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why nobody is actually borderline P/J

simulatedworld

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I'm pasting this from an extended wall conversation I've been having with Two Point Two, because I thought it had some other applications and might result in some good discussion. It provides support for my ongoing assertion that only the four primary functions (dom, aux, tert, inf) are ever truly exercised.

This is in the context of speaking to an INTJ:


A good example of what I mean here is people who claim to be borderline P/J.

In actuality this doesn't make any sense because P and J imply completely different sets of functional value systems. I've seen people claim to be something like ENFx, which is ridiculous because it implies that Fi, Fe, Ni and Ne are all of equal importance to you, and this simply doesn't work because Fi and Fe are so fundamentally opposed in their approaches (same for Ni and Ne.) (Amusingly, people who claim ENFx are virtually always ENFPs who are just attracted to the idea of being "miscellaneous". "Wow, I don't fit into any of the molds! I guess that's cause I'm just SO unique and different!" It's no coincidence that "be unique and different/don't fit the molds/go outside the box" is such a huge part of Ne's value system. Go fucking figure!)

This is what I mean about how every behavior, thought, action and opinion can be reduced further until you end up with ~4 primary life directives...one for Je, one for Ji, one for Pe and one for Pi.

People who make these claims simply don't understand enough about functional dichotomies to recognize why they're implicitly contradicting themselves. We're not working with 8 mutually exclusive and completely independent processes here; we're working with an interconnected system of competing and often absolute opposite value systems. Saying that you value Fi and Fe equally is completely absurd; you just don't understand the implications of those terms.

I may "use Fi" sometimes, but not because I place any fundamental value in Fi itself, but rather because I recognize situations where Fi's values happen to align with my own (which are invariably the result of Ne+Ti+Fe+Si.) I have no shame in admitting that I find Ti a totally superior system for internal judgments, but then--of course I do, I'm a Ti user! Again you need to direct your focus toward the total reasoning process and its most basic underlying values, not just the surface behavior or end conclusion.

You as an Fi user may make decisions in some situations that resemble Fe decisions, but it's always possible to look further into the motivations for those decisions and recognize which function or functional combination was ultimately responsible. Just because you did something that a lot of Fe users commonly do doesn't mean that Fe actually motivated your reasoning process to do it. I realized this through just talking to a lot of people and prying for honest, deep insight as to the most basic values that make them tick--and trust me, nobody values Fi and Fe equally. The natures of those two value systems are too fundamentally contradictory.
 

Polaris

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simulatedworld said:
I've seen people claim to be something like ENFx, which is ridiculous because it implies that Fi, Fe, Ni and Ne are all of equal importance to you, and this simply doesn't work because Fi and Fe are so fundamentally opposed in their approaches (same for Ni and Ne.)
Everything is fundamentally opposed, yet the universe somehow manages not to fly apart. This is because every opposition is unified at a higher level (the highest level being yourself considered as a perspective). If this weren't the case, you could have no awareness except of one thing at a time, since multiplicity is the most basic form of opposition. My point is this: everyone is a patchwork of paradoxes, so a person could very well contain Ni and Ne at the same time. All they would need for this is some higher, more universal concept to embrace those lesser ones (for example, undifferentiated intuition).
 

Stanton Moore

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Can you give examples of how Fe and Fi approach a problem differently?

When you say that 'I recognize situations where Fi's values happen to align with my own' are you implying that Fi is something exterior to your values? Does it have it's own values? What constitues your values vis-a-vis this difference? thx.
 

Oaky

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I walk up the stairs then I walk down the stairs, then I walk up the stairs, then I walk down the stairs. I continue this for the rest of my life. So am I someone who walks up the stairs or down the stairs?
 

Athenian200

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I walk up the stairs then I walk down the stairs, then I walk up the stairs, then I walk down the stairs. I continue this for the rest of my life. So am I someone who walks up the stairs or down the stairs?

You are someone who walks upstairs while you are in the process of walking upstairs, and you are someone who walks downstairs while you are in the process of walking down the stairs. While not on the stairs, you are a person who doesn't walk on stairs.

In other words... you're dynamic in this regard. You are whatever you're doing. What you've done in the past (what you were) or what you will do in the future (what you will be) doesn't matter in regards to this question.
 

Wonkavision

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I'm pasting this from an extended wall conversation I've been having with Two Point Two, because I thought it had some other applications and might result in some good discussion. It provides support for my ongoing assertion that only the four primary functions (dom, aux, tert, inf) are ever truly exercised.

This is in the context of speaking to an INTJ:


A good example of what I mean here is people who claim to be borderline P/J.

In actuality this doesn't make any sense because P and J imply completely different sets of functional value systems. I've seen people claim to be something like ENFx, which is ridiculous because it implies that Fi, Fe, Ni and Ne are all of equal importance to you, and this simply doesn't work because Fi and Fe are so fundamentally opposed in their approaches (same for Ni and Ne.) (Amusingly, people who claim ENFx are virtually always ENFPs who are just attracted to the idea of being "miscellaneous". "Wow, I don't fit into any of the molds! I guess that's cause I'm just SO unique and different!" It's no coincidence that "be unique and different/don't fit the molds/go outside the box" is such a huge part of Ne's value system. Go fucking figure!)

This is what I mean about how every behavior, thought, action and opinion can be reduced further until you end up with ~4 primary life directives...one for Je, one for Ji, one for Pe and one for Pi.

People who make these claims simply don't understand enough about functional dichotomies to recognize why they're implicitly contradicting themselves. We're not working with 8 mutually exclusive and completely independent processes here; we're working with an interconnected system of competing and often absolute opposite value systems. Saying that you value Fi and Fe equally is completely absurd; you just don't understand the implications of those terms.

I may "use Fi" sometimes, but not because I place any fundamental value in Fi itself, but rather because I recognize situations where Fi's values happen to align with my own (which are invariably the result of Ne+Ti+Fe+Si.) I have no shame in admitting that I find Ti a totally superior system for internal judgments, but then--of course I do, I'm a Ti user! Again you need to direct your focus toward the total reasoning process and its most basic underlying values, not just the surface behavior or end conclusion.

You as an Fi user may make decisions in some situations that resemble Fe decisions, but it's always possible to look further into the motivations for those decisions and recognize which function or functional combination was ultimately responsible. Just because you did something that a lot of Fe users commonly do doesn't mean that Fe actually motivated your reasoning process to do it. I realized this through just talking to a lot of people and prying for honest, deep insight as to the most basic values that make them tick--and trust me, nobody values Fi and Fe equally. The natures of those two value systems are too fundamentally contradictory.


+1
 

poppy

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I agree with a lot of what you said (most notably the J/P thing...you can't really straddle that dichotomy without being two different people).

However, people do use all 8 functions, obviously at different levels of proficiency. For instance, to say an INTJ never uses Fe as a function in itself ever, but only as a mockery of the function would be to imply that INTJs have no genuine concern whatsoever for social harmony (and some of us sure act like it) but that would make us sociopaths. Likewise if an ENFP had no Ti, they would have no (objective) concept of truth, and would be compulsive liars. (No?)

So what I'm wondering is exactly where you stand on this. Because some of the language you use ("nobody values Fi and Fe equally"--big emphasis on the equally) implies that you don't think it's that black and white, but everything else you say suggests that you do. And sometimes you get kind of hyperbolic to make a point, so if you could pin that down for me, I'll be done here.
 

Oaky

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You are someone who walks upstairs while you are in the process of walking upstairs, and you are someone who walks downstairs while you are in the process of walking down the stairs. While not on the stairs, you are a person who doesn't walk on stairs.

In other words... you're dynamic in this regard. You are whatever you're doing.
I was talking hypothetically.
 

simulatedworld

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Can you give examples of how Fe and Fi approach a problem differently?

They completely disagree on what the source for one's ethical bearing should be.

Fi says: I should draw my ethical principles from my own internal sense of what is ethical in a vacuum. Ethics would still exist as a fundamental property of the universe even if we were not here to think about them.

Fe says: I should draw my ethical principles from what my community surroundings hold as important values. Ethics exist only as a means of fostering emotional connection between people so that they can work toward external goals together.

The key is that to Fe, nothing is actually ethical until some external goal has been defined. If the goal is integrating into a given culture, then the methodology would clearly involve integration into that culture's moral and social norms. Fe's ethics change and adapt based on the emotional texture of its environment.

Fi, on the other hand, sees ethics as private, personal and non-negotiable. It neither seeks nor requires any external validation, because it knows what is ethical and what is not, end of story.

When you say that 'I recognize situations where Fi's values happen to align with my own' are you implying that Fi is something exterior to your values? Does it have it's own values? What constitues your values vis-a-vis this difference? thx.

Yes, Fi is completely outside of my personal value system. Since I use Ti for my internal judgments, I find use of Feeling for internal judgments to be inappropriate and selfish. Sometimes my internal logic and another person's internal feelings will reach the same conclusion, but for totally different reasons.



Not even worth my time.

troll.jpg
 

simulatedworld

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Everything is fundamentally opposed, yet the universe somehow manages not to fly apart. This is because every opposition is unified at a higher level (the highest level being yourself considered as a perspective). If this weren't the case, you could have no awareness except of one thing at a time, since multiplicity is the most basic form of opposition. My point is this: everyone is a patchwork of paradoxes, so a person could very well contain Ni and Ne at the same time. All they would need for this is some higher, more universal concept to embrace those lesser ones (for example, undifferentiated intuition).

Missed the point, though not so badly as to warrant not getting a response (like Ragingkatsuki, lol.)

Anyway, we need to come to a common definition of "containing" a function. Clearly some people hold positions that are typically associated with Ni as well as some positions that are typically associated with Ne, but that distinction on its own is meaningless and superficial.

When I use typology, I am seeking to define the most basic value system upon which all others are based. If you hold a traditionally Ni perspective on a given issue, but only do so in order to serve a more important Ne directive, you are not actually applying Ni itself, in my opinion. The key is whether or not you fundamentally value Ni on a most basic level...if you can only accept Ni perspectives in Ne terms, instead of on their own terms, you don't really actually value Ni. You seem to be focusing solely on the surface characteristics, an approach in which I find myself wholly uninterested.

I believe that all people's value systems are consistent with themselves when you take all the variables of that person's perspective into account...this is something like the basic economic principle that people always behave rationally and in their own self-interest.

Given this, and the fact that Ni and Ne directly conflict with each other regarding which forms of intuition can be taken seriously, I don't see any way that both could be valued equally by the same individual. If you don't see why Ne and Ni are fundamentally opposed to each other's approaches, I'd suggest that you do more research regarding the definitions of the functions themselves.
 

SillySapienne

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The difference between P types and J types is VAST!!!

I identify with INFPs, whereas I do NOT identify with ENFJs

ENFJs and ENFPs don't have a single function in common.

Blah, blah, blah I agree with you.

Whenever someone has ABCx as their type, I find it highly suspect.
 

Eric B

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I'm pasting this from an extended wall conversation I've been having with Two Point Two, because I thought it had some other applications and might result in some good discussion. It provides support for my ongoing assertion that only the four primary functions (dom, aux, tert, inf) are ever truly exercised.

This is in the context of speaking to an INTJ:

A good example of what I mean here is people who claim to be borderline P/J.

In actuality this doesn't make any sense because P and J imply completely different sets of functional value systems. I've seen people claim to be something like ENFx, which is ridiculous because it implies that Fi, Fe, Ni and Ne are all of equal importance to you, and this simply doesn't work because Fi and Fe are so fundamentally opposed in their approaches (same for Ni and Ne.) (Amusingly, people who claim ENFx are virtually always ENFPs who are just attracted to the idea of being "miscellaneous". "Wow, I don't fit into any of the molds! I guess that's cause I'm just SO unique and different!" It's no coincidence that "be unique and different/don't fit the molds/go outside the box" is such a huge part of Ne's value system. Go fucking figure!)

This is what I mean about how every behavior, thought, action and opinion can be reduced further until you end up with ~4 primary life directives...one for Je, one for Ji, one for Pe and one for Pi.

People who make these claims simply don't understand enough about functional dichotomies to recognize why they're implicitly contradicting themselves. We're not working with 8 mutually exclusive and completely independent processes here; we're working with an interconnected system of competing and often absolute opposite value systems. Saying that you value Fi and Fe equally is completely absurd; you just don't understand the implications of those terms.

I may "use Fi" sometimes, but not because I place any fundamental value in Fi itself, but rather because I recognize situations where Fi's values happen to align with my own (which are invariably the result of Ne+Ti+Fe+Si.) I have no shame in admitting that I find Ti a totally superior system for internal judgments, but then--of course I do, I'm a Ti user! Again you need to direct your focus toward the total reasoning process and its most basic underlying values, not just the surface behavior or end conclusion.

You as an Fi user may make decisions in some situations that resemble Fe decisions, but it's always possible to look further into the motivations for those decisions and recognize which function or functional combination was ultimately responsible. Just because you did something that a lot of Fe users commonly do doesn't mean that Fe actually motivated your reasoning process to do it. I realized this through just talking to a lot of people and prying for honest, deep insight as to the most basic values that make them tick--and trust me, nobody values Fi and Fe equally. The natures of those two value systems are too fundamentally contradictory
.

If we go back to starting with just four functions (S, N, T, F), and that an ego uses them in an inner or outer orientation, choosing in an alternating fashion which to use where. It becomes clear that Xe and Xi are not the totally separate animals that we have made them out to be. So it is hypothetically possible for someone to be close in J/P. We do normally choose one and reject the other, but still, however it develops, they can be close where it is hard to tell.
 

Feops

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Huh.

Well, I wrote the quiz and got a 50/50 split on the J/P thing, so that's why my last letter has a nice little 'x'. I didn't really think of the mechanics overmuch, and I intentionally did not research the meanings at length beforehand, because I did not want to project any bias onto the results.

The quiz questions were quite simple everyday things, and didn't hint at a deeper meaning.
 

Wonkavision

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I believe that all people's value systems are consistent with themselves when you take all the variables of that person's perspective into account...this is something like the basic economic principle that people always behave rationally and in their own self-interest.

I agree.

Children, up to a certain age, should not be expected to have strongly developed preferences or value systems.

But an adult with no consistent preferences or value system (if such a person even exists) would lack integrity, would have no character, and would be shallow and untrustworthy.
 

SillySapienne

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And an adult with no consistent value system (if such a person even exists) would lack integrity, would have no character, and would be shallow and untrustworthy.
Ew, shape shifters, they exist, and they're terrifying.
 

simulatedworld

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I agree with a lot of what you said (most notably the J/P thing...you can't really straddle that dichotomy without being two different people).

Right, which implies that Pe will never come up in conjunction with the other Pe function in the same person. (Also, Pe will never come up in conjunction with the Pi process that shares its letter designation, such as Se+Si, since Se and Si are fundamentally contradictory life attitudes in the same way that Ne and Ni are.)

However, people do use all 8 functions, obviously at different levels of proficiency. For instance, to say an INTJ never uses Fe as a function in itself ever, but only as a mockery of the function would be to imply that INTJs have no genuine concern whatsoever for social harmony (and some of us sure act like it) but that would make us sociopaths. Likewise if an ENFP had no Ti, they would have no (objective) concept of truth, and would be compulsive liars. (No?)

INTJs can have concern for social harmony without using Fe. Some INTJs that I know consider this to be an inherently ethical part of how one should behave, and so the root motivation here is Fi.

ENFPs can have objective conceptions of truth via Fi+Te. They can reason out what they find to be internally ethical and combine it with what they see works to complete meaningful external goals, and there you have it. Lacking Ti does not a compulsive liar make.

My point is that whenever you think you're seeing someone use a function outside the main four, if you really sit and talk to that person about the deeper fundamental reasons for it, if that person is willing to be open with you then you can always find a better explanation for it based on that person's four traditional functions. I think that most people see the surface behavior and neglect to consider the true underlying motivation; for example:

"Wow I've seen lots of Fe users do that, and now this INFP is doing it--he must be using Fe!" Well, no, he's not. Fe implies a completely different set of values and end causes for behavior and belief systems, and furthermore many of these blatantly contradict Fi's values. I don't buy that he's using both; you just need to dig deeper into that person to see what's really going on. I believe your interpretation here is flawed because it defines functions according to observable surface behaviors instead of internal motivations.

So what I'm wondering is exactly where you stand on this. Because some of the language you use ("nobody values Fi and Fe equally"--big emphasis on the equally) implies that you don't think it's that black and white, but everything else you say suggests that you do. And sometimes you get kind of hyperbolic to make a point, so if you could pin that down for me, I'll be done here.

The black and white part is the functional combination, not the particular order of the functions in any given combination. Each person uses one Ji attitude, one Je, one Pi and one Pe--but never two of the same cognitive process, and never two different directions of the same process. (e.g., you might see someone who uses Ni+Fi as the top two functions, but never Ni+Si or Ni+Ne.)

Now as for the orders of those functions--some people have them in different orders than what MBTI suggests, but it's my contention that these people virtually always suffer from personality imbalances and could generally improve their results in life by working to balance out their priorities so that their top two functions contain an E, an I, a P and a J. This is most conducive to self-actualization, balance and happiness.

On a side note, it's absolutely, completely, extraordinarily ridiculous--no, in fact, more than that--it's a sheer ludicrous absurdity that you would even begin to suggest that I ever exaggerate or use hyperbole. That's by far the most outrageous thing I've ever heard.
 

Wonkavision

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My point is that whenever you think you're seeing someone use a function outside the main four, if you really sit and talk to that person about the deeper fundamental reasons for it, if that person is willing to be open with you then you can always find a better explanation for it based on that person's four traditional functions. I think that most people see the surface behavior and neglect to consider the true underlying motivation; for example:

"Wow I've seen lots of Fe users do that, and now this INFP is doing it--he must be using Fe!" Well, no, he's not. Fe implies a completely different set of values and end causes for behavior and belief systems, and furthermore many of these blatantly contradict Fi's values. I don't buy that he's using both; you just need to dig deeper into that person to see what's really going on. I believe your interpretation here is flawed because it defines functions according to observable surface behaviors instead of internal motivations.

Yes! YES! Hallelujah. Somebody gets it. ;)

On a side, it's absolutely, completely, extraordinarily ridiculous--no, in fact, more than that--it's a sheer ludicrous absurdity that you would even begin to suggest that I ever exaggerate or use hyperbole. That's by far the most outrageous thing I've ever heard.

LOL---This IS a joke, right?

I'm pretty sure it is, but just wanted to check. :)
 

Jaguar

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Missed the point, though not so badly as to warrant not getting a response (like Ragingkatsuki, lol.)

Are you sending Ragingkatsuki obnoxious PMs, too?
Are you flaming Ragingkatsuki by rep comment, too?

What is it with you Sim, people can't have their own opinion which differs from yours,
without having to deal with your unruly temper tantrums in PM and rep comment?

If you want to harass people in private for disagreeing with you in public,
why don't you just preach to yourself in the mirror.
There will be no "dissenters."

Grow up.
 
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