I was roughly following until that last line. Why must someone pick a side?
We do it for the sake of sustaining cohesive explanations. Sooner or later, we reach a point where we are forced to consider the priority and hierarchy of available analytical tools. And for a theory to be sustainable, it must be predictive. That's where socionics goes too far, shoehorning character traits and qualities that don't hold up to scrutiny. The Reinin dichotomies and Gulenko's cognitive styles become a bed of Procrustes, as they simply don't fit when applied practically.
If the two systems are incompatible, couldn't it be that they describe different aspects of people, with "INTP"etc. referring to cognition, and "INTj/LII"etc referring to social dynamics?
Next to romantic style, social dynamics constitute the worst aspect of socionics. The LII "Robespierre" analyst, which is exemplified by e.g. Vladimir Putin, is jokingly referred to as a type that applies the guillotine to whatever falls out of favor. Meanwhile, this is an "emotivist" and "merry" type, which is simultaneously cold-blooded and experiences the world through holographic-panoramic cognition.
The more traits you add and the deeper you dive into the type description, the greater the chaos. In the end, the analysis is so far-reaching that it can only be applied to that one subject (be it Robespierre, Hamlet, Zhukov, or any other avatar).
(or, given that socionics speaks of "information metabolism", each system could be referring to cognition analysed from different angles)
If that is the case, then we are dealing with esotericism and not a perspicuous theory.
My side is just... whatever I happen to have pieced together from various sources. As I mentioned, I haven't yet been able to make sense of socionics.
I appreciate your contributions, and find that you are consistently able to motivate your conclusion. Even if you fully rely on intuition, and only trace the necessary steps after the fact, you remain flexible and open to argue your case. If you were to rely on socionics, it would turn your approach to typing inside out, from assessment of function to that of shoehorning.
Saying that Socionics and MBTI is completely different is like saying, well an African is completely different from Caucasian. And we all know how that argument goes today. We are all the same fundamentally, deep down in the core, but now to go and argue that we are different is like sticking your head in the sand and denying that we have the same cores although slight exterior "noticeable" attributes.
That's a poor analogy, as we humans share 60% of our DNA with bananas and fruit flies, and 90% with cats. And as far as humans are concerned, my 4% Neanderthal DNA is enough to set me (and most Eurasians) apart from sub-Saharan Africans, while my Ashkenazi ancestry significantly raises the risk of developing Crohn's disease and other unpleasantries.
With that in mind, typology does not require the exactitude of genetics and genomics. But if we are looking to draw meaningful conclusions, we shouldn't muddy the waters by merging incompatible theoretical outlooks that don't even rely on the same definitions.
Besides, the fact that we use terms like NF and SP, from a system that was introduced by Keirsey, expanded on the ancient study of temperament by Hippocrates and Plato, is ironic, since Keirsey distances himself from MBTI and calls his own system completely separate from MBTI. This simply perpetuates the whole argument that it "must be different" even though today nobody seems to make a distinction of it.
Expanding on that dimension, I appreciate the ancient Greek distinctions, such as Dionysian (SP) and Apollonian (NF). But they are playful and expansive and, as such, do not constrain the types. Furthermore, I am not defending MBTI. I am embracing Berens' expansion of MBTI through the lens of Jungian analytical psychology.
You cannot be an ENFx in MBTI and then state to be a SLI in Socionics.
I agree that it's unlikely, considering the function stack, but that
via negativa still doesn't tell us anything about the person in question. The problem occurs when, e.g., ISFP is equated with the ESI "guardian," which is described as a highly ethical and family-oriented stoic, someone who'd consistently choose duty over love. The moment you try to merge them, you realize that one will have to give.