The things people often use as examples differentiating sensing and intuiting seems to me to come down to education, experience, and exposure.
What I notice on the forum is if anyone can talk about politics, science, current events, and
their feelings, with any intelligence they're an N. I'm from DC so any Joe or Jane Blow on the streets of downtown DC can talk politics and current events and I can go to the theater or a make-up counter to hear people talking about their feelings.
These are my opinions of why people think intuitives are so rare:
Location: People from smaller population centers tend to be more like-minded than those from larger metropolitan areas. That like-mindedness is often thought of as being "sensing" which it isn't necessarily. Your immediate culture impacts how you conceive of things, which brings me to the second reason:
Culture: I'm a racial minority and I find it hard to scrape off the thick patina of Fe, Si, and Se from most of the black people I try to type. I know two black INTJs that are more Fe than me! And frankly the way my Fe manifests itself feels different than the way the other Fe-dominants on the forum manifests itself so I've basically given up trying to find people who I typologically identify with on the forum.
Exposure: You can be the strongest ISxJ ever and if you've been exposed to many different types of people, foods, ideas, languages, whatever I completely think you'll be more open to experience than an ENxP who's been in one place their whole life. In fact, the larger vat of knowledge Si has to pull from it begins to look like an encyclopedia of knowing virtually anything.
Education: This ties to exposure as well, but you can be taught things like critical thinking skills, argumentation, metaphor use. A lot of what people consider being intuitive comes down to being culturally literate, i.e. "Did you get my [obscure] reference?" Yes: N. No: S. Being culturally literate is dependent upon how much you're plugged into the dominant culture. If you're not, a lot of metaphor use will go over your head. Or you'll use metaphor that is within your domain of knowledge but doesn't necessarily map to the dominant culture.
And these gawd-awful typing threads!!!:steam: Think about this: if you have an incredibly popular movie or fictional character that everyone seems to relate to and enjoy they're probably a sensor or close enough to the S/N line for people to see a bit of everyman in that character. Ye average sensor, will not identify with a hardcore N and vice versa. When I researched correlations between MBTI and the Big Five I found studies that most people hover around the middle of the Openness factor, which roughly relates to what MBTI considers "sensing" and "intuiting." The Openness factor as has subfactors:
- Fantasy - the tendency toward a vivid imagination and fantasy life.
- Aesthetics - the tendency to appreciate art, music, and poetry.
- Feelings - being receptive to inner emotional states and valuing emotional experience.
- Actions - the inclination to try new activities, visit new places, and try new foods.
- Ideas - the tendency to be intellectually curious and open to new ideas.
- Values - the readiness to re-examine traditional social, religious, and political values.
If I had to guess, I think the
ONLY factors that indicate a preference for intuiting are Ideas and Values. Fantasy, Aethetics, Feelings, and Actions, are anyone's game. And guess what? You can score highly on those subtraits and still get a high Openness score without having high Ideas and Values scores. Conversely, you can score high on the Ideas and Values subtraits and still have a low Openness score. I personally think a truly open person would score highly on all subtraits not just a few, or rather
the most important ones.
Based on my experience I think the population of S/N is around 60/40 rather than 75/25 or that impossible 90/10.