Some people are aware that over the last 8 months or so I have become quite fascinated with personality types and research on personality and culture. What many people do not know is part of the reason why. Actually what follows explains only a fraction of my interest, but that will have to do for now.
Anyways, terms of Jungian/Meyers Briggs personality theory the biggest difference between people in the population is whether they are Sensory (S) or iNtuitive (N). Roughly speaking S type people enjoy concrete things they can learn about with their senses and N type people tend to naturally be more abstract thinkers. The vast majority of the population tends to be S type. For myself I an N type abstract thinker. When I took the test it was only about 10% confident on all the dimensions except S-N. It was 89% confident I was N. Among my friends I tested only two people were on the same order of magnitude confidence on the N side. Both were INTP. One got the same confidence I got and the other was I think 92% confident. Both of these guys are very interesting people to talk to. I suspect I have one ENTJ friend who would test similarly, but this person knows too much about the test now and it would probably be meaningless. Anyways I digress... The point is I am a pretty abstract guy for better or worse.
Anyways during my initial learning about the S-N difference I came across this youtube video.
When I saw it I thought to myself that it was pretty mean-spirited. It seems there was a bit of arrogance present. As I saw other people talk about the S-N difference on forums and
youtube I would often see this arrogance. It was often times subtle but there. I thought to myself it was quite cruel. Anyways, there was one valid point that I thought might be worth addressing. Our current society is setup in such a way that many jobs that are probably traditionally appeal to S type people no longer exist or are on their way out. A prime example is manufacturing. I used to be a machinist. Machinists often times speak of a "sense of touch" or "sense of feel," that helps them diagnose whether they have a lathe or mill setup correctly. I make the argument this is a very "Sensor" type of intellectualism. I now work with alot of physicists, and the dual intelligence for them would be "physical intuition." they always like to talk about. What I am getting at here is that there may be different types of intelligences out there and we should leverage them all to improve our economic output. As it is now though, increased automation means machines can do many of these jobs better than any person. On the other hand we are currently living in a world that is increasingly being deluged by streams of data. Everything from oil exploraiton to the stop market to marketing to cyber-security has tons of data to sift though. There was an interesting article this month in Harvard Busines Review talking about it.
Data Scientist - The sexiest job of the 21st century
http://hbr.org/2012/10/data-scientist-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century/ar/1
Clearly there is a need for people to sift through lots of abstract data and find useful patterns. Unfortunately this is a job that will probably mainly appeal to rare, abstract, N-type thinkers with programming and math backgrounds. I am guessing most "data scientists" are INTPs actually. The point is, we have alot of potential to make some real gains form our data deluge but we don't have people with the skill to take advantage of it. In the trade we sometimes like to call this field "data mining."
Well for some reason at roughly the same time I was begining to study personality types I also came across some videos on human echolocation. A good explanation is given here:
So I started to think to myself... " If the brain is adaptable enough to replace a lost sense perhaps we can develop totally new senses... New senses that allow us interact with abstract concepts in new ways." Then I thought. Maybe we can use emerging haptic technology and smart materials to build human-machine interfaces that allow us to transmit data to humans through touch. This way all those machinists who operate by "sense of feel," can transfer their skills to the new data mining problem. Now I say, "Why are we hiring engineers to do data mining when prehaps we should be hiring miners?"
I ran this idea by a Professor from Scotland I collaborate with and he suggested I check out sensory deprivation tanks to see if it could be a method to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for this application. I looked into it and I found one in Santa Fe. I finally made it there to test drive it this morning. Here are my results:
Here is the sensory deprivation tank. It is full of salt water at 98 degrees F to match human body temperature. You are totally buoyant in it. You float right to the top. They close the lid and it is pretty much sound and light proof. It is totally dark inside. Basically the idea is to cut you off form all sensory excitation. Some people report seeing hallucinations while being in one of these tanks. I paid for a 1 hr ride and got in to try it out.
I also want to point out this is probably the closest you can feel to the weightlessness of space outside being caught in some kind of freefall. Oddly enough it is really hard to roll over in the water. My body was very stable staying face up. My neck was a bit sore for awhile, but I found putting my arms over my head helped with that. I think being in this tank causes your propioception and nocioception to increase. I could very acutely feel all the sore parts of my body. Probably because there was nothing else to feel. If you move your arms in the tank they do begin to feel oddly heavy. I was told that some people feel very odd in the tank because they have nothing to sense. I did not seem to mind this at all. I think I could have stayed in there for awhile. I was told their record was 6 hrs. I suspect the tank forces S type people into the world of intuition and abstract thinking. I am guessing because I am such an abstract thinker I may have already been in my natural element. I would be curious to hear what someone with a sensor personality thinks.
Some people apparently like sleeping in there. If you need it really quiet and dark to sleep I can see how that might help. I have a book that talks about the medical and physiological ramifications of being in space. I am going to read it over and see how it compares to what I experienced.
Some odd things I experienced are the following. First, you really in some sense do experience a heightened sense of touch. I could run my finger over parts parts of my stomach with hair folicles and I could feel those sensations very acutely. I compare it to sitting at my desk now and it was definitely amped up in the tank. Also I ran my finger over the facial hair on my nose. I could very very distinctly hear every single hair on my upper lip move. It sounded almost loud. I try it right now and it can hear the hairs, but the sounds of them bending all blend together. When I was in the tank I could hear each individual hair. It was quite unique. This is a good result because I suspect I need this kind of sensory discrimination to build new tactile human-machine interfaces. I put a picture that I took right after getting out of the tank that shows the current state of my facial hair for reference. I have alot of other thoughts on this, but they will have to wait for another day or personal conversations.
