit hidden features of the internet---where everybody is or at least could be a dog---that wrinkles and gray hair is hidden and you never know the chronological age of the person, you're talking to. After running this forum for almost 15 years, I can definitely say that I've sometimes been wrong by 20-40 years thinking someone much younger than they really are ... but also sometimes the other way around.

[karff]

@jacob,
I'm more talking about capabilities closer to the physiological level. For instance, someone who had a large number of very sensitive mirror neurons, and those neurons were wired to trigger a greater emotional response. That person would likely be very interested in the social functioning of Kegan3, but hardly at all any of the other levels. Just speculating, but it seems that might be the physiological basis for the majority of human females rapidly gaining k3, but really not being interested in the more analytical road to k4.

One funny thing (in retrospect) is that he went through his "fundamentalist" /rigid phase of development fairly young, but applied it to spelling. He was incapable of exhibiting tolerance for other humans who made spelling errors. In his mind/worldview, they were irredeemably "stupid and wrong", and this belief resulted in physical fights with other students and disrespectful comments made to teachers, causing me a decent bit of parental grief. Actually, it just now occurred to me that he stopped behaving as self-appointed Spelling Czar around the same time he started reading college level books on the topic of linguistics, so it was almost like the literal literal abstraction level directly corresponded with a more liberal literal worldview.

I was rigid about historical and geographical accuracy around middle/high school. Followed by a "Everything's subjective, descriptionists always win" phase.

I like Dabrowski's "positive disintegration"-framework. Basically, transcendence happens when 1) a person is put into a situation that causes tension and anxiety; and 2) they're shown a way out of it that requires tying everything they already know together in a new way.

I tend to look at it from a reward perspective rather than a punishment one. Just from personal experience, a lot of my understanding of the world was driven by an intense curiosity about how things worked. As in, the reason I see the world as an interconnected system of social, political, economic, ideological, historical subsystems is because I was just very interested in how it all fit together.

[jacob]

@jacob,
I'm more talking about capabilities closer to the physiological level. For instance, someone who had a large number of very sensitive mirror neurons, and those neurons were wired to trigger a greater emotional response. That person would likely be very interested in the social functioning of Kegan3, but hardly at all any of the other levels. Just speculating, but it seems that might be the physiological basis for the majority of human females rapidly gaining k3, but really not being interested in the more analytical road to k4.

Maybe!

I've noticed a collective (odd numbers)/individual pattern (even numbers) in Kegan which I don't recall seeing mentioned in the two Kegan books I've read (and generally recommend). It's possible that I missed it, though. If you're interested in this compare to Kohlberg and Giligan's models of moral development, which I forgot to include in my list above.

Within Kegan's model, an easy experiment would be whether some people have an easier time going from even to odd or odd to even given some correlation with another mirror neuron experiment.

[karff]

On the other side, the easiest that comes to mind is psychopathy. Some psychopaths are quite intelligent and perceptive, and seem to have a somewhat k4 -like understanding of things. But they're basically barred from k3 because their mirror neurons do not set off the same emotions in them as in their subject of observation.

[jacob]

On the other side, the easiest that comes to mind is psychopathy. Some psychopaths are quite intelligent and perceptive, and seem to have a somewhat k4 -like understanding of things. But they're basically barred from k3 because their mirror neurons do not set off the same emotions in them as in their subject of observation.

There is some research to back this up including the possible relation to mirror neurons. However, Kegan's structure is not based on emotional empathy; rather it is constructed around the idea of seeing humans (the self and others) and their interactions in terms of subjects and objects in increasingly integrated ways. In that sense Kegan is closer to the concept of "compassionate empathy"

Antisocial personality disorder comes about when failing to recognize other humans as their own subjects. This is Kegan2 and usually found in preteens but also in about 10% of the adult population. This is a lack of empathy that goes beyond cognitive empathy (to understand what other people think) and/or emotional empathy (to understand what other people feel). It is a lack of compassionate empathy (to understand that other humans are humans like oneself).

The psycho/sociopath simply does not think of other humans as human beings with their own rights and desires. Kegan2 also sees other people as "objects" in the sense that those other humans mainly serve the self (subject) but not really grokking that those humans are also subjects to with their own self and desires and opinions.

This makes social and moral behavior difficult which begets the disorder. Obviously it's a matter of degree and so this is why <1% is diagnosed even if the Kegan2 numbers are higher. A Kegan2 could learn the social/moral rules and thus be fairly well behaved, but they would struggle to understand why the moral rules are what they are. I suspect this is why we see less sociopathic behavior IRL---because Kegan2 people get "trained" sufficiently---but more sociopathic behavior online, e.g. trolling and shit-posting that doesn't just come from teenagers. Online, the behavioral codes are still not common knowledge to everybody and about 10% simply don't or can't care about the human beings on the other end of the conversation.

[7Wannabe5]

Just speculating, but it seems that might be the physiological basis for the majority of human females rapidly gaining k3, but really not being interested in the more analytical road to k4.

I also think there is some truth to this, and this truth might be better revealed through deeper parsing of terms such as "analytical", "rational", "logical", "objective", etc. As somebody who is sex=female and core gender= feminine, but of a "rational" personality type with approximately 2 to 1 male to female ratio in human population, I often find myself conflicted or mediating this gap. In "Finding Radical Wholeness", Wilber notes study from longest/least sexist region of Scandanavia in which far larger proportion of females freely choose profession of nursing and far larger proportion of males freely choose profession of engineering. However, many undergraduate majors which generally attract those with the highest IQs, such as Mathematics, Philosophy, and English Literature are becoming closer to gender parity, with Physics still lagging, but not to the persistent degree of Engineering.

Having spent a couple years as an engineering major and several years teaching/tutoring part-time at elementary school level, my "mirror neurons" and other brain-bits inform me that engineering is "too cold" and elementary school teaching is "too warm" and both are too "formulaic" to engage in at the 40 hours/week level. Also, although there is a great deal of variation in the humans who actually occupy such frequently held roles, I have found the proportion of elementary school teachers at Kegan 3 to be pretty consistent with the proportion of engineers at Kegan 3, although their Kegan-3ishness is exhibited somewhat differently and in better alignment with typical-female-blindness or typical-male-blindness. Therefore, I would posit that any human who is more typically in alignment with the masculine in terms of sex/gender and personality type might be somewhat more limited in recognizing level of functioning in females than in males and vice-versa would also hold. OTOH, at the Integral Level ones own internal gender dichotomy is more freely and fluidly accessible, so this difficulty may be transcended. Since it is the case that when the INTJ's NiTe and FiSe are swapped, you get the ISFJ type which is actually the type most likely to be female rather than male (71:29), work towards maturing those functions while firmly placing Te tendencies aside might best serve towards Integral Level development of feminine energy/perspective for many members of this forum.

Wilber also suggests that at the Integral Level, a balance between Level Orange/Modern tendency to promote universal freedom through equality of opportunity and Level Green/Post-Modern tendency to promote universal care through equality of outcome will be sought. Ergo, it may follow that either a deficiency or a surfeit of mirror neurons may contribute to inability to fully inhabit Integral Level of development.