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

Iván Elías

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Now I have no doubt I am a Ni-dom, and used to have strong tertiary Fi that changed to a more properly use of auxiliary Te. My enneagram followed this change, reflected on my wings and integration cycles. It seems that I was a confused INTJ long time ago. I think I just found something useful to my personal puzzle. Thank you.
 
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Just read this quote. It's the first one that has actually helped me understand the difference:


"The difference between Ni and Ne is that Ni has an idea first, then gathers data second, whereas it's the other way round with Ne."
 

uumlau

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Just read this quote. It's the first one that has actually helped me understand the difference:

"The difference between Ni and Ne is that Ni has an idea first, then gathers data second, whereas it's the other way round with Ne."

This is indeed true as far as it goes, as Ne is extroverted and Ni is introverted, and is a good first-order description/distinction, especially as regards to how Ni and Ne handle scientific hypotheses. It is, however, somewhat incomplete, as it fails to account for a few subtleties:
  • Ni is always gathering data, just not entirely consciously.
  • It doesn't entirely apply to Je-Ni types (ENTJ, ENFJ), which tend to act first based on their dominant function, and reflect upon that action with their auxiliary.
  • Ni doms tend to have a lot of subjective ideas, not just one, but use external context (real life data) to determine which idea applies. If there isn't enough data to select an idea, the Ni dom tends to stay silent, rather than openly speculate like an Ne dom. If there is "too much data", the Ni dom will say that "something doesn't add up", as the data is inconsistent with the patterns they know. This leads to a search for a new valid pattern or an error in the presentation of the data. Only if a single idea arises as the only possible one that applies do others see the "magical" Ni "ah-ha".
 

the state i am in

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Meh... I'd say as far as filtering (which is, one admits, a kind of judging) it might go (least filtering to most): Se Ne Ni Si

I'd say Se being less filtering than Si is fairly indisputable.

Whether Ne vs Ni is more filtering kind of depends on perspective. I'd say Ne generates a large number of (single hop at a time) alternatives. Then a judging function (Ti or Fi) prunes from there, but in a way that pretty invested once it chooses.

By comparison, I'd say that Ni tends to filter down to a single (or small number) of likely "nearly inevitable" or "convergent" perspectives. Then Te or Fe prunes (in a way that is fairly flexible in terms of new input) from there.

i understand the thought process here and mostly agree (especially the awesome verbiage of "hop" for Ne), but i wanted to add my two cents.

while we are very top-down thinking, that alone doesn't mean that we are filtering "more." we are filtering an aspect more, sure, but not EVERYTHING more. for the theory to make sense, filtering is inevitable. filtering would describe how cognitive functions specialize in different modes of filtration.

to me, it seems we Ni types are filtering the momentness most of all while employing a greater aggregation of filter iterations in order to do so. those convergent perspectives aren't that we get rid of more information. it's that we hold the essence of something stable by exploring how we can continually cross-contextualize it through different combinations of filters and investing a shit ton in filter creativity in every thought process in order to do so. we send more information back to the source of the process, which is the consciousness of the filtering process itself. this is also where we are most playful, and where all those transcriptions and weird evolutions of key/tonal center keep shape-shifting so we can keep the dream of the thing steady in our defocalized not in this space anymore but more in the hyperspace now gaze.

for me, what gets me stuck on a perspective has more to do with a vague question or purpose in my thinking, which is usually emotionally driven. some kind of value attraction or need that is being met. while sometimes the stuckness of these frameworks results when i forget how to come back to the moment bc the baggage of the process builds up until my mind is exhausted from carrying it (just exhaustion from trying to mind-read complexity too long), more often than not it's simply because i have a need i do not recognize, that i am not emotionally realizing (which would be the best way to realize it), where i'm just too attached or aversive to something to be able to let go enough to keep a balance sense of now clean and aware of the sequence of what has been happening overall. so the flow is gone, and so catching the wave of situational relevance flowing through me all the way through the bones of my body and through others takes a little bit of balancing and falling when trying to stand up again. kinda gotta get a sense of hereness, where gravity and spin are meaningfully happening really in only one direction (and one thing that Ne types seem to never have to reduce their presence to, a kind of lame biggest force first order of operations).
 

pmj85

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The most profound Ni-state I have experienced was reached through quiet contemplation one mid-Summer afternoon. I was sat in my garden, half mulling things over, half taking in the sounds and sights of nature. From seemingly nowhere there was a sudden onset of stillness, a complete quieting of my mind and of the world around me. In that moment it was as though time stood still and reality unfurled before me, my layers of subjectivity peeling back; I began to view the world in what seemed to be a truly objective manner, completely devoid of any human filter. My consciousness expanded exponentially.

There was, for lack of a better phrase, a sense of ego-death. I was no longer an individual human being – I was a part of the ‘flow’ of the natural order, and I realised that up until this particular point, my entire world view (and also the world view of others) had been shaped so profoundly by our own subjective or shared values and perceptions. It was an incredibly humbling experience.

Introverted Intuition Revisited | INFJ Insights

^ My own attempt to define Ni :p
 

Eric B

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Pretty interesting article.

The whole focus on "contemplation" reminds me of Beren's description of Ni in Dynamics of Personality Type (where the little excercise tells you to wait for some "universal meaning" to come up), which is perhaps the first in depth descriptions of the functions I had read, but it focuses on the whole "getting a sense of 'what will be'" aspect, which is what made the whole function seem totally "mystic" and hard to grasp or digest as something real, for me.
The description didn't say where these "universal meanings" come from; only that they can come when "we have no sensory data to go on". So that made it even more confusing (for someone starting out on trying to understand the functions), as to "what exacty this is".

Of course, the answer is that they come from "the unconscious", but when I soon afterward saw descriptions of Ni (including from Jung himself) as dealing with the "unconscious", that made it all the more confusing, because unconscious I had just learned was what undeveloped functions are. (and then, I would see the term used on both attitudes of iNtuition, and then all introverted functions, as I've probably mentioned).
I guess it's Ti looking for some consistent defining terminology before a concept will "register".
 

pmj85

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Hi Eric,

Yeah - it's a puzzling one for sure. Also, if I'm not mistaken we have spoken at reasonable length in the past (over on PerC). Apologies if I'm mistaken, but if you are the same person I believe you to be, thanks - you helped me quite a lot back when I most needed it :) I eventually submitted myself for professional typing, but the advice 'you' offered was pretty much spot on. I think you *may* have slightly edged towards ENFJ, but if I recall correctly you later retracted that and said that I must be an INFJ. It was quite a confusing time.

Vague memories, but you helped me to clarify things.

Oh, I just noticed your avatar. Ha! Yeah - it was you ;p
 

Eric B

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Hi Eric,

Yeah - it's a puzzling one for sure. Also, if I'm not mistaken we have spoken at reasonable length in the past (over on PerC). Apologies if I'm mistaken, but if you are the same person I believe you to be, thanks - you helped me quite a lot back when I most needed it :) I eventually submitted myself for professional typing, but the advice 'you' offered was pretty much spot on. I think you *may* have slightly edged towards ENFJ, but if I recall correctly you later retracted that and said that I must be an INFJ. It was quite a confusing time.

Vague memories, but you helped me to clarify things.

Oh, I just noticed your avatar. Ha! Yeah - it was you ;p
Yeah, as much as I try to help with this stuff, I'm always trying to refine my understanding, and make sure I'm getting it right myself, and Ni has (understandably) been the most difficult to understand and convey.
 

pmj85

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Ni is extremely hard to understand - even us Ni dominants struggle! That article is the closest I have ever come to really pinning it down; ultimately, words aren't sufficient.

People who have experienced altered states of consciousness (by way of substances like DMT) often say that words alone cannot begin to convey the experience. Ni is a lot like that. That being said, a few Ni dominants have been in touch with me re: the article. I've had a resounding "This strikes a chord" response, so it must have hit some mark, somewhere.

Ni is a liberation. A transcendence. I would assume that it lends great foresight to INTJs. To us INFJs, it makes life an incredibly beautiful and mystical experience. But... shit. It's multi faceted. It can also allow me to peer into the depths of a person, it allows me to know things without knowing HOW I know something.

It's...

It's very confusing :p
 

Eric B

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I meant to add, I often would wonder how Ni would come out for Christians I think might be NJ's in our environment, which is heavy SJ. (Even the Berens book mentiones that we don't get much training in this kind of process int his society"). All of that "altered states of consciousness" would be looked on with suspicion, at least when put that way.
However, the people would likely simply attribute it to "God speaking to them" in normal "prayer"/meditation. (I tend to think that many Christians are trying, a bit unnaturally, to prolong the "divine intervention" they read about in scripture, in this age where "special revelation" has clearly ceased. This ends up producing this "inner"-focused religion, especially among Charismatics; and what they don't realize, is that rather than "testifying" to the rest of the world that it's really God working in them, it only "proves" to everyone that "God" is only some "inner" thing, and thus it doesn't really matter which religion one uses to access it).

So the point is, this is how their otherwise "unusual" form of perception would blend nicely into a heavy Si Christian environment. They'll probably be the ones more insistent that God really "speaks" to us, while the majority SJ's go through the motion because it's what we're "supposed" to do, but they'll be the ones to admit that it's hard to really hear what God says anew, and instead rely on the way he's "already spoken" to us in scripture. (Which I tended to fall back on, though with Ne in front, ponder on why direct revleation doesn't continue, and often gro weary of either of the other approaches, especially when neither has produced any consistent doctrinal unity).
 

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Some thoughts I had on Ni today.

I can only say of Ni, my dominant function that it is my primary way of understanding the world, of taking in information via my senses, the same as anyone else, yet it makes an underlying, abstract connection of this information.

Ni is activated 24/7. It's always ON.

I take in every bit of info around me and it constantly makes connections with other information gathered in order to synthesize a deeper understanding, a higher meaning. It happens internally, so there's not usually a lot of talking that is going on during the process. But there is a lot of noise in my head.

I subconsciously and consciously evaluate every piece of information to see where it fits into my overall understanding of the grand scheme of things. It has to somehow contribute to the big picture. Even apparently random stuff has meaning and purpose in the overall scheme of things. Everything is a thread in the tapestry of my existence.

I am driven to seek a deeper meaning and purpose in life. I have learned that when people look at me with that glazed-over-what-planet-are-you-from look that I should just not even engage. So, many times I mentally walk away and keep the conversation on a level they’re comfortable with. People think I'm just really cool and reserved, but mostly it's because I often feel like I'm explaining the experience of color to someone born without eyes.

I am very adept at connecting the dots. Ni dominants are idea people. Ni has the ability to synthesize an overall pattern and predict a plausible outcome.

I think that in real life, I’m pretty people savvy. Still, it’s important to note that while a well-developed intuition can often be dead on the money, intuition can also be wrong sometimes. It must be balanced with logical thought or else you end up with a fruitcake on your hands, which is fine for an occasional dessert, but you can't live on fruitcake alone.

Ni dominants subconsciously and sometimes consciously seek to find answers to their questions. They need closure.
 

chubber

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I really liked this post, OA.


This is so close to being dead-on accurate. It only has one flaw, which you can see if you compare it to Si. Si references internally stored archetypes, too. However, Si doesn't CHOOSE them: they were created by experience.

Similarly, Ni doesn't "choose" the perspective it perceives, as much as it might seem like it to others. Rather, think of both Si and Ni as libraries of experiences. Si stores the concrete, literal versions of those experiences, but doesn't tend to keep functional/purpose/meaning-based attributes of it. Ni stores a more functional/purpose/meaning-based version of experiences, but tends to lose track of the concrete specifics.

Both Si and Ni can quickly pull up their respective libraries, and quickly rifle through the index to pull up the most relevant past experience.

So what Ni does is look at reality, e.g., at a problem, and immediately sees "what kind of problem" it is, pulls out the Ni-experience that relates to it, and it is nigh-instantly solved. (Just as if you'd asked Si about a fact, and the Si individual immediately recites the correct fact to you.)

Ni doesn't remember facts. It remembers how to solve "that kind of problem" in a very abstract way. As you might notice, putting "that kind of problem" into more concrete terms is very difficult.
wow, mind blowing. Yes, concepts I only deal in concepts, it feels like breaking my brain when I have to recall facts.

You are going to have more of an understanding of Ne than I do, but I don't think Ne chooses a perspective either.

Perhaps the difference is that you are judging dom and I am perceiving dom? You always end up choosing what you look at and how you look at it, perhaps? A blindness of Ni doms is that we don't really feel like we're "choosing" anything, that it's just there, but it probably looks like a "choice" to others.
wow, another thing I have great difficulty trying to explain when someone asks me to make a choice.

Again, the notion of "whatever it is they want it to be" is off. This is how it looks to others, not to oneself. What you are experiencing perhaps from other Ni types is that they appear to want to change whatever it is you believe to be true, and you're immediate thought is likely, "But that's reality. You don't get to change that."

The reality is that they see a different reality than you do. They're looking at a different set of interconnections that you don't readily see, just as you see interconnections that Ni doms don't readily see.

Ni doms don't "choose" that perspective that they apply. It's what they see. It is their reality. AND they don't often realize that other people don't look at the world that way. Self-awareness for an INTJ is when we realize that no, we aren't that smart, but rather we simply don't look at the world the way everyone else seems to. Most people don't look at the world and see a complex system of cause-and-effect that can be altered in fundamental ways. One surprise for me was that what most people view as static, I see as entirely flexible and changeable. Conversely, what most people view as flexible and changeable I see as almost-immutable law, e.g., analogous to the laws of physics.
So many times, people that work with me, will say I'm smart, but I don't feel smart. I feel comfortable in certain fields that everybody else seems to have a hard time with. But the opposite happens for me in their "easy category".

Interesting perspective, here. I think what you are encountering is the different visions of the world, again, which see different kinds of things as mutable/immutable.

Quick and dirty function-theory version: To Ne/Si, the concrete is immutable, the abstract is mutable. To Ni/Se, the abstract is immutable, the concrete is mutable.
This explains so much. I'm always the one sticking to my concept, while only fiddling with the parameters.

More likely, circumstances changed (Se is mutable) which drew up a different Ni-experience-model-abstraction. To you, it looks like they just totally changed their mind, and don't even remember that you had just proven them wrong, for example. What really happened is that you believe there is only one context (Si is immutable), therefore the Ni dom just did a 180-degree logical reversal.
:doh: sounds so familiar.

My ENFP ex and I had some really weird arguments along these lines early in our relationship, until after an explanation of mine she realized, "Hey, waitaminute! You changed context. You're not even talking about what I'm talking about now!" To which I replied, "Yes. Exactly. Why wasn't that obvious before?"

You might wonder how that fits into Ni being immutable. Ni is still immutable because the old context didn't just disappear. It still exists in abstract, but doesn't apply now in the concrete instance. If the context switched back, you'd hear the same arguments as before the original switch. Further, there can be kind of a "chaos theory" kind of effect: a slight change in circumstances can produce a radically different conclusion even when maintaining the same Ni-understanding. Physics and math are full of things like this, where the math doesn't change at all, but a slightly different input value produces a significantly different result.
The only example I could think of is something like acceleration.

When reading this thread: http://www.typologycentral.com/foru...itive-functions/72998-function-clarifier.html It completely threw me off, off Ni. Thinking that I didn't use or had preference for Ni. Does visual have anything to do with it?
 

Mademoiselle

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Of all the functions, this is probably the hardest to understand what it means.

I mean you read a description and it's like "Knowing thins instinctively" and "Experiencing Premonitions" and it's just like WTF? It's hardly an explanation of how a mental function works. Does anyone have a better explanation? I can almost never tell definitively in characters if what they are using is Ne or Ni, since both are abstract idea generators and pattern connectors, supposedly.


Disappointing take that account down.
How come this came out of you?
 

chubber

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Some thoughts I had on Ni today.

I can only say of Ni, my dominant function that it is my primary way of understanding the world, of taking in information via my senses, the same as anyone else, yet it makes an underlying, abstract connection of this information.

Ni is activated 24/7. It's always ON.

I take in every bit of info around me and it constantly makes connections with other information gathered in order to synthesize a deeper understanding, a higher meaning. It happens internally, so there's not usually a lot of talking that is going on during the process. But there is a lot of noise in my head.

I subconsciously and consciously evaluate every piece of information to see where it fits into my overall understanding of the grand scheme of things. It has to somehow contribute to the big picture. Even apparently random stuff has meaning and purpose in the overall scheme of things. Everything is a thread in the tapestry of my existence.

I am driven to seek a deeper meaning and purpose in life. I have learned that when people look at me with that glazed-over-what-planet-are-you-from look that I should just not even engage. So, many times I mentally walk away and keep the conversation on a level they’re comfortable with. People think I'm just really cool and reserved, but mostly it's because I often feel like I'm explaining the experience of color to someone born without eyes.

I am very adept at connecting the dots. Ni dominants are idea people. Ni has the ability to synthesize an overall pattern and predict a plausible outcome.

I think that in real life, I’m pretty people savvy. Still, it’s important to note that while a well-developed intuition can often be dead on the money, intuition can also be wrong sometimes. It must be balanced with logical thought or else you end up with a fruitcake on your hands, which is fine for an occasional dessert, but you can't live on fruitcake alone.

Ni dominants subconsciously and sometimes consciously seek to find answers to their questions. They need closure.

My significant other sent me this today... which was coincidence as I read [MENTION=9310]uumlau[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=16382]Ene[/MENTION]'s posts.



She said that she gives me the same look like the 2nd dog that is not speaking (green collar), when I say something "crazy".

edit: I would say that I constantly seek answers to questions, it will always be at the back of my mind until I run into something that solves the question/problem/challenge. I definitely need closure.
 

Ene

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My significant other sent me this today... which was coincidence as I read [MENTION=9310]uumlau[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=16382]Ene[/MENTION]'s posts.



She said that she gives me the same look like the 2nd dog that is not speaking, when I say something "crazy".

I LOVE that! LOL. Thank you for posting it.
 

Stanton Moore

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If Ni 'takes information from your senses' then by definition, it is Ne.
Ni does not exist. Not one person can profer a definition that makes any sense, not even so-called Ni doms.
Face it guys, it's just a tidy shortcut to finish Jung's theory, to make it 'balanced', but it simply doesn't make sense beyond it's function as an ego-syntonic booster for some folks: 'I'm an Ni dom!' I have magic in my blood, ordained by the gods!'.
I'ts a fantasy, the psychological equivalent of a unicorn.:unicorn:
 
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Eric B

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I once thought that (that the function didn't make any sense, and Jung must have filled it in to "finish" the theory).

All data has to come from the senses, originally. Nothing starts purely from inside, without any input from the world. It's what we do with the "impression" the senses makes, that etermines the function-attitude.

From Lenore's book:

Se: Sense impressions as they occur [from the outside, of course.
Si: stabilize our sense impressions by integrating them with ones we remember (past experience) [i.e. internal storehouse]
Ne: unify sense impressions with larger [outward] contexts
Ni: liberate sense impressions from larger contexts; patterns are part of us [i.e. internal, also largely unconscious]; the way we make sense of information and energy impinging on our systems.
 

Alea_iacta_est

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I once thought that (that the function didn't make any sense, and Jung must have filled it in to "finish" the theory).

All data has to come from the senses, originally. Nothing starts purely from inside, without any input from the world. It's what we do with the "impression" the senses makes, that etermines the function-attitude.

From Lenore's book:

Se: Sense impressions as they occur [from the outside, of course.
Si: stabilize our sense impressions by integrating them with ones we remember (past experience) [i.e. internal storehouse]
Ne: unify sense impressions with larger [outward] contexts
Ni: liberate sense impressions from larger contexts; patterns are part of us [i.e. internal, also largely unconscious]; the way we make sense of information and energy impinging on our systems.

Eric, have you ever considered a Dynamic-Static approach to cognitive functions? With the Introverted Perception functions dealing with tracking how things (objects, people, design) affect or leave impressions on either the self, the environment, or others, and the Extroverted Perception functions dealing with the features of things (objects, people, design), their describable qualities that can be separated from the self?
 

Stanton Moore

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I once thought that (that the function didn't make any sense, and Jung must have filled it in to "finish" the theory).

All data has to come from the senses, originally. Nothing starts purely from inside, without any input from the world. It's what we do with the "impression" the senses makes, that etermines the function-attitude.

From Lenore's book:

Se: Sense impressions as they occur [from the outside, of course.
Si: stabilize our sense impressions by integrating them with ones we remember (past experience) [i.e. internal storehouse]
Ne: unify sense impressions with larger [outward] contexts
Ni: liberate sense impressions from larger contexts; patterns are part of us [i.e. internal, also largely unconscious]; the way we make sense of information and energy impinging on our systems.

Once again: so ambiguous as to be meaningless. No one can offer a definition that is simple and unambiguous. Patterns are part of us? what?

Unicorns...
 

Eric B

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Eric, have you ever considered a Dynamic-Static approach to cognitive functions? With the Introverted Perception functions dealing with tracking how things (objects, people, design) affect or leave impressions on either the self, the environment, or others, and the Extroverted Perception functions dealing with the features of things (objects, people, design), their describable qualities that can be separated from the self?
I had considered "dynamic/static" for S/N not too long ago (based on the Fundamental Nature of the MBTI site, which represented S products as static dots and N as the connections between them), but that wasn't simple enough apparently.
What I'm going with regarding the functions now, I've just spelled out here: http://www.typologycentral.com/foru...604-taking-top-root-defintions-functions.html

I'll think on what you've just described. Did you get that from somewhere?

Once again: so ambiguous as to be meaningless. No one can offer a definition that is simple and unambiguous. Patterns are part of us? what?

Unicorns...
Yes, she could have been a bit more clear there, but what it's referring to (as I annotated) is the unconscious.
 
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