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[Jungian Cognitive Functions] Ni - What the hell is it?

Mal12345

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Please explain how a personality disorder that describes how one mishandles emotions applies to what melebula wrote.

"As time went on and we got to know one another, she became extremely clingy and attempted to destroy my friendships."
Cite:
The perception of impending separation or rejection, or the loss of external structure, can lead to profound changes in self-image, affect, cognition, and behavior. They experience intense abandonment fears and inappropriate anger even when faced with a realistic time-limited separation or when there are unavoidable changes in plans (e.g., sudden despair in reaction to a clinician’s announcing the end of the hour; panic or fury when someone important to them is just a few minutes late or must cancel an appointment). They may believe that this “abandonment” implies they are “bad.” These abandonment fears are related to an intolerance of being alone and a need to have other people with them. Relationships and the person’s emotion may often be characterized as being shallow.​
Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms | Psych Central
 

Siúil a Rúin

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Perhaps Ne is more apparent to identify because it can immediately patterns and connections between whatever it encounters in the world. We look at Ne-doms and their uber-creative, zany antics.

Ni is like that except that it tries to create a coherent whole of it all, which might be an impossible endeavor. It makes us capable of achieving a sense of balance or be completely nuts - and probably in some manner both.
 

Pionart

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I noticed myself use Ni a couple times the past few days. I know I was using Ni because right after using it, I had an epiphany that I had been using Ni.

Basically, what happened, was I was organising plans for the day with a friend, but it wasn't making sense to me what we were actually going to be doing, where we were meeting etc. Basically, something was missing from the picture, and I could experience this "something is missing" feeling. I then used some kind of extroverted judgement function to inquire of the other person how it was going to work, but I did it in a really messy way, asking lots of questions that didn't quite get at what I wanted, indicating my unfamiliarity with the Ni function.
 

Eric B

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Still trying to clarify my understanding of it, going back over stuff I've read.

I should clarify that introverted iNtuition is not inferring from a subjective pattern (as I may have characterized it earlier). Both Ni and Ne compare data with patterns stored in memory. Ne looks at data in terms of the patterns, while Ni infers from [elsewhere] within what’s been left out of the given pattern.

Lenore had said “For INJ’s, the patterns aren’t ‘out there’ in the world, waiting to be discovered [like an ENP physician putting together a whole single disesase syndrome from several unexplained symptoms]. They’re part of us—the way we make sense of the riot of information and energy impinging on our systems.” (p.225)
“Pattern” here refers to two different things: the initial parttern being observed, which for either function is objective; and then, for Ni, there are internal (and likely unconscious) elements, [making the function introverted or subjective] that are used as “alternative possibilities” to guage the situation by.

One place I was getting hung up, was that “alternate possibilities” we usually think of as Ne. But again, Ne derives it’s possibilities from an external pattern itself, while Ni looks at the external pattern in terms of these internal impressions.

This is why, I find, INTJ’s look at type theory ideas so differently than I do. Unless they’ve already believed in an idea, they usually just appear to often scoff at new ideas (or even some existing, popular ones), like the big debate we had not long ago in the Tandem Names thread.
Lenore continues “A disease syndrome is a useful construct, but that’s all it is—an aggregate of observations attached to a label, telling us what to see and how to deal with it. They’re merely arbitrary, derived from a particular view of life. For this reason, they can trap us into holding that view—say, that physicians are in the business of cure rather than prevention—without being aware of its effects”.

I see just an idea of how one system or set of categories might “possibly” fit another, and they just choose to see it another way, through other “possibilities” not being mentioned. I will see their possibilities, as just that, another possibility, but the ones I’m suggesting seem to fit better, as determined by Ti, so that function “nails it down”, as I’ve heard described.
This is likely one reason why INFJ’s are not quite as cynical as INTJ’s about these things. Even though they share the dom. Ni, INFJ’s have the tertiary Ti which identifies binding principles like that. What the INTJ nails a possibility down with would be Te (its practical usefulness); hence, seeming rigidly against something TiNe comes up with, and yet, at the same time, they are the ones in a way being more “open” to certain things. (This goes into the whole thing Personality Junkie discusses and Lenore alludes to later on the same page, regarding INJ’s being the true “perceiving” types, ⦅like ENP’s⦆, and INP’s being the true “judging” types).

So the example Lenore gives (p223) is someone wondering why people feel so strongly about getting a good tan. You look at the larger contexts; which in this case are the historical causes of this phonomena that we can remember reading of. On one hand, a tan suggested manual labor (from being out in the sun), but then pale skin came to suggest labor from working inside. However, neither [conflicting] reason is any longer relvant today. It’s just something that has stuck, as being “attractive”.
What I notice here, is that no conclusion is really reached, and the goal seems to be simply to raise a question in itself.

I guess this would be Ni in its purest form, without judgment filling it in. It is merely a perception, or observation, after all. We have often portrayed Ni as “foreseeing” something, but that’s only when it is working with a judgment function, which can rationally draw a conclusion from the data; especially when it comes to time elements, such as the predictable or recurring, and to determine rules or models that determine something.

I used to wonder about tans, and the way I went about it was one day putting it together with race. On one hand, dark skin was seen in a negative light. Yet, you always see in Western culture all of these light people trying to get dark. Some tans are so deep, they’re actually as dark as many moderate toned black people. I too asked “what was that about?”, but then surmised it was likely some sort of “shadow” dynamic. (This was years before I knew Jungian terminology, so I didn’t use that word, though I had heard enough about openly hating what we are subconsciously jealous of).

I looked at the pattern I was seeing in terms of other patterns: racial issues, and then psychological dynamics, and then put together a hypothesis that seemed to explain it, and figuring “that’s probably it”, was satisfied, and then put the question to rest. I only looked within for the sensory and logical data; not for the possibilities themselves, which only were conveyed through the S+T facts.
 

Eric B

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A great sense I got of introverted iNtuition at work was from this blogger’s http://dananthonyobrien.wordpress.com/2011/01 take on the Jacob Riis “Baxter Street Court” photo (which I had years ago run across and was intrigued by, sparking off an interest in the FIve Points slum of "Gangs of NY" fame, where this was located. I in fact worked literally yards from the site for a decade and never knew it).

This was a photo of squalor in what was being held as an example of “tenement life” in 19th century NY slums, but I later found the example shown was really a converted distillery and not a real tenement, as many other nonresididential buidings were being converted (which is part of what created the whole problem Riis was exposing). So what had originally struck me was how different it looked from a real NYC tenement.

This other blogger, however, notices a lot of different things, and observes it from a totally different angle.
He suggests that a photo like this (that he saw as part of a series shown in some presentation, apparently) “contains symbolic use of lighting (amazing considering the primitive level of the technology at the time) and spectacular use of mise en scène.” [Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction.]

In ‘Baxter Street Court, NY’ for example the children appear illuminated while the adults are, either a dark silhouette or, returning into the gloom. The dark figure overlooking the scene seems almost regal in his surveillance of his dominion, there may be some pun intended on ‘court’. His darkness and bearing may suggest an inability to relinquish either his grasp on the ‘Old World’ or indeed on the next generation. The division of the scene by the clothes-line however leaves the picture a hopefulness that supplants the foreboding mystery figure.

He likens both the man, as well as the clothes lines and “the abandoned cart in the foreground” to some fictional characters he’s discussing.

I had noticed the man, but never knew what to make of him. What I did see is that it’s supposed to be a picture of squalor, but this guy looks kind of rich, with his top hat and suit; like someone who would fit in better in the classy mansions further uptown. Who is this?
I figure he’s probably the owner of the place. Probably drawn to the scene by the photographer being there. (And it’s true that the pose he’s making looks authoritative). After all, it would be the living and/or working conditions he’s maintaining that are being exposed, and threatened throughout the area at that time.
He does have a spookiness to him, and perhaps that could be part of the “spiritual” sense people I showed it to picked up.

So this blogger is reading internally derived meanings into the external data and coming up with conclusions that never would have dawned on me. He also pays more attention to visual detail, which is the extraverted Sensing that works in tandem with introverted iNtution. This is the less conscious version of N that has likely drawn me to see some emotion-producing meaning in the photo, but my normal extraverted iNtution —in conjunction with the internalized factual data of introverted Sensing— then tries to figure out where it was, what it was, why the architecture looks the way it does, etc.
Again, I’m looking for the external pattern to match it all to. He’s adding impressions from within, and totally missing from the patterns I draw. (You can see here why in the new Cognitive Styles model, the Ne/Si perspective is aptly named “Inquiring Awareness”, while SeNi is “Realizing Awareness”).

It took me time to even notice there was only one man there. (I was focused on the building). I at first only remembered women and children near the door under the steps, and later, I thought there were two or three better dressed people posing on the steps.

(I believe where his impression went too far is in his interpretation of “court”. He may not have realized that “court” back then simply means what we today would call a “back yard”, and the old fire insurance maps I consulted showed such a “rear court” at that address. Though it’s possible that it could be both, and that the term came in handy for such a dual meaning.
I know in Biblical debate, I have seen where people will read something into texts like that, and it looks just like that: coming up something out of the blue that is not there. While Christianity is often regarded as very F or even FJ, I believe much of the doctrine has generally been set by NTJ leaders).
 

Siúil a Rúin

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Dominant Ni to me feels like "haze" in the brain. It's constantly running and analyzing, but the thoughts and images it brings up is abstract. Sometimes I will analyze a situation and detect a hidden pattern or meaning in it, out of nowhere, but it's abstract. It can be concrete, but I won't consciously know what made the connection. I will then subconsciously associate this pattern with an image, and it will "feel" right to me, but if you asked me to put it in words, you'd think I belonged in the loony bin, because it will make no sense. A lot of it is subconscious thought garbage, unless it's grounded by Te or Se.

Other times, it's a sense of "just knowing" how things will turn out, because you've already intuited it in your mind without doing the work. The Ni images are being projected onto the outside world - they become "one", in a sense. This abstract idea connects with that abstract idea, and boom, you suddenly "know".

You don't "use" it, it's just something that runs in the background, but it guides you. It's like a map through which you navigate.

To clarify how it works in the real world, in developing a new skill, I will have a sense of "knowing" what is required of me without being directed or reading instructions, and I'll pick it up fairly quickly.

Other times, I will interpret the things people say or do to mean something that seems totally far-fetched, but I'm usually right. I met a girl who told me she was heavily into photography - and from this I came to the conclusion that she had a crippling personality disorder. As time went on and we got to know one another, she became extremely clingy and attempted to destroy my friendships.
Great description here!
You probably picked up her heavy focus on photography feeling like something different than intellectual inspiration, but expressing a kind of personality imbalance prone to addiction.

Ni has a lot to do with processing speculation, which is also important information to deal with in reality. It isn't fact based and in many cases cannot be because it is so future oriented where the facts have not yet occurred.

Even if I have a strong intuitive impulse which can inform decisions, I try to keep that type of data separate from "fact", and instead treat it something more akin to statistical possibilities. In the same way that people can get facts wrong, people can also get speculation "wrong", but that doesn't mean that it isn't extremely valuable.
 

uumlau

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That's a pretty good synopsis, Eric.

I'd say that for Ne, the patterns it sees are "just facts" out there in the real world. Ne doms in particular seem to regard them as objective facts because they can say, "Look! Data!" and while they know that correlation is not causation, they almost cannot help but believe whatever "obvious" point the data appears to be making.

For Ni, the patterns, as you say, are internal. Just as Si has an internal library of concrete understandings of the world, Ni has an internal library of abstract understandings. These understandings pre-exist the concrete instances to which they might be applied.

The Ne patterns answer the questions of who/what/where. The Ni patterns answer the questions of how/why. Ne usually sees a singular meaning of the external pattern (via Si's influence, perhaps?) or perhaps no meaning at all ("it's just true"). Ni sees multiple possible meanings, and uses concrete points to eliminate the "possible" meanings that cannot be true. This is how you get the example of Ni in your second post, where the individual appears to apply TOO MUCH meaning to what is there.

There is of course no answer to "which one is better". The real knowledge to be gleaned here is 1) they look at different problem spaces, asking very different questions, and 2) which problem space has which priorities.
 

grey_beard

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That's a pretty good synopsis, Eric.

I'd say that for Ne, the patterns it sees are "just facts" out there in the real world. Ne doms in particular seem to regard them as objective facts because they can say, "Look! Data!" and while they know that correlation is not causation, they almost cannot help but believe whatever "obvious" point the data appears to be making.

For Ni, the patterns, as you say, are internal. Just as Si has an internal library of concrete understandings of the world, Ni has an internal library of abstract understandings. These understandings pre-exist the concrete instances to which they might be applied.

The Ne patterns answer the questions of who/what/where. The Ni patterns answer the questions of how/why. Ne usually sees a singular meaning of the external pattern (via Si's influence, perhaps?) or perhaps no meaning at all ("it's just true"). Ni sees multiple possible meanings, and uses concrete points to eliminate the "possible" meanings that cannot be true. This is how you get the example of Ni in your second post, where the individual appears to apply TOO MUCH meaning to what is there.

There is of course no answer to "which one is better". The real knowledge to be gleaned here is 1) they look at different problem spaces, asking very different questions, and 2) which problem space has which priorities.

Hate to shoot off on a tangenet here,uumlau, but I am reminded of the book Galileo's Daughter.
The Enlightenment / rise of Science (so-called) was not a revolt against religion, but a two fold substitution:
1) empiricism for authority
2) similar to the Ne's "who what where" as opposed to Ni's "how why", asking why (cause and effect, mechanics) as opposed to why (teleological or spiritual significance or purpose)
 

grey_beard

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Darn. I was hoping that Mole was Chicken.

Then we'd have Chicken Mole, which is quite yummy.

CHICKEN%20MOLE.jpg


Ni, however, is about 58.69 gm/Mole, and not nearly as yummy, as it tastes kind of metallic.

Sorry for the late response, but...:rotfl:
 

OrangeAppled

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The best way I can get my head around an intellectual description of Ni is to see it as choosing a perspective, not because its factually the most correct or evident, because it seems the most consistent with some internally sourced archetypes. Ne also chooses a perspective, not which is most evident and certainly not the most factual, but which seems to have the most potential to create something novel and/or something connected to a Ji concept (because these don't exist in a vacuum from the other functions). This is why NPs seem the most disconnected from reality or "absent-minded" or "dreamy" because it appears to be wishful thinking from the outside. Ni looks delusional too, but in the way where someone frames reality to be whatever it is they want it to be, with complete disregard for actual facts, so that no matter an outcome, it is what they predicted, because it can be framed that way. That's sort of like wishful thinking too, but the change is in the internal perspective, whereas with Ne, the possibilities are out there, and it's a matter of you being able to chase them, cultivate them, and create the change outside of yourself. For the Ne type, if the outcome is not turning out to be the potential initially seen, then they abandon and move on, whereas Ni types can stubbornly stick to it and insist it is what they said it would be. The Ni type seems less fickle because of this, but they are really abandoning an internal perspective in favor of a new one which shapes reality as they want it to be (or which gives them a sense of control of its outcomes), and this is as just as fickle, and perhaps which gives them the reputation for suddenly going cold on people or dropping an entire system of belief, as if to start from a blank slate. As a parallel, Fi expresses less than Fe, but when it does, then its in a big way; Ni may do less 180s than Ne, but when it does, then it really throws stuff on its head.
 

GarrotTheThief

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The way I think of NI is when you're trying to solve a problem for hours and you finally say, darn I give up and throw up your arms, and then a few hours later you'll be eating a fruit or sitting on the john and suddenly you'll come to an insight on what will solve the problem or come to some crazy outrageous idea for something that is completely unrelated but solves some issue that you're not paid or shouldn't think about. Oh wait, that second one is inferior NE.
 

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This other blogger, however, notices a lot of different things, and observes it from a totally different angle.
He suggests that a photo like this (that he saw as part of a series shown in some presentation, apparently) “contains symbolic use of lighting (amazing considering the primitive level of the technology at the time) and spectacular use of mise en scène.

Using a tangible example like this to examine the functional space is interesting.

To me, when I read the blogger's description, I sense it has gone astray not because of Ti details (and there's an important one you note) but Fi details. The Fi space that I sense, the subjective internal space from each person, doesn't match up. So although I find the examination of potential symbolism interesting, because it doesn't mesh with the sense of internal truth I get from the people, it somewhat falls flat. Still thought-provoking and interesting though, but I want a truth from it, actual bare truth. How those people felt in that picture bears relevance to the truth. I hate talking about what I feel from each person because I can never prove what I sense to be fully true, and in this instance, all of those people are dead and we will never know what happened at the moment of that photo. Kind of a bummer, in subjectively-subjective land.

For that photo to embody those qualities above, there had to be intention. Do you think Ni comes to the table with that intention in mind to take a photo like this? Or is intention simply applied like a patina after the fact, identifying subconscious drivers to the construct? (Just general questions there, not specifically directed at you Eric.) I find that presumptuous, just as someone would find me identifying the inner space of the people in that photo presumptuous too.

And opposingly, sometimes I just want to say, a picture is just a picture. Not much deeper than that.

From above, you mention:

"What the INTJ nails a possibility down with would be Te (its practical usefulness); hence, seeming rigidly against something TiNe comes up with, and yet, at the same time, they are the ones in a way being more “open” to certain things."

Do you think the 'being open' to certain things is due to / about Fi? Can you expand that more? What kind of things do you mean?
 

Eric B

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I hadn't presumed what the person's judgment preference was. (Whether INFJ or INTJ). Ti would be for the former, but Fi for the latter (both tertiary, respectively). I would probably have to read more of his stuff to really gather.

Being "open" refers to "perception", because you're just taking in information, and not "nailing anything down" with a judgment. We normally think of "openness" as being associated with extraverted Perception, represented by a "P". But I was giving a nod to Personality Junkie (and by extension, Socionics, and Jung himself), who make "p" dominant perception, which include the dominant introverted perceptions, or IJ's. We look at openness or closedness in terms of what they display on the outside; hence Myers' useful for interaction J/P scale. But being internally open means when they turn within, they will take whatever their Sensing or iNtuition tells them, and usually not try to force it into a framework, with a judgment function (unless, of course, the tertiary gets involved; usually as a next line of defense).
Of course, we don't see this; we just see then "closing" things with extraverted judgment. In the case of this blogger, he went with whatever his iNtuition told him, and did not use a lot of ["rational"] judgment at all.
 

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I hadn't presumed what the person's judgment preference was. (Whether INFJ or INTJ). Ti would be for the former, but Fi for the latter (both tertiary, respectively). I would probably have to read more of his stuff to really gather.

Being "open" refers to "perception", because you're just taking in information, and not "nailing anything down" with a judgment. We normally think of "openness" as being associated with extraverted Perception, represented by a "P". But I was giving a nod to Personality Junkie (and by extension, Socionics, and Jung himself), who make "p" dominant perception, which include the dominant introverted perceptions, or IJ's. We look at openness or closedness in terms of what they display on the outside; hence Myers' useful for interaction J/P scale. But being internally open means when they turn within, they will take whatever their Sensing or iNtuition tells them, and usually not try to force it into a framework, with a judgment function (unless, of course, the tertiary gets involved; usually as a next line of defense).
Of course, we don't see this; we just see then "closing" things with extraverted judgment. In the case of this blogger, he went with whatever his iNtuition told him, and did not use a lot of ["rational"] judgment at all.

Yes, that's all very good. What I'm getting at, is how INJ's find each other closed I guess. So, the things that you as an INTP sense as 'open' mesh (more naturally) with what an INFJ will agree (mol) with. You will (at a higher level of probability) experience an INTJ closed in a similar way (and the only evidence I can provide for that atm are my empirical observations). There's a similar phenomenon in INFP / INTJ interactions (loosely, Fi-Te interactions.) We sense Ti-Fe closed in a different way.

I was wondering if you had some thoughts as to how to define what you mention as "certain things". What is Ni-Te open to that Ni-Fe is not? And vice-versa?
 

Eric B

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The "certain things" [they are open to]was what I mentioned: "they will take whatever their Sensing or iNtuition tells them, and usually not try to force it into a framework, with a judgment function".
Ni is "open" to the "internal (and likely unconscious) [and "missing"] elements, that are used as 'alternative possibilities' to guage the situation by." Si is open to the stored tangible experience it references. When dominant, the ego's main world view is this openness to these things, where for a Ji dom. like me wants to close off the internal information after enough is taken in so that Thinking can make its decisions with it.

Ni-Te and Ni-Fe would be "open" to the same things, because it's the same perception function, and only the judgment is different. All that means is that when turning outward with assessments of situations, one's focus will be more impersonal, and the other more personal.
 

uumlau

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I really liked this post, OA.

The best way I can get my head around an intellectual description of Ni is to see it as choosing a perspective, not because its factually the most correct or evident, because it seems the most consistent with some internally sourced archetypes.
This is so close to being dead-on accurate. It only has one flaw, which you can see if you compare it to Si. Si references internally stored archetypes, too. However, Si doesn't CHOOSE them: they were created by experience.

Similarly, Ni doesn't "choose" the perspective it perceives, as much as it might seem like it to others. Rather, think of both Si and Ni as libraries of experiences. Si stores the concrete, literal versions of those experiences, but doesn't tend to keep functional/purpose/meaning-based attributes of it. Ni stores a more functional/purpose/meaning-based version of experiences, but tends to lose track of the concrete specifics.

Both Si and Ni can quickly pull up their respective libraries, and quickly rifle through the index to pull up the most relevant past experience.

So what Ni does is look at reality, e.g., at a problem, and immediately sees "what kind of problem" it is, pulls out the Ni-experience that relates to it, and it is nigh-instantly solved. (Just as if you'd asked Si about a fact, and the Si individual immediately recites the correct fact to you.)

Ni doesn't remember facts. It remembers how to solve "that kind of problem" in a very abstract way. As you might notice, putting "that kind of problem" into more concrete terms is very difficult.

Ne also chooses a perspective, not which is most evident and certainly not the most factual, but which seems to have the most potential to create something novel and/or something connected to a Ji concept (because these don't exist in a vacuum from the other functions). This is why NPs seem the most disconnected from reality or "absent-minded" or "dreamy" because it appears to be wishful thinking from the outside.
You are going to have more of an understanding of Ne than I do, but I don't think Ne chooses a perspective either.

Perhaps the difference is that you are judging dom and I am perceiving dom? You always end up choosing what you look at and how you look at it, perhaps? A blindness of Ni doms is that we don't really feel like we're "choosing" anything, that it's just there, but it probably looks like a "choice" to others.

Ni looks delusional too, but in the way where someone frames reality to be whatever it is they want it to be, with complete disregard for actual facts, so that no matter an outcome, it is what they predicted, because it can be framed that way.
Again, the notion of "whatever it is they want it to be" is off. This is how it looks to others, not to oneself. What you are experiencing perhaps from other Ni types is that they appear to want to change whatever it is you believe to be true, and you're immediate thought is likely, "But that's reality. You don't get to change that."

The reality is that they see a different reality than you do. They're looking at a different set of interconnections that you don't readily see, just as you see interconnections that Ni doms don't readily see.

Ni doms don't "choose" that perspective that they apply. It's what they see. It is their reality. AND they don't often realize that other people don't look at the world that way. Self-awareness for an INTJ is when we realize that no, we aren't that smart, but rather we simply don't look at the world the way everyone else seems to. Most people don't look at the world and see a complex system of cause-and-effect that can be altered in fundamental ways. One surprise for me was that what most people view as static, I see as entirely flexible and changeable. Conversely, what most people view as flexible and changeable I see as almost-immutable law, e.g., analogous to the laws of physics.

That's sort of like wishful thinking too, but the change is in the internal perspective, whereas with Ne, the possibilities are out there, and it's a matter of you being able to chase them, cultivate them, and create the change outside of yourself. For the Ne type, if the outcome is not turning out to be the potential initially seen, then they abandon and move on, whereas Ni types can stubbornly stick to it and insist it is what they said it would be.
Interesting perspective, here. I think what you are encountering is the different visions of the world, again, which see different kinds of things as mutable/immutable.

Quick and dirty function-theory version: To Ne/Si, the concrete is immutable, the abstract is mutable. To Ni/Se, the abstract is immutable, the concrete is mutable.

The Ni type seems less fickle because of this, but they are really abandoning an internal perspective in favor of a new one which shapes reality as they want it to be (or which gives them a sense of control of its outcomes),
More likely, circumstances changed (Se is mutable) which drew up a different Ni-experience-model-abstraction. To you, it looks like they just totally changed their mind, and don't even remember that you had just proven them wrong, for example. What really happened is that you believe there is only one context (Si is immutable), therefore the Ni dom just did a 180-degree logical reversal.

My ENFP ex and I had some really weird arguments along these lines early in our relationship, until after an explanation of mine she realized, "Hey, waitaminute! You changed context. You're not even talking about what I'm talking about now!" To which I replied, "Yes. Exactly. Why wasn't that obvious before?"

You might wonder how that fits into Ni being immutable. Ni is still immutable because the old context didn't just disappear. It still exists in abstract, but doesn't apply now in the concrete instance. If the context switched back, you'd hear the same arguments as before the original switch. Further, there can be kind of a "chaos theory" kind of effect: a slight change in circumstances can produce a radically different conclusion even when maintaining the same Ni-understanding. Physics and math are full of things like this, where the math doesn't change at all, but a slightly different input value produces a significantly different result.
 

Eric B

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No, Ni or any other perception function doesn't "choose" anything. Only judgment does that.

I'm now wondering, if an example of Ni is when we come up with an idea, and it seems to fit so well, yet there's this sense that we might be missing something, or even overlooking something that collapses the whole premise; even though this factor is not yet known. Ne ignores this and hopes it goes away (for all that matters is that it can fit, and after all, nothing solid disproving it is being presented), while an Ni perspective would say "let's look at this and see what it really is".
Ni was described to me as "giving a voice" to something that [perhaps] could not be articulated, and I didn't fully get this at first, but then it suddenly dawned on me that it might be describing this subconscious sense of something missing, or things being "too good to be true".

Does that accurately describe Ni dom. experience?
 

Seymour

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Meh... I'd say as far as filtering (which is, one admits, a kind of judging) it might go (least filtering to most): Se Ne Ni Si

I'd say Se being less filtering than Si is fairly indisputable.

Whether Ne vs Ni is more filtering kind of depends on perspective. I'd say Ne generates a large number of (single hop at a time) alternatives. Then a judging function (Ti or Fi) prunes from there, but in a way that pretty invested once it chooses.

By comparison, I'd say that Ni tends to filter down to a single (or small number) of likely "nearly inevitable" or "convergent" perspectives. Then Te or Fe prunes (in a way that is fairly flexible in terms of new input) from there.
 
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