This material continuation of personal pondering, further motivated by Gulenko.
The dichotomy I personally find easiest to notice and get a lock on is positive-negative. It holds the same issues as all small-cycle dichotomies. It's very volatile. On the other hand it is easy to identify, observe, understand and analyze.
Gulenko supplied the descriptions of positive-process and related groups.
Remaining within the small-cycle dichotomies, I pick
Negative Taciturn (Rational)
Here, rational is used as control dichotomy. Result of algorithm must not contradict rationality.
Description of Negative, as before.
Taciturn:
Starting with one or more specific objects of thought and looking for links/connections/relations between them.
Combined ->
Taciturn-negative, which I shall here dub Sample-analytical thinking.
Taciturn negative is taking a set number of points of information and deriving of knowledge that can be deducted from them. It is the essence of the quality why INTj is called the analyst as the INTj has this quality within the "intellectual club" NT. You let an INTj observe a matter and he will try to analyze all the information he caught. The limits of the issue being hir ability to make correct observations and on the other hand the ability to perform the analysis correctly, to combine the information in ways that are truly derived only from the observed sample. I'd expect the existence of various personally learned techniques to connect information in these ways, to sort it, rate it and so on.
Sample-analytical thinking must start by believing in the given information. Some parts of the information are easily combined, they may seem more relevant, or more weight can be given to the outliers. As it becomes more and more difficult to combine information, the explanations and connections derived become more tortuous, more strange, more likely to fail.
Example.
John, Jack and Jonathan.
Link: All start with J. But also...
Link: Names derived from the Bible.
Link: Male names.
Link: Words appearing in above list.
Link: Names my third grade teacher happened to use of individual pupils while not using their given names.
etc.
All the above links are true. If we add more names to the list we would get a smaller list of true information but we might remember ways to connect them that we haven't thought of or thought of as important before.
There are two parts to the analysis: The extrovert part is the fixation on the problem, the giving of importance to specific pieces of information. The introvert part is the act of trivializing the information by turning it into groups. Subtype difference: is a person talking about a problem, or performing the best s/he can to solve it.
Cons: too much or too little importance is given to particular relations. The results are only as good as the original data set. New material that can not be linked to within the same system forces a rethinking of the system or the discarding of the new material.
Pros: When correctly performed, this way of thinking is extremely reliable. It works well with constrictions and limits. The end result is supposed to be a reliable understanding of how something works.
Habits: The strict "No", often followed by a period of thinking and trying to unite a new issue with existing understanding/system/process. Habit of trying to "completely solve" problems by offering solutions that turn the problem trivial. Development of reliable problem-solving techniques. Seeking personal expertise over an issue. Habit of trying to conquer specific limitations.
Interesting points one needs to ponder: ISFj and ENFj as analytical thinkers is weakly understood. First of all, comparison of ISFj with INTj. Se is more defined starting information than Ne is. It is more difficult to go wrong starting with Se traits than it is with Ne traits. The process of solving practical Se problems is often trivial, mechanical and the problem becomes one of finding an ethically acceptable solution, one that is true to the person hirself and hir relations to others. Social analysis of one's personal role by deduction. Interesting concept, explaining quite well the habits of ISFjs to confine themselves into little appreciated roles. A seeking of an universally acceptable form of behaviour?
ENFj? Ethical/humanist/religious analysis. Starting with a set of individual not-well-defined social pieces of information and trying to find a complete solution to these? Seems cryptic. The answers tend to be a sort of understanding of the universal connection between things in a vague, religious-sounding way (that does not have to in its essence be religious). In essence, the answer is simply as vague as the starting information.
More interesting points: ENFj = NF = not-well-defined. Turns vague information into another sort of vague information.
ESTj = ST = well-defined. Turns strict information into another sort of strict information.
INTj = NT = Socially-closed. Turns vague information into strict information. Event takes places with little interaction, focus on the person. Addition of clarity.
ISFj = SF = Socially open. Turns strict information into vague information. Event takes place with maximum interaction. Loss of clarity.
Important to note: Addition of clarity to information occurs within the deductive process. There's no addition of information within the INTj's action, there's a transformative decision.
Similarly for ISFj. The ESTj and ENFj on the other hand are more like filters of information, pure parametric-algorithmic analysts. This-> therefore. The process is more directly run by the data, less so by themselves. A more correct process, but with less important results (socionics joke).
Is the above in conflict with the descriptions of rationality? Not to my understanding. Thereby the description above could be inverted and used to add understanding to the essence of rationality, with the standard caveats of limited accuracy of any description.
...
Second group
Negative-narrator (irrational)...
Have trouble finding good name for the group. Personally unable to experience the connection directly so all information theoretical/inductive...
Starts with the general knowledge of what kind of things are linked/related/connected and proceeds within those limits by deduction to individual actions.
...More analysis to follow...