Bufo Marinus wrote:

What precisely IS content ?

Recognising that content is only as useful to the extent that you do something with it. Thats enough content for me

If 'scenario thinking' is an example of conseqence lead thinking, maybe intent is just the pre-meditated form of this?

I'm interested as to why you mimicked people asking questions which revolved around 'intent?' A consequence is possibly that it's resulted in me asking this question- but what was your intention?

And indeed, if intention by definition can only come about as a result of hindsighted thinking once we have a consequence, does it ever exist at all apart from in the present moment?

Nice vids- I think promoting discussion should always be encouraged.

Bufo Marinus wrote:

Therin lies the rub. What precisely IS content ?

"As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the
poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

Also, as an Shakespearean, your choice of soliliquy interests me greatly.

If only you'd carried on a few more lines...

Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear.

Or in a model that i currently relate to, Content Imposition in action.

zackpolanski wrote:

I'm interested as to why you mimicked people asking questions which revolved around 'intent?' A consequence is possibly that it's resulted in me asking this question- but what was your intention?

I wasn't, as far as my intentional self perception was involved, mimicking a specific person or persons around intention focus, but rather a reflexive habit of mind... I think I was trying to foreground the "part" of our thought processes that sends us into that corner, which we then, all too often, find ourselves painted into.

I'd like to see (going into the outcome direction) the intention challenge better integrated into a rich structure of reality testing and reality evaluative options...

For example (a down chunk here) it sure looks to me like corporations have distorted the potential model in exactly the other direction.... they form an inviolable outcome, like making the quarterly numbers... anything else is "the enemy"...

In process-speak.... they generate a rigid intent, make the numbers or lose your job, it is tightly framed.... in this environment we ONLY discuss these points in THESE ways... anything else is (evidence frame) indication of bad attitude and not being with the program... and then there are some strong suppositions as to consequences (either you get your 5 millon pound luxe accomodation in central London OR you go back to entry level status...lucky dog, you)...

(chunking up with embedded chunking down)However, I also detect some categorical confusions that gets these hyper-outcome driven models into trouble... as they have a strong tendency to blur "outcomes" (as predefined things to be targeted) and "consequences" (complex map that include a lot of the matter deleted in the business plan: divorces, heavy drinking, high blood pressure, opportunity costs, never seeing the light of day, terrible intellectual constriction, awful moods that won't lift...)

(another outcome here)The better question, IMHO, is "what is being foregrounded by this inquiry?"... what is being popped from implicit memory to explicit memory ? Are we being moved from re-activity to pro-activity ? Is life showing up more as fate or more as choice ?

Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity,
I moralize two meanings in one word...

How would you feel then about flexible outcomes, as maybe the result can usually be an unpredictable consequence anyway?

Maybe it's not true that anything but 'rigid intent' is an 'indication of bad attitude and not being with the program?'

What could happen if you could have both?

To keep in this Bard tradition.."There's little choice in a barrel of rotten apples.'

Mmmm... yes, there's some semantic business involved... business loves concepts like "clearly defined goals", "benchmarks", "best practices".... in some cases, the structure is tightly defined at every step through rigorous quantification, as I'd imagine bringing a next generation processor chip to market, even Disney now supposedly has perfected a formula for brining late-teen talent to the public on a smoothly structured conveyor belt, other businesses give their managers a great deal more scope in the "how you get it done" side as long as the outcomes satisfy certain criteria.

I think when business gets it most backward is when they have rigid processes, "we do things in this specific way come hell or high water" and lose sight of their outcomes. Or inevitable changes in the marketplace. So (whatever they actually mean) there is a dynamic interplay of intent and consequence, smart companies continuously recalibrate both in real time.

This adds an important dynamic component to the Slight Of Mouth map the Dilts composed, as high energy, high adapdation, high success enterprises have many tight, robust, perspective rich feedback loops at every level of the organization.

Imagine having three hidden cameras on your every interaction, and a group of wise advisors who could give you superb criticism of ever aspect of how you handled the interaction; your posture, your reasoning, the use of your voice, your timing, your intangible nuances... and they sat down and reviewed your day with you every evening... how differently you might appear five years later, as opposed to having little or no feedback...

Bufo Marinus wrote:

If memory serves, culturally induced forms of selection pressure are known as Baldwinian Evolution.... I don't have the foggiest idea who Baldwin was... he must have counted for something in the early stages of evolutionary theory.

As for Evolutionary f*ck up, yes, of course, now I remember, J.B.S. Haldane and the Unified Theory Of Evolutionary Expletives... caused quite a stir in its' day....

Lol, maybe the expletive was unnecessary but what I believe has happened constitutes to that expletive. Another example of an non useful mind read. Don't think I mentioned anything about culture induced forms of selection pressure. I just don't think evolutionary thinking is needed or is useful - I have even posted a thread about it and no one replied. There are many many evolved processes that cause us endless pain. If they didn't NLP wouldn't even exist neither would any other form of "therapy" (Please no one mind read me to be saying NLP is therapy). Some people suffer so much pain they kill themselves - what would evolution say about that? What self respecting set of genes would remove themselves from the pool? What self respecting set of genes would kill their offspring? If you honestly believe that we haven't taken the reins of evolution (which would never be the "goal" of evolution) and are going beyond that which we are intended for - having sex and producing offspring then I would be apprehensive of basing your beliefs on evolutionary processes. Our evolution never "intended" us to live the way we do now we are even killing the whole planet, I would even go as far to call humans an even more extreme expletive. Given this I struggle to see how evolutionary thinking is useful in the context of change. Just because the male of the species is designed to be promiscuous doesn't mean it is right or psychologically healthy for every man and the pain it causes their partners. We simply were not designed to be psychologically healthy, we were designed to reproduce. That doesn't mean psychological health cannot be achieved though which is why I would favour an NLP type starting point than an evolutionary one.

Malcomb's post has given a lot of insight to the "other side" and something I can chew over. I'm still airing towards content free models though. Clean language for example avoids mind reading completely and it works without any need for the client or practitioner to engage their conscious minds to understand why it just is. For me at the moment I think there is a difference between unconscious connection resulting from rapport and a mind read. Lions for example work extremely well together as hunters but i'm not sure I would say they are mind reading more unconscious communication. The second you introduce language onto an experience you begin to obliterate the experience for what it is. Almost a bit like mind reading your own experience. People get it totally wrong so for me the less chance of mind reading occuring the more ecological the outcome? Maybe completely wrong but I like standing corrected I read in SciAm mind that you make neurologically stronger links from making a mistake the first time and learning from it.

Shakespeare walks into a bar Landlord shouts "GET OUT ya' bard"

"To be or not to be, that maybe the question" (E-Bard)

I suppose the more externally structured an environment is, the more "cleanness" it can tolerate.... however when you take it to the street, in competitive, messy, ambiguous business situations... where the big money, big payoff culture is in full throttle, content is pretty damn important... and content imposition is a blood sport. There's none of this let's all be on our best behavior, in rapport, hum a happy tune therapeutic mindset. Words like Machiavelli and Sumo Wrestling and defenestration come to mind. These are guys who feel compelled to work themselves to death, admire Atilla the Hun and Vito Corleone as proper role models for their children, think pit bulls make cute pets, hire former Mosad agents to bug telephones for them, keep their money offshore, buy small nations as real estate investments, think neutron bombs are conceptual art, refer to their employees as "slaves" and consider that being realistic, eat endangered species BECAUSE they're endangered species, have cocaine addicted mistresses who weigh 80 pounds and a dominatrix one the side, reputedly have Descartes' skull under a glass dome in their library, think that Denis Koslowski's ice carving of Michaelangelo's David urinating Stolichnya vodka was a great cultural achievement, have standing annual appointments with Beverly Hills plastic surgeons, constantly agonize over their penis size, wish they could have been around to sack Rome, think that Stalin was misunderstood.... it's a differnt sort of wavelength...

Is your intention then to kind of build a business NLP model? I know your avoiding stating your intention but from a purely selfish and naive point of view I haven't got the foggiest what your on about now. Or maybe thats your intention? Anyway bloody great thread Bufo I have learnt loads!!! Take care and if anything you are doing takes some sort of shape I for one will be looking forward to it

Industrial Strength NLP is definitely on my *to do* list.... but, yes, you're on the money with that interpretation... you might say, NLP that can be applied in contexts where the norm tends to be shoot three letter acronyms on sight.

Hi Bufo

Bufo Marinus wrote:

Well, IMHO, we're making genuine progress on multiple levels I think.... these can only come about from committed collisions of beliefs, cultural differences which are too often taken for granted, frames, etc.... My belief is that real progress comes from the energy invested, these things have to matter, there has to be some *besetzung* something at stake, the possibility that we might break some stuff but we might bring some stuff into the world as well... it's the struggling to hammer some steel into a workable shape... outrage, incomprehension, frustration, these are standard part of the creative process.

Wow...sleight of mouth in ten minutes or less....delivered in a compellingly engaging (if slightly manic) manner. Your focus on intention grabbed me most of all, as it did others it seems. A delightful nominalisation accepted by the many, it seems, including me.

What is intention ? Very good question I think, and analogue marked out by you as significant. Here is my response.

(Opinion frame). My intending has an origin in my mind. It serves an existential confirmatory function. Am I really here ? How do I know I exist at all ? When I intend I seek to poke the jelly of the time/space continuum with my will. When the jelly wobbles and ripples with effect, I am the (possibly illusionary) be-cause. And so I am here. I generate consequence, and that happens as you suggest over a time frame, sometimes even an extended time frame.

Conscious or otherwise, my intending "proves" that "I" exist and can generate effects in the world. For example, I am thirsty....I intend to make a drink. I consume a drink and I am gratified.

I want money, so I get a job. I have an idea, and I create a consequence, and am gratified. It is unlikely that I will make money without action on my part. I want to make someone laugh, say, so I need to do something, anything to generate that feedback of "being here after all" reality.

Even when I am clinically depressed and suppress any active output into the universe, by actively (in a sense) creating that emotional black hole I am inviting the jelly to bend towards me in terms of attention to confirm my actuality.

Am I really here ? My lips might move but have I any influence ? Core questions for me.

Intention maybe the willful TOTE to confirm that I have a responsibility for my being here, moment to moment to affirm that is so, from satisfaction of the physical body to contact with another person also wrestling with this metaphysical puzzle.

Even when my intents go astray, and I generate the consequence of "bad Malcomb" or "stupid Malcomb" or "hurtful Malcomb" the truth of my actually being here after all is a compelling illusion that is temporary, and so I must generate ongoing intentions minute to minute to reaffirm that elusive and fleeting sense of self. But even poor results establish that I am here generating consequences, making the jelly wobble and vibrate through intention. So all communication comes to have a positive intention because it reasserts my potency as a (minuscule) force in the chaos of life.

So there you go, Bufo. A take on intention. Thanks for inviting me to examine a nomilisation I previously accepted without criticism. You raise too many points to comment on all at once.

Perhaps I should state at this point that I have little experience of, nor interest in the corporate business world. One of the reasons I am not with cash is that I associate with and work with those who do not have any dosh to push my way through commission or gratitude. Then again, hardship can be another confirmation of the "realness" of living, right ?

Thanks again for your posting and raising of quality questions.

Regards

MH

Hi Alistair,

Alistair_Donnell wrote:

Malcomb's post has given a lot of insight to the "other side" and something I can chew over. I'm still airing towards content free models though. Clean language for example avoids mind reading completely and it works without any need for the client or practitioner to engage their conscious minds to understand why it just is. .

Here we are on a content biased medium. If you will allow me to try to clear up a few of my unintended confusions, here goes.

In proposing a relationship between rapport and useful "mind reads" at least in my mind, I am not proposing a complex equivalence or even a cause and effect. I suspect that the relationship, if any, is more systemic than that, at least to me. In the most simple terms the cause and effect seems to work forwards to back and back to front.

Imagine two magnets. Appropriately aligned the two can add to each others' field of influence. Otherwise they might repel each other.

I think there is a difference between unconscious connection resulting from rapport and a mind read.

I agree. I am speculating however about the relationship, and in an ever expanding chaotic and laterally connected universe, there could be a relationship albeit not an obvious Newtonian one.

A fish is like a light bulb because........(answers on a web forum please)

Regards

MH.

Just read Philip Zimbardo's book The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life... cover to cover last night... v. interesting stuff that adds a significant dimension to what I've been trying to get my head around in a conceptual-verbal fashion... so I'm putting together a new vid in my mental workshop....

Some of the framing ideas that have come up are:

Zimbardo asesses substantial benefits from certain modes of future consciousness (and penalties as well if overused)...

My mini-problem with Dilts' slight-of-mouth architecture with the timeline superimposed (although this does count for progress in my belief system) is that it can anchor the user in some less that empowering, or perspective constricting definitional spaces.

Take for example that mysterious word "intent". How many ways can we subtly permutate the definitional space of "intent" so it opens up and offers more choice, while remaining true to its central purpose ?

Unfortunately, we are also stuck with cultural habits, if the ear is so accustomed to hearing a concept put into words in a particular way, hearing that concept reworded may sound out-of-rapport, just plain confusing or weird from the frame of conventional thinking.

So some poetic skill may be needed to take unwieldy thought experiments and turn them into acceptable English for the ordinary listener...

I don't know how far language can be stretched before the mind tosses it out like a raving drunk from a birthday party.

What are you intending ? Def. not the same as "what were you intending ?"... which has a prosecutorial edge to it..."what are your intendings here ?" Ah, the possibility of more than one ! "how are you intending this ?" Not bad, sounds like real speech, and def. opens up the process frame more. "what weren't you intending?" now, that's an odd duck of an inquiry, almost a trance induction, only exceeded by "how weren't you intending this ?" mmmm... process plus negation... could be heard as "what were you trying to avoid ?" or "what consequences might you have overlooked ?"... for more of a "mappy" reading... "what is the path of your intention here ?" or "how is the path of your intention shaping you goals ?" which can be neatly reversed to "how are your goals shaping the path of your intentions ?"...or maybe a bit more open ended "how are your goals relating to your intentions ?"...for a whopper "how has the process of moving toward your goals shaped the way that you form intentions ?"... suggests a dynamic interplay between the very definition of intent/intending and the consequesnces of using that understaning of intention...

I'm sure this could go on at length, and fruitfully at that...

On the intentionality front, we might include ridiculous sounding yet deeply thought enriching questions, such as "what is the most unbelievable aspect of your intending ?"... so then we are jumping directly into live process (OMG, my intending is a living organic array of interwoven processes and not a small statue of the god Thoth ?... how extrordinary !).... "What is the most liquid aspect of your intending ?, What is the most solid aspect of your intending ?, What is the most alchemical aspect of your intending ?".... weird, absolute heresy as far as the content-phobes are reaching for their hand sanitizer... but, OTOH opens up this broad world of process inquiry, that there may be multiple intendings, multiple frames of Aristotle's Efficient Cause.. "what is the most predictable aspect of your intending ?"

Bufo Marinus wrote:

Just read Philip Zimbardo's book The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life... cover to cover last night... v. interesting stuff that adds a significant dimension to what I've been trying to get my head around in a conceptual-verbal fashion... so I'm putting together a new vid in my mental workshop....

Some of the framing ideas that have come up are:

Zimbardo asesses substantial benefits from certain modes of future consciousness (and penalties as well if overused)...

My mini-problem with Dilts' slight-of-mouth architecture with the timeline superimposed (although this does count for progress in my belief system) is that it can anchor the user in some less that empowering, or perspective constricting definitional spaces.

Take for example that mysterious word "intent". How many ways can we subtly permutate the definitional space of "intent" so it opens up and offers more choice, while remaining true to its central purpose ?

Unfortunately, we are also stuck with cultural habits, if the ear is so accustomed to hearing a concept put into words in a particular way, hearing that concept reworded may sound out-of-rapport, just plain confusing or weird from the frame of conventional thinking.

So some poetic skill may be needed to take unwieldy thought experiments and turn them into acceptable English for the ordinary listener...

I don't know how far language can be stretched before the mind tosses it out like a raving drunk from a birthday party.

What are you intending ? Def. not the same as "what were you intending ?"... which has a prosecutorial edge to it..."what are your intendings here ?" Ah, the possibility of more than one ! "how are you intending this ?" Not bad, sounds like real speech, and def. opens up the process frame more. "what weren't you intending?" now, that's an odd duck of an inquiry, almost a trance induction, only exceeded by "how weren't you intending this ?" mmmm... process plus negation... could be heard as "what were you trying to avoid ?" or "what consequences might you have overlooked ?"... for more of a "mappy" reading... "what is the path of your intention here ?" or "how is the path of your intention shaping you goals ?" which can be neatly reversed to "how are your goals shaping the path of your intentions ?"...or maybe a bit more open ended "how are your goals relating to your intentions ?"...for a whopper "how has the process of moving toward your goals shaped the way that you form intentions ?"... suggests a dynamic interplay between the very definition of intent/intending and the consequesnces of using that understaning of intention...

I'm sure this could go on at length, and fruitfully at that...

I'm not sure whether you have seen this video Bufo but I quite liked it as an introduction for what Zimbardo is now saying and certainly stirred interest in me

Philip Zimbardo prescribes a healthy take on time | Video on TED.com

I quite like this video from Seligman as well. I certainly think there are areas of Psychology "catching on". I don't fully understand your bit about intention but its there for me to return to. This following video though is a good demonstration of what can be achieved when you "switch" intention...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FBxfd7DL3E&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - Martin Seligman: Why is psychology good?[/ame]

It looks like there may be substantial value in redesigning how we think about intent-intention-intending, and part of that value, maybe a large part of it has to do with the way the "neuro" is affected by the "linguistic".... because is we ask ourselved, "what type of question is asking about intent ?" it reduces to a "why" frame..... a glorified way of wanting to know, "why did you say/do that ?".... i.e. please explain to me what wishes/theories/beliefs/assumptions/dark urges motivates your behavior.... Larry King of American television fame likes to boil it down to a terse "what's your point ?".... pyschologists have been trained, *ad naseum* to challenge, "what did you want me to feel by saying that ?".... which presupposes the "point" of communication is diving headlong into K states... when it might be a heck of a lot more interesting, and informative, if the shrink were to ask "what did you want me to discover by saying that ?" Total reset of the emergent possibilites of the communication... If you should be so fortunate to meet with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, you'll find a guy who is postively enamored of content imposition, he typically challenges questions with the reply, "the assumption built into your question is __________." So he's working from the belief that questions have backgrounded assumptions that can be easily discerned and foregrounded and he has little reticence when it comes to telling his interlocutors precisely what their assumptions are. Of course, you could (probably) royally piss him off and state, "the questions built into YOUR assumptions are __________." Ha. Interview terminated, miserable worm.

Ok... we cover lots of ground today... especially time line business and working that into Dilts' models for maximum leverage...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxzSpAsL_TA]YouTube - 20091102125057[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98j6qQtek-A]YouTube - 20091102125831[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qugfIzKce8E]YouTube - 20091102141822[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZTmuO6sIeU]YouTube - 20091102143453[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR0w9-VnTJo]YouTube - 20091102155807[/ame]