Ne/Ni Jungian Cognitive Function Interaction

[Kalach]

This is completely off. Ne is ALL about arriving at new insights by creating connections between previously disparate fields of thought.

Well hey, I keep having the intuition that Ne people misrecognise Ni as some kind of jumped up Si, it seems only fair that I should misconstrue Ne as some kind of whacked-out Se.

Creating, you say? I want to say that I'm involved in creating too, but I'm not immediately aware of how the creation occurs. At best I can say it's a relatively sophisticated juxtapositioning--placing concepts side by side and having linkages spring up. It's not random, things seem to have glaringly obvious opportunity for juxtapositioning sometimes, and one takes it from there. I think it must have something to do with growing accustomed to abstracting content and, I guess, growing it. But I wonder if this paragraph includes really any more content than "I just see it, man." I guess the thing to add is one needs to have a feel for what is or isn't fruitful... although it seems a lot of the time that it isn't a conscious decision what is and isn't fruitful.

Then again, maybe it doesn't just happen. I know for instance that if I want to work out the answer to some problem, I know I have to seed the bed--read a few books, look at a few choices in the conceptual area, give myself something to form. But that's just the conscious processing part.

Dunno. What does Ne do?

In another thread on this, it seemed you all preferred the term "meta-perspective", but that to me is harder to understand.

That was the other yo-yos. (I think. I don't remember if I agreed or not, but it doesn't sound like something I'd agree to, if only because I don't know particularly what it means either.)

I dunno. "Meta-perspective" might be a stand in for an idea of a perspective that manages perspectives. A way to be among perspectives and have an view of what perspectives lead somewhere. It'd be, well, I don't want to say idiosyncratic, but certainly it'd be subjective. But maybe the view of views is the way views are selected for fruitfulness. Maybe it's the semantic operator I was trying to get at before.

(But, as one may see, I am merely combining ideas here--taking the word "meta-perspective" and some concepts from the semantics of formal logic--and I'm aware of doing some of them injustice... if I'm taking a meta-perspective here, it's rather more like the putting together of disparate parts and selecting, or abstracting, from parts of those parts to form some new concept....... this is (conscious) Ni in operation? It's the Frankensteining of new concepts?)

 

[Seymour]

Well hey, I keep having the intuition that Ne people misrecognise Ni as some kind of jumped up Si, it seems only fair that I should misconstrue Ne as some kind of whacked-out Se.

I think that's a fair assessment of both. Ne is similar to Se in some ways, and likewise Ni and Si. I find Ni fairly opaque, in particular (since it both abstract and internal). It's kind of the Fi of the perceiving functions in terms of understanding externally.

Creating, you say? I want to say that I'm involved in creating too, but I'm not immediately aware of how the creation occurs. At best I can say it's a relatively sophisticated juxtapositioning--placing concepts side by side and having linkages spring up. It's not random, things seem to have glaringly obvious opportunity for juxtapositioning sometimes, and one takes it from there. I think it must have something to do with growing accustomed to abstracting content and, I guess, growing it. But I wonder if this paragraph includes really any more content than "I just see it, man." I guess the thing to add is one needs to have a feel for what is or isn't fruitful... although it seems a lot of the time that it isn't a conscious decision what is and isn't fruitful.

Then again, maybe it doesn't just happen. I know for instance that if I want to work out the answer to some problem, I know I have to seed the bed--read a few books, look at a few choices in the conceptual area, give myself something to form. But that's just the conscious processing part.

Dunno. What does Ne do?

So, I feel like Ne operates like a continuous fire hose of associations, each association leading away from the starting point (which is why Ne conversations can be so all over the place). Each hop is often just a single association or idea. You can retrace the whole chain of hops (assuming you can remember how you got to your destination).

The Ji that goes with Ne operates as a heuristic for selecting which associations to follow, and also chooses which conceptual associations to stabilize into a long term theoretical model or value system.

From what I understand of Ni, it is less continuous, but operates in bigger bursts. That is to say, each unit of association that comes from Ne is smaller... Ni seems more likely to generate a whole string of associations all at once. Ni seems more likely to reshuffle the known into a new order.

It's a bit like those optical illusions, in which from the right perspective assembled bits come together to create a new image. It seems like Ni works best in fallow earth that has been seeded with ideas and information. There has to be a space in which an idea can form... a kind of internal pregnant waiting that Ni can fill. Then, it can suddenly re-contextualizes already existing information into a larger, coherent whole.

In a way, it reminds me of these junk shadow sculptures (more here... I think I posted this image before):

Except that Ni is good at finding the perspective in which everything comes together. It seems more magical to me than Ne, because it's less reducible into individual, easily understood associations.

 

[Qre:us]

My major complaint with flip floppers is not truly that they can't be pulling switcheroos. It's that the supposed reason for the existence of "preference" hasn't, it seems to me, been looked at closely enough yet. Function order and orientation, it is supposed, serves a purpose, or exists because of a need. And at least at first glance, flip flopping denies that that need exists.

Why does preference exist?

Because it's your most natural way of being, the most seamless; the one that defines you more than you can define/limit it.

Is it true that if you spend half of your time doing one orientation and the other half of your time doing the other, then you cannot be doing either with great competence?

Half? Why 'half'?

What you're negating is WHY the flipflopping might likely happen, because you're starting from a justification [and assumption] of the impossibility of flipflopping happening in the first place.

I think in order to understand whether "flipflopping can happen", we have to understand first whether the reasonings for why it might happen is plausible.

***

I am quite Ne-heavy, I believe. If anything, I'd sum myself as an "intuitive perceiver".

I also have a very high preference for Ni [not as high as Ne, though]. My top three functional preferences are Ne>Ti~Ni.

When Ne overwhelms me, it's not productive for my Ti to "keep up" with dissecting all the information because it can't, practically speaking, keep the fuck up. At that point, it's pointless to turn to my preferred judging function in hopes of balancing my overwhelmingly strong perceiving function.

When I was much younger, I'd have incidences where Ne overwhelmed me to the point of internal mental chaos, and it was the height of frustration [usually followed by a lot of destructive behaviours].

Imagine being bombarded by thoughts after thoughts, and before you can even grasp a thought to the point of having peace with it, it has springboarded to more and more and more thoughts, until you feel as if you're in the eye of a thoughts storm. And nothing, not one thought, is within your reach to securely grasp to your satisfaction.

For example, when I was pretty young, in school, there was this one instance where we were working in a group, and I was highly invested and interested in the discussion. And, I reached this point where I had to literally yell out to the group, "STOP! You're all going too fast!" accompanied by me physically slapping my forehead, repeatedly. (weirdo!)

The thing is, they weren't going too fast. It was me. My anxiety and frustration was just growing and growing because I felt like only 1/1000th of the ideas spurred in my mind from the group discussion were actually being seized by me, and transferred to the group, while the rest of the ideas were doing chaotic whizzing around my head. Too fast to grasp. Always slipping by. And taunting me as it flashed by. I was wanting relief, so I was turning to physical stimulus to get it [Se?] - my head-butting.

Something....ANYTHING....to calm my mind.

This is when I've seen myself preferring to turn to "Ni". Ni-Ti is very calming for me. As I grew older, I learned to not go to the opposite (often destructive/hedonistic) extreme, in order to "escape" - which was Se.

As an intuitive perceiver, I learned to harness the other angle of my QUITE dominant preference - which is still perceiving through intuition - but from "inside out" - Ni.

Thus, with Ni, it allowed me to be at peace with "an" idea (rather than seeing it as ideas, after ideas, after ideas....etc). Harnessing my Ni meant that I was able to perceive ideas as a holistic whole. One main focus.

So, in the same group discussion, how it would play out would likely be that I won't see parts after parts and try to keep up with how they'd form a whole. Rather, I'd start with an not-fully-understood concept/whole, and focus in on that [the whole being greater than the sum of the parts - thus, no anxiety if some "part" escapes me, because I still have grasp on the "whole"].

It's an insight where a part can suddenly become the whole [focus], and that's all right. All other thoughts can whiz by, and I'm content with that. There is no feeling of "loss".

Just going deeper and deeper into that particular thought - the calming feeling of sinking, constantly, slowly, where you actually feel like you're floating. There was no feeling of anxiety and/or frustration due to a "loss of thought". Allowing myself to, once in a while, just sink [in] to my thoughts (Ni-Ti), rather than trying to keep afloat on them (my normal mode: Ne-Ti).

No idea if I explained that well, or if it made sense, but, yeah........I do believe it is possible for a person to have a dominant preference for Ne and still have a high preference for Ni, as well. Conclusion: I have a very strong preference for perceiving through intuition.

 

[Synapse]

Now, that is not saying that Ni itself is a template or templates, if that's what you think. I was just trying to describe the "abstract frameworks", or "patterns/connections" Ni references, especially in contrast to the kinds of "patterns/connections" referenced by Ne.

Yeah, I imagine there could be a better word, but that was the one that I thought of at the time which really seemed to explain it.
Simply "model" is another one, which would convey the same thing, and be shared by all the introverted functions.

I knew there was a familiarity with the site reference I just couldn't place it, sinks in now. I tried to condense it a little. There is so much there to read and I thoroughly enjoyed your interpretation. Thanks for writing your thoughts out and leaving them on the internet, very nice.

 

[Kalach]

Because it's your most natural way of being, the most seamless; the one that defines you more than you can define/limit it.



Half? Why 'half'?

Is that your Ni again? It's certainly mine. "Half" is a tag for a larger concept of partiality. "Half" under this Ni regime has a fuzzy meaning, effectively equivalent to "some" or "an unknown amount of time that is not the whole amount of the time". That what you do when you Ni? That's what I do. I corrupt one perfectly good idea by giving it fuzzy boundaries and letting it stand in for some other more exact idea that I have currently no interest in being exact about, because it is in the process of becoming. And being exact about the concept will end the process of becoming. The bigger, newer concept won't emerge if the old concepts are given their true dimension. Loosey Goosey is where it's at with Ni. It's about as likely to calm the flow of Ne ideas as anything else that isn't Si.

What you're negating is WHY the flipflopping might likely happen, because you're starting from a justification [and assumption] of the impossibility of flipflopping happening in the first place.

Yes, I am. And you know why? For the exact reason this thread exists. The high speed chaos of extroverted intuition is mirrored inside introverted intuition. Ni does not relieve Ne, nor ground it. It cannot. It is just as chaotic, open, and unbounded. Ever wondered why INTJs are full of shit? Because the vagueness that is their playground is yours too, but they do it in a different way (and project it differently). So when Ne doms come along telling all that nonsense about how INJs "ground" their crazy flights of fancy and give them purpose, they ARE NOT describing some function of Ni. They are describing only their own need for concrete information. It's called projection. Extroverted intuition gets going by treating all incoming information as concrete, all subject to being abstracted away from and possibly connected to other ideas, ignoring the possibility of connection saturation, the event where all the perceivable connections have been perceived. And bear in mind that the cry "There are an infiinite number of connection! You can't limit it!" is NOT a truth, but an ideology borne of a need to see the world that way.

[tl; did read]

With the possibility floating around that projection is present and undermining truth in labelling, and the fact of Ne being actively present vaguing up the meaning of real things (as could be witnessed right there and then in the [tl; did read] section by "Ne" and "Ni" existing without suitably delimited definition), I'm obliged to call LIEZ!
DIRTY STINKIN Ne DOM LIEZ!

That extroverted intuition can and will make connections between this and that thing means you HAVE begun to explain what actually happened IF the intuition process was properly primed. Drawing a connection between an idea of an introverted function and the experience of an extroverted function DOES NOT constitute anything other than a description of the operation of an extroverted function. (By which I mean, sure, use the label "Ni", but in the absence of actual content, it's just a label.)


Or to put it all in a less territorial voice, how exactly is "Ni" a calming focus on a single overview? That cannot possibly be what actual Ni people do if that single overview is a constructed concept drawn--grown even--from the array of whatever distant and closely related concepts have or ever will (as far as we're concerned) exist.


("As far as we're concerned"--it's an i function, remember? Formally it isn't checked by what's "out there" at all. We make stuff up. Happy with that as a function of yours?)