Yeah, I don't know. You're turning ISTPs into systemizers, like your INTP dad. ISTPs are troubleshooters. There are cases where I want to think ahead more and rig a more fool proof system, but in my experience, it's mostly been with computer repair. Especially someone else's computer that constantly gets fucked up (due to their misuse and/or surfing porn). So I try to set up little safeguards and things they should do if they're going to be a problem. It takes some experience to know what they're doing wrong, so I don't just "set up" some big system right off the bat. And with air conditioners specifically, I'm Se. I know when it's cold and the heat needs to be adjusted at the moment. I don't predict that stuff.
INTPs are trouble-shooters par excellence. We just arrive at an understanding of the logic of the situation differently (perhaps). The main difference being that ISTPs are more rooted in the body, and in time. It's daft to suggest that an INTP wouldn't alter the temperature interactively, relying on a "theory" of what the temperature should be. We do both. The "best" solution for us is likely to be context-independent, timeless, because that exposes the core, unchanging features of the problem, and to grasp those is to understand the system deeply, so that, in the moment, improvisation is possible around that unchanging core. But we don't systematise robotically. In fact, the kind of person who rigidly systematises everything is more likely to be TJ. All TPs like a certain amount of freedom to revise and react to changing circumstances. To us, most everything is provisional.
Te uses objective facts and Ti uses subjective facts that the Ti user doesn't consider grounded until they're put into practice and yield predictable results.
Not true. "Putting something into practice" is a feature of extroverted [whatever].
This is why STP's can be incredibly stubborn in their beliefs and have "theories" as to why something happens the way it does, but they look outlandish to Te users. The STP will come up with a theory, "I believe if I punch jerry in the face he'll cry because he's been thinking a lot about his dead mother lately." So an Se-Ti user punches jerry in the face, jerry cries. "See look, Jerry is thinking about his mother constantly I proved it!" This is one of the flaws with Ti in that if they're not careful it can attribute the wrong information to the actual solution, and the Ti user can become very confident in his reasoning which ultimately doesn't make any sense to anyone else.
This might be something you do. It's not typical. It's actually an example of
weak Ti.
So for you, a Ti user, I would imagine you have an experimental approach, most likely trial and error so long as everything makes sense in your mind. Your create the theory in your mind, and then you implement it to see if its practical in real life. This is why TJ's are often very afraid of looking wrong while TP's could care less. If a TJ is wrong, it basically means all of their sources are wrong and their life is in shambles... Sucks. Ti users will often just drop the theory and come up with something new and not take it personally.
First of all, the "trial and error" and "form a hypothesis/test it" approaches are not one and the same. This split is more characteristic of S/N. S = "just do it", N wants a reason.
TJs are afraid of looking wrong because they are afraid of being wrong. Like all Js, they are more attached to the dichotomies of right/wrong, correct/incorrect. Black and white thinking. TPs are more comfortable with ambiguity, but we don't just drop theories, we try to synthesise them. Ti pares back extraneous detail but also loves synthesis. Te is more rigidly reductionistic.
Te is drawn to arbitrary order: sequential order (do step1, then step 2, then step 3, repeat); and hierarchical order - it trusts authority (as long as it sees that authority as legitimate). It likes rules and procedures. Its fastidiousness and rigidity, seem to me, to be based on an inability to trust one's ability to act extemporaneously. A mistrust of novelty and unpredictability. This is because it does not have the deep understanding that Ti relies upon. Deep understanding allows one to wing it, not blindly, but with confidence, guided by a sense that I can only describe as aesthetic, a feel for the underlying principles, the gestalt, which may or may not find concrete expression, depending on the intellectual attainment and self-awareness of the individual.
A good example I've used before as far as problem-solving goes, is that Te will consult a look-up table to perform a calculation. It will always consult this table (standard procedure + authority + repeatability), coming to rely upon it as a bible of sorts. Ti will immediately look to strip away everything unnecessary. It will notice the pattern, construct a formula, and use that instead. Of course, the latter approach might take a bit longer initially, because it goes much deeper into the problem, but when faced with a situation/ set of numbers not found in its bible, Te will struggle; Ti will not.
In the example of assembling furniture, the Ti user is less likely to consult instructions (especially written instructions) because a) he doesn't automatically assume that the instructions will be correct or helpful b) his thought-process isn't sequential, like the Te user, it processes the situation holistically, it understands potential, it visualises the end result and works backward to achieve that, almost by instinct. Trying to use instructions will actually often interfere with this native intelligence, especially since instructions are usually compiled by Te, for Te.
This is something TJs often cannot understand. They think that everything can be systematised and procedurized and thereby made more efficient and predictable and easy, when in fact, only mindless tasks can. I was once asked (by an ESTJ manager) to document my problem-solving process (so that other people could use it). He saw that I got the best results and wanted to systematise my process. Of course, I could do no such thing. One is either sensitive to the aesthetic potential of a situation, or one is not. I can simply "see" when something is wrong, when the logic is faulty, the impression is as real and immediate as that of other sense data. It is like looking at pink and orange side by side. Things that are wrong offend my aesthetic sensibility. They leap out at me. How does one explain that to the colour-blind? I can laboriously delineate what the problem is so that others can fix it, but I am at a loss to teach them how to "see" what is so obvious and immediate to me. It is only thus because Ti looks deeply into things, until it understands structure and potential, what a system can do, and what it cannot. There is no substitute or shortcut for that.