I have the ability to spot an Ni user from across the room. From a comparison perspective it seems very familiar to me. Ni was a trait I always recognized in others without knowing why.
If you think about it, the familiarity comes from the understanding of someone else weaving through their world, much in the same way you do. Ni users seem to stick out like a sore thumb, to me, since not everyone acts from the same functions. I am familiar with it, so I see it.
I was joking to a friend one time who was watching me pour a fountain drink, which I filled up to the fullest extent while allowing for a lid, and not overflowing, in one shot. He laughed, “Nice pour!†I told him “That’s how you know someone is an NT.â€
When asked why that would mean someone is an Nt, I responded that most of the sensory things which are often thought about, NTs didn’t just ignore them, they thought about them, then they thought about more.
Little sensory perfections, and big dumb intuitions are more a sign of an intuitive than someone who walks around pretending like they are autistic.
Now, that is N (with a T thing). In difference between Ne and Ni, I am going to start from my own comparison of interactions.
Ne seems to jump out at me out of nowhere. It is startling even if in a good way. During a conversation with an Ne user, you never have an idea of the direction it is taking. It is choppy, and goes in loops. One min you are heading in this direction, the next the position has changed.
I find Ne fun. A lot of fun. At times though I find it hard or annoying to try to keep up, unless I am really in a mood. It is …hyper N. Usually when Ne startles me, it snaps me out of attention to whatever I was thinking about like…..screeeech…..?.... Then I think about it for a second, and Lol.
Ni works a little differently. It is familiar to me, like I said I can spot it across the room, and I have very rarely been wrong. It is in everything they do. The way they carry themselves, the way they interact with others. The subtleties. Like someone said, they are big picture thinkers, have the ability to take a step back and analyze the situation.
An example would be, an Ni user who wants to appear attractive will more likely take on a confident walk than douse the shit out of their eyes with excessive make up.
Maybe that example does not ring true for all Ni users (remember I have Se in there somewhere), but the point is that you can recognize them by acting upon base theory, more so than projecting out a certain commonly held way of being.
They are less likely to do something categorized as the common “effect†to cause a specific "reaction". They get the same reaction, and stay on step, but from a more, base-core, philosophy or refined understanding.
Unless they are crazy, then they just default into “nothing is true, the world is shit†type mentalities.
To sum it up, Ni users seem to operate from a deeper yet simpler state of mind. They can refine to fit a certain situation, but even that will be because they have the ability to see how they must be in order to maximize the possibilities of the situation. Yet this understanding is from a deeper philosophy which isn’t as easily swayed surface influences.