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[Ni] How does Ni work? some thoughts

AphroditeGoneAwry

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A post by Coriolis in the "Ask an INTJ" thread made me think about some possible explanation about how Ni works. The following is my take on how Ni works.

Needless to say that this is but my view regarding this and could be way off target/wrong. Feel free to chime in with suggestions/questions/alternate explanations.

I'll begin with the Quote I initially started to reply to.
---------------------------------



Great points and I agree wholeheartedly. From what I have been able to gather from analyzing my Ni over the years, I have come to a similar conclusion. (Which might be subject to change..further disclaimers etc etc)

As you pointed out, I too have noticed that Ni is not something "magical" but is actually the result of processing done in the unconscious surfacing to the conscious mind. I believe this is one of the fundamental differences between Ni and Ne. Ni is not about objects but about the interconnection between objects. Or to be more accurate, an INTJ would Abstract away objects altogether and concentrate on their functions/how they interact with the system. NE, imho seems to concentrate more about the objects than some unifying underlying quality which can be filtered from these objects.

Ni would look at pots/cups/toys made from clay and abstract away the objects, concentrating on "clay" and its properties. Let’s call this the “clayness” . When the INTJ encounters another object made out of clay in the future..(eg; clay oven) the Ni would unconsciously use the “clayness” quality of all things made out of clay to predict how/and what this clay oven will do/interact with other things around it.

As others have mentioned...Ni synthesizes information to arrive at ONE answer for a problem(real life or imaginary ). I hasten to add that Ni sometimes gives more than one answer (eg: say..maybe 5). An INTJ would then run Te over these answers and eliminate the ones that fail, resulting in one answer OR an answer that is slightly modified/fine tuned from the Initial version spewn out by Ni.

The external world is not really “real” to the INTJ in the sense that it is but one “possible version/reality” and is subject to change all the time. Change is probably one of the very few constants thus the INTJ comes to distrust concrete “definitions” due to their oxymoronic nature( How does one define something with absolute certainty when everything in this world/universe is in a constant state of flux?).I have noticed this to be an issue that causes misunderstandings/miscommunication when dealing with other types, especially INTP’s. I hate to find concrete definitions for things because internally I find the notion very troubling, whereas the INTP with whom I am conversing with might find my reluctance a form of dismissal.

Ni: An internal framework of connections between qualities/attributes?

INTJ’s tend to accumulate these “connections” (eg : “clayness”) over the years into an intricate internal framework. However this framework is Not a framework of connections between objects, but imho is more of a connections between qualities/attributes. Imagine a 3D net, with a perfect sphere on each of the intersections. Also let us assume that there are an infinite number of intersections. ( such a net with infinite reflecting spheres is known as the “Indras net" in Hindu/Buddhist philosophy btw). Each sphere reflects all other spheres on the framework. This is analogous to a framework of connections.

One sphere could be “clayness” , another could be “wetness”. The image of the “wetness” sphere reflected on the “clayness” sphere would be a connection between “wetness + clayness”. Thus an INTJ when encountering mud for the first time, could make accurate predictions about its attributes/what it might do almost instantaneously (which he then passes through the Te filter to eliminate incorrect/impractical answers). This I believe is what Ni does.


Let us look at a real world example. Imagine an INTJ looking at some objects made out of clay, and some other objects/states of water.

image.png


The INTJ starts extracting what he/she thinks to be the essential qualities of the aforementioned stuff and filing them away in its internal network of connections.

In the following image, the "reflections" of other spheres on a sphere is the "influences" other qualities represented by those spheres have on the quality represented by the sphere we are considering.

image.png


Each sphere is reflected on every other sphere. What I mean to imply by this image is that qualities/attributes all have some “effect” on everything else in the system. Sometimes the effect is very strong, sometimes microscopically small.

The main advantage of this form of organization imho is that it allows the Ni to “switch its Pov at will”. For example it could look at a problem from the viewpoint if sphere 1. However if it decides that the problem would be better solved from a different view, it could switch to sphere 2 instantaneously without a need to re-compute all the connections again. (Edited to add: or the INTJ could also look at the same sphere from another angle..noting a different set of reflections on the surface, thus pointing at a different set of influences)The framework of connections (spheres in this example), is built over a lifetime, and cannot be re-built from scratch at will.

There is a system of “weights” given to the connections between the spheres as well. In other words, these “weighted connections” allows the INTJ to quickly asses the relative influences each sphere will have on a problem at hand and eliminate almost all but about 4 or 5 factors(spheres, and their interconnection’s) which might influence the current problem they are working on.


However as the INTJ learns new things/figures out connections between things they keep on adding these to the framework. This results in spheres being added, existing spheres getting modified, or the ‘weights” of the connections getting updated.

image.png


Te will then go over the answers thrown up by Ni to quickly eliminate the ones which are wrong. The resulting answer will then be the one selected.

I have to add that sometimes the resulting answer will be a slightly modified version of the initial one given by the Ni. While going over the answers Te would find some errors, which will then be fed into the internal framework. These changes will probably result in some minor tweaks to the framework…for example the weights given to the connections might be changed a bit…or some factor could be added to the milieu. Ni now pops a more “correct” answer which is filtered by Te again.

In my opinion Te sees to check for “errors”. It does not “prove” that the answer is correct. It only shows that the answer is “not wrong” .

image.png


What was meant to be a short post grew into a super lengthy one:ohmy:



Nice post. You are really fleshing out some good definitions of Ni.



I getting an overall thrust from this post that,

Using Ni is like finding the least common denominator among variables.



And I think you are right. Because it's not that Ni only looks for one answer for one thing, because life is rarely that simplistic or neat. It's that Ni looks for the best, most unifying way to unite many variables.
 

Fluffywolf

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Ni is a blurry Ti. Olol!

j/k, I'm pretty alien to Ni. Sometimes I think I can 'tap' into it. But that's probably just my Ti.
 
T

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No need to be so hostile.

Her response:

thanks for proving my point.

was not hostility. It was an Fi response to your misunderstanding her post, which felt invalidating to her. All she was saying was that Jung compared Ni doms to prophets, but didn't mean it as a compliment, and you interpreted that as poking fun and used language that said she was "unenlightened." She's an Se user, and usually can be taken at face value.
 

Kayness

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Well I'm sorry if you think I'm poo-pooing on your comment. It was not my intention. You're going by your first impression jumping into that conclusion and it's not correct. If I recount my experience from a Ni-dom perspective it's not necessarily meant as criticism toward you. No need to be so hostile.
Your sarcasm is really grating on me.

Do you really, really want me to dissect everything that you said that I take issue with? I'm going to do it just in case my benefit of doubt is right - that you actually want to discuss and are open to my point of view but happened to just went by your impressions without seeking external clarification
Would you be open to consider though that Ni from a dominant function position may be a stronger more complex experience than from tertiary?
This is a, "when was the last time you beat your wife?" kind of question: loaded question.

I could think of a few implications here, but one that most stands out to me is that you think I am not aware of the difference in the manifestation of functions in the dominant position vs. tertiary position. This would have been easily circumvented by utilizing an informative tone, because it takes away any presumption of motives from either side.

There is an inherent openness ... "prophetic".
If you are implying that I'm questioning Jung's validitiy - I'm not, but I am not too ready to fully integrate it to my understanding without further examination. See my reply to Daedalus below my reply to you. Also, you're not saying anything I haven't read in Jung's description of Ni and Ni types, and I want more than just an reiteration. I want a thorough deconstruction and analysis with adequate anchorage to external data. Just in case you're wondering, I'm not satisfied with his description of Fi and Fi type either.
So it's quite complex and I find it unenlightened at times to poke fun at some people who use this type of language.
What type of language, exactly?

If you take my "Jung didn't mean it in a glorifying way" comment as some sort of a slight to Ni:
I meant that Jung didn't mean it in a glorifying way because he wrote it in a very matter-of-fact tone. That's it. That's all there is to it. Don't read more into what's there, or if you do, check again with the source to see if your extrapolation is correct before you react accordingly. In this case, it's not. If you insist on not believing me and thinking that I'm lying to you in order to make you question your own perception all the while your 'hunch' is right all along, then please do me a favour and not reply. It also confirms my "running on your own impressions without seeking external validation" point, and that other thing Jung said about Pi 'devaluing the object.'

If you think that cushions the impact of your post, don't. It seems inauthentic. If it was sarcastic, then it's even worse.
 

Reverie

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Her response:



was not hostility. It was an Fi response to your misunderstanding her post, which felt invalidating to her. All she was saying was that Jung compared Ni doms to prophets, but didn't mean it as a compliment, and you interpreted that as poking fun and used language that said she was "unenlightened." She's an Se user, and usually can be taken at face value.
I kind of gathered that, and perhaps my wording wasn't the best because it left room for that interpretation. However in all honesty I was not referring to HER specifically, thinking her unenlightened. I suppose it can be inferred. That was not intentional or on my mind as I wrote it. So my apologies if it hurt her feelings. I wasn't talking about her though. More on a general level as I am aware that in our culture generally speaking some words create immediate negative reactions, like "prophetic".
What I did not like was the reaction which I thought was rude. If you accuse me of jumping into conclusions (which I didn't) while jumping into a conclusion, and then using me as some example...it's just ironic more than anything. And a bit rude, really. I would have apologized had there not been that kind of a reaction.
 

Reverie

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Your sarcasm is really grating on me.
Well your tone is really grating on me.
Do you really, really want me to dissect everything that you said that I take issue with? I'm going to do it just in case my benefit of doubt is right - that you actually want to discuss and are open to my point of view but happened to just went by your impressions without seeking external clarification
And you are...???
This is a, "when was the last time you beat your wife?" kind of question: loaded question.

I could think of a few implications here, but one that most stands out to me is that you think I am not aware of the difference in the manifestation of functions in the dominant position vs. tertiary position. This would have been easily circumvented by utilizing an informative tone, because it takes away any presumption of motives from either side.
It's being conversational. We obviously have different conversational styles. I don't see why you're reading all this into my comment.
If you are implying that I'm questioning Jung's validitiy - I'm not, but I am not too ready to fully integrate it to my understanding without further examination. See my reply to Daedalus below my reply to you. Also, you're not saying anything I haven't read in Jung's description of Ni and Ni types, and I want more than just an reiteration. I want a thorough deconstruction and analysis with adequate anchorage to external data. Just in case you're wondering, I'm not satisfied with his description of Fi and Fi type either.
I'm not implying. Just discussing. Don't be so defensive.

What type of language, exactly?

If you take my "Jung didn't mean it in a glorifying way" comment as some sort of a slight to Ni:
I meant that Jung didn't mean it in a glorifying way because he wrote it in a very matter-of-fact tone. That's it. That's all there is to it. Don't read more into what's there, or if you do, check again with the source to see if your extrapolation is correct before you react accordingly. In this case, it's not. If you insist on not believing me and thinking that I'm lying to you in order to make you question your own perception all the while your 'hunch' is right all along, then please do me a favour and not reply. It also confirms my "running on your own impressions without seeking external validation" point, and that other thing Jung said about Pi 'devaluing the object.'
I really think you've read too many MBTI profiles and are taking out some INFJ angst out on me. I'm a person, not a type. You are one of the rudest and hostile people I've come across.

If you think that cushions the impact of your post, don't. It seems inauthentic. If it was sarcastic, then it's even worse.
You're so rude. Whatever. What's your problem? Jesus.
 

RaptorWizard

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You're so rude. Whatever. What's your problem? Jesus.

I thought INFJs are among the very most diplomatic of all types, although based on your above responces, I am questioning that.
 

Reverie

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I thought INFJs are among the very most diplomatic of all types, although based on your above responces, I am questioning that.
This old cranky one isn't necessarily. Depends. That's why people shouldn't rely on web profiles so much. I'm sure there are many INTP stereotypes around that you may not feel reflect reality fully. It's just what it is, typing. Broad abstractions never do justice to singular cases. IRL I would be generally considered nice and accommodating, but It doesn't mean some people don't get on the wrong side of me. I have my buttons I don't like being pushed like any other person. It's a more complex issue. Some of it's cultural: I'm from a rough area, I've dealt with a lot in my life, I'm generally become much more open and frank about things with age and I really dislike typism. Why would someone just think they can come off telling me I jump into conclusion and go by some "hunches". My cognitive process preference is one thing and who I am and how it manifests is another...and how I expect to be treated by strangers is another too. I don't care what someone reads off of a profile on the internet they'd better not come tell me what I as a person do and don't do. They may be wrong. and yes. I am direct when peeved off. It's my personality.
 
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The Great One

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When I think of Ni, I imagine a person looking through a kaleidoscope. Ni is almost like wearing x-ray vision goggles. It allows you to see what others do not. With Ni, everything has a hidden meaning and hidden symbolism. Ni looks at something and analyzes, and analyzes until it comes to one universal truth (it's not like Ne where it believes that there are several things that could be true at once.) Ni is almost 3 dimensional, it gets an idea and just builds, and builds on that idea until it comes to a full understanding of something, then they get this "yes I understand" moment. Ni is also like a holographic image on a card, if you turn it one way, it sees this, and if you turn it another, it see's this. I hope this helps.
 

RaptorWizard

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When I think of Ni, I imagine a person looking through a kaleidoscope. Ni is almost like wearing x-ray vision goggles. It allows you to see what others do not. With Ni, everything has a hidden meaning and hidden symbolism. Ni looks at something and analyzes, and analyzes until it comes to one universal truth (it's not like Ne where it believes that there are several things that could be true at once.) Ni is almost 3 dimensional, it gets an idea and just builds, and builds on that idea until it comes to a full understanding of something, then they get this "yes I understand" moment. Ni is also like a holographic image on a card, if you turn it one way, it sees this, and if you turn it another, it see's this. I hope this helps.

This description of Ni sounds so accurate it almost seems as if it came from an Ni user (perhaps yourself or another person.) I agree that Ni is a setup for open mindedness enabling the user to see all perspectives of the multidimensional relativistic reality. They are as the Buddha said, what am I, I am awake!

You Ni users are special people comprising the 2 rarest types in all of typology!
 

The Great One

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This description of Ni sounds so accurate it almost seems as if it came from an Ni user (perhaps yourself or another person.) I agree that Ni is a setup for open mindedness enabling the user to see all perspectives of the multidimensional relativistic reality. They are as the Buddha said, what am I, I am awake!

You Ni users are special people comprising the 2 rarest types in all of typology!

Yeah, this definition of Ni came from me chatting with Ni users on PerC and with an INFJ I've been chatting with over the phone lately.
 

Kalach

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Oh. My. GAWD!

Ni cannot and does not operate in isolation. In a dominant role, the relationship to sensing is all but lost to consciousness but just let the weirdos start talking and you can hear the connection. Fleeting physical events are not meaningless, they say. Bundles of connected content--theories, conspiracy theories!--provide the true meaning. And although there is no rule beyond the personal governing what may be connected to what, the imagery loses its purpose, becomes vacuous, if it so finally fails to cohere that it contains true, core contradiction.

In short, Ni is the creation of mental schemes that undermine the obvious contradiction, the better to know what fleeting physical event will happen next.

Ne works a similar anticipation. For introverted sensing, unfamiliar immediate sensation isn't real. It exists, but its content is not and can not be concrete until its appropriate location in the scheme of the physical has been found. And given how huge the true scheme of the physical really is, one must seek much more widely than the immediate moment to know what that location might be. And that's extroverted intuition: the attempt to place sensation where it could rightly be, most certainly even expanding it out from where it already is.


So thank your mommas.

I know I did.
 

RaptorWizard

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How does Ni manifest is ISxPs, because someone wrote a fairly convincing message on my wall with related material on other threads that I might be ISTP due to Ni and Ti, Ni being perhaps more noticable.
 

Daedalus

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I think all intuition anticipates sensing.

Looked at that way, Ni is the work of knowing ahead of time what can come up in the moment. This is the same as saying "Ni is a rejection of Se". Instead of deigning to experience the physical moment, one sits back to draw up some collage of what is in all moments.

Obviously this collage is haunted by what experiences you haven't had, what books you didn't read, all the things you don't know. Major efforts go into examining what you are aware of and drawing out themes and images that can be timelessly projected into the future to create foreknowledge.

As to how that happens...

Well said Kalach. Ni is all about anticipation/foreknowledge when we think about its use. I think of it as a "problem solver" as well, in the sense that Ni really comes into its full being only when we are faced with problems (either factual or imaginary)

[MENTION=10033]Daedalus[/MENTION] - on a slightly tangental note, I'm with an ISTJ and he tells me that for most of the time, Si serves the Si doms well. I'm sure this is the same way for Ni. It's just the unchecked Pi that gives me a hard time.

Anyway, thanks that anecdote. That actually makes me wonder what a 'hunch' is, as in, how to deconstruct it so that I may analyze it, because I'm willing to accept this explanation more than the 'it's mystical, etc.' one. You say that it's from the way they interact with others and body language. Perhaps that's Se, picking up external cues and then feeding it to Ni, which in turns generates extrapolations & the motivations associated with them, then to Te, which eliminates unlikely options given the situation, then to Fi, which evaluates the rest (this is what I was trying to do, given that mindset/motivation; this is good/bad)? Then this is all very subconscious within the user, so they don't realize they're using all these functions in tandem.

Ni needs input in order to throw out its answers. In the event i recounted, it probably was Se but I am not sure. My friends consider me to be a really jovial and people-person. Only the closest and dearest of my friends(maybe 2 or 3) actually know that I'm an introvert. Others generally think in the middle..maybe even an extravert. We INTJ's usually have a harder time sensing feelings in others(not to mention allowing those feelings to cloud our judgement). This leads to what many have described as the INTJ's lack of social skill/rudeness/etc etc.

Starting from my late teens, I noticed that a lot of social situations can be predicted by careful observation (and then piping these observations into Ni to find plausible "feelings" the other person we are talking to might be experiencing). Over time, and over the years, through trial and error one can become better and better at it. Now, in my mid 20s I am able to compensate for the usual INTJ's inability to pick up feelings by predicting what feelings the other person might be experiencing. Facial clues, context, choice of words...a lot of body language (and a huge amount of past history/similar events) all go as input to my Ni , which in turn gives me an answer. Even though it might seem a pretty cold way of doing it...at least this way I can understand what feelings the other person is experiencing...to a very good degree of accuracy. Thus I think with practice its very possible to predict a lot of stuff we are only supposed to pick up using Se. I wonder if it is correct to assume that Ni is used as a crutch to make up for the reduced sensor abilities of the INTJ's.


That's a really interesting perespective on Ni use. I can identify with a lot of it. I've always used my past experiences to project meanings to other things I encounter, and am usually good at forecasting traits and qualities of new items/people I encounter. I always thought the past experiences thing was an Se/Ni use, and that Ni dom use really was more "magical". :p But I suppose the only real difference is how the data is originally picked up. I originally pick it up with Se, then later that becomes part of the storehouse of data Ni uses. How Ni picks up data to use in the future is a little mind boggling to me.

Yes, Se is the inferior function of the INTJ's so I think we try to substitute Ni generated predictions in place of missing Se cues sometimes.


PS: My apologies folks, for vanishing from this thread for a few days. Got a lil busy with a conference
 

Daedalus

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Nice post. You are really fleshing out some good definitions of Ni.



I getting an overall thrust from this post that,

Using Ni is like finding the least common denominator among variables.



And I think you are right. Because it's not that Ni only looks for one answer for one thing, because life is rarely that simplistic or neat. It's that Ni looks for the best, most unifying way to unite many variables.

Thank you. Ni does seem to find the least common denominator which can then be used to predict the answer to a problem.

When I think of Ni, I imagine a person looking through a kaleidoscope. Ni is almost like wearing x-ray vision goggles. It allows you to see what others do not. With Ni, everything has a hidden meaning and hidden symbolism. Ni looks at something and analyzes, and analyzes until it comes to one universal truth (it's not like Ne where it believes that there are several things that could be true at once.) Ni is almost 3 dimensional, it gets an idea and just builds, and builds on that idea until it comes to a full understanding of something, then they get this "yes I understand" moment. Ni is also like a holographic image on a card, if you turn it one way, it sees this, and if you turn it another, it see's this. I hope this helps.

It does. Thank you
 

Daedalus

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I wonder if the following is due to Ni or its influence

I read fast...I mean really really fast. Not because I took some speed reading course, or follow some speed reading method, but simply because I do not "read" the letters. I just read "words".

To explain, think of each word as a letter. Now instead of reading each letter in a word to understand a word, and do it multiple times to understand a sentence, one can just read each word as a letter, and understand the sentence much quicker.

Most of us actually do this unthinkingly to the smaller words, but don't do it for the bigger ones.

Do any of you guys actually read the letters in the words "The", "at", "if" ? I don't think you. You guys "know" how "the", "at" and "if' look like. So instead of reading "t"+"h"+"e", you read "the" as one letter, because the brain is used to it and knows how to recognize it. Imagine doing the same to really large words, like "procrastination" or "contemplation". It sounds hard, but with years of practice (or maybe due to use of Ni??) this is easy to do.

While reading a sentence I just read the words as pictures and let my mind make sense of them based on context. This context based reading input also works marvelously well for real-time error correction. Errors are bound to arise because many words "look" similar. For example let’s look at the following two sentences.

1) The idea was fit for contemplation
2) The apple was fit for consumption.

Sometimes when reading really fast I might "see" contemplation as consumption (this is not a great example; there are other long words which only differ by a letter or two). However even as we realize there is something “wrong” with the wording, the word that should have been there (for the sentence to make sense) simply pops up in the mind and replaces the mis-read word. Over time we kinda start to “know” how many words would look like even in very new(at least to us) fonts..thus new fonts don’t really affect this speed reading ability as they ought to.

I wonder if this ability to “see” words even though they are in different fonts, and the fact that letters are not “read” but seen as a whole that makes a word hints at some Ni connection. We know that Ni is about finding connections between seemingly diverse objects. This seems to apply to reading in a way. Words are but connections between seemingly independent letters. Different combinations of such letters create different words. I have a hunch Ni is at play here. What say you?
 
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