Model L is beyond trash

I was asked, or challenged, or both, to write criticisms of Model L in a formal way to reflect the record and perhaps, in lieu of bitching loudly about it on social media. A sensible or at least understandable request, although not one I relished to accept, for several reasons. One important reason is because the creator of Model L, Kimani White, has proven to be quite a belligerent asshole, who vainly seems to expect recognition for his accomplishment, and has shown nothing but hostility and contempt towards others (not only myself) who are not quick to kiss his feet and who do not care about his extremely vapid dichotomy structure (I wish to add that Model L's former co-creator, Aleesha Lowry, has absolutely not engaged in any of this vanity or bullying at all, she is an old friend of mine and not an asshole). As such, I have some reservations about even bringing attention to Model L, although likely towards whatever audience reads this blog I am preaching to the choir. But probably an even more significant reason not to bother with this post is because Model L is overwhelmingly dearth of descriptive content, and there is very little of substance to actually respond to, and what substance does exist will be exceedingly technical.

Anyway, since I'm here with questionable judgment writing this regardless, let's start by discussing what Model L is and what it isn't.

Model L is a 16 element model, whose elements (which I will call L-elements, and whose function I will call L-functions) are the combination of an IM element and a jungian axis. For example, the leading function of the LSE in Model L, is Te(S), or Te colored by the ST club, or alternately, Te+Si+Se. Therefore, unlike my block models which have blocks as their elements, Model L is not a block model since L-elements are not blocks, since a block consists of one rational element and one irrational element, and clearly Te+Si+Se does not consist of one rational and one irrational element. In fact, L-elements consist of two ordered blocks, not one. Each of the 16 socionics types has exactly one unique base function in Model L. As such, Model L is homomorphic to the set of socionics types and to other 16 element models such as Model A16, but does not emphasize in its design the isomorphism between the model and the set of intertype relations. More on this a bit later.

Because L-elements contain two blocks and not one, and because these blocks are from adjacent quadras, (e.g. Te+Si is a delta block, and Te+Se is a gamma block), each L-element does not belong to any one quadra. The L-elements are isomorphic to types, and these types each belong to exactly one quadra, but the L-elements considered by themselves do not belong to any one quadra.

Why was the choice made to make L-elements into two blocks and not one? I don't know, but this structure emphasizes clubs and dimensionality, and it seems likely to have been invented by someone who was primarily concerned with clubs and dimensionality, and who sees the creative and demonstrative functions as type defining, in other words, the type defining blocks are 1+2 and 1+8, instead of 1+2 and 1+6 as they are in the theory of quadras.

Therefore, by emphasizing clubs and dimensionality, and by including no quadra structure in the basic formulation of the model," Model L is fundamentally incompatible with Western Socionics. Recall that Western Socionics is the idea that socionics is largely, although not necessarily entirely, a theory of quadras. Model L has more in common with Model G and other eastern systems of Reinin dichotomies than it does with Western Socionics. Both Model L and Model G emphasize the 1+2 and 1+8 blocks as the type defining blocks, unlike in Western Socionics, and both of them rely heavily on Reinin dichotomies for their formulation and analysis, which are incompatible with quadras.

Kimani's long, dense, non-descriptive document entitled "Socionics Tweaks" has a section describing quadra priority from the presence cube, but it does not very clearly integrate priority into the model. For example, the "ordinals" in Model L are grouped (bizarrely) based on dimensionality and into clubs, such that the ego and id blocks are paired together in an orbital, the super id and super ego blocks are paired together, and the other two orbitals consist of L-elements isomorphic to adjacent quadra blocks. It seems like the section with priority and dimensionality exists to define priority and dimensionality operators over the L-functions, that is, each L-function is given a dimensionality and priority score. The derivations of the operators are actually not explicitly given in "Socionics Tweaks," and oddly 75% of the L-functions are given neutral dimensionality and priority. It is not exactly easy to understand why this would be. It is, in the first place, not easy to understand why the 1+2+8 function (called the A1 function in Model L) has a dimensionality of 4 and a priority of 4 given that the dimensionality of the functions 1+2+8 average to 3.67, and the priorities of these functions average to 3. There is some explanation for the extension of dimensionality onto L-functions in section 7 of "Socionics Tweaks," having to do with dichotomy and dimensionality structure of the club membership of L-elements, which doesn't seem intuitive at all but okay fine -- priority is not addressed there. The priority operator in "Socionics Tweaks" therefore at best is opaquely defined and, more realistically, is just merely defined badly, which is to say, the definition is wrong. Model L's only item pertaining to the quadra structure of Western Socionics is its priority operator. After excluding the priority operator due to both its questionable definition and overall low profile in the Model, there is no remaining quadra structure in the whole of Model L. There is a section near the beginning of "Socionics Tweaks", section 3, called Quadra currents, and another section at the end, section 13, called Quadra summaries, but both sections are very short and there is nothing in them except some logically chunked labels with very little elaboration or description. There is slightly more description in section 4, expanding on section 3, but almost all of section 4 is devoted to describing why the classical blocks (or maybe the L-elements, I can't really tell) are either aristocratic or democratic in nature. In any case, neither of these sections appear to pertain to the Structure of Model L. So in conclusion, no part of Model L is quadral, so it does not not by definition belong in Western Socionics.

Model L was not built with an isomorphism to the intertype relations in mind. Instead, it was built with an isomorphism to the Reinin dichotomies in mind, each L-function maps to a unique Reinin dichotomy (or equivalently and without loss of generality to the Tencer dichotomies). The Reinin dichotomies are shown in sections 9 and 10 of "Socionics Tweaks." More specifically, section 9 defines the Reinin dichotomies as Model L function dichotomies, and section 10 defines these same dichotomies over the socionics types and therefore these are literally Reinin dichotomies although the section is entitled something else for some reason. These sections are confusing because the Reinin dichotomies, as well as the Reinin equivalent L-function dichotomies, are all given different names than the usual conventional names used to describe Reinin dichotomies. This attitude of renaming established terms with no explanation and little description, which clearly reflects logical chunking, is a pervasive disease throughout the entire "Socionics Tweaks" document. The new names and short, insubstantial descriptions, certainly do nothing to promote any practical understanding of socionics, and like the Reinin dichotomies before them, do not very clearly apply to the types to which they purport to describe. Let's look at one example, the Anticipatory/Circumspect dichotomy, which is exactly the Carefree/Farsighted Reinin dichotomy. In a hyperlink from "Socionics Tweaks", the carefree (circumspect) typyes are described as having their "sphere of focus be largely spatial, whether focusing on actual or possible conditions", and the farsighted types are instead described as having the "perceptual sphere be largely temporal, whether of eventual or imminent occurrences." This is obviously very abstract, and it is not explained what it means to have a temporally focused attention on "imminent occurrences," as attributed to the ESXX types, like the erstwhile example type LSE. The definition is so abstract and so vague that it could really be rationalized to apply either way to any type. There is a name for the effect where people misattribute highly vague features to themselves: The Forer effect, or Barnum effect. The kind of definition that triggers the Barnum effect has a name too: garbage.

Throughout the entirety of "Socionics Tweaks" there are really only three things that appear to receive any significant quantity descriptive attention beyond logically chunked labels, or one sentence abstract descriptions (instead these features have short paragraphs of abstract descriptions that are still too complicated to understand). These are, dual-seeking pairs of IM elements, "co-dimensional function pairs" (in other words, unordered and ordered skew blocks when in the 1=8 or 1+8 position), and L-functions. The Reinin dichotomies and L-elements are not sufficiently well described (at least, I couldn't find any detailed description of L-elements) to qualify for this category of description, despite their fundamental importance in Model L. So, as I said at the outset, there is not that much to talk about in Model L that makes any sense, since the entire model is so abstract and the explanation consists of so much abstract garbage and many tables of diagrams pointing out Reinin structure, the same Reinin structure that I have previously called meaningless.

In his presentation about Model L on Jack's channel, Kimani discusses that there is a significant point of departure between Model A and Model L, in that the asymmetrical intertype relations are now symmetrical in Model L. This is an odd claim, which is not published in "Socionics Tweaks" as far as I can see. Because it's unpublished and not very elaborated in the presentation, I am not sure exactly what is being claimed, but in the video, Kimanis states that instead of supervisors projecting onto a supervisee's vulnerable function, both supervisors in Model L project into one another's negligent functions, which is function C2 in Model L. As such it is actually the radial orbitals themselves that are asymmetrical. In order for this intertype relation to be symmetrical, the C2 functions must consist of different block functions. In other words, the LSE has Te(S) as its leading L-function and it's supervisee SEI has as it's leading L-function Si(F). Therefore in order for these L-elements to be in the C2 position, the C2 position must consist of the 2+3 and 2+5 blocks for the LSE, and 4+1 and 4+7 for the SEI. At first, I thought this was so absurd that it was a mistake, but upon further researching the issue, I see that this is actually true in Model L. In section 9, it describes that the B ordinal always is the club with the same rationality as the type, and the C ordinal is the club with the same irrational axis as the type. For example, the LSE, an ST type, has the NT club as its B ordinal and SF as the C ordinal. While this does make supervision symmetrical, it leads to some bizarre properties. As one example, kindred types no longer always have the same relations with each other. The LSE is kindred to the LIE, and these types have each other's base L-function as B1. However, the SLI and SEI are kindred, and these types have each other's base function as C1. Therefore these types have different intertype relations with each other in Model L. I guess the reason for this change is that it makes the Reinin math work better, but it makes the block math broken. These differences in intertype relations, in fact suggest that Model L is not compatible with Model A from classical socionics, in contrast to Kimani's frequent and presumptuous claims that Model L is fully backwards compatible. It is possible that Kimani would acknowledge this. By the way, since there is not a single example of a type and all of its L-functions with the correct L-elements in "Socionics Tweaks", it was rather hard to understand the L-functions on the radial ordinals. The fact that there is no example of any type with all of its L-functions fully listed is a remarkable omission, and speaks both to the eccentricity of the model and to Kimani's negligence as a communicator. 

Does Model L come with any examples or cases? "Socionics Tweaks" doesn't refer to any examples or cases nor does Kimani have any publically facing typing work, at all, let alone typing work where he discusses or applies Model L. I had a couple of (contentious) conversations with Kimani, and he suggested a couple of examples of his typing work, including seeing Elon Musk as ILE, and Dan Tubb as LIE, the latter case one where he disagreed with Jack, who typed Tubb as ILE. In my view Elon Musk is clearly LIE and I looked at the linked interview for Tubb, who seems to me clearly a beta ST and not LIE or ILE, my typing is SLE. So, despite a small sample size, I find the application of Model L to casework filled with club and dimensionality stereotypes, and wholly unimpressive. Overall, public typing work, whether of famous people or ordinary people, does not seem to be a priority for Kimani in lieu of continuing to produce more hyper-abstracted written modeling.

In summary, Model L is extremely bad. The creation of a 16 element model is not bad. The design choice to emphasize clubs and dimensionality is bad, and a step away from western socionics. The design choice to make L-elements a combination of two blocks instead of one block is bad and bizarre. The design choice to emphasize the isomorphism between functions and Reinin dichotomies is extremely bad. The design choice to make ordinals vary (ie, their blocks from Model A16 are different) depending on the rationality of the type is very bad and very bizarre. The descriptive quality of "Socionics Tweaks" is extremely bad, all of the descriptions in the document are extremely vague and empty of meaning. The lack of focus on practical typing from practitioners of model L is unfortunate, although common. The sample of typing work of famous people that I have seen from Kimani is bad, although of small sample size. There is no positive feature or redeeming quality in Model L.