can someone please define Si for me?

[Jive A Turkey]

My mother is dominant Si and she has a strong fear of travel. The two seem like they could be connected based on the information in this post.

 

[redacted]

curious. So how do you define it now?

*waits for sparkling insight from INFJ*

eh, it's hard to explain. it clicks finally, though. stupid Ni...

i could define it, but it wouldn't be very sparkly lol. it would just be reiterating certain things that have already been said.

actually, it kind of reminds me of confirmation bias. and dispositional attribution (as opposed to situational).

dispositional attribution...yeah.

 

[Carebear]

My mother is dominant Si and she has a strong fear of travel. The two seem like they could be connected based on the information in this post.

They could. Staying in the place you've experienced down to the tiniest pebble (to exaggerate) will feel safe and sensible. New places could always spell trouble, and trouble in a place you don't even know at that. Better not to travel if you can. That said, most Si dominant people don't fear traveling, and though they might not be your typical random backpacker (preferring instead to plan ahead and travel to places where they know approximately what to expect), they can be pretty used to traveling.

Other functions come into play as well. A Si-Fe person in a culture where people travel a a lot would for instance have a strong reason to travel as well. (Because of Fe -> being concerned with societal standards and expectations.) A Si-Te person on the other hand could really hate traveling, because in addition to leaving predictable, he's also leaving a place where he's probably used to controlling his external surroundings for a place where he'll have much less control (Te).

Hm... but yes, there could be a connection. I know whenever I'm about to travel, I always feel a small unease when leaving the safe and predictable, even while I at the same time am wagging my tail to experience new and unpredictable. I think this unease could be weak Si.

 

[Nocapszy]

eh, it's hard to explain. it clicks finally, though. stupid Ni...

i could define it, but it wouldn't be very sparkly lol. it would just be reiterating certain things that have already been said.

actually, it kind of reminds me of confirmation bias.

Or OCD[/quip]

 

[bluebell]

I originally posted this on INTPc a few weeks ago. I'm posting it here (with some minor edits) because I'm curious if the ISXJs on here think this is at all accurate, or whether I've got it completely wrong. It's something I spent quite a bit of time thinking about - but given I can't actually see inside someone's head, it could be totally screwy.

--------------------------------------------------------

One of my ISTJ colleagues is pretty familiar with MBTI and other personality profiling and she's somewhat introspective, so I've learnt a bit from her. As far as I can tell, following a set process is comfortable for her, and it's enjoyable. If she doesn't have a process set out, she's way out of her comfort zone and she feels stressed.

Maybe that's what drives the need for closure - to have everything decided and planned in advance. If she has to get something done, and she hasn't done it before and there isn't a stepwise process written out somewhere to follow, she comes to me because I can invent a process for her to follow that she can write down.

I still haven't worked out what actually drives her to get things done though. Perhaps it's more that 'getting things done' is part of the processes thing. That part of the process is doing the things on the list of things to do. And if you don't do things, then the process hasn't been followed.

I have a good friend who is an ISFJ. She operates in a similar way, but her focus is on people, not abstract tasks. She is the ultimate hostess. She also gets way out of her comfort zone if she's in a people situation which she hasn't come across before. She doesn't know what the 'correct' thing to do is, so she gets stressed until someone tells her what the 'correct' process is, eg an unusual dish at a dinner party and how to serve it for herself on her plate.

I think the doing things for other people is because it's the 'correct' thing to do according to her mental model of processes. She can't comprehend not doing things for people, like baking a cake on someone's birthday for everyone she works with. Because that is part of her mental picture of the world. It is very hard to put into words though. It's not motivated by wanting other people to feel at ease or comfortable (because, frankly, her excessive hostessing can sometimes make me very uncomfortable, but she does it anyway because it's the right thing to do in her eyes).

As far as I can tell, Si involves mental models but of processes - not ideas or concepts.

 

[Hirsch63]

ISTJ...following a set process is comfortable for her, and it's enjoyable. If she doesn't have a process set out, she's way out of her comfort zone and she feels stressed.
...need for closure - to have everything decided and planned in advance.

ISFJ...but her focus is on people, not abstract tasks. She is the ultimate hostess.
...gets way out of her comfort zone if she's in a people situation which she hasn't come across before.
...doesn't know what the 'correct' thing to do is, so she gets stressed...
...can't comprehend not doing things for people, like baking a cake on someone's birthday for everyone she works with. Because that is part of her mental picture of the world.

... It's not motivated by wanting other people to feel at ease or comfortable (because, frankly, her excessive hostessing can sometimes make me very uncomfortable, but she does it anyway because it's the right thing to do in her eyes).

FWIW I can identify with the quotes here, except the last. I do want people to feel at ease and enjoy the best work I am capable of. Partly because I believe that it is my responsibility to do the best I can for others with what I have and partly because I utilize the feedback from their experiences to make the next experience incrementally better.

I started out on this forum with the impression that my preferences would label me ISTJ...but as time passed and I began to learn more I found the T and J very fuzzy for me.

As also mentioned I store volumes of trivial data and don't even realize it. And I do have those "hunches" as well...though I have a hard time believing them because I am constantly self-questioning the reliability of anything especially my perceptions. Having been wrong or failing at somthing makes me hyper vigilant about a re-attempt. Not that I won't, just that I will feel the need to be ridiculously over-prepared. This can really just rob the joy out of many experiences...it is somewhat similar to an addiction I feel.

 

[Wandering]

Funny how all those descriptions of Si make me uncomfortable... It's like I have to turn myself inside out to get a sense of Si. Weird!

 

[MerkW]

Funny how all those descriptions of Si make me uncomfortable... It's like I have to turn myself inside out to get a sense of Si. Weird!

?

What do you mean?

 

[Wandering]

?

What do you mean?

Hm... How to explain that?

It's like Si is about doing in the sensory realm what I want to do in my head, and vice versa.

Attention to details, for example. I can be obsessive about details when I contemplate ideas and theories and things like that: I *love* going into such details (to the exasperation of quite a few people I have talked to online). But when it comes to the sensory world, details quickly overwhelm and irritate me. As long as the general feeling I get from the outside world is OK, I don't care about the details. I really don't. I don't care what one is wearing, what car people drive, what I'm going to eat for lunch, and so on.

That's something that's easily noticeable in any fiction I write for example: you will find extremely little mention of what the environment looks like for example, unless it is directly important to the story. Even when I imagine the scene, I don't have any details in it except for those that matter: the rooms are empty of furniture unless I need it, I have no idea what my characters are wearing unless it matters, and so on. But I can tell you more than you'll ever want to know about what they are thinking and feeling, about their motivations and fears, and in fact, in one way or another, that's basically what my stories always end up being ABOUT.

Similarly, when it comes to *remembering* details, I naturally want to do the opposite of what Si does. Si will remember minute details from years ago. Argh! Just that thought makes me sick! I want to remember the GIST of things, what they MEAN, but certainly not what they were like. (That regularly lands me into troubles, mind you, like for example when I end up saying things like: "I don't remember exactly what he said, but this is what he meant... Believe me?")

There was also something about being settled in one's environment. Uh, settled. That's one word I really don't relate to. For me, settling is dying and life is change. I abbhor routines with a passion, for example, and I have to make a MAJOR move every few years. A static sensory environment is a nightmare for me, no matter how comfortable it may be at first. You could give me the house of my dreams, and I'd absolutely love it and enjoy it at first, but if you forced me to always keep it in the exact same way you gave it to me, I'd eventually, after a few years, find a way to escape it - and I can go to extreme lengths for that. In my head, though, a stable, reliable environment is what I am constantly after, if only because I can almost never get it, because there is always a detail (see, details!) here or there that just doesn't fit. But when I do get to that state of bliss where, for just a minute, all the details seem to fit just right into a great picture, it's like WAOUH! And I wish it would last. But it never does, because new details come in that just don't fit and I have to find a new great picture that takes them into account. A settled mind is my Holy Graal, but a settled life is my personal Hell.

And then there's comparison. I suck *big time* at comparing sensory inputs. I mean, it's so bad I can't even identify basic tastes like apple or whatever in cakes: I get the weirdest of looks from people when I am forced to admit I have no idea what taste their cake or food or drink is supposed to be. And don't ask me to compare something that's happening now with something that happened before, because I'll draw the blankest of blanks. First because I can barely remember what happened before anyway (in sensory terms, I mean), and second because even if I did, I'm no good at comparing. I can tell you if I like this or that better, but I can't compare them and I might start crying if you insist I do, because that's how helpless I'll feel. But when it comes to ideas or theories, man, I live for that! Comparing new inputs to previous understandings, comparing new inputs between them, I love doing those things.

See what I mean?

 

[nightning]

It is like the details do not exist unless we are reminded of them... or that they somehow become linked to other parts of the idea in meaningful connections do we think about them. I think Ni likes to focus on how some parts of objects relates to other things. To bring all the little details into focus is to overwhelm the mind. Imagine each piece is related to Nth number of other ones. For every single piece you integrate into the model, the number of related pieces goes up by the power of n. A computer has difficulties handling such inputs, let along the human mind with our limited discrete memory.

 

[Wandering]

It is like the details do not exist unless we are reminded of them... or that they somehow become linked to other parts of the idea in meaningful connections do we think about them.

Yup !

I think Ni likes to focus on how some parts of objects relates to other things. To bring all the little details into focus is to overwhelm the mind. Imagine each piece is related to Nth number of other ones. For every single piece you integrate into the model, the number of related pieces goes up by the power of n. A computer has difficulties handling such inputs, let along the human mind with our limited discrete memory.

Are we talking Ni or Si here ?

With Ni, I don't really mind having too many details to deal with, because I've developed tactics to deal with them. For example, I have learned how to discriminate between the important details and the less important ones (for example, recognise the main tenets of a theory from the tangential ones), so that I can focus on only the important ones at first. And if there really are too many important details, then I just pick some of them to work with right away and I put the others on a shelf so to speak, and I trust that I will get back to them sooner or later.

But I don't know how to do that with Si. I don't know how to recognise the important sensory inputs from the non-important ones, and I don't know how to selectively pick some and how to dismiss others. So I have to deal with them all at once, and obviously I can't do that, so my mind quickly explodes.

 

[nightning]

Are we talking Ni or Si here ?

With Ni, I don't really mind having too many details to deal with, because I've developed tactics to deal with them. For example, I have learned how to discriminate between the important details and the less important ones (for example, recognise the main tenets of a theory from the tangential ones), so that I can focus on only the important ones at first. And if there really are too many important details, then I just pick some of them to work with right away and I put the others on a shelf so to speak, and I trust that I will get back to them sooner or later.

But I don't know how to do that with Si. I don't know how to recognise the important sensory inputs from the non-important ones, and I don't know how to selectively pick some and how to dismiss others. So I have to deal with them all at once, and obviously I can't do that, so my mind quickly explodes.

I wasn't being very clear... (don't mean to go offtopic either ) I meant how Ni and Si handles data differently. I find that for myself, because I'm N dominant, things have to fit together for me to work with them. Isolated facts (the details) recalled by Si usually do not fit. So I either ignore them or to find a way to stick it in with the other stuff. Otherwise I go offtopic because I couldn't handling working with two patterns simultaneously.

I like to think of Ni applying filters on information. Things that fit gets to stay, and things than do not doesn't even register. Si takes an opposite approach. An object has all its details. How parts of the object relates to other patterns however are not considered.

 

[Wandering]

I meant how Ni and Si handles data differently. I find that for myself, because I'm N dominant, things have to fit together for me to work with them. Isolated facts (the details) recalled by Si usually do not fit. So I either ignore them or to find a way to stick it in with the other stuff. Otherwise I go offtopic because I couldn't handling working with two patterns simultaneously.

I think I see what you mean. If a sensory input, or a memory, fits within a pattern I've identified, I can integrate it within it. But if it doesn't fit anywhere, then it's just too much work to keep track of it, so I let it go.

For example, that's how I remember people's birthdays, most of the time (those I do remember, anyway...): by integrating it into a pattern with someone else's b-day, or an important event, or something like that. For example, I am barely starting to remember my 5yo son's b-day on its own: up to now, I remembered that his was 3 days before mine, and there was even a time when I had to actually count back the years to remember what year he was born

And sometimes it backfires too, when my mind accidentally creates a wrong pattern to remember something (like this actor's name, Zachary Quinto: for some stupid reason, my mind made a connection between Quinto and Joachim, and now my first reaction whenever I think of him is to call him Joachim Quinto :steam: I *know* his first name is Zach, but no! My mind is stuck on Joachim, grr...)

Is that what you meant? Or at least close?

I like to think of Ni applying filters on information. Things that fit gets to stay, and things than do not doesn't even register. Si takes an opposite approach. An object has all its details. How parts of the object relates to other patterns however are not considered.

Huh. Alien.

 

[nightning]

I think I see what you mean. If a sensory input, or a memory, fits within a pattern I've identified, I can integrate it within it. But if it doesn't fit anywhere, then it's just too much work to keep track of it, so I let it go.

For example, that's how I remember people's birthdays, most of the time (those I do remember, anyway...): by integrating it into a pattern with someone else's b-day, or an important event, or something like that. For example, I am barely starting to remember my 5yo son's b-day on its own: up to now, I remembered that his was 3 days before mine, and there was even a time when I had to actually count back the years to remember what year he was born

And sometimes it backfires too, when my mind accidentally creates a wrong pattern to remember something (like this actor's name, Zachary Quinto: for some stupid reason, my mind made a connection between Quinto and Joachim, and now my first reaction whenever I think of him is to call him Joachim Quinto :steam: I *know* his first name is Zach, but no! My mind is stuck on Joachim, grr...)

Is that what you meant? Or at least close?

Yes. Details that fit into patterns are recalled no matter how obscured they might be. I also have that happen to me. Some things I know are incorrect, but because of some weird connection made in the past I can start laughing at inappropriate times. For example Jenga is a perfectly neutral word/game... yet if you mention it, I have an uncontrollable urge to laugh.

Huh. Alien.

Filter... I see the unconscious mind filtering everything before passing it off to our conscious (although preconscious will be a better descriptor) mind. Inputs that fits are allowed to interact with other ideas in the mind. Those that do not fit are rejected immediately... before our conscious mind can even register their presence.

 

[TaylorS]

Jungian Function Theory

Introverted Sensing - Recalling past experiences, remembering detailed data and what it is linked to. Introverted Sensing often involves storing data and information, then comparing and contrasting the current stimulation with similar ones. The immediate experience or words are instantly linked with the prior experiences and one registers that there is a similarity or a difference - for example, noticing that some food doesn't taste the same and is saltier than it usually is. Introverted Sensing is also operating when you see someone who reminds you of someone else. Sometimes the feeling-tone associated with the recalled image comes into your awareness along with the information itself. Then the image can be so strong, your body responds as if reliving the experience. This could be seen as a source of feelings of nostalgia or longing for the way things were. In one instance, a young couple living in Europe spent their weekends trying out restaurants looking for food that tasted like American food.

IMO Si is associated with the left temporal lobe of the brain. The association regions of the temporal lobes take in visual and verbal information and processes it against memories and factual knowledge. once processed the information is sent forward to the frontal lobes to be used for planning, decision-making, and manipulating mental images (T and F). It is the LEFT temporal lobe in particular because of the influence of the language centers, which makes sensory analysis in the left cerebral hemisphere more literal and concrete then the right hemisphere. The right temporal lobe is where Ni dominates.

 

[Nocapszy]

I have a good idea. Si is like putting together a collage.

Take in the object details. That's not the information Si is interested in. First it sees what is.

Then it takes the negative from the original picture, and puts it in front of the other one. What's targeted are those things which don't line up perfectly. The difference between the two is the information Si takes in. Of course there has to be the initial sensation, which would have to be extraverted, otherwise there would be no film to compare the next experience to. That difference is then... I guess... averaged(?) and the compromise becomes the subjective sensation.

In the case of an ES_J, instead of accepting the sensation and compromising, they're more inclined to use their judgement to rearrange things so there is no difference. Of course there are varying levels of extraversion, and the willingness to change the situation to fit the Si is hinged thereon.

That's about as clear as I can be right now. I'm observing my ISTJ bro a lot lately, and this is the best I've come up with.

It's better than I said before.