Question(s) for Ni users

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Do you think of Ni as an eccentric function?

I've always found that Ni to be extremely difficult to observe or understand by the usually provided descriptions, which has probably made me think of myself as someone who don't utilize it. Or, perhaps it's the sole function that I can't get myself out of; can't step out of it to observe whether I use it or not.

I feel I'm a naturally highly eccentric, idiosyncratic person inside. Yet I've found it nowhere near hard as many others to maintain an amount of conformity.. tho it has still been much harder than for the people in general. Edit: the end result, I believe, is that I conform and adapt really well.

But, by a process of elimination, I'm thinking of function usage and where to place my eccentricity. I'm thinking Ni or Ti.

Te, Se can't be responsible. Ti just might; a person understanding and analyzing things proficiently sees things in an odd way compared to a person who just goes by the most obvious interpretation.

Do you feel your Ni giving strange insights for you? How would you notice them being strange? Can Ni processes be explained? How does the "eccentricity", "strangeness" or "uniqueness" in your person relate to Ni?

 

[nightning]

Ni is my dominant/overused function. I'll never describe it as eccentric or strange... although when other people view my thought process, I'm sure those terms came across their minds on a few occasions.

If you try hard enough, you can explain the connections you're making sequentially one step at a time after the fact. I like to think of Ni as taking leaps over a few steps because of preexisting patterns it recognized.

 

[redacted]

Doesn't seem strange to me, but I've never known anything else.

Everything is themes.

 

[pippi]

Ni isn't strange to those of us with it, we trust it, but it probably does make us seem eccentric to others. It looks like we are not going step by step and are jumping to conclusions or following hunches, but as nightning says we actually work it out all inside our heads.

 

[Haight]

I don't know if this is going to answer the OP or not, but . . .

I knew you were going to ask that question before I opened the thread.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Ok, it's not strange to you. None of you seem strange to me, either. Perhaps I've just learned that I'm strange, from outsider's comments: philosophical, curious.. for some time in my childhood, even persisting to early adulthood, I didn't understand having skipped many necessary points while explaining a thing. I mean.. things that checked out I had understood them correctly and jumped to the end conclusions. Just like you've said. I haven't had that thought for a while.

Now that I remember it..

Some times I've thought of Ni as having brainstorming session with someone you trust. The brainstorming is directed at the plausible, rather than the bizarre.

Perhaps its the Ni descriptions that border on the mystical.

Edit: no, it was also the kids at the school wondering what I explained. What I thought most often turned out to be just right, just not so much inside my mind I couldn't explain it in their terms. Of course then there were the personal opinions I didn't know where badly proved; I had my idea of the shape of the universe, based on stability criteria.. etc.. and similar ideas, which were probably wrong. It's why I wanted to learn to communicate so badly.

 

[The Ü™]

I think the mystical thing is an exaggeration. I do not see myself as mystical, but when I'm not feeling numb, I'm usually scheming ways to achieve ends. It kind of kills me, too, because I have a need to be perfect at whatever I'm setting out to do, and when I realize the reality of ends possibly not ending up as I hoped, I become fearful and get trapped inside, as if the world is caving in on me.

So I guess you can say that I have ambitious plans, visions, and ideas, but when reality catches up, the ends become harder to reach.

 

[Haphazard]

It doesn't seem 'eccentric' to me.

But, it may explain why nobody can follow my thoughts, if it was so.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Perhaps something sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic? I recognize this use of Ni Nighting mentioned; intuitive leap. Not everywhere, but directed somewhere. I think it makes this feeling: "they'd believe if they saw what I'm thinking". I recognize that thing too.. that thing of having to break down one's thinking in steps in order to make it intelligible.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

It doesn't seem 'eccentric' to me.

But, it may explain why nobody can follow my thoughts, if it was so.

I've always thought you've written clearly, so it's been rather easy to accept most of what you write. Now that I think of it, it's mostly some Ne users whom I'm offended of for believing in such far-fetched, unproven ideas and taking them as something real. It seems like Ni is a very well-grounded function.

Well, it's neighbor, Si, is a reliable, grounded function as for what I can tell..

 

[cascadeco]

I don´t see it as eccentric per se.

But perhaps other people view ME as eccentric - but I don´t think that´s solely due to Ni.

I also don´t think I jump to conclusions, so have never fully related to the whole mystical, going-solely-on-intuition thing. I do think I´m driven by patterns and systems, though, and connections between one thing and another, and I probably overlay a lot of things simultaneously in my mind and then the net result - what is spoken or written - might appear to have come out of thin air. But the internal process to reach that conclusion was far from arbitrary and far from being random or mystical. If anything, it is hard for me to articulate why I have concluded something - simply because there were SO many convoluted data points involved in my reaching that conclusion. So it´s easier for me to just give a blanket statement, rather than write a 20 page thesis on how I came to that statement.

 

[Apollanaut]

I prefer Jung's adjective for Ni: irrational.

My own Ni is very unpredictable. Sometimes it leaps to a conclusion that I can see was based on simple logic or a linear reasoning process - it simply skipped a number of the intervening steps. At other times it will shift perspective and view a situation from a vastly different perspective, which can be extremely powerful in problem-solving or for facilitating change. Then there's it's ability to work with paradox - for example, seeing both sides of an argument as valid, or that two seemingly contradictory ideas can both be useful. It is wonderful at seeing very faint patterns amongst high levels of background noise.

Finally, there is definitely a "mystical" aspect to my Ni - those times when I just "know" something without any external cues. This can take the form of premonitions; hunches which prove to be highly accurate; a sense that a friend or loved one will contact me shortly or is in trouble; highly detailed information about something that is happening elsewhere; and so on.

BTW, I also consider myself to be a highly eccentric, idiosyncratic person inside, and I do credit my Ni for this trait!

 

[INTJMom]

Santtu - Have you ever seen Si in action?

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Well, I've got the idea it (edit:talking about Si) mostly revolves around memory. Sometimes I think I've recognized it, then I doubt. I've just advanced from hating the damned function to wishing I were any good at it. If I had to give my best shot without thinking now, I'd say it presents some systematization of perceptions. Whereas Se is the reality in it's most concrete form, readily understandable, experienced.. Si is the same thing classified, compared, remembered and archived. I guess Si is more prone to consider a series of events than Se, which is spread everywhere; I might guess Ni/Ne work in the similar fashion.

Si is much more mystery to me than anything else. I've hated it's users for making everything in the world so f'n slow, contained .. every opportunity being scrutinized and deemed non-standard, hence unacceptable with the damned Si. It's been somewhat of an enemy for me.

 

[Simplexity]

From a Ti perspective it seems like I do that in trying to find logical structure in things. Basically the whole viewing situations from multiple angles in a logistical sense, I often notice a clash in thoughts when conversing with my INTJ dad.

How does it differ from your perspective when one of your "hunches" or "Intuitive leaps" is refuted or invalidated by a Ti user?

I know perception works in coordination with a judging function so Te might have to be mentioned at one point. Internally though it seems we attack problems from different modes of perception (used in the visionary sense, not MBTT, different representation of "reality"). I can sense that there is some internal process behind your statements, which are obviously modified or influenced to a large extent by Te. I just can't truly get a grasp of how you are perceiving the situation.

 

[Haphazard]

I've always thought you've written clearly, so it's been rather easy to accept most of what you write. Now that I think of it, it's mostly some Ne users whom I'm offended of for believing in such far-fetched, unproven ideas and taking them as something real. It seems like Ni is a very well-grounded function.

Well, it's neighbor, Si, is a reliable, grounded function as for what I can tell..

I don't know if I'd call Ni 'grounded'. Well, perhaps it is. It's a bit like a long dissertation that ends with, "But anyway, that's neither here nor there."

The only reason I manage to appear intelligible is because I tend to keep my posts short. Any longer and this would probably no longer be true...

 

[INTJMom]

I'll be back.

 

[INTJMom]

I worked with an ISFJ (leading function Si) for two years. She would get these "hunches". At first, I didn’t trust them. I would think, "Where in the world did you get that idea from?!" She couldn’t explain how she knew what she knew, yet over and over again, it would turn out she was right. It was uncanny. Every now and then she would be able to prove where she had gotten the idea from, but most the time she would just say, “I don’t know. I just have a hunch.” Interestingly, Jung says Ni gets hunches, too, but I never use that word for myself.

Reading Jung’s description of Si, I figured out that her S function was taking in all these facts and details and storing them for future use. And then somehow, she would get a "hunch" that would just seemingly pop up out of nowhere, yet was actually based on facts or information she might have taken in 5 or 10 years before! Incredible!

Once I read that, I realized that Ni works the same way, except for a difference in the type of information it takes in. In my case, I am always looking for underlying truths and general principles that will always apply in every situation. I love wise sayings that are always true. I believe that’s why I was naturally good in geometry. I memorized all those laws. They made sense to me. I got an A without even trying very hard.

So to tie it together with Si, I see Ni as collecting principles and truths and remembering them for later use. Then, at another time, even years later, when they apply in a certain situation, they will come forward and make themselves known though only in a fog-like state, not in a clear – oh I know where that came from – kind of way.

I don’t know how much it has to do with anyone being eccentric though.

 

[pippi]

From a Ti perspective it seems like I do that in trying to find logical structure in things. Basically the whole viewing situations from multiple angles in a logistical sense, I often notice a clash in thoughts when conversing with my INTJ dad.

How does it differ from your perspective when one of your "hunches" or "Intuitive leaps" is refuted or invalidated by a Ti user?

I know perception works in coordination with a judging function so Te might have to be mentioned at one point. Internally though it seems we attack problems from different modes of perception (used in the visionary sense, not MBTT, different representation of "reality"). I can sense that there is some internal process behind your statements, which are obviously modified or influenced to a large extent by Te. I just can't truly get a grasp of how you are perceiving the situation.

None of the functions operate in a vacuum so understanding just one is nebulous. When my thoughts are challenged I know it's because someone is approaching the problem from a different angle. I think it's possible to get to the same conclusion with any the functions (N,S,T, or F) as your dominant one, each just uses a different route and there is some validation or testing going on with your non-dominant functions throughout the process as well.

/offtopic
All the discussion on boards like this about N being 'better' than S or T 'better' than F are silly in my opinion, all of them can get you to the same decision or understanding, they just get you there differently. The more functions you can tap into, the better.
/ontopic

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Thanks.. I'm too tired to even sum it up what I've learned. But in short:

Ni :
-not a process making one strange or eccentric
-may come off as such, if someone can't follow that trail of thought
-Pattern recognition skill based on evaluating what's learned and applying it more generally
-ability to speed up one's thought
-not exactly "jumping into conclusions"

and somethign more. I'll visit this thread later! Now I gotta go to sleep.. thanks all!