Examples of Ni

A concrete example that happened yesterday:

I was going on a bus to another town to visit my parents. After getting on and finding my seat I suddenly became very conscious of whether I had my ticket with me in case of inspection. It was very unusual because:
- an actual inspection have happened just some three times in a period of 10 years.
- thus I never think about it.

And when the inspection did come at the next stop I was mysteriously smiling while handing the ticket.
 
One night after watching a show on black holes, I got a vague idea in the back of my head. For some reason, I was thinking about the big bang - what it was, what caused it to happen, the idea of inflation (of the universe), and about the fundamental laws of our universe. I also thought about the multi-verse theory, which states that there are many different universes all co-existing. These ideas meshed together into one system for thinking about the universe, the core of which stated: Black holes spawn universes.

This was about.... a year or two ago. Recently I decided to test my theory out, and I told one of my very knowledgeable friends about this theory. He pointed me to this story, and told me that even Steven Hawking thought that this could be true. I was quite pleased with my introverted intuition. :)
 
cazandria said:
One night after watching a show on black holes, I got a vague idea in the back of my head. For some reason, I was thinking about the big bang - what it was, what caused it to happen, the idea of inflation (of the universe), and about the fundamental laws of our universe. I also thought about the multi-verse theory, which states that there are many different universes all co-existing. These ideas meshed together into one system for thinking about the universe, the core of which stated: Black holes spawn universes.

This was about.... a year or two ago. Recently I decided to test my theory out, and I told one of my very knowledgeable friends about this theory. He pointed me to this story, and told me that even Steven Hawking thought that this could be true. I was quite pleased with my introverted intuition. :)
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The same conclusion came to me about a year ago, but it was in the form of a dream. I saw our universe emerging from a black hole.
 
Jungian Trip said:
The same conclusion came to me about a year ago, but it was in the form of a dream. I saw our universe emerging from a black hole.
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It makes so much sense. It explains so much! I want it so badly to be true, I feel it, the system works...
 
Jungian Trip said:
The same conclusion came to me about a year ago, but it was in the form of a dream. I saw our universe emerging from a black hole.
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Whilst perhaps not a scientifically useful idea, there is certainly much to learn from this in terms of archetypes of the collective unconscious.
 
When a member on this forum thought it was smart to PM me while frantically double dealing behind my back and in full view of others as well as picking a fight with some very good friends of mine; I knew in that instant that they were not an Ni dom as they declare.

In the meantime while I was cobbling together what exactly was going on Ni played a crucial part at me keeping them at arms length because it makes wonderful tea-leaves in such situations.

Ni after it has done its job properly! -> :m027:

I wonder if they sussed out that I could see everything they were up to when I called them on it here :D
 
Artsu Tharaz said:
Whilst perhaps not a scientifically useful idea, there is certainly much to learn from this in terms of archetypes of the collective unconscious.
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Of course for it to be scientific in any sense it would need calculated research, but I wouldn't say it is useless to science.

I am in agreement with the latter part, however. The archetypes are fascinating. I am interested in how the idea may translate into neuroscience- all the cf for that matter. In August I am supposed to talk the the head of a Interdisciplinary (Biology, Psychology, Philosophy) Neuroscience department about joining their Ph.D program in Neuropsychological Research in the fall of 2012. Though we have briefly spoken together about neurotheology, I am interested to hear what he thinks about research possibilities in Jungian cognitive functions.
 
A concrete example I've been analyzing now for several years deals with music:

I've played an instrument for more than half my life (guitar) and have been around lots of other musicians as well. I can honestly say, there is a certain divide in thinking between us (Introverts, not Extroverts for this argument).

On one side of this "line" you have the Intuitive musicians and on the other, you have the Sensing musicians. The Intuitives would be the types that can pick up an instrument, mess around with it for a while on their own, figure out how to make notes come out and then piece them together in a song.

The Sensing musicians need to take it step by step and read notation, learn the theory and practice the scales before they're ready to try creating a song.

Other than the musical styles, this is the difference between someone like Yo Yo Ma (sensing) and Jimi Hendrix (Intuitive). I know I've always had a "deficit" when it came to learning the technical aspect of music, I can pick up a guitar and just start playing a song but if you give me paper and notes, I get lost. My wife is the exact opposite on violin, she can read and play nearly anything if it's written out on the paper for her, but can't just pick it up and play something without seeing it in writing.
 
How to Spot an Ni Dominant

I'm going to let you into a big secret regarding the Ni dominant and it's all to do with the Se anima.

Ni dominants can often have a highly visceral reactionary status to changes in their environment especially when they lose trust in their environment. Outside of only a very few people who claim to be Ni dominant I have not found anyone who understand the disastrously unsettling nature of out of control changes in the environment and the warm sticky glue feeling when something sticks satisfactorily. It's always easy to spot the false Ni doms when you see their reaction to people undergoing this state.

With regards to losing trust in the environment or having to exist in an environment which is shifting under your feet, there is only one thing to do at such a time. Grab it by both hands and steer it regardless of direction; somewhat akin to falling down the stairs.

Do not worry, there is nothing unnatural that you may have missed this or the reasons for it; it is generally ignored on typology forums because Ni dominants actually slip from them due to the constantly unsettling and shifting environs; this tends to lead to most very attitude differentiated Ni users not hanging around to discuss it in depth.

The only documented and established way to keep an Ni dominant calm and placid without them crawling up the walls with stress is to ensure that any changes to their environment are entirely organic. Forced change will have a highly visceral reaction especially if it is sudden and without earlier signs that things would move in that direction to allow their brain to mentally process and accept those changes.
 
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I apologize, everyone. I am still learning. This thread is extremely helpful for me. Thank you.
 
InvisibleJim said:
I'm going to let you into a big secret regarding the Ni dominant and it's all to do with the Se anima.

Ni dominants can often have a highly visceral reactionary status to changes in their environment especially when they lose trust in their environment. Outside of only a very few people who claim to be Ni dominant I have not found anyone who understand the disastrously unsettling nature of out of control changes in the environment and the warm sticky glue feeling when something sticks satisfactorily. It's always easy to spot the false Ni doms when you see their reaction to people undergoing this state.

With regards to losing trust in the environment or having to exist in an environment which is shifting under your feet, there is only one thing to do at such a time. Grab it by both hands and steer it regardless of direction; somewhat akin to falling down the stairs.

Do not worry, there is nothing unnatural that you may have missed this or the reasons for it; it is generally ignored on typology forums because Ni dominants actually slip from them due to the constantly unsettling and shifting environs; this tends to lead to most very attitude differentiated Ni users not hanging around to discuss it in depth.

The only documented and established way to keep an Ni dominant calm and placid without them crawling up the walls with stress is to ensure that any changes to their environment are entirely organic. Forced change will have a highly visceral reaction especially if it is sudden and without earlier signs that things would move in that direction to allow their brain to mentally process and accept those changes.
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This is the reason that Ni dominants fall victim of not going out of their comfort zones because change to them destroys their hard working framework of reality. It takes time to understand your environment because on top of taking in the physical stimuli of that environment you're also analyzing on all of the different perspectives of how to deal with the experience.

For example, I always eat at the same restaurant because I already know all the exits from it, I know that no one I know will eat at that restaurant, and I also know what shifts each employee works in. Maybe this is trivial information to the outsider, but to me, every piece of detail I can get out the situation, the more I can do with it. I can draw a general picture of how things will play out on such and such occasion.

However, the ideal thing would be to experience every kind of environment to expand on Ni's framework and get a more global perspective of how things are being played out.
 
AUM said:
This is the reason that Ni dominants fall victim of not going out of their comfort zones because change to them destroys their hard working framework of reality. It takes time to understand your environment because on top of taking in the physical stimuli of that environment you're also analyzing on all of the different perspectives of how to deal with the experience.

For example, I always eat at the same restaurant because I already know all the exits from it, I know that no one I know will eat at that restaurant, and I also know what shifts each employee works in. Maybe this is trivial information to the outsider, but to me, every piece of detail I can get out the situation, the more I can do with it. I can draw a general picture of how things will play out on such and such occasion.

However, the ideal thing would be to experience every kind of environment to expand on Ni's framework and get a more global perspective of how things are being played out.
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Because of the very things you and Jim are talking about, one of my INTP pals thought I was an ISTJ for quite some time. She associates that with Si.
 
This happened to me the other day, and it at least seems like Ni. I dunno. It's fuzzy for me too. But the descriptions seem to fit it...

The other day I suddenly remembered a scene from some sort of story. I couldn't remember where it came from. I wasn't sure if it was book or TV or movie or a memory or a dream. I figured it was from a book, as I could remember all the ways the author had described the scene and such. I kept thinking about it and I was going to give up and just ask my friend who read often, and immediately I knew what book it came from.

(Please tell me if this is Ni or just me unburying a memory somehow!)
 
Jungian Trip said:
Because of the very things you and Jim are talking about, one of my INTP pals thought I was an ISTJ for quite some time. She associates that with Si.
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Superficially, indeed, they do look alike. Ni has nothing intuitive or mystic as many people portray, on the contrary, it's a very left-hemispheric brain function, unlike Ne. Many people say, "I just know...", but it's not really that they "just know", what they're doing is interpreting past information and interpreting it from many different angles. When an event does occur, that event matched with one of the interpretations from the past experience.

There's this site that gives a more detailed view of this:

Ni is orienting yourself by an explicit representation of the mapping between signs and meaning. For example, "This dark-stained mahogany table is supposed to make me think the owner is upper-class" or "We put north at the top of maps (rather than, say, the bottom or the right), because northern countries traditionally had more power, and we perceive 'higher on the page' to mean 'more important'." From an Ni standpoint, one doesn't feel oriented until one can articulate explicitly what are the signs one is supposed to look at and what are the meanings one is supposed to take from them.
Because the mental space that Ni "lives in" is the world of all possible ways of mapping signs to meanings, Ni leads you to consider not only the accepted ways of mapping signs to meanings, but others. For example, why couldn't dark-stained mahogany mean "lower class"? For example, what if instead of viewing failing a test as an occasion for shame, we viewed it as an occasion for celebration? How might our lives change if we merely rewired the interpretations we are giving to things?
An Ni perspective leads one to seek out the leverage points of any system. What is triggering what? What "good faith" assumptions are being made, and what would happen if those assumptions were violated? For example, ants "interpret" certain pheromones as "meaning" that something is a larva that needs to be fed. Some parasites have evolved the ability to give off these same pheromones, triggering the ants to feed them. The parasites have found a way to game the system by exploiting its assumptions. The parasites don't orient by Ni, of course, but this kind of analysis takes an Ni approach. One can apply this same kind of analysis to almost anything: looking at a system not through the lens of "how it's supposed to work", but from outside the system, merely characterizing how it converts a sign into an interpretation, triggering a cascade of behaviors.
Lenore characterizes Ni as "about the box" as opposed to Extraverted Intuition's "outside the box". That is, an Ni orientation leads you to describe the assumptions and rules that a given system of thought or perception is following.
Ni on this perspective is a decidedly left-brain orientation. It doesn't lead you to flow with anything or even participate. It leads you to stop, get "into your head", and even act in ways that go against the spirit of a system, or to think about ways that going with the spirit of rules can lead to unexpected and undesired results.
In contrast to most other definitions, this one has nothing mysterious or particularly "intuitive" about it. Ni on this definition is simply a matter of looking at things from a "meta" perspective, explicitly characterizing how signs are getting mapped to meanings. This simple definition, combined with the idea of ego-orientation, explains the many standard observations about NJs and SPs: the "commenting from an outside perspective" usually seen in INJs, the coldly "objective, impersonal" style usually seen in INTJs, the interest in pointing out that social myths exist to support power structures usually seen in INFJs, the interest in gaming a system or throwing a monkey wrench into it usually seen in SPs, the seeking of the social "cat-bird seat" usually seen in ENJs, the endless levels of meta-discussion found in INJ-filled academia, etc.
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Source
 
Yes. It is very imprtant that people consider exactly what it means to have this Ni regime in the ego and worse yet, the corresponding Se switch in the Anima/Animus. Otherwise it is impossible to jive with them. For a very strong show of how even subtle things can have destructive consequences to relational stability when it appears someone has moved Ni's Se goalposts see the rep bar changes. More importantly think about the individuals who showed distinct Ni and who did not. There are your INFJs.
 
AUM said:
Superficially, indeed, they do look alike. Ni has nothing intuitive or mystic as many people portray, on the contrary, it's a very left-hemispheric brain function, unlike Ne. Many people say, "I just know...", but it's not really that they "just know", what they're doing is interpreting past information and interpreting it from many different angles. When an event does occur, that event matched with one of the interpretations from the past experience.

There's this site that gives a more detailed view of this:



Source
Click to expand...


That makes much more sense. The mystical orientation or "just knowing" is what made me disassociate myself with INTJ for a long time, thinking myself INTP. Looking at the functions helped me since I'm inclined to Te over Ti, Fi over Fe and Se over Si. The problem for me was in how many sites clumped mysterious, mystical gnostic-type understanding with Ni.

Nice addition, AUM.
 
[MENTION=1814]invisible[/MENTION] Jim You mentioned that Ni doms don't really want change/don't enjoy it much. So, do you think that once an Ni dom decides to change, they will completely rework their perception of what they're reworking (i.e. their life)?

I'm not so sure about resisting change though because I feel like Ni is quite dynamic. I guess that may have more to do with the functions that follow it though.
 
bickelz said:
[MENTION=1814]invisible[/MENTION] Jim You mentioned that Ni doms don't really want change/don't enjoy it much. So, do you think that once an Ni dom decides to change, they will completely rework their perception of what they're reworking (i.e. their life)?

I'm not so sure about resisting change though because I feel like Ni is quite dynamic. I guess that may have more to do with the functions that follow it though.
Click to expand...

Change needs to be organic; through growth; not the application of new paint. Otherwise it's a corruption of the same old.
 
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