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Ti, Te and "Systems"

G

garbage

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Ti analyzes and defines, Te organizes and applies.

Right. This shouldn't be so difficult to grasp. Any sort of extrapolation of specific behaviors from the basic definitions of the functions should have a solid foundation, and that's lacking all too often. The holes are often filled in with pure speculation, personal definitions confused with an objective point of view, or the God-given ability to generate impenetrable walls of text.
 

uumlau

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*stops dancing for long enough to notice the thread*

:hi:

*pulls out his Ni, Te and Ti*

Ultimately, my point (or assumption) is that Fi/Te users tend to regard "systems" as external, and so see things like the MBTI - a system that they interpret is trying to tell you how to think, feel and behave - as limiting and arbitrary, and not fit to tell people who they are and how they should act (since that is the domain of Fi - only the individual knows that). And so they resist it. :)

You are drawing an unwarranted conclusion about Te users' attitudes based on remarkably little information, not to mention a very broad assumption, namely the assumption that Te users think MBTI is limiting and arbitrary: Te has NOTHING to do with whether one thinks a particular system is good or bad. It has to do with why one thinks a particular system is good or bad.


the relationship to theory and idea systems in general is just as relevant to this discussion. i find Ti types have more invested in definite concepts and meanings that focus on systemic integrity rather than on what they can accomplish. they try to attain a perfect objective truth, whereas Te doesn't focus on truth in-so-much as it focuses on action. there is no big truth concept, apart from what Fi deems subjectively true (tho they're often not aware to the degree this silently pulls them in one direction).

i think Ni and Ti have an interesting relationship (of course i do, i'm an infj 5). Ni also focuses on systemic relationship but it is far more vague, hazy, and undefined. yet it is so densely associated that when it blends all the associations into one single 3-dimensional picture, if checks a lot of past information and context into that, so there is a ton of feedbacking. which creates a sort of integrity, tho without any Ti solidity and Fe context it is wildly projecting and pretty much insane.

i think the i functions generally do the feedbacking. i still don't understand how Fi works as a reasoning process, apart that is has tons of feedback. i can't articulate why some Fi seems so advanced, perceptive, and well-developed, and some seems incapable of abstraction, expansion, synthesis beyond hot-stove = burning = bad.

for me, Ti is such a breath of fresh air. strong Ti is so precise and specific and detailed within the system it is analyzing. it sees individual relationships and develops them into something with great organization.

i still don't understand Te, but i'm starting to think i get how aristotle, and kant, and habermas all fit together in the ntj group. the Te categories ARE tightly put together and well-organized and speak to a specific reality that inspires philosophical thinking for a damn good reason. the balance of Ni and Te in ntj is interesting, it's difficult to cross that barrier of s and n and still have the role of Ti or Te be the same. but with Te you'll always find some Fi band-aids (as far as pure logic is concerned), which may or may not be a problem to you depending on your own values.

There are good observations, here. Similar observations can be made if you transpose Ti for Fi and Te for Fe.

what are you guys all bickering about?

I'd guess Te comes in a multitude of flavors depending upon what it is paired with and where it falls into the natural function order.

Fi doesnt like to be boxed. It's unique and special.

My Te fucking loves boxes. I'll box anybody. Even better I will fiddle with all of the boxes when I find out the first boxes were not quite the right shape and then I rebuild the boxes. My favorite take on MBTI actually involves four boxes with each of the 16 types plus a 17th category for folks who dont fit in the first 16 groups. Box 17 is really the "yet to be fully understood" box.
Happy Puppy's wisdom reveals itself again. As with state's analysis, one can swap Ti for Fi and Te for Fe and make similar observations. Fe loves boxes, too, but they're very different boxes from Te's boxes.


Ti analyzes and defines, Te organizes and applies.

Very good synopsis, but a bit too brief and easily misinterpreted.

I noticed the words "objective" and "subjective" being bandied about. Interestingly, the Xi functions were being deemed subjective. Not the usual definition I'm familiar with, but I understand what it's saying.

So, lets make a grid out of this: "Looks at <objective/subjective> things <objectively/subjectively>." And assign the grid to each of the judging functions.

Fi; "Looks at subjective things subjectively"
Ti: "Looks at objective things subjectively"
Fe: "Looks at subjective things objectively"
Te: "Looks at objective things objectively"

Now while the Fi and Fe statements are equally fascinating, I'll stick with the Ti and Te ones.

For Ti, logic is a personal matter. It's all about my understanding of how something works. No one else can make me understand any better. I have to process it all for myself, and I'll get back to you when I'm done. With respect to a system, the goal is to understand the system and how it all works together. Eventually, one tests the system against reality, but there are no useful tests until one's personal subjective understanding is achieved. The theory must be understood in order to design a credible experiment.

For Te, logic is an impersonal matter. I deal with both my own personal understanding, and with others' understandings. The ideas are outside of me, in the public domain, so to speak. Even my own ideas are outside of me, at this stage. I can organize the ideas. I can communicate the ideas. I can quickly take others' ideas into account. I can implement the ideas. For Te, the "system" is not something to be internally processed and understood, but it's already "out there" and acting in the world. Te strives to understand how the system works, and if it doesn't seem to be working, tries to make it work, quickly shuffling various ideas from various sources in an effort to correct any misconceptions one might have about how the system "ought to work." For Te, there is no "ought to work" or "should work." It either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then it is not a viable system, and one looks for a working system, perhaps based on the old system.

So, w/r to the OP, this Te behavior can give the impression that Te "doesn't like" MBTI, if a particular Te finds flaws in the implementation, or disagreements with observations. It isn't a matter of "doesn't like". Truth for the Te is whether it works, whether it is consistent with the world at large. The archetypal scientific Te activity would be "experimentalist".

In contrast, Ti is the "theorist." Ti isn't concerned with the system being consistent with the world (by definition, mind you, so I'm not saying Ti doms are stupid in this regard). Ti is concerned with the system being consistent with itself. That the system represents a complete understanding, and that there are no internal flaws within that understanding that would indicate that the understanding is incorrect.

Ti will naturally appreciate MBTI as a self-consistent system, and any disagreement with reality is gradually adjusted so that MBTI becomes a more perfect system. Te will instead appreciate MBTI to the degree that it works. If it doesn't work, Te will make any of a large range of choices, from completely tossing out MBTI as a viable system, to discovering the one key flaw (as they see it), and replacing that with an alternative as suggested by observation.

*takes a deep breath*

Ah, much better.

*puts his Ni, Te, and Ti away, pulls out Fi and Se and Ne*

:bye:

*dances out of the thread*
 

htb

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I promised no such thing! (though the contents lists at the beginning are bulleted, and there are some other bulleted lists throughout as well).
I slogged through it anyway -- a good read.

If you can break the whole theory down and explain it with bullet points, I'd like to see you do it!:coffee:
Not the theory so much as the provided information. Tempting . . .


Mister Eyebrows said:
Right. This shouldn't be so difficult to grasp.
I can't fault SolitaryWalker and his nemesis for theorizing, but, yes, the best conclusions are simple ones.

uumlau said:
Very good synopsis, but a bit too brief and easily misinterpreted.
But introducing additional concepts such as objectivity and subjectivity only increases the theory's abstraction, complicating attempts to demonstrate actual usage (which is, to me, the most meaningful).

In my experience, Ti-dominants (ISTPs and INTPs) who are knowledgeable in a particular subject cannot be outsmarted or fooled over details by other types when discussing internal mechanics or calculations -- how and why a thing works. But their focus impairs the capacity for global evaluations (physical or extra-mechanical arrangements of things). They show relatively little interest in organizations or larger processes incorporating their discrete specialty.
 

uumlau

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But introducing additional concepts such as objectivity and subjectivity only increases the theory's abstraction, complicating attempts to demonstrate actual usage (which is, to me, the most meaningful).

In my experience, Ti-dominants (ISTPs and INTPs) who are knowledgeable in a particular subject cannot be outsmarted or fooled over details by other types when discussing internal mechanics or calculations -- how and why a thing works. But their focus impairs the capacity for global evaluations (physical or extra-mechanical arrangements of things). They show relatively little interest in organizations or larger processes incorporating their discrete specialty.

If the synopsis were a precise technical definition, I would agree. I find that it is more productive to "get a feel" for what the functions are, finding the common points of various definitions. That's what makes it "usable" for me.

In my experience with ISTPs and INTPs, I find that they are very certain of their knowledge in a way that puts the arrogance of INTJs to shame. The problem is that their knowledge is so complete, when someone actually comes along and points out something wrong, they're completely confused, especially the ISTPs (the INTPs catch on a bit faster because you don't have to iterate through all the details). The problem is that they have their internalized system, and then compare it with what you say, and what you say just does not compute. I suspect at first blush when encountering a logical flaw, it feels to Ti as if it makes everything in their system false. And because the Ti perspective demands that one understand it for oneself, you really cannot explain the flaw to them: you don't see all the contradictions in their heads that need resolution, and they cannot possibly verbalize it all. So you just have to wait until they figure it out.

As a case in point, an ISTP acquaintance of mine was absolutely sure that the date-time datatype of the database and the procedural programming language we used to make db calls included time zone information. He was so sure of this fact, it took me a couple of hours of talking over some time zone conversion code with him to figure out how he was interpreting it. Once I narrowed it down and informed him of his misinterpretation, it took another two hours of talking it over with him, which still didn't convince him, but he consented to write some code to test it. In the end, I convinced him of nothing: he had to prove it to himself. Even after that, he made no apologies for being a stubborn ass and wasting half of my day, but just chuckled that he thought date time included time zone because XML did it that way.

(Yes, I'm griping about a particularly annoying fellow who happens to take ISTP flaws to an extreme. Another ISTP I know would only take about half an hour of my time for a similar issue. I do not intend to impugn ISTPs in general. Even my annoying ISTP acquaintance is really quite good at what he does, but your words carry no weight with him if he happens to disagree, and making it very difficult to work with him at times.)

With respect to a more global perspective, I don't think that they lack a global perspective, but Ti isn't suitable for analyzing it: at some point, it becomes more of a Te (and often Fe) job, because any practical understanding at a high level must incorporate extroverted judging, selectively ignoring details that "don't matter", because human understanding is incapable of dealing with the amount of detail implied by the global perspective.
 

Eric B

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I suspect at first blush when encountering a logical flaw, it feels to Ti as if it makes everything in their system false.
That makes sense. It's like the whole system stands or falls together. If one little thing over here is wrong, it throws off the symmetry of the whole thing, so it might as well all be wrong.
 
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