What is positivism-negativism, and where does its semantic content come from?

Since Talanov introduced questim-declatim functions, positivism-negativism has become somewhat clearer.

In essence, positivism is the inertness of declatim functions (Di and De), while negativism is the inertness of questim functions (Qi and Qe).

The main content of questimity-declatimity apparently consists in the fact that declatims work toward achieving consensus, establishing a social norm, and the simplification of conceptions inevitably associated with this, whereas questims work toward the divergence of opinions, their deviation from the norm, and their increasing complexity. At least, conflict in relationships with other people arises considerably more frequently among questims, and this is quite explicable in these terms.

The inertness of a function means that the subject becomes fixated on its aspect. Why does this happen? Apparently because the inertness of a function is, in essence, the deviation of its value from the average norm in the population. The deviation may be positive (excessive strength) or negative (excessive weakness); this does not matter here, only the absolute magnitude of the deviation matters. Any excessively large deviation gives the person possessing the function rare beneficial properties, but at the same time also gives them harmful ones, which may lead to social maladjustment. Monitoring the aspect of this function therefore becomes a very important matter for the person. If the function is strong, the aspect is monitored because it is constantly engaged and the subject relies on it too much; if it is weak, because the subject is too vulnerable in this aspect and has to expend effort in order always to be able to evade other people’s activity in it. Both produce fixation.

Positivism is fixation on declatimity, that is, on consensus opinions. Types with strong inert declatimity, ESE, LSI, LIE, and EII, work toward consensus, toward the convergence and simplification of opinions. Types with weak inert declatimity, SEE, SLI, ILE, and IEI, conversely, need an absence of consensus in order to have room to maneuver (and often they themselves destroy this consensus through their own actions).

Negativism, in turn, is fixation on questimity, on norm-destabilizing deviance in oneself and other people. Types with strong inert questimity, LII, EIE, ESI, and LSE, tend to complicate everything within their area of competence (associated with club values), creating deviations from the customary norm. Types with weak inert questimity, ILI, IEE, SEI, and SLE, conversely, in theory, suffer when everything is too complicated; they would prefer things to be simpler, closer to the norm. They therefore monitor deviations in order to combat them.

Since deviations from the norm, as I have already said above, are not harmless and often lead to maladjustment, a person fixated on deviations will, in essence, be on the lookout for all sorts of unhealthy features in the world, and their mood will deteriorate as a result. This is also why negativism becomes associated with depressive melancholy, whereas positivism is associated with a tendency toward euphoria.

However, on the other hand, the perspective of a negativist will be broader than that of a positivist, since the norm is something narrower. Thus, for example, credulity, naivety, and a tendency to fall for fraudsters’ ploys are to some extent associated with positivism. High intelligence, in turn, correlates with negativism, albeit very weakly. Judging by Talanov’s statistics, negativists are also somewhat more likely than average to experience malice and hatred, directed at someone in particular or taking the form of global misanthropy.

If anyone undertakes to type people using this trait, I would point out that it is quite usable. However, its range is nevertheless small, and it is therefore susceptible to the influence of other, stronger dichotomies. Specifically, ethics, judiciousness, and irrationality reinforce positivism, whereas logic, decisiveness, and rationality reinforce negativism. I therefore do not recommend using it to identify types such as IEE, SEI, LSI, and LIE. - As it turned out later, LIE can, after all, be identified this way [author’s note, 07.2026].