Wow, this has really developed well. Thanks specifically to [MENTION=8413]Zarathustra[/MENTION] and [MENTION=9310]uumlau[/MENTION] for the great explanations!
The static verses dynamic distinction is very interesting, though I'll have to think about it more to really appreciate how it works in practice. I just don't think a lot of Ne ideas can be packaged like the gravity example. It is commonsense to know that one principal can be present in different situations, yet that principle is still subject to adaptation within each example. I'll use a personal example, I play many games competitively and my theory is that forcing your opponent to react to you by creating your own low risk, high reward situations is the key to any good strategy. Is this static or dynamic? Well I at least think it's dynamic as different games have different components and so this same principle should be adapted in different ways. Am I using Ni though? That's doubtful, I would think that I'm just using a more developed form of Ne. I dunno, what you think, is this Ni? Are there more examples you can give? Maybe I'm just the bestest thing ever with 2 well developed iNtuitive functions
. Though the thought of having well developed Se+Ni (which seems to be needed for this sort of world view) seems highly unlikely.
PS. Just for the record, I think I had a good understanding of Ni before I made this thread. The problem was simply that it's very hard to actively see precisely what someone's thinking process is, which seemed to be the only way to find Ni. Maybe I should just give up on the short and quick methods.
I think uumlau's description of the various ways of thinking about gravity, but, depending on the situation, using the particular one that best fits the context of that situation, was phenomenal. I myself spend most of my time/mind in a different world (economics/forecasting/business-analysis rather than physics), so when I think about these things, naturally, that's where my mind goes. For me, the difference of NTJ vs NTP thinking (and, by extension, NiSe vs NeSi [although TeFi and TiFe differences come into play when talking about NTJs and NTPs, and I think by the end of this I'll have talked about more types than just these]) is extremely well illuminated when thinking about stock market analysis.
See, I can just tell you right off the bat: never take stock tips from an NTP. Something very, very deeply tells me that you really never should. Now, interestingly, I think it does make more sense to take advice from an STP, but particularly an ESTP (I wouldn't really trust an ISTP, either -- Ti just really is not helpful for good stock predictions), which probably helps to explain why I a lot of stockbrokers (i.e., not
analysts, who do the deep research, but the brokers, who basically act as the [investment banks'] analysts salesmen to other [hedge fund, mutual fund, pension fund, insurance fund, etc.] analysts) are ESTPs. I might listen to an ENFP over an NTP (INFP, with Te last, would be a little tougher), but only if they had well-developed Te. STJs are interesting cases, as I think ISTJs make for probably the best analysts after the NTJs. I'm not as sure about ESTJs, but I think they probably suffer from the same fault that causes ENTJs to be inferior to INTJs (too ready to make a decision, based off of too little information), and since the STJs are worse in general than the NTJs, the ESTJs probably won't be all that great (note: it's important to realize that, for the most part, on average, in the long run, most peoples' stock advice will be useless, and will not "beat the market", or, more accurately, will not beat the average rate of return on a portfolio with the same risk profile; as such, being just a bit better than average at predicting stock movements will not really be helpful enough to get one beyond the escape velocity of stock prediction mediocrity; in order to actually beat the market in the long run, one really needs to have a particularly high level of acumen, and, as such, only the most highly skilled analysts will fit the bill [and, as such, if type can be correlated with ability to make accurate predictions on the stock market, which, frankly, I think it can {obviously, no such study exists, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence}, then, for example, if one were building out a staff at a hedge fund, one would do best, all other things being equal {i.e., experience, intelligence, etc.}, by making the ultimate buy/sell decision-makers of the type(s) with the best predictive abilities]).
So, why are all these rankings I laid out above anything more than gibberish, not based simply on subjective personal opinion (Fi)? Well, aside from being congruent with my personal experience in this realm (I didn't come into the situation
with these beliefs; I'd been making observations throughout my career, and, after I began studying typology, and especially after I garnered a strong-enough understanding of it, I believe I've come to realize why certain things tend to work out the way they do), I think there are typological explanations that can go pretty far in showing why they are not, specifically with regards to the differences between NiSe and NeSi cognition (as well as TeFi and TiFe cognition, and how the different perception and judgment axes interconnect and manifest in the various types).
First, why trust an STP over an NTP, and specifically an ESTP more than any of them? Well, first off, NTPs and STPs both share the TiFe axis, so that doesn't matter. The difference, then, is the NeSi axis vs the SeNi axis. So this basically comes down to a question of trusting SeNi over NeSi when it comes to correctly predicting stock movements. The reason? NeSi is what you might say "untethered" from reality. I have said as much in the INTJ-ENFP thread numerous times, including recently, when I've said "reality often
eludes ENFPs". They, in kind, have talked about their inability to walk around, even with the lights on, without banging into things, and regularly feeling like warp holes open up in reality and swallow their belongings, not to be found again until said warp holes reopen and deliver them back to the world. This, to me, speaks of a serious detachment from reality (note: I am not saying NJs, with repressed Se, are not often at variance with reality as well, as we certainly can be; by the end of this, I will address how this is relevant to what I'm arguing). The specific, concrete, the-world-is-out-there-and-it-can-be-read-correctly-for-what-it-is idea that is most closely associated with Se (and Te) is simply better suited to correctly analyzing that world, at least with regards to something as
dynamic and
ever-changing as the stock market (when it comes to discovering immutable laws of physics, I'll give that one to the NTPs [although, Newtown was an INTJ, uumlau is an INTJ, and I'm sure many other physics theorists probably are as well, so I suppose we're not completely inept in that field, but uumlau could probably speak more to this {I, frankly, don't know shit about this world}], as that seems to be much more Si-friendly territory: a static, immutable, unchanging law of "everything"). Still, I don't think Ti is as useful for objecting analyzing the external world as is Te, but, I suppose, when paired with Se in the dominant (and even Ni in the inferior [although, because of the specific unwieldiness of Ni, when it is in the inferior {or even tertiary} position, I doubt many learn to wield it well]), as in an ESTP, it probably makes Ti more useful at doing so than when it's paired with Ne or Si (as in an NTP).
What you get often with NTPs, when it comes to the stock market, is an attempt to, as uumlau put it, "overlay" a framework onto the market. This does open up territory for people like quants to get in on things, and use their mathematical prowess, and notions of how certain formulas could be used to predict which stocks are undervalued, or which will see swings in their prices, and such methods have become very popular and prominent since the late 90s, but, the example of what happened in the economic crisis, and the role quants played, only goes to prove my point. It was quants who developed the models that gave rise to the housing boom, by using math to "prove" that the risk was diversified when mortgages (and other debt) were sliced and diced into little pieces, and combined into large packages of little pieces of many different mortgages (and other debt) called CMOs and CLOs and CDOs and what not. The problem is, their model (Si) was bullshit, and all that risk that was supposedly reduced by diversifying it actually just became that much more correlated on a systemic basis. Furthermore, quants working in other parts of the financial system, like the stock market, built similarly complex models that all basically worked in the same way, and caused one anothers' models to become extremely correlated to each other, so that their entirely , computer/database/math-based system of trading became like a giant automated herd, whereby they would drive the stock market up together, and likewise, when everything finally got to a point of obvious unsustainability (i.e., when the Dow crossed over 14,000 in December of '07, even though all the signs were there [Se] that we were about to head into the biggest recession since the Great Depression, I took my entire 401K and threw it into government bonds, while they were singing their praises about how their mathematical models were so superior to the "old method" of trading based, essentially, on research [TeSe] and intuition [NiTe]), and the facts of reality could no longer sustain the bubble they'd been building, the stock market slowly slid (and all of them along with it) over the next year until all hell broke loose in September of '08. Meanwhile, analysts, investors and funds who were actually paying attention to the external facts (TeSe), realized that a giant housing bubble had formed over the prior 5+ years, that this bubble had reached its apex, and had now popped, and that the entire economy was gunna tank as the housing market tanked, shorted the shit out of homebuilders, subprime mortgage lenders, the financial industry, CDOs, CMOs, CLOs, and the general market, and made out like bandits (now, I'm not saying that only TeSe and NiTe-styled thinking would be capable of realizing this; what I am saying, though, is that this style of thinking would be more apt to realize it than almost any other, and that NTP-styled thinking, especially that of the TiSi variety [which, obviously, is not their only form of thinking] would not be particularly suited to realizing it).
Anyway, I know I just got into some complicated, possibly esoteric stuff (frankly, I'm never quite sure to what extent people who don't work in the field are aware of this stuff, but, since the crisis hit, people certainly seem to have become far more aware of it than they were before [before, honestly, >99% of people didn't seem to know shit about what was really going on]), and it very well may go over many peoples' heads, but, if you're more interested in understanding what I'm talking about, this would probably be a good book (LINK) -- ftr, I've never read it, but it came out when all this was going down, and seemed like it was probably pretty good -- also, the narrative I just laid out above does not explain the entire reason why we went into this recession, so please don't go around with pitchforks and torches and try to lynch the nearest NTP math geek -- the number of reasons why we went in this crisis is so large, and the story so complex, it is damn near impossible to create one clean, simple, linear narrative -- there are simply too many moving parts, all relevant, for such a thing to be possible).
The other thing you get, aside from quants, with NTPs and the stock market, is armchair theorists like
Eugene Fama, who make complicated TiSi based arguments about why it is impossible to beat the market over the long-run, and claim that anybody who does so is simply a current statistical anomaly that will be corrected in the long run. This idea is commonly known as the
efficient market hypothesis, and has been hugely influential in the world of finance since Fama developed it as his PhD thesis in the 1960s (although, over the last 10-15 years, it has taken a serious drubbing at the hands of behavioral economists, who have more-or-less proven it to be inadequate). Now, there is some reality to the efficient market hypothesis, as it is very difficult to beat the market over the long-run, but there are a good number of famous practitioners who have done so over the long-run, and, if you examine them closely, it's not merely "luck", as Fama and his followers would like to make it out to be, there is actual skilled involved, and these people and/or the organizations (George Soros, Ray Dalio, John Paulson [although, he's been having troubles as of late], et al) they've set up
do have a superior ability to, as it's known in the finance world, find alpha (which simply means to find return in excess of the commensurate level of risk [i.e., what you, animegai, were earlier calling "a low risk, high return strategy"]). As such, the joke among finance types goes, "Eugene Fama got out of one of his lectures and was walking back to his office while talking with one of his students, when the student stopped and said, 'Hey look, there's a $20 bill on the ground,' to which Fama replied, 'Impossible. Someone would have picked it up already.'" As you can see, the joke basically points to something uumlau pointed to earlier, that the Si-user will attempt to "overlay" their understanding of how the world "should be" (Si) onto how the world really is (Se). Furthermore, I think with Fama, who is likely an ENTP, his theory is basically ego-syntonic and self-serving, in that it helps him rationalize and mask his own deficiency in being able to accurately read reality (TeSe) and predict what is going to happen (NiTe). As you might imagine, he is rather despised among actual practitioners.
There could be some counter-examples to the above -- I've seen Soros typed as INTP (it may be true, but I'm not sure; he seems to be some form of NT, and probably INT, at the least) -- and, if it were the case, I think there are some explanations for why it could be the case, but, for the most part, based on my experience, and backed up, imo, by some reasonable typological explanation, predicting future price movements in a constantly dynamic and fluctuating environment like the stock market is far more suited to NTJ-styled thinking (NiTe and TeSe) than NTP-styled thinking, and NiSe-styled thinking, in general, is more suited to the task than NeSi-styled thinking.
I could write more about the other types and their relative strengths/weaknesses, and why, but I'm just gunna leave it at that for now.
Much different then NeSi style of humor.
moment was this:
