How acutely aware are you of your Ni?

[Happy Phantom]

My Ni is better than yours, and I'm not even INFJ

 

[Wyote]

I forget what they're called.

Sentinels

 

[Ginny]

@Ginny


Actually that's a fairly accurate way of describing it - Ni will comfort zone itself (and take over) whenever I'm not in any "new people" situations (at least at present with avpd calling the shots) but as soon as this changes Se will abruptly take over and it becomes an avoidant trigger - there is either very "corrupted" memory of events at this point or sometimes no memory at all until Ni picks up again. Loop I guess referring to its repeating nature.

I see one situation, described by the two different stages of stress - not a loop, more like you're stuck in quicksand, which makes you reactive as soon as something comes at you. A loop would be described as two functions working in tandem at the same time. I'd just say that you seem to be on edge the whole time, and the group setting increases your stress levels, so that you act differently. Not everything repetetive is a loop, just another kind of noticeable pattern. Loops are ongoing and independent of whatever situation you are in. It's different for each type how they get in or out of it, there is probably also an individual component. But there is a sense of perpetuity about them, which makes them difficult to shake off (unless you have a stimulus that activates a different function).

Take some time to relax. Or allow yourself to have a specific time frame each day to unwind. It'll get better.

 

[jkxx]

Yes, this actually makes more sense than how I was thinking of it up to now. Also will look into the definition of loops a bit more since the concept is clearly something else with them. Usually once it gets set off, the "current condition" of the quicksand state remains stable until I get in touch with one of my close friends who helps me shake it off but then it's fine. I think it ultimately has to do with a combination of the overall perception of Se itself as well as that function being strong in the personality despite being an inferior. I do think it will get better since the Uranus-Sun transit is exact right now, so at least in this instance the craziness should subside over the next few weeks.

 

[ZcM4xzkjgzCjytBc]

High on Ni

 

[John K]

Interested in Ni... wizardry.

INFJs - How acutely aware are you of it? What does it do for you? How does it affect your life? How does it "come off" to others?

Ni happens to me in several different ways. One way, I’ll get a feeling about something - or perhaps a sudden linking of two apparently unrelated things that seem unexpectedly to complement each other. For example, I’ve been following a particular INFJ blogger I admire for the last few weeks; it suddenly struck me last week that he reminded me very much of a local and very ESTP guide that took me round a small Scottish Island for a day tour last year. To find out why this sort of unlikely match should occur to me isn’t clear at first and takes me some work – Ti mainly to start off with. It’s as if I’ve got an elephant-of-the-mind in a dark shed, like in the Buddhist parable, and my Ti is blind and can only use touch to find out about it. I can hear and smell that there is something large in there, but I have to go all round it and feel it with Ti to begin to understand it properly and consciously. Sadly, I never know when to stop and I’ll analyse it to death given half a chance. And then getting the results out to anyone else is another thing completely – I’ll know eventually what the elephant is like, to the 10th degree probably, but most people aren’t too tolerant of a long walk round the beast, particularly when we get to the tail end. Fe or Te should help is the usual advice, but alas …….. for me not always successful.

Another way – I’ll get an image of something and it can be quite poetic, mystical even. Once I “saw” the universe from the outside, as a complete thing, all of time and space rolled up into a single rose on a long stem, gorgeous, spectral, eerie, monochrome. Everything is dark around it. It is alive, it is complete in both time and space and it is full of purpose which is fulfilled by its very nature. It is not the only rose, there are many of them laid out in cultivated rows. There is a planter - I can’t see the planter but everything is glowing with “his/her/its” presence. How can I talk about it properly, because language needs time and this is outside time and contains all of time and space within it, and that is only a small part of it, and I am enraptured, unnerved, disturbed, privileged - and I would not have missed this for a fortune in gold. It is a perception, a bit like seeing - it’s not a thought or an idea. It hits me in the face as a single image event, not spread out into a narrative like this description has to be - the words I use to (sort of) describe it come from Ti and Fe processing, I think. I experience quite a lot of insights expressed pictorially or metaphorically, mostly much less mystical and much more grounded than this one. They usually show me a broader, synthesised view of something I am interested in, or perhaps a quirky fresh angle on it. Maybe a way to relate to this is to remember and work at apprehending a striking dream image you have had, but that isn’t quite the same.

Sometimes Ni for me is like being in a very noisy party, bar or café for hours. For example, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and there is a barrage of images, hopes, fears, worries, joys, things I should have said to some jerk 15 years ago, desires, things to do, guilt about something I did when I was a child 50 or 60 odd years ago, answers to life the universe and everything – all rushing together and I can’t shut them out. For me, Sudoku helps quieten things down. This experience is very humbling because without it I wouldn’t realise how easily Ni can generate a complete load of bollocks. Too much people contact, particularly in groups, has a similar sort of effect on me – eventually I can’t shut out the noise they make in my head, and can’t process it properly.

That reminds me – Ni provides a brilliant bullshit detector if it’s trained properly. Trouble is there is so much of it about my detector keeps getting overloaded.

Before I retired, I was a middle manager in the computer systems department of a large multi-national. Our user department was highly technical, and the computing technology highly specialised – all at the cutting edge of what was possible. I couldn’t hope to have in-depth knowledge of all the necessary details and theory, but Ni was great at picking up broad and accurate big picture models from just some of the details and I specialised in being a generalist. I experienced it very much like in the first example I gave above, but on a much broader and deeper front. It was more like having a whole a herd of elephants, developing over many years and several generations, and moving about on a large territory. I fed it and evolved it with a constant loop, back and forward, from particulars to the general, and from the ideas to the concrete results. To do this I used a lot of Ti, but, primarily and much more importantly, I used a lot of interaction with people, individually and in teams, through all the extraverted functions. It seems pretty obvious to me that anyone doing the same sort of job needs to use Ni, but they need to use several other MBTI functions competently as well: it is no more or less important than those - so of course there were managers of other type preferences who did the job successfully, but differently than me, and used Ni even if they didn’t realise it. The people I saw struggling to some extent in my particular combination of circumstances were dominant S types - but then I could get blown out with inferior Se if I tried to take in too much new stuff at a time.

I’ve got quite a few other herds of elephants that I’ve farmed down the decades, though some of them are perhaps woolly mammoths, or even triceratopses.

As I write this, it occurs to me that everyone must use Ni very proficiently to live in their world – the sum total of their language, family life, community, society, political persuasion, religious outlook, everyday technology etc, etc. We must all have a model of our world inside our heads that we take completely for granted and which we are not usually very conscious of. From infancy to old age, we are constantly refining it, using it, getting feedback and modifying it - without it, day to day life would be impossible. We don’t need to think about using it consciously, it’s just automatic. I notice mine most of all when I’m put into a situation that doesn’t fit my everyday world view. When I first started visiting the USA on business trips, for example (I come from England), I remember yelling down the corridor to our US PA for a rubber, and got some funny looks till I was taken aside and told gently that what I wanted are called erasers over there. More seriously, it is weird forcing yourself against all your instincts to check to the left first, not to the right, when you step off the pavement (sorry …. sidewalk!).

I’ve gone to town a bit on this haven’t I – and I’d like very much to thank you for your question which feels like you held up a mirror for me to see myself in. Does it sound like I have put a lot of thought and effort into this over a long period of time? I haven’t – I have only realised this lot about myself as I attempted to answer your question, though on the other hand it feels like I’ve known it for years. I love metasystems and recursivity – the idea of turning Ni back on itself to see what kind of an elephant it is seems like a lot of fun to me, but what do you call the faculty that sits outside this process and watches it? MetaNi? My job brought me into contact with many people like yourself with an INTP preference, and I really enjoyed working with them. When you have two people with a playful streak, sparking insights off each other, one a dominant Ti and the other a dominant Ni, the Ni/Ti interactions I described above can be very entertaining and much more effective than doing it solo. Could that possibly be a way you could get closer to experiencing Ni yourself?

And now you can see what I mean when I say my Ti happily analyses my Ni to death. I’ve let it do so in this case and wandered all around my own Ni Elephant “out loud” so that I can show you sort of how it plays out in my head. I’d better stop before we get under that elephant’s tail for too long and I risk triggering everyone else’s bullshit detectors on this site ……….

 

[mintoots]

The Ni moment to me is a moment of absolute clarity. I just know and yet i don't have too much to prove it with. Sometimes it's annoying because i feel so certain but because i have no rational evidence to back it up, i will never react to it or actively do something about despite feeling certain but not knowing so. But i just know.

This is another question to fellow INFJs, has the Ni ever played out much in choosing your spouse or partner or when meeting significant important people in your life? Do you ever meet people and say, "ah this one is going to mark a dent in my life for sure" without much proof? Were you ever mistaken as in nothing came out of the hunch?

 

[hauteur]

For me, Ni shows up in a few different ways. And, believe it or not, I think it feels more pronounced when I'm with other people. I notice it happening more - maybe because I feel like I need to keep a tighter rein on it. If I just jump out there with the conclusion, I get blank stares or flat out disagreement more often than not. I was also thinking that I might tend to use Ti more when I'm by myself. I'm thinking and analyzing in combination with Ni rather than just intuiting what is going on around me. I don't know.

When I do notice it, I think it comes in a variety of forms. The first one has more to do with processing - just in the way that I think if I'm not using my Ti. I can move around what I think of as "concept blocks." It's like having a box that represents some thing. It could be an idea or a system or a subject area - pretty much anything that can be represented as an abstract high level version of itself. It's like being able to think about the thing without worrying about the details of it - they are all safely inside. If I need to think about the details, I can zoom in on it and look at what's inside. I know that's kind of weird and metaphysical, but I can't think of a different way to describe it.

When I am thinking that way, it can be super hard to describe what I'm thinking to anyone. People I'm talking to don't take those blocks for granted the way that I do, so I have to figure out how to translate my thinking into words in a way that gives them more specificity than I need. The less familiar the ground I'm on, the harder that is to do.

Another way that Ni shows up for me is almost as weird. It's like being able to look at a number of different variables and then fast forward in time to predict an outcome or even rewind to see a cause. It's really uncanny when this happens because I tend to feel pretty certain about either the future or the past. I get a really clear picture of what was or will be. This one is the hardest for me to understand how I do it or how it works. It's also the hardest for other people to accept. They often can't see the future I see no matter how I try to explain it. And then if I'm right (which, to me, seems pretty often), the people I told about it seem to have no recollection or think it was just by chance.

Ni can also show up in a way that is similar to the puzzle analogy someone brought up earlier. I think of it kind of like one of those games (I think there is a game show for it) where you are shown bits of a picture, one bit at a time, until you can guess it. Or maybe like "Wheel of Fortune" or "Hangman" where you get parts of the word without the guessing. Ugh, these are so hard to explain. The idea is that I can see lots of bits and pieces that may or may not be actually related, and then I can draw conclusions based on them. This one is almost like a combination of the other two, and I think it is basically that idea of knowing the answer without knowing why. You just kind of put the pieces together and get it.

There's also the whole "aha" think that people talk about, but I don't experience that as much. It does happen, but it's not a normal occurrence. Well almost. Sometimes if I have a problem I'm having a hard time solving, I like to walk away. Maybe overnight. When I come back, it is usually ten times easier to solve. Or it will come to me when I'm not thinking about it. I guess it does happen, but it is more of a thing where you don't know what or why or how, it just is. It's like remembering something you had forgotten. I don't know. This all sounds super weird when you write it out.

What about you guys? Does this line up for you? Do you also feel like it is more active or noticeable when you are in a group setting? Could that be Fe?

 

[John K]

For me, Ni shows up in a few different ways. And, believe it or not, I think it feels more pronounced when I'm with other people. I notice it happening more - maybe because I feel like I need to keep a tighter rein on it. If I just jump out there with the conclusion, I get blank stares or flat out disagreement more often than not. I was also thinking that I might tend to use Ti more when I'm by myself. I'm thinking and analyzing in combination with Ni rather than just intuiting what is going on around me. I don't know.

When I do notice it, I think it comes in a variety of forms. The first one has more to do with processing - just in the way that I think if I'm not using my Ti. I can move around what I think of as "concept blocks." It's like having a box that represents some thing. It could be an idea or a system or a subject area - pretty much anything that can be represented as an abstract high level version of itself. It's like being able to think about the thing without worrying about the details of it - they are all safely inside. If I need to think about the details, I can zoom in on it and look at what's inside. I know that's kind of weird and metaphysical, but I can't think of a different way to describe it.

When I am thinking that way, it can be super hard to describe what I'm thinking to anyone. People I'm talking to don't take those blocks for granted the way that I do, so I have to figure out how to translate my thinking into words in a way that gives them more specificity than I need. The less familiar the ground I'm on, the harder that is to do.

Another way that Ni shows up for me is almost as weird. It's like being able to look at a number of different variables and then fast forward in time to predict an outcome or even rewind to see a cause. It's really uncanny when this happens because I tend to feel pretty certain about either the future or the past. I get a really clear picture of what was or will be. This one is the hardest for me to understand how I do it or how it works. It's also the hardest for other people to accept. They often can't see the future I see no matter how I try to explain it. And then if I'm right (which, to me, seems pretty often), the people I told about it seem to have no recollection or think it was just by chance.

Ni can also show up in a way that is similar to the puzzle analogy someone brought up earlier. I think of it kind of like one of those games (I think there is a game show for it) where you are shown bits of a picture, one bit at a time, until you can guess it. Or maybe like "Wheel of Fortune" or "Hangman" where you get parts of the word without the guessing. Ugh, these are so hard to explain. The idea is that I can see lots of bits and pieces that may or may not be actually related, and then I can draw conclusions based on them. This one is almost like a combination of the other two, and I think it is basically that idea of knowing the answer without knowing why. You just kind of put the pieces together and get it.

There's also the whole "aha" think that people talk about, but I don't experience that as much. It does happen, but it's not a normal occurrence. Well almost. Sometimes if I have a problem I'm having a hard time solving, I like to walk away. Maybe overnight. When I come back, it is usually ten times easier to solve. Or it will come to me when I'm not thinking about it. I guess it does happen, but it is more of a thing where you don't know what or why or how, it just is. It's like remembering something you had forgotten. I don't know. This all sounds super weird when you write it out.

What about you guys? Does this line up for you? Do you also feel like it is more active or noticeable when you are in a group setting? Could that be Fe?

Hi @hauteur, I thought this was really great, and I’d like to compare notes if you don’t mind.

I know what you mean about concept blocks – one way this happens to me is a little bit like the way we treat unknown values in maths (my university degree subject). For example, if I’m reading about a difficult concept and come across a bit that I don’t understand fully, say in science or philosophy, I seem to be able to section out the challenging bit subconsciously, give it an “x” label, carry on anyway and still grasp the overall picture keeping the “x” as an unknown. The “x” bit then very often pops out downstream with a feeling of “of course!”- these days I can’t usually be bothered with the hassle of turning that feeling into something that would convince anyone else, but that’s the privilege of being retired I suppose.

I do get feelings about the future or past, but they seem to work on an eschatological scale which is not a very nice thing to discuss in polite company, so I don’t. For example, I know that “Western Civilisation” will come to an end in two or three generations, and will be replaced. It’s run it’s course and is pretty long in the tooth now, so this is a natural process and is to be embraced. Don’t ask me why or how. But what the hell do I do with this sort of thing??? Best to keep quiet, except in this sort of context.

That bit about filling the gaps in the puzzle I find really interesting. Maybe that’s where the Achilles’ heel of Ni can best be seen, because if you have too few dots you can fit a lot of very different pictures to them, a lot of them completely wrong. Maybe that’s where my end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it feelings have come from.

The ah-ha bit comes to me as metaphors or visual images very often, out of the blue. For example, it struck me once that the researcher computer users I was supporting in a large pharma needed the computer system equivalent of mountain bikes, not the national railway system that corporate computing were building (didn’t help – if you push it this way your colleagues start looking up funny farms on the internet).

 

[Ginny]

I do get feelings about the future or past, but they seem to work on an eschatological scale which is not a very nice thing to discuss in polite company, so I don’t. For example, I know that “Western Civilisation” will come to an end in two or three generations, and will be replaced.

I feel it too, but it may come sooner rather than later. Current events are tumbling ever faster, making it difficult to pin down the time exactly, but change will come upon us soon, within the next ten or twenty years.

 

[John K]

Do you also feel like it is more active or noticeable when you are in a group setting? Could that be Fe?

Sorry @hauteur forgot to answer this part.
I find Ni is a mixed blessing when I'm in company. Sometimes, I'll get an instant insight, metaphor or image about something and that can add a lot to the discussion, but it can also simply confuse people. I'm not actually sure if this isn't Ne sometimes rather than Ni. The big problem I have is with the un-verbalised icebergs of things I certainly know through Ni, but which take a lot of effort to express. I'm probably Fe secondary, but the preference is not the same as competence alas, and I have been known to go into a long incoherent ramble that is only preserved from tragedy by a competent chairman. Looking back at some of my posts on this Forum since I joined a week ago, I still have a bit of work to do on this ...

 

[hauteur]

Thanks @John K

You know, one thing this discussion really does is cement the idea that the online descriptions of the functions really are pretty bad. You have to wonder if a lot of them are written by people who don't have them.

Reading your ideas about concept blocks made me realize that I didn't explain mine all that well. I totally relate to what you're saying though. Being able to set something aside as an abstract idea to come back to later is something I can definitely relate to. I just have to be careful not to make assumptions about that thing that can bite me in the butt later.

Same with the future or the past thing. Although, I don't think it is that different - yours is just on a larger scale. Mine can be on even a very small scale. It's like if I see Suzy is doing X and Leroy is doing Y and this thing is like this and that thing is like that, then xyz is going to happen. Only thing is that I don't consciously think about what Suzy and Leroy and all the other things are doing. It's like all of those variable come in through my Se and assemble into some projected future without any effort on my part. It's like being able to see a car on a road that you happen to know has a collapsed bridge. If they continue on their route, they're going to be blocked and have to turn around (or they will go off the bridge). When it happens, I have an enormous level of confidence in whatever the outcome is. It's like it is painfully obvious. Only it isn't.

This is fascinating stuff.

Oh - I didn't take you as rambling. Not at all. But I get it. I do it.

 

[John K]

Thanks @John K

You know, one thing this discussion really does is cement the idea that the online descriptions of the functions really are pretty bad. You have to wonder if a lot of them are written by people who don't have them.

Reading your ideas about concept blocks made me realize that I didn't explain mine all that well. I totally relate to what you're saying though. Being able to set something aside as an abstract idea to come back to later is something I can definitely relate to. I just have to be careful not to make assumptions about that thing that can bite me in the butt later.

Same with the future or the past thing. Although, I don't think it is that different - your's is just on a larger scale. Mine can be on even a very small scale. It's like if I see Suzy is doing X and Leroy is doing Y and this thing is like this and that thing is like that, then xyz is going to happen. Only thing is that I don't consciously think about what Suzy and Leroy and all the other things are doing. It's like all of those variable come in through my Se and assemble into some projected future without any effort on my part. It's like being able to see a car on a road that you happen to know has a collapsed bridge. If they continue on their route, they're going to be blocked and have to turn around (or they will go off the bridge). When it happens, I have an enormous level of confidence in whatever the outcome is. It's like it is painfully obvious. Only it isn't.

This is fascinating stuff.

Oh - I didn't take you as rambling. Not at all. But I get it. I do it.

Your right, it really is fascinating. I quite agree with you that the function descriptions are very confusing at best -the one I have the biggest down on is the way Fe is described. "Harmony" - Bah!! The MBTI sites I've found most helpful myself are those that describe what happens when functions go wrong or you try to misuse them - I started thinking INFJ for myself only recently when I came across this sort of thing, and they clicked with me. I'm still trying the clothes on to see if they fit.

I thought your description of "concept blocks" was very clear, and I immediately thought of the analogy of mathematical unknowns. The analogy may be better in terms of a more complex maths unknown, though, such as matrix, or a tensor, rather than a simple variable - but if you aren't into maths I may be drifting into stuff that's no use here. I think it's an illusion, the feeling of Ni certainty - like you imply, the initial value our subconscious puts into the unknown can be a trap. If we've put a lot of energy into building a huge castle on top of it, but then find the subconscious assumption was wrong, it's not easy to pull the castle down and start again.

 

[John K]

Interested in Ni... wizardry.

INFJs - How acutely aware are you of it? What does it do for you? How does it affect your life? How does it "come off" to others?

Hi @noisebloom, Just wondering if the comments in this thread are the sort of thing you expected? I'd love to have similar comments from you, or any other INxPs around, on how your Ne works - it would be fascinating to compare notes.

 

[Ginny]

I thought your description of "concept blocks" was very clear, and I immediately thought of the analogy of mathematical unknowns. The analogy may be better in terms of a more complex maths unknown, though, such as matrix, or a tensor, rather than a simple variable - but if you aren't into maths I may be drifting into stuff that's no use here. I think it's an illusion, the feeling of Ni certainty - like you imply, the initial value our subconscious puts into the unknown can be a trap. If we've put a lot of energy into building a huge castle on top of it, but then find the subconscious assumption was wrong, it's not easy to pull the castle down and start again.

I think this is why we use functions in tandem: I have a kind of support system wherein I use my judging functions to check on the validity and logic of what I seem to have perceived. It's an anchor to keep us from disappearing completely.

Edit: It would be an explaination for how Ni is so unconscious, as we use it all the time, but since it is almost never without the use of another function, it stays an invisible pool of info that is always taken in and arranged subconsciously. It's only when we try to make sense of it, or focus on something specific, that we can dive into the vastness of this small multiverse inside our minds.

 

[John K]

I think this is why we use functions in tandem: I have a kind of support system wherein I use my judging functions to check on the validity and logic of what I seem to have perceived. It's an anchor to keep us from disappearing completely.

Edit: It would be an explaination for how Ni is so unconscious, as we use it all the time, but since it is almost never without the use of another function, it stays an invisible pool of info that is always taken in and arranged subconsciously. It's only when we try to make sense of it, or focus on something specific, that we can dive into the vastness of this small multiverse inside our minds.

That's absolutely right for me.

I read an ebook recently by a rather wise INFJ blogger that points out INFJs can only realise their Ni properly by extraverting it with Fe. It hadn't occurred to me until about 2 months ago that I might be INFJ, so I joined this forum in part to force me into "extraverting" in a safe environment! It's been a revelation, because the stuff I've been writing about in these more substantial threads I've only known as I wrote them, even though I've also known them for years, but in a sort of lump (or elephant, going back to my first comment!). I find I can't capture precisely what I'm trying to say when I extravert it, but it makes the whole thing conscious. The more complex stuff I have to chew over and rephrase a lot before it's coherent. It's all very weird - but does this make sense?

 

[Ginny]

That's absolutely right for me.

I read an ebook recently by a rather wise INFJ blogger that points out INFJs can only realise their Ni properly by extraverting it with Fe. It hadn't occurred to me until about 2 months ago that I might be INFJ, so I joined this forum in part to force me into "extraverting" in a safe environment! It's been a revelation, because the stuff I've been writing about in these more substantial threads I've only known as I wrote them, even though I've also known them for years, but in a sort of lump (or elephant, going back to my first comment!). I find I can't capture precisely what I'm trying to say when I extravert it, but it makes the whole thing conscious. The more complex stuff I have to chew over and rephrase a lot before it's coherent. It's all very weird - but does this make sense?

It makes lots of sense. I mostly try to think about what I am going to say, but even then once I blurt it out it becomes something wholly different anyway (unless perhaps I'm in a stressful situation). And after I still think of some better way to put it. But that's just conversation. In writing I tend to have an idea of what I want to say, but I don't think it through before I write, for that same reason. There are just too many things I think of during the writing of it, that it doesn't make that much sense to overthink it. However, in that delayed mode, I can still change things to make them more coherent, and I make use of it too.

 

[hauteur]

I've found my peeps, me thinks.

Seriously, though. These types of conversations are really strengthening my opinion that I'm an INFJ. Like you, @John K, the idea that I might be an INFJ is fairly new. I've suspected it for quite a while, but I was always reluctant to put myself into the "Feeler" camp. I'd have never classified myself as such in a million years. Especially, an extraverted feeler, not that I really knew what that meant. To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure that I do. I know that this one is the worst in terms of the popular descriptions. The way Isabel Myers characterized it is the best I've seen (although, she was quoting someone else, actually). Thinking equates to true/false (is it logical) whereas feeling is more like agreeable/disagreeable (do I like it or does it feel right).

Granted, I'm much more emotionally expressive than I ever thought I was. I pretty much suck at not letting people know how I feel. What is really reinforcing the idea is from studying the functions - but also in talking to people here and reading what they have to say. I'm thinking I have a lot more parity with the folks here than I did with the folks out on INTJ Forum.

Hi @noisebloom, Just wondering if the comments in this thread are the sort of thing you expected? I'd love to have similar comments from you, or any other INxPs around, on how your Ne works - it would be fascinating to compare notes.

I agree completely @noisebloom.

It makes lots of sense. I mostly try to think about what I am going to say, but even then once I blurt it out it becomes something wholly different anyway (unless perhaps I'm in a stressful situation). And after I still think of some better way to put it. But that's just conversation. In writing I tend to have an idea of what I want to say, but I don't think it through before I write, for that same reason. There are just too many things I think of during the writing of it, that it doesn't make that much sense to overthink it. However, in that delayed mode, I can still change things to make them more coherent, and I make use of it too.

This is a dead ringer for me. I'll say stuff or write it and think it makes more sense than it does. It's usually best if I wait and reread what I want to send before I send it if there is any kind of argument in it.

I thought your description of "concept blocks" was very clear, and I immediately thought of the analogy of mathematical unknowns. The analogy may be better in terms of a more complex maths unknown, though, such as matrix, or a tensor, rather than a simple variable - but if you aren't into maths I may be drifting into stuff that's no use here. I think it's an illusion, the feeling of Ni certainty - like you imply, the initial value our subconscious puts into the unknown can be a trap. If we've put a lot of energy into building a huge castle on top of it, but then find the subconscious assumption was wrong, it's not easy to pull the castle down and start again.

I like your reference to the matrix (not The Matrix, lol). It could be a reference to something huge. An idea, a theory, a whole set of data, anything. And it isn't just set aside. I can have multiples of them in my head at once, and I'll think about how they relate or work together - usually when I've got another one that I'm trying to construct. I'm a software architect by trade, so it often has to do with applications, but it can be anything, really.

I also agree about the trap of having too much confidence in our correctness. One of my favorite expressions is: Certainty is the enemy of discovery.

Edit: @Ginny, what is the IEI in your MBTI?

 

[charlatan]

I like to use the NiTe example to illustrate this -- a reason why Ni might go with Te at all is simply that the unconscious nature of its working may result in needing to see it only through a "what works" POV, not one that you can a priori define as Ti may be more prone to want to do.

Similar remarks apply with respect to Fe vs Fi -- Fi types are more likely to really sort of fix their point of view in value judgment/it's less in dynamic interaction with the outside.

Going back to the NiT example, I like the 8-function pov of socionics loosely (not even close to the letter), and I think of the idea that ILI has *superstrong Ti* as saying this: that ultimately, they resist an external-first point of view by saying that you can define things/adopt premises almost any way to save a view you may wish to hold to, and in this sense they acknowledge the power of Ti.
However, how they decide their views in practice won't be this way, and will invoke intuition supported by Te.

 

[Fidicen]

This is another question to fellow INFJs, has the Ni ever played out much in choosing your spouse or partner or when meeting significant important people in your life? Do you ever meet people and say, "ah this one is going to mark a dent in my life for sure" without much proof? Were you ever mistaken as in nothing came out of the hunch?

Sure, but it's difficult to say exactly what is the part Ni played since I believe the experience is universal. Who hasn't been madly infatuated? But I can nevertheless imagine why Ni dominants might be more prone to it. The weakness (and strength) of the function is that it doesn't really have anything to limit it. When introverted intuition goes rampant, it means jumping to conclusions without a shred of evidence. That's why it needs other functions, other forms of thinking to support it. The INFJ description often refers to the function by saying "They are usually right and they know it.". This is mere flattery*. I can only imagine how annoying we can be when young, being very certain of our opinions that were formed with a huge amount of intuition and little else. Since Ni is the first function to develop, there's always a temptation to overuse it while neglecting the limiting factors that keep us grounded in reality.

Anyway, you're talking about first impressions, and those are hard to change for any type. In my relationships there has always been a sense of ease from the very first moment. It also works in the other direction. Sometimes I immediately get the impression that someone is not my type. For some reason this judgment happens immediately after they speak. Just seeing someone is never enough, but hearing how they talk (and of course the kind of things they talk about) I can get a clearer impression. Sometimes the positive impression was wrong, and we don't really get along after all, but it seems to happen less as I grow older. Maybe I've become more cautious with age. In these cases I simply think it was physical attraction that made me think there was something deeper.

*It also occurred to me that this same attitude causes our relationships with INTJs to be so complex. Because both are using intuition, we can have fascinating discussions, but since the function stack is different, it's easier for us to see the negative side of Ni since the arguments they use to support the intuition come from a different place. When talking with INTJs I often feel like they make a ton of assumptions and call it absolutely rational thinking, disregarding anything that doesn't support their thesis. I bet they think the same about us. So we can find common ground, being interested in the same things, but can also annoy each other to no end, both feeling that the Ni the other one is using is jumping to conclusions because the Fe/Ti way of finding evidence is very different from the Te/Fi way.