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[Jungian Cognitive Functions] Ni - What the hell is it?

redacted

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Ni: "The answers are in there. I just have to uncover them"
Ne: "The answers are out there. I just have to seek them out"

i like this.

though don't only Judging functions technically generate information? i thought Perceiving functions... well... Perceived :huh:

I like that explanation too.

Perceiving functions are actually the only way to generate information. They unconsciously take data from the world and combine it with internal sources of information to generate a stream of perception that's passed to the judgment functions. Judgment functions label the information, weigh it, throw some of it out, etc. But there can be no "leaps" in judgment functions -- they decide their conclusions based deterministically on a defined metric. With no leaps, there'd be no new information. That's why there's always an interplay between judgment and perception -- perception is necessary to change scope, broaden context, etc. and judgment is needed to flesh out whatever framework perception has defined.
 

Kalach

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Pfft, answers.

Meanings.





(Having Te on tap, I'll check truths against outside criteria, thus tend really to avoid saying "answers" are found inside. Inside is for where all that shallow Te finds better substance.)
 

InvisibleJim

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I love how this thread is full of dominant Ni users posting what they think Ni is, only for Ne users to come in and tell them that they are clearly wrong. This strange irony filled my morning with joy. I think every description of Ni I have read here has a grain of truth in it.
 

Quickening

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I agree that Ni is probably one of the harder functions to grasp if it's not one of your "top" functions.
Perhaps part of the confusion stems from the way Ni doms, especially, tend to explain it. I know I, for one, am inclined to try and reach for that single, ultimate phrase to encapsulate the whole experience of Ni - Ni as "seeing" or "knowing" or "total vision" or "everything". Or something. Ni is a singularity so it must be expressed as a singularity. This can easily come across as self-important/overblown, not to mention rather vague...but...it *does* seem to me capture something of the experience of using/seeing with/being Ni.
Hmm.
 

Craft

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I frown at what people are showing to be a complexity. Everyone uses Ni everyday, everyone tries to see things in a different way. When you read posts, you try to look at it in ways others might read it. When you brush your teeth, you visualize your teeth from a closer point of view. When you twist your key, you think of all the mechanisms involved to start the engine or open the door. When you read a word, you think of the word's meaning instead of the word being mere combination of letters or symbols. When you look at "1", you Ni it to make it not just "1".

Ni is Intuition that is Introverted. It is two words: Introverted Intuition.

It is the prime opposite of the function nearest to objective(or rather 'unconnected') reality: Se. For Se, 'touch' is 'touch', 1 is 1, nothing else.
 

skylights

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I love how this thread is full of dominant Ni users posting what they think Ni is, only for Ne users to come in and tell them that they are clearly wrong. This strange irony filled my morning with joy. I think every description of Ni I have read here has a grain of truth in it.

where do you see that in the thread? i have gone back through all 9 pages looking for this specifically, and what i mostly see is Ne users pointing out where Ne does the same thing as well, which is clarifying when an attribute belongs to N in general, and not just Ni.

i don't think that stating our own theories and observations about the "other side" is wrong in such a thread. you yourself have pointed things out about Ne and what ENPs do - and some Ni dom/aux have said things like Ne operating only in real time or being linear, both of which are not always true. i think it's fair for a Ne user to come in and clarify.

at least personally, i often pick up on a degree of pretension from Ni users. "you would understand if you used it" (though really, we all use it to some degree), "it's interior leaps and bounds and can't be explained", etc. i understand that it may be very difficult to discuss - Fi, being introverted and highly subjective, is much the same - but it's frustrating to read this thread and to basically see a bunch of Ni users be like, "it is spiderwebs", "it is a singularity", etc., which in essence tells us very little, and then to assign incorrect limitations on Ne. perhaps the nature of Ni is such that you can grasp a lot out of those little statements, but for the rest of us, it really doesn't clarify much. after all, if you already know what you're talking about, it's easy to grasp one another's analogies.

honestly, it sometimes ends up sounding like you (not you personally, i tend to find your method of communication very clear and not biased) - but sounding like some Ni users are pretentious and incorrect, and, given the communal nature of a thread, affirming one another in their incorrect pretentiousness, all of which is rather insulting. and that's when a Ne user tends to butt in and try to clarify. maybe the Ne user will be somewhat wrong, but that can be addressed through discussion. at least they're expressing things with language that others can have a chance to understand.

Perceiving functions are actually the only way to generate information. They unconsciously take data from the world and combine it with internal sources of information to generate a stream of perception that's passed to the judgment functions. Judgment functions label the information, weigh it, throw some of it out, etc. But there can be no "leaps" in judgment functions -- they decide their conclusions based deterministically on a defined metric. With no leaps, there'd be no new information. That's why there's always an interplay between judgment and perception -- perception is necessary to change scope, broaden context, etc. and judgment is needed to flesh out whatever framework perception has defined.

ahh. that makes sense. thanks.
 

uumlau

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Wow. I'm confused. One person says Ni is about looking at things from different perspectives and another says Ne explores all possibilities while Ni is focused on a singular vision.

Neither intuition is singular. It's just that Ni's plurality exists in a different conceptual space that isn't readily apparent.

This is something I always come back to. lol I never QUITE fully understand it. More specifically, I have problems differentiating Ni from Ne + Fi/Ti. Is Ni simply more conclusive than Ne + Ti?

Ni is more "judgey." It filters out concepts as much as it includes alternate ideas. When one strong in Ni communicates ideas, what you hear is the end result of all the thinking. Ne is less judgey, in that Ti or Fi evaluates the ideas internally, but personality-wise, you'll hear their thoughts on the fly. That's the way to spot it, but it doesn't describe what it does or what it feels like.


I agree that Ni is probably one of the harder functions to grasp if it's not one of your "top" functions.
Perhaps part of the confusion stems from the way Ni doms, especially, tend to explain it. I know I, for one, am inclined to try and reach for that single, ultimate phrase to encapsulate the whole experience of Ni - Ni as "seeing" or "knowing" or "total vision" or "everything". Or something. Ni is a singularity so it must be expressed as a singularity. This can easily come across as self-important/overblown, not to mention rather vague...but...it *does* seem to me capture something of the experience of using/seeing with/being Ni.
Hmm.

It's even hard to grasp if it is your top function, because there are no words to describe it. Even other Ni-doms will say, "no no no, that's not Ni," and give their own interpretation, which is simply their personal subjective model of how Ni works for them.

Behavior-wise, when dealing with others, the easiest way to spot Ni is the "context shifting." This concept of context shifting doesn't come straight from Jung, but it is present in the Myers-Briggs and Lenore Thomson literature, among others. It's useful to be aware of this effect both to spot it in others and to be aware of when doing it oneself if one is strongly Ni.

The way it appears is that in the middle of a conversation, one can talk with an Ni user, and they appear to change topic, but insist that they haven't changed the topic at all when challenged. Subjectively, they're still focused on the same idea, but they come at it from different angles. These different angles can be just simple obvious different perspectives that most people can see, but often they'll be off-the-wall perspectives, or very "projecting" perspectives where they assume you must have "really" meant something else than what you said. In a highly technical discussion, it can become very obvious, because the Ni-dom is trying to figure out some difficult problem, and will be switching mental gears behind the scenes as he adopts and rejects a variety of perspectives/contexts.

The way it feels to oneself is "just knowing." The perspective-shifting is so natural that it is an unconscious behavior. I've argued with Ni-doms who insist that there is no context shifting - and observe them context-shifting even as they argue the point. The context shifts themselves cannot be put into words, mostly because they change the very definitions of the words, or require inventing new words. Imagine being able to see in the infrared spectrum, and having to explain how you know that a car's engine is still warm without touching it - and you don't have words like "infrared" or "spectrum" to describe it. Answer: you "just know."

However, "just knowing" is not a good means of determining whether one uses Ni. Ti and Fi and Si also "just know." It's a feature of the subjective processes. Si and Ti are a bit more "concrete" and can eventually be described in words. Ni and Fi tend to be very difficult to translate, and both "just know."

Therefore, I would suggest regarding context-shifting as the distinguishing feature. It doesn't fully describe how Ni really works, but it has a reasonably reliable manifestation that others can observe, and one can observe in oneself.

As for the singular vision, this is where Ni's version of multiple perspectives comes in. Ni tends to pursue a single idea, but from multiple angles/perspectives/contexts. As was noted in another thread, Ne goes "outside the box" for a solution and keeps that box around for reference, Ni goes and builds new boxes.

As an intuitive person, it is possible to feel like one can do both of these Ne and Ni tasks, and one is generally right. One will have a preference for one or the other, which is part of one's personality, but one employs the other as needed. E.g., Ne doms will go conceptually afar to pursue an idea, but is certainly capable of drilling down Ni-wise to figure out a particularly difficult puzzle (though this can often be Ti or Fi, too, depending on the case). Similarly, Ni can delve deeply into a problem, trying to find the right box to fit, but should that fail, reach more broadly for new understanding that might help (and this can often just be Te or Fe, not just Ne).

These are just ways of perceiving and understanding the world, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. There isn't much to be gained by describing Jungian superpowers of cognition to make certain perspectives seem more powerful or useful. Rather, there is much to be gained from noting the weaknesses of Ni, and the weaknesses of Ne, beyond just the "head in the clouds" problem. The "better" function is the one that happens to look at a problem or situation "in the right way," and that's situation-dependent, not an intrinsic feature of the function.
 

PeaceBaby

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Ni: "The answers are in there. I just have to uncover them"
Ne: "The answers are out there. I just have to seek them out"

I like this too, but I wonder what Ni doms and aux's think.

Would providing examples be of use? Could Ni users provide some real life times where they felt Ni was engaged to provide a new insight or fresh perspective?

I appreciate that Ni is hard to explain, much as I feel Fi is hard to explain.

Here's a brief Ne example from my life that came to mind:

Right now, my hubs and I are living in an apartment while his job is in another city, and we still own a house, but quite far away actually. We miss living in a house, as we're not at a point in our lives where we feel we want to be in a smaller space without our own land around us etc.

A couple of weeks ago, we were out walking the dog, the issue above not a part of our convo that day. A woman in a car pulled up to us and asked us how we liked the apartments, what was the neighbourhood like etc. We answered her questions, and asked her if she was looking to move to the area. Her reply was that she was renting a house but found it too big for her and she was tired of doing lawn maintenance etc. She thanked us for our time and drove off.

After she pulled away, I said to my husband, more joking than serious, "We could have sub-let our apartment to her and we could rent her house. Trade-sies!"

To me, that's Ne. It's a tangential pull seemingly out of the air to solve a problem, or relate ideas to each other like beads on a string. It always feels like an "aha" moment to me, but haha, let me know if you think that's Ni instead!

Can Ni users share a story or two? I would be very interested to hear them. :)
 

IZthe411

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That sounds more like Ne.

Ni's more like seeing her dog in the act of pooping and you figure out World Peace.
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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I frown at what people are showing to be a complexity. Everyone uses Ni everyday, everyone tries to see things in a different way. When you read posts, you try to look at it in ways others might read it. When you brush your teeth, you visualize your teeth from a closer point of view. When you twist your key, you think of all the mechanisms involved to start the engine or open the door. When you read a word, you think of the word's meaning instead of the word being mere combination of letters or symbols. When you look at "1", you Ni it to make it not just "1".

Ni is Intuition that is Introverted. It is two words: Introverted Intuition.

It is the prime opposite of the function nearest to objective(or rather 'unconnected') reality: Se. For Se, 'touch' is 'touch', 1 is 1, nothing else.

I agree with this. But perhaps others believe this answer to be too simple?
 

uumlau

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I like this too, but I wonder what Ni doms and aux's think.

Would providing examples be of use? Could Ni users provide some real life times where they felt Ni was engaged to provide a new insight or fresh perspective?

I appreciate that Ni is hard to explain, much as I feel Fi is hard to explain.

Here's a brief Ne example from my life that came to mind:

Right now, my hubs and I are living in an apartment while his job is in another city, and we still own a house, but quite far away actually. We miss living in a house right now, as we're not at a point in our lives where we feel we want to be in a smaller space without our own land around us etc.

A couple of weeks ago, we were out walking the dog, the issue above not a part of our convo that day. A woman in a car pulled up to us and asked us how we liked the apartments, what was the neighbourhood like etc. We answered her questions, and asked her if she was looking to move to the area. Her reply was that she was renting a house but found it too big for her and she was tired of doing lawn maintenance etc. She thanked us for our time and drove off.

After she pulled away, I said to my husband, more joking than serious, "We could have sub-let our apartment to her and we could rent her house. Trade-sies!"

To me, that's Ne. It's a tangential pull seemingly out of the air to solve a problem, or relate ideas to each other like beads on a string. It always feels like an "aha" moment to me, but haha, let me know if you think that's Ni instead!

Can Ni users share a story or two? I would be very interested to hear them. :)

I'm fairly sure that's Ne. It's finding new (objective) possibilities.

Ni instead finds the new perspective that explains why process X isn't working right.

Ne starts with kind of a home base that might be regarded as Si (I don't particularly mean the function, but rather as the other end of the Ne/Si dichotomy). There is an internal subjective point of view, "the box" if you will, and it works outward from that. Notice that the notion of "house" and "apartment" and "rent" and all the rest remained constant. You put the concepts together in a new way.

Here's an example of Ni from my perspective, of the "spooky" sort. I was once watching one of those corny Twilight-Zone-like shows back in the 90s [Tales from the Crypt, if I recall correctly], where there is always a twist in the plot, usually totally unexpected. This particular story was about an old man who has died, his pretty trophy wife, and his two sons. There is also another son who left long ago, estranged, and is only mentioned in passing. They're arguing about the inheritance, and the sons don't want the trophy wife to have a share. Without going over the entire story, which I barely remember, I'll tell you my Ni insight. I thought, "Oh, the wife is really the missing son, with a sex change," after watching it for about 5 minutes.

I was proven absolutely correct at the end of the show!

The "context shift" part is obvious: I replace "wife" with "son," which seems absolutely ludicrous, absurd.

What went on inside my head is how the context shifts happen. I'm given elements A, B, C, D, and formula f(A,B,C,D), which is unknown. f(A,B,C,D) is the context. I switch from f() being the story in its context to the context of "what would I want to do to give this story a twilight zone flavor with elements A, B, C and D?" Remember, one of the rules is that they have to tell you everything you need to know, so that they can point back at it and show how you were looking at it all wrong. At this point, the missing son was highlighted as a problem element in the story. He was mentioned too much. In a typical story, he might show up in the finale, and reconcile with everyone, including the trophy wife. But that option I rejected as too normal. The most "elegant" solution was that the missing son was already present, and the only way for the missing son to be already present was for him to be the trophy wife.

The most important aspect of Ni in this regard is that we don't disregard particular possibilities based conventional notions of likelihood, but rather we allow/disallow contexts based on whether they "work." As long as the context is self consistent (kind of like Ti), we'll keep an open mind about it. If it's the ONLY possible context, it sounds like we just predicted something magically, by "just knowing." It even feels like that to ourselves.

In the more conventional arena, I use Ni to troubleshoot. The context shifting in this regard is to come up with a set of possible problems that could have happened, no matter how ridiculous they might seem. I investigate the most likely ones, and quickly find the real answer, which is often but not always my first guess.

In one particularly odd case, a web page was crashing based on some weird SQL error. There was no way that anything was wrong. All the data looked correct. Everyone was puzzled. So I looked at the data for oddities. The main weird thing I saw was that the person's name as given in the data was very long, basically a sophisticated identifier for QA testing to sort results. I changed the name to "Joe Smith" and the bug went away.

At that point, I knew that something about the name (it turned out to be the length) was somehow corrupting the data. It took forever, though, to explain this to everyone else. Their reaction was always, "No way," and "That makes no sense at all." But I could point at empirical data to prove it, which isn't often the case for Ni. In spite of the empirical data, the conclusion was so odd, that it wasn't easy for others to absorb. My Ni attitude was of the "I don't know why it is true, but I know that it -is- true" and I knew that I would figure out why eventually, and didn't need to know "why" to communicate the problem. It turns out that Microsoft's SQLXml had a bug in it, and we needed to update to a new version of SQL Server to fix it.

This is how Ni relates to Se. The "singular vision" is often an Se-perspective of the matter, either we want to make the Se-perspective true (by understanding and controlling our environment via Ni) or we want to understand why the "Se-fact" is the way it is. This is entirely analogous to how Ne branches off of an Si-subjective understanding.

I hope these anecdotes give others a good understanding of Ni. The results are weird, but all we're doing is admitting possibilities that others immediately discard, because they don't fit those others' context(s).
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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This is how I imagined Ni working. The only way for Ni to work effectively is with Te. It (Ni) needs all the information it can get because it has to have something to organize. I think of Ne as 'finding' the connections. Ni takes the found connections and rearranges them in a way in which the whole is logical and coherent. This is helped either with the dom and aux. functions that help organize both Ne and Ni.
 

Aleksei

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I love how this thread is full of dominant Ni users posting what they think Ni is, only for Ne users to come in and tell them that they are clearly wrong. This strange irony filled my morning with joy.
Well, for one thing personal perspectives of what type is run headfirst into a catch-22 situation, which is that since functions themselves are abstract symbols it's necessary to first define what the function is to then figure out whether you fit it, only after which you can define your experience with it.

Personally, I have't tried to correct any Ni user on what Ni is -- I've corrected them on what Ne is.
 

Craft

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I agree with this. But perhaps others believe this answer to be too simple?

Then I suggest "others" consider themselves 'overthinking'. Ni's base definition is permanent. On the other hand, longer series of connections may extend the qualities of the function further but too far will break the "rope" that connects itself with the reality of what it is.

This is how I imagined Ni working. The only way for Ni to work effectively is with Te. It (Ni) needs all the information it can get because it has to have something to organize. I think of Ne as 'finding' the connections. Ni takes the found connections and rearranges them in a way in which the whole is logical and coherent. This is helped either with the dom and aux. functions that help organize both Ne and Ni.

I think the relationship between judging and perceiving functions is always there. You can't perceive without a standard of judgement, you can't judge something without that 'something'. But thats another discussion...

It is interesting that you say 'both Ne and Ni'. It implies that one can have both functions. But then, where did the 16 types go?

Here is how I think Ni Je Ji operates:

1. You discover an internal perception-based idea.
2. You judge the plausibility of the idea via Je or Ji.

Here's an interesting way of looking at the operation:

1. Imagine looking into a telescope; Imagine you are seeing a specific something, a rock.

2. Now, Imagine within the telescope the distance between your eyes and the rock. What 'spaces'(distance) must be there in order for your perception to be valid?


The 'Ni-idea' is what you see immediately, the rock. The 'distance' represents the several key components needed to determine the validity of the perception; they are parts of the puzzles that must be scrutinized by a standard, by a judging function. Therefore, what parts are necessary are determined by what kind of standard your mind adheres to. Ti-Fe or Te-Fi?

Thus, the difference between an INFJ and INTJ.

Se is when you stopped looking onto the telescope and you actually start moving towards the rock.

---

Now, Here is how I think Ne Ji Je Pi works:

1. You see an external connection.
2. Same thing, you judge it with T or F depending on the scenario and I or E depending on your available functions. If Ti-Fe, you go by those standards, if Fi-Te, you by those standards, if etc. etc.


So, metaphor:

1. There's a rock.
2. You pick it up.
3. You swallow and digest it.
4. Before you know it, Bam! You got your scrutinized rock right out of your ass.

---the end.
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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Wouldn't Ni try to determine what the rocks purpose was and then in an experiment use Te and Se to test its theory?
 

Craft

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Wouldn't Ni try to determine what the rocks purpose was and then in an experiment use Te and Se to test its theory?

It feels kinda weird when you say "Ni tries to determine". I think it's suppose to be a function, not a person. If a person will try to determine something, helpful Ni will just be there for the person. I think your right if your saying something like Ni=hypothesis. Yeah. probably. maybe.

So you have it: Ni *guides the person* towards a possible solution that adheres to Te's standards. (Te is after all about scientific empirical proof)

With Se, I don't know. Se is also perception. It's there when the 'actual' experiment is being conducted.

----

With 'purpose', well that's only one of the things you try figure out in this world.
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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I personify the functions every now and then. It helps me describe them. Yeah, I'd say Ni is a hypothosis.
 

Craft

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I personify the functions every now and then. It helps me describe them. Yeah, I'd say Ni is a hypothosis.

Ah..yeah.. I think that could be one of the *sources* of misunderstanding, so for what its worth, I'd recommend an alternate method.
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

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Pronouns=/=functions. Then I say that the function Ni is a hypothosis. That seems to sum up the internal inspiration pretty well. However I don't know how to compare Ni with foresight which one with it is said to possess. Perhaps it's still a hypothosis?
 
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