Ni and knowing

[redbaron]

Is it Ni when you "just know" something is happening and make an educated guess, putting together various clues such as: the look on someone's face, body language, someone ducking under the radar, evasively answering questions, the feeling in the air when you're with them, the knowledge of a previous problem in their lives, etc. Does Ni project meaning onto those things (that admittedly may or may not exist) and come up with the reason why? (without sharing it with the whole world just in case it's wrong )

Or maybe that's NiFe more than pure Ni?

[Nexus]

Is it Ni when you "just know" something is happening and make an educated guess, putting together various clues such as: the look on someone's face, body language, someone ducking under the radar, evasively answering questions, the feeling in the air when you're with them, the knowledge of a previous problem in their lives, etc. Does Ni project meaning onto those things (that admittedly may or may not exist) and come up with the reason why? (without sharing it with the whole world just in case it's wrong )

Or maybe that's NiFe more than pure Ni?

-creative is when you are sick of listening to people try to dissuade you from doing something and you just do it, -base means you are already doing it because an alternative never occurred to you

a feeling in the air is still a feeling (judgment) and not an intuition (perception), and knowing is most commonly associated with and

[silverchris9]

@rb, yes.
@huitz, no.

[Krig the Viking]

Is it Ni when you "just know" something is happening and make an educated guess, putting together various clues such as: the look on someone's face, body language, someone ducking under the radar, evasively answering questions, the feeling in the air when you're with them, the knowledge of a previous problem in their lives, etc. Does Ni project meaning onto those things (that admittedly may or may not exist) and come up with the reason why? (without sharing it with the whole world just in case it's wrong )

Or maybe that's NiFe more than pure Ni?

I would say that the clues you're talking about: "the look on someone's face, body language, someone ducking under the radar, evasively answering questions, the feeling in the air when you're with them," are related to Fe. I would say that Ni takes those things and looks for how they're connected, how one thing flows from another, and from that gets a sense of the big picture.

For me, my Demonstrative Ni manifests mainly as a vague "gut feeling"; in an Ni-Ego I would expect these impressions to be a little more clearly defined, partly because the person spends more time and effort paying attention to them.

[krieger]

I think it's a very common thing in human thought to "know" things without being able to explain the exact steps via which the knowledge was reached. A lot of the mental inferences we make happen on a tacit plane.

[stevENTj]

Ni is sort of like a crystal ball.

[FDG]

I think it's a very common thing in human thought to "know" things without being able to explain the exact steps via which the knowledge was reached. A lot of the mental inferences we make happen on a tacit plane.

Yeah. That can't really be easily connected to a function.

[shapeofthings]

I can't really explain Ni and am at awe generally of those who can somehow put it into words. *scratches head*

But I sort of have this strange "Ni" sounding experience with a familymember. And I know it can be explained scientifically too, we were watching a film about it just that year in psychology class actually. She had been getting more tired over the years, and had been over to the doctors to see what might be wrong, but they didn't have answers. I didn't really pay much attention to it back then, but I was wondering why other women at her age were doing all kinds of things and she wasn't.

Then one day she came home and announced a very seemingly unrelated piece of information, that her blood work came out clean, and that second, I felt something disturbing inside of me, like something moved or shook inside of me, like an internal ALERT going through my body. Unlike I've ever experienced before. Lol gut feeling if something. And the feeling wouldn't go away. And I had a dream, that she hada a disease, and I woke up in the middle of the night, and I hardly ever remember the dreams / wake up to them. Maybe I kind of wanted to make sure I know it was important. A week later, she had a seizure and they diagnosed that disease.

My explanation: Too much ER series growing up, but all these "unrelated" symptoms here and there I didn't put together consciously, I think my unconscious put them together and analysed the problem and came up with what it was and that was the "funny feeling" in my gut like something isn't right. So no, nothing magical, it was that piece of information that awoke something in my unconscious that wanted to get out. And apparently everyone is capable of this (said so in the documentary).

But at the same time the feeling hasn't come back, and her test results have been positive, so I kind of... Maybe I should, but I don't, like worry at all about it, because I kind of have this feeling I won't have to. It's very presumptous probably but I just can't worry because I feel or, "know" I won't have to. It's just not there. It's very hard to explain. I feel "tuned in" when it comes to this. And ofc it might be I'm proven wrong one of these days too.

[Aiss]

I would say that the clues you're talking about: "the look on someone's face, body language, someone ducking under the radar, evasively answering questions, the feeling in the air when you're with them," are related to Fe. I would say that Ni takes those things and looks for how they're connected, how one thing flows from another, and from that gets a sense of the big picture.

This. Clues are of the Fe variety here, but it sounds like Ni, overall. It's like pure implicit interconnectedness, indirectly joining events and making a story out of them, like seeing how something fits into the plot and where it's going. That's also why Ni is said to deal well with the scarcity of information. In fact, when there's an abundance of details, it still focuses on the indirect connections over the direct ones, resulting in possibly missing the obvious. Or making up perfectly unrealistic explanations.

[Singu]

I find that in this interview, Taylor Swift (IEI) explains the working of Ni + Fe in a very quintessential way:

YouTube - TIME Magazine Interviews: Taylor Swift

I find inspiration in human emotion. The way that we treat each other, the way that we make each other feel and the pattern of it. And how it repeats itself so often, but we never learn from it. ... I just love watching people and how we react to feelings.

So... I think Ni is about finding pattern in something, and then it applies that knowledge to the future. In this case, Fe is about emotion and how we react to things.

[Creepy-Korpsey]

To me Ni stands outside time and deals with the eternal and unchanging nature of Being that underlies appearances and other manifestations of the temporal. Rather than looking to discrete points in the past or future it encompasses time as a unitary whole on the ontological plane.

"...in so far as our thought is disconnected from memory and imagination, and is knowledge of eternal and necessary truths, our thought is disconnected from the limitations of time, and in this thinking we are united with the eternal aspect of Reality (God or Nature) as thought. We make the transition from thinking of ourselves as particular things in the constantly changing face of Nature, each with a particular standpoint and location in time, to thinking of ourselves as being, in our thinking, parts of the eternal framework of Reality." - Stuart Hampshire, introduction to Spinoza's "Ethics"

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

I find that in this interview, Taylor Swift (IEI) explains the working of Ni + Fe in a very quintessential way:

lol I agree with Dolphin's earlier post, she's just so cunning. Something about her is also so 'interpersonally exploitative' and evil. I'm not saying that I'm any better, I mean I'm probably the same way with my 16 types novela and everything, all artists know how to cut people subjectively to move ahead in the hollywood life!

And I crack up at the youtube comments saying how 'she's down to earth.' Whatever. This bitch has 'I will poison anybody to make it to the top' written all over her.

[Singu]

Yeah, I kind of agree. I mean, deep down, I'm sure that she's a nice person. I know an IEI who is EXACTLY like her, like freakishly alike, and you know, she is also, deep down, very nice.

[silverchris9]

To me Ni stands outside time and deals with the eternal and unchanging nature of Being that underlies appearances and other manifestations of the temporal. Rather than looking to discrete points in the past or future it encompasses time as a unitary whole on the ontological plane.

Sure... but what does that mean? And what is an ontological plane...?

[krieger]

To me Ni stands outside time and deals with the eternal and unchanging nature of Being that underlies appearances and other manifestations of the temporal. Rather than looking to discrete points in the past or future it encompasses time as a unitary whole on the ontological plane.

I don't really think so. Ni is actually pretty strongly concerned with perspectives and appearances and doesn't always puncture into the deeper strata behind these. It's ability to orient without doing this (i.e. acting in a kind of perceptual "haze") is one of it's major strengths. "Unchanging nature" refers to more of a Static function.

[xerx]

I don't really think so. Ni is actually pretty strongly concerned with perspectives and appearances and doesn't always puncture into the deeper strata behind these. It's ability to orient without doing this (i.e. acting in a kind of perceptual "haze") is one of it's major strengths. "Unchanging nature" refers to more of a Static function.

My understanding has been that Ni is concerned with appearances and linear reality, which is the jumping off point to the transcendent or supra-temporal reality. It uses an iterative (or dynamic) process to arrive at a possible conclusion. There is a concrete and an abstract vector to it that is dependent on the person's innate abstract abilities or desire to abstract reality, and I believe that's the case for every information element.

An unindividuated perceptual haze sounds like what happens when you try to use or describe a weak or unvalued function (i.e. anything but the ego).

IMO

[Aiss]

I don't know where you people are getting this Ni-linearity thing from. The most stereotypical application of it might be time-related, and therefore linear, but wtf has Ni itself to do with linearity? If anything, hidden connections are the not-so-linear ones. I'd sooner describe Te as linear - or any other external element, for that matter.

[silverchris9]

It's basically a paraphrase of what Jung said re: . Apprehension of archetypal patterns that underlie the dynamic order of things, etc.

Oh, okay. I do understand that. God, I've gotten like 9x stupider over the past few months.

I don't really think so. Ni is actually pretty strongly concerned with perspectives and appearances and doesn't always puncture into the deeper strata behind these. It's ability to orient without doing this (i.e. acting in a kind of perceptual "haze") is one of it's major strengths. "Unchanging nature" refers to more of a Static function.

Your concept of the universe as fundamentally static is a best a misconception, at worst kind of crack pot-y. Listen. Parmindes proved that there is no time, no space, and no difference. I.e., he used the laws of logic to dissolve themselves (nondisjunction says that all things are the same). Following him, Xeno has a lot of paradoxes. I'm not saying we should take the extreme opposite position, and say, like the Epicureans, sense experience is the sole foundation of truth (in which case, reality must be fundamentally dynamic, because, neurologically, we have areas of the brain designed to sense motion, i.e., the temporal concept of motion is an essential part of sense experience). But you have to recognize that the truth is likely to be in some blending or combination or medium between the two extreme positions. That's a good rule of thumb to follow, easily as good of a heuristic as Ockham's Razor, in any case.

Anyway, yes, one way of thinking about Ni, is that it views objects from multiple perspectives, which is precisely how it arrives at a universal truth. Truth doesn't change, but we can best apprehend truth (in the largest sense, not in the sense of mere facts) by rapidly shifting between multiple perspectives, resolving dichotomies/contradictions/paradoxes into unities. How is God both immanent and transcendent? I dunno. How is the world both good and bad? I dunno. But I know that the truth is only going to be where those two intersect. Ni might see either side of the dichotomy as a perspective through which to peer at "the real thing" whatever that turns out to be.

And the ability to "orient" without "deeper strata" comes because Ni skips straight from the outward appearances, the signs, the discrete pockets of information organized by Je (be it objective/explicit information in the case of Te, or subjective/implicit information in the case of Fe) to the inner nature. In other words, Ni skips several steps. But just because Ni skips layers 3 through 9, doesn't mean it doesn't get to layer 10.

[Trevor]

A lot of Ni types have this kind of inner wisdom. They pick up on things, connect them together to form non judgmental opinions & learn from them fast. You can often get great advice from people who have strong Ni.

Sometimes this can be rather depressing, because you kind of pick up on the ingredients to life. You intuitively know how things are going to turn out, and it's pretty frustrating when you know the results will likley be poor. The positive side to this is that you rarely make uncalled for decisions, and you can attempt to manipulate the future in your favor.

Regarding the second paragraph. I think these are more of a Ni-leading characteristics. Also, Ne-Creative types aren't really far from this. In any case, it describes them better than it describes Ni-Creative types. That would be Introvert-Intuitive-Farsighted small group as per Reinin i.e. having Focal/Limiting Intuition in ego-block as per Labcoat/Smielingeyes.

[Aiss]

Regarding the second paragraph. I think these are more of a Ni-leading characteristics. Also, Ne-Creative types aren't really far from this. In any case, it describes them better than it describes Ni-Creative types. That would be 4-dimensional Ni, stronger even if not valued.

Fixed.

[Creepy-Korpsey]

...But you have to recognize that the truth is likely to be in some blending or combination or medium between the two extreme positions. That's a good rule of thumb to follow, easily as good of a heuristic as Ockham's Razor, in any case.

Anyway, yes, one way of thinking about Ni, is that it views objects from multiple perspectives, which is precisely how it arrives at a universal truth. ...etc. etc.

Good post.

[Jonathan]

I think there are a lot of problematic ideas out there about Ni, and part of that comes from the history of Socionics and many of the descriptions that exist, which I think are lacking.

This idea that Ni-ego types know what's going to happen doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because if it were true they could all instantly get rich in the futures markets. Nobody has a crystal ball or sees into the future. Maybe a few people have an uncanny ability to be able to predict the markets, political events, etc., but that would probably be a small percentage compared to all the Ni-ego people.

Sometimes what appears as "magical intuition" may just be weak Te. With strong Te, one can tell why something isn't going to work and explain it clearly, but with weak Te, people may have a vague notion that something isn't quite right but be unable to explain it.

Then there are those who think Ni = the absence of Ne (e.g., that Ne is seeing all those great and wonderful possibilities and that Ni is simply the lack of being endowed with the supreme gift of being an Ne type)....which I think shows a rather primitive understanding of the IM elements. It doesn't begin to make sense that the definition of one IM element would simply be the lack of another one.

Perhaps IM elements may be seen as very broad categories of the structure of existence. One might be able to view Ni as anything having to do with what isn't fully explicit but is rather implied or associated or imagined, regarding how the substance or material of things moves through time. So that could be related to issues of imagination, foreboding, anticipation, a narrative of something, etc....all of which may be useful in predicting things, but not perfect and not really magic.

[krieger]

For a good idea of what Ni is look at one of it's societal manifestations: poetry. Poetry isn't about capturing the properties of an entity in a definition. It's exactly about leaving it's properties implicit while using an illustrative perceptual vantage point to hint at it. This is what Ni does. For actually reaching the object study with the attention, you use some combination of Ne, Se and Ti (and maybe Fi).

[krieger]

There are actually quite a lot of times when Ni is used in a process that ends with some externally real truth being arrived at, but Ni itself is a preliminary stage in this process. INxps are actually most characterized by a reluctance to rush to the conclusion of this process where a lot of other types (EPs most notably) look for the quickest shortcut there.

[silverchris9]

I think there are a lot of problematic ideas out there about Ni, and part of that comes from the history of Socionics and many of the descriptions that exist, which I think are lacking.

This idea that Ni-ego types know what's going to happen doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because if it were true they could all instantly get rich in the futures markets. Nobody has a crystal ball or sees into the future. Maybe a few people have an uncanny ability to be able to predict the markets, political events, etc., but that would probably be a small percentage compared to all the Ni-ego people.

Yes, but I would be willing to guess that a disproportionate number of those who have uncanny skill at predicting markets/large-scale financial and economic trends, would be Gamma NTs.

Sometimes what appears as "magical intuition" may just be weak Te. With strong Te, one can tell why something isn't going to work and explain it clearly, but with weak Te, people may have a vague notion that something isn't quite right but be unable to explain it.

This is somewhat true.

For a good idea of what Ni is look at one of it's societal manifestations: poetry. Poetry isn't about capturing the properties of an entity in a definition. It's exactly about leaving it's properties implicit while using an illustrative perceptual vantage point to hint at it. This is what Ni does. For actually reaching the object study with the attention, you use some combination of Ne, Se and Ti (and maybe Fi).

Oh. Well, sure. But the poet has to be aware of that which he or she is implying. Shakespeare knows what he's not telling us, not an explicit sense, but in a shadowy sense, and he awakens that shadowy, first-degree knowledge in us too. That shadowy knowledge in knowledge of first things, and so although it is not, perhaps, full solid knowledge, it is knowledge of something "deep" or "high". Also note that this is more to do with romantic and post-romantic poetry than poetry in general. William Wordsworth was the one who focused on what it means to me, the half of the world created by our mind, and our interaction with the "real" world. Other poets (mostly before WW) focus on other things.

[Logos]

@ INTjs

Ashton, are you sure you do not belong to an aristocratic quadra? Instead of " @ Labcoat," as per to be expected with more democratic quadras, you take his comment as somehow being the erroneous misconception you believe LIIs hold or perhaps find frustrating about LIIs.

[Creepy-male]

 

intelligent sounding statement painstakingly composed using a thesaurus which proports the grandiose ability Ni-ego types have at perceiving the vastness of time and space

 

The above statement is complete bullshit

 

Basically you have a split between sensing and intuition. Sensing is being connected with a direct experience, i.e. a sensation, there of course is more depth and literature on this but this is basically the concept. Intuition is being less connected with a direct experience, and more so interpolating and "connecting the dots", i.e. taking an intuitive leap. Once again there is of course more depth and literature on this also, but that is the basic dichotomy.

Given this you have Se and Si, and Ne and Ni.... this introduces a further split based on if the perceiving functions are extraverted or introverted. Literally meaning external-facing or internal-facing.

I only mention these pedantics because essentially Ni and Ne are not separate functions but two different variations on a common theme, that being intuition. Ni is no better at "knowing" things than Ne, because this would imply that the external-facing form of intuition possess different qualities than the internal-facing form of intuition. While possible, in order to prove such an argument, one would have to show that internally-facing intuition possesses a greater propensity for knowing things than externally-facing intuition. There is no real argument of this manner beside personal opinion, which is greatly unreliable, who wouldn't want to attribute a positive attribute to themselves.

What I do think is true is the following....

Ne and Ni are similar in nature but different in perspective. Ne is concerned with the outward properties of intuition, being possibilities, potentials, unique defining properties and attributes, and prospects. While Ni is concerned with the inward properties of intuition, being more game theory in nature, like a web of various possibilities, and more temporal and algorithmic in nature. Ne is static because it doesn't have to consider but a single observable possibility in something at a given time. Ni is dynamic because it does consider multiple possibilities in flowing way. The observations made by an Ne ego however are fleeting as these single outwardly manifested traits they perceive are constantly in change. The observations made by an Ni ego however are not fleeting as they are considering more than just a single outwardly manifested trait but rather a web of possibilities.

Ni types may "know" something intuitively but that's not a consequence of their inwardly facing characteristic but more a characteristic of intuition. Intuition is about making intuitive leaps and seeing what is unseen. The actually nature of this "knowing" though is different from Ne types in that Ne types experience more of a single "knowing" event. It's the proverbial "lightbulb" going off in their head, the "ahah" moment, to signify they just know something. Ni types however are more characterized by seeing the various threads of something temporally come together and getting an overwhelming sense of something and knowing it.

All intuitive types are strong in both functions.... however a particular orientation is preferred in the ego, its valued. So that is to say that an Alpha NT or Delta NF doesn't have less perceptual abilities than say a Gamma NT or Beta NF, but rather the nature of these intuitive perceptions is different. To the Ne-valuer this knowing experience is much like a lightbulb going off and to the Ni-valuer it is more so like the clip below (separate threads coming together into a weave of knowing). Also its not uncommon for any intuitive type to experience both attributes, but the ego attempts to prefer and focus on a specific type of experience. Alpha NT's focus on the "aha, lightbulb moments" which may arise from unconscious Ni-based experiences, while Gamma NT's focus on this experience, which may arise from unconscious Ne-based experiences. The fact a single orientation is expressed by the ego allows for duality to exist and there to be a connection between sensory and intuitive functions which is an explanation for another topic. What is important to notice is that link between sensation and intuition... intuition only works by interpolation from sensation. Intuitive leaps are made from disparate sensory perceptions. For Ni... Se sensory experiences are requires to peice together a weave or web. For Ne.... Si sensory experiences are required to experience the lightbulb moment.

A good clip which explains the this weblike temporal nature of Ni is the following, from 1:24 onward... enjoy

[xerx]

I don't know where you people are getting this Ni-linearity thing from. The most stereotypical application of it might be time-related, and therefore linear, but wtf has Ni itself to do with linearity? If anything, hidden connections are the not-so-linear ones. I'd sooner describe Te as linear - or any other external element, for that matter.

I was only using the term linear to mean normal, as a contrast to the transcendent or hidden. Not linear in the sense that Si is linear.

[Logos]

Nah, don't read into it that deeply; I don't literally think like that. It was just a sarcastic remark to express annoyance at what I saw to be a hypocritical statement, and intended to avoid the burden of having to explain myself much.

FWIW, there seems to be a trend where I experience most frustration w/ LIIs overall—contrary relations match my experience well, hence the generalization I made. But it's really only a minority of LIIs that I've encountered this strongly with and I can think of many individual exceptions.

Thank you, Ashton, for the clarification. As you have noticed, I get slightly annoyed by blanket statements and sweeping generalizations.