Inferior Ti and lack of ability to trust objectivity

[á´…eparted]

Coming back to this because I completely forgot to say stuff and it just dawned on me out of the blue.

I definitely experience this, however my first instinct would be to attribute to anxiety, rather than personality type. Anxiety is like a radar constantly sweeping your environment for things to fix/protect you from. And once any tiny detail sets it off, it's going to keep beeping at you until it has actual evidence that everything will be fine. Logic/data/facts don't mean a thing once that part of your brain is activated no amount of logical analysis is going to shut it off.

Now, this could be type related because Fe doms are very in tune with how people work, and people are unpredictable. You can kind of apply logic and data to predict human behavior, but ultimately there are SO many factors that need to be considered to accurately predict behavior. Perhaps we expect more objective situation to also be unpredictable?

I'd agree in my case it is due to be an anxious person, but I do think the motivations are still stemming from inferior Ti, simply because of the content I am fretting about, and what inferior Ti tends to fret about. It gets bent out of shape when there is so much logic and rigidity that must be navigated that can't be fenagled for finessed, and at the same time there is no clear path or destination to get there. Or, if there is one, it's impossible to see because data is overwhelming. In some it might trigger an anxiety response. In others, it might just show up as garden variety stress.

This also sounds a lot like anxiety to me. The constant "what iffing" and ruminating on possible bad outcomes, even though logically most information points to a good outcome. When I do this I find myself trying find security in things that supposed to be objective and 100% reliable. But then I ask myself, is anything 100% reliable? To which my answer is generally "no". I'm not a scientist, but I would imagine that even with something tried and true there is still variability. How old are my components? Could something have been tainted? What if something happened in the lab where it was prepared? Did I actually measure that correctly? Even Te users are subject to this if anxiety is present. My INTJ brother who has OCD/GAD finds himself in this mindset from time to time.

I partially agree. It's anxiety, but again it's the motivation behind it, and I think it's somewhat unique to inferior-Ti. My lab mates will get stressed over similar things as I do. Particularly reactions not working. The stress can get terribly bad. What they think about though, is very different from me though. They don't get hung up on the "what if's" and don't lose this sense of trust in logic always being tried and true. There's an INTP in my lab that found this to be very perplexing when I explained it to him. It could be a language thing (he's from China), but he said while laughing "you actually think that?", as if he never consider someone to think that. They may lose a bit of faith, but they don't become completely detached/overwhelmed unable to think through properly. I hate to keep using my labwork as the example, but it causes me the most stress, and my line of work is heavily tilted in the favor of Ti doms/aux thinking patterns.

I really wouldn't consider money to be something objective or data related. Sure, you could know exactly how much money you need to meet your needs on a monthly basis. Even if you secure a job that provides enough money, with a little bit of a buffer to keep you in the green, shit happens. Cars break down, illness can cause you to miss work/rack up medical bills, pets get sick and have to go to the vet, etc. Even if you carefully calculate how much money you need, things can always change. I have anxiety, so I worry about stuff like this, even though logically I know that most months will be normal, and I'll have enough money. And if something does happen, no amount of worrying will actually help when it does.

Ok, this is fair and I can't find a good reason/way to disagree with you.

Maybe this is just confirming all your theory, but I just don't always trust data. Data said that Donald Trump wouldn't make it this far. Well, he did. Data says he won't win, but he very well still might. I don't trust data related to people, because people do crazy things. Which is probably why I will never get tired of studying them. Most data related to human beings is really just calculated guess work. So much goes into the accuracy of data. Who funded the study? Did they have a desired outcome in mind? Did the researchers actually follow all of of the protocol? Did the people in the study actually do what the researchers suggested? What would happen if they extended the study to 10 years instead of 5? Would the results change? I distrust data because I know how much potential for error there is in collecting data. Not to mention that people fake data, all the time and then get busted for it years later. Just look at the vaccine situation. At one point there "was data" that suggested vaccines caused Autism. But it turned out to be a load of crap because the researcher didn't follow protocols correctly and faked his data. Things like this make it very difficult for me to trust science immediately. Because ultimately, the accuracy of science depends on the accuracy of the people conducting the experiment. And people are never 100% accurate. We screw up, it's unavoidable.

The bold rather does confirm my theory. From talking to others in my lab, and friends outside of it, they do trust data. To them it's really "easy" to determine what data can and can't be trusted, and they don't get overwhelmed by it. When really stressed this sort of skill doesn't appreciably diminish much. If anything, my Ti friends get stressed over data that is subjective. When it comes to that sort of stuff, I am a lot more confortable, because it feels less rigid and like I can finesse it as I need.

The way FJs process objective data has sorta been on my mind for a while now. It's like there's not much ability to process objective data holistically- meaning, to see all the details at once and to be able to pick out the ones that matter (in a 'shared reality' kind of way- they obviously matter to the individual FJ). It's a "can't see the forest for the trees" kind of thing, where experience of one tree seems to give all they need to know about the forest; whereas other times, one whole forest is not a big enough sample size. It's almost like sometimes the lens of perception is concave, sometimes it's convex- so, there's a constant "objects in mirror are closer/further away than they appear" going on with details- and the only way to know if the lens is curved is to give it time and check it later or to ask someone else whose judgment has been established (with the particular FJ) as sound. I think it's more visible (and accessible) in ExFJs. I see something a lot like this in myself and other INFJs (possibly ISFJs), but there's additionally an absolute unwillingness- to the point where I'd say it's an incapability- to go forward until we have a better idea of whether the 'detail' we're looking at is as significant as it feels, or even until we have a better idea of what the offending 'detail' is in the first place.

I had an ENFJ mom, and it could be infuriating at times to deal with the way she seemed to think her own gut instinct should be 'clear' to everyone else. In her mind, she thought she was presenting linear reasoning. And I had a close eNFJ friend who would react much the same way (emphasis on "had", it got to be too much for me to deal with). I don't know how to describe it except to say that it seemed like there was no objective rhyme or reason for why certain details blew up to be so incredibly important and why other details were dismissed. That, in itself, wasn't the infuriating part- it was that there was an obliviousness to that lack of rhyme or reason and an aggressiveness in pursuing their point incommensurate with the validity of its logic. Trying to point out how something didn't make sense would get interpretted as some kind of willful misunderstanding (on the other person's end) of their point. [I'm not saying every ExFJ does this, I'm saying some ExFJs do this.]

Yes, VERY much the bold. This is something I struggle with immensely. It's something my TP friends have almost no problem with. It makes me wonder if there is an area of the brain connected to this sort of multi-tiered thinking. For example, one of my ENTP friends (a nuclear engineer PhD student) is able to do this sort of stuff EASILY. It is sort of amazing for me to watch him in action. I've even asked him how he does this sort of processing, and he can only say "*shrug* it's just natural". I guess it's a parallel for me to get a good read of what makes a person tic in a few seconds (something he can't do which he finds surprising in me).

My adviser gets on me over "not seeing the forest in the trees" all the time. I'll see that I am not keeping up with small data streams, so I panic and try to dig in deeper into them, and then eventually lose sight of the big picture, and when I have moment when I zoom out, I FREAK because then I get overwhelmed by all the data points needed to keep up.

I get frustrated when my gut instincts aren't obvious to others. Mostly in cases where I can't properly articulate them. Fe will tune which facts and factoids matter and which don't on it's own, and when something comes along and goes "you can't tune data points" it freaks out and tries, and they enter inferior Ti mode to do it and can royally screw up.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Yes, VERY much the bold. This is something I struggle with immensely. It's something my TP friends have almost no problem with. It makes me wonder if there is an area of the brain connected to this sort of multi-tiered thinking. For example, one of my ENTP friends (a nuclear engineer PhD student) is able to do this sort of stuff EASILY. It is sort of amazing for me to watch him in action. I've even asked him how he does this sort of processing, and he can only say "*shrug* it's just natural". I guess it's a parallel for me to get a good read of what makes a person tic in a few seconds (something he can't do which he finds surprising in me).

I actually kind of do see TPs struggle with it, but their struggle is more external than internal. Like, stuff doesn't get effectively completed, but they're so detached they don't feel the weight of it not getting effectively completed? They don't seem to lose any sleep/struggle internally as a result. (Of course, I'm not immersed in any kind of scientific environment where the tasks we're comparing would be anywhere near the same.)

And yeah, TJs do have a reciprocal issue of seeming to not be able to see interpersonal issues holistically, whereas it's just like breathing to FJs.

I get frustrated when my gut instincts aren't obvious to others. Mostly in cases where I can't properly articulate them.

I think this is truly a J bane.

 

[JocktheMotie]

This is an interesting read as a Ti dom, mostly because there's seems to be an emphasis on accepting objective "data" on face value, which I necessarily wouldn't consider being a Ti thing. I could see being unable to accept objectivity as a thought process, or as a way to acceptably come to a satisfying conclusion, but it's puzzling to see that extended to questioning an objective fact about reality as a whole.

Not saying this is wrong, but just interesting to see.

 

[typologyenthusiast]

Ti in ENFJ is paired with extroverted sensation. Although sensation is a psychological function that responsible for orientation by and to the concrete, observable by the five senses facts, or information, when it is an extroverted ones and the paired function is introverted one, I don't think the nature behavior will be like doing a scientific experiments in a laboratory. I'd like to say that the experimentation is more natural for Si-Fe psyche (INTP, or ISFJ). But I think because it is the academic requirement, we can't just drop it. It is the same like when I conducted a research utilizing statistics that requires me to look for data to be analyzed. I did it anyway even though It was too cumbersome and psychically turned out to be unhealthy for me.
I'd like to say that the nature expression of Se-Ti can be like the martial artist or sportsman, or dancer, showing some individual technique. The nature will be spontaneous physical body movement. During your scientific research,when you get annoyed with the experiments somehow, it could happen that you get mad and breaking many the laboratory glass -made equipments.
A video showing very good natural demonstration of Se-Ti in ESTP.

In ENFJ, they can be like also an ESTP. A good classical example of ENFJ spiritual monk and ESTP martial artist is in chinese shaolin. They don't just learnt Kung - Fu, but they learn also a spiritual teaching.