NTs and NFs in discussions and arguments
how accurate would you say this statement is?
"The truth is that NTs know how to sound right without actually being right. This is a very irritating habit for NFs who know how to be right without actually sounding like it. I don't mean to say NTs are always wrong and NFs are always right, but, rather that--the rhetoric can be misleading."
I don't know if it is right, but I like it.Originally Posted by yeves
You seek a great fortune, you three who are now in chains. You will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek.
But first you must travel a long and difficult road, a road fraught with peril.
You shall see things, wonderful to tell. You shall see a... cow... on the roof of a cotton house. And, oh, so many startlements.
I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the ob-stacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward.
Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pukq_XJmM-k
This is a separate issue - it relates to motivations and things like that. Someone can wish to sound right without caring about being right because they are seeking not knowledge but are actually seeking self-gratification or some other end. It can come also from your sense of being right coming more from your subjective attitude than the actual knowledge you are conveying. I run into this latter issue with people a lot, and can most definitely say it happens in NF as much as NT. Like, they are really actually implicitly trying to convey to you not a piece of knowledge, but that they aren't a shallow person - they wish you to believe something about their character rather than their point. What is funny is the same exact people will insist the opposite, because again, it is their image of themselves that they are not only not shallow, but that they are also down-to-business-let's-cut-to-the-core-knowledge people.
Where it irritates me is someone just asserts the truth in a plausible sounding way without trying honestly to expose its flipsides and downsides, and give an honest attempt at noting why someone might reasonably disagree, and instead makes it their sole or primary effort to promote the point. It's called sales-pitch vs truth-seeking, and it basically irritates me to no end.
this reminds me of the conflicts i get into with NTs on this forum.
(i have always been right ofc)
its like getting caught on a technicality, like failing a math test even though i got the answers right cuz i didnt show my math, and i sometimes have a hard time gauging whether people are arguing in good faith or not because its like you're docking off points for that?
i do objectively understand that you need to be able to convey evidence and provide convincing rationale for people if you really want them to think about what you're saying. this is counterbalanced by 1) not being good at expressing myself that way and being annoyed because whats communicated the most faultlessly is not always right, and 2) having a sense that everybody bases their opinions on their internal values more than anything else, so the details are almost superfluous.
Well, it's not like the NTs around here generally support their points with solid evidence either (plus I think you are actually very good at making your points).
PS: I know you were not looking for compliments or the like, but there you have it.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin
People here tend to be dismissive of NF (and SF) communication style during debates because they are biased. If you had the same conversations, but as a registered NT type, people would be less dismissive. Of this I am very sure. It's pretty funny how much crap you can spew around here with people thinking you are the cat's meow because you are the mighty NT.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin
I doubt most NTs have the social skills to intentionally mislead people. NTs are pretty high on the autism scale of over-literally interpreting social subtext.
But they can easily cherry-pick facts and theoretical abstractions to make a logical but intellectually dishonest case, I guess.
I do not think NT is the best example for supporting with solid evidence, in that their logic is dealing more speculatively, and potentially not that empirically determined even if empirical in origin. This varies from NT to NT in extent. The point for them isn't empiricism even if they may resort to it in order to ensure secure foundations eventually. I guess they can write a logical theory which stems from an intuition, and try to prove the theory itself correct, but an "intuition" isn't something you prove or point to for proof usually, even if it can be in some culty circles.
In socionics language, remember N is an "internal" function just like "F" is - it is not quite concerned with explicit conceptualization, which is more the realm of logic, namely the process of shaping an idea into an explicitly defined construct such as a "system," so much as speculative and ideational intensity for its own sake.
The dichotomy that separates N from F is (if people use this) abstract/involved, and how this shows up is an ethical valuation might just be construed as a potential way of seeing things, and its actual import not related to adequately. N is still useful though, as it does tune into subjective psychological information in its own way.
The issue of "details" versus "general" actually shows up in some different ways - it's come to my attention that to some extent that just matters in terms of how much someone cares about the full complex form of an information element. As a simple example, even if we view intuitive types as most "generalized" in their representations supposedly, if you think about it, how general or specific you are comes down to what you want to penetrate into the complexity of...a sensory type might for instance isolate the sensations relevant to the functioning of an intuitive type's intuitive faculties, yet be unconcerned with generating intuitive information, claiming it's all just an instance of what they've discovered, which is the real meat.
Similarly, a logical type may shape a concept or a body of knowledge as fully as possible within the parameters of logic, and view the many ethical feelings which stem forth to be less relevant, and more or less relevant in so much as they clarify their logically formulated concept further - that is, to the point where further logical associations can be made.
The reason we've got strong superego roles relatively (not strong, but stronger than polr) appears to be simply that there's only so far judgment goes without seeking out more of its counterpart for sanity check, and to ensure it's not missing the important points. At least for the normal cases, not the more dysfunctional ones. This is the issue of not really valuing, yet listening to the input of nonetheless.
Last edited by chemical; 10-14-2014 at 05:21 AM.
NTs have a need to be right. It's satisfying to them. They're constantly testing and tinkering with concepts, ideas, logistics, truths, foundations, hierarchy, design, and structure. Like it or leave it, that's what they're inclined to do. So in order to interact with them on an intellectual level, you have to work through those avenues with a reasonable amount of proficiency. Unlike NFs, NTs have the tenacity for finding answers to what perplexes them. They will search through information tirelessly for those answers like an NF searches for ways to improve the human condition. NTs are the NFs of math, science, and perhaps philosophy, and it's not that NFs can't do well in those areas, but it rarely occurs because of their differences in tenacity for rational truth.
STs do well in applied math and science. They don't have an insatiable need to find solutions in the way that NTs do. STs have an insatiable need to find pathways for utilization of rational truth. STs probably created the tool that an NT used to figure out a solution (like a thermometer) or it can be that STs create leverage with tools, so even though the NT created the underlying structure (which is a solution to an NT problem), the ST is the one who builds on it.
SFs want to find ethical pathways of utilization. They seek fairness, equality, indiscriminate selection processes, and gradations of ethical or emotional truth.
I see what the statement in intending to convey, and like most things there is a golden pebble of truth in it. But, at the same time, it's not exactly precise.
N as a whole tends to give insight, or skill, or whatever term one feels appropriate for technical expertise in the field of concepts. Words and language, are all concepts and metaphors that represent a notion. These notions are well defined to N's, and because of that they can typically be right in areas where S's(less concerned with all that) don't care about.
With that said, T's analyze and collect knowledge, and F's make value judgements and look beyond the forms things are presented in. I feel that NT's will "sound right" more than most types, because they have the tools to convince others(T) and the insight/drive(N) to learn this area. NF's will be right more than they will "sound right" because the way they process that N information is in ways that aren't exactly logical. I can make a value judgement about something, and it's mainly my experiences or inklings about it that lead me to assess that things worth in the way i do. Explaining it to someone else isn't my goal, and as such i developed my patterns of thought to serve the accuracy of inklings and not the ability to relate that i'm right to another.
The quote "Words are not true, Truth can not be found in words" comes to mind here. Having something internally panned out in words removes the reality and accuracy of it. To me, most of my most profound truths or realizations would come out intelligible to someone else unless you gave me infinite time to explain it. But that's just me and my limited knowledge of the world. As always, "the gold fish bowl is not the whole sea".
As for my own value judgement of the post, i feel that the value is there in that it attempts to distinguish a barrier between NT's and NF's and that i have the tools to make sense of it, regardless of the posters intentions. That value judgement also leads me to look at that post and think that whoever wrote it thought they were smarter than whoever they were thinking about.
Oh and upon re read of these posts one thing becomes evident - NTs attempt to explain their point in ways that (when done well) are hard to argue, they make sense, and you really have to go tit for tat over everything to counter their point. They sound right. NFs don't. An NF post that (when done well) is subjective as hell, and you just kind of have to gauge whether what they are saying is accurate. If they're right, they're right. If they're not, they're not.
Projection is ordinary. Person A projects at person B, hoping tovalidate something about person A by the response of person B. However, person B, not wanting to be an obejct of someone elses ego and guarding against existential terror constructs a personality which protects his ego and maintain a certain sense of a robust and real self that is different and separate from person A. Sadly, this robust and real self, cut off by defenses of character from the rest of the world, is quite vulnerable and fragile given that it is imaginary and propped up through external feed back. Person B is dimly aware of this and defends against it all the more, even desperately projecting his anxieties back onto person A, with the hope of shoring up his ego with salubrious validation. All of this happens without A or B acknowledging it, of course. Because to face up to it consciously is shocking, in that this is all anybody is doing or can do and it seems absurd when you realize how pathetic it is.
I think Pookie's post does a good job of attacking the issue. Feeling-appraisals are, like he says, done subjectively - the very nature of them is in some ways to increase the awareness of the feelings underlying one's involvement with a content, and the subjective attitudes they represent, rather than to focus on mastering the content through explicit logical delineation of it. I think strongly intuitive thinkers, however, can often understand these feeling-judgments pretty well, even if they're less adept at or inclined to seeking them out themselves. It's rather similar to how you don't tune into an intuition by looking at every detail, but rather attempting to perceive a whole conceptually integrated content in a flash...you can't focus on explicit logical delineation to entirely get it, but on the other hand the strength of intuition can tune one into the NF-land if one tries hard.
As for being right/not, let's be clear -- I don't excuse prioritizing feeling-judgment where logic is due, and vice versa. It at most comes up where the feeling type must make a logical statement and can't quite prove it logically, because, well, their insight isn't stemming directly from logic, but from still a discriminating appraisal.
That's precisely it. The first step is always this spontaneous insight. It just comes to me. Many times, it feels like one single thought; but if I dissect it and investigate, that thought unfolds into a complex theory that takes about an hour to explain. Other times, I'm just having a gut feeling - for example, something might just feel off, not quite right, but I won't initially be able to say why. Or a good idea is just around the corner, it's on the tip of my tongue but I don't quite have a handle on it yet.
My parents are both Sensors, as were most people around me, so I've been taught to think like an ST. As I got older, though, I found out that my inklings are astonishingly reliable. I'm now trying to take them as working theories which I'll then seek hard evidence for. Without that, my contributions to a discussion would probably be: "Here's a hunch I've had, and I know it's true because I can feel the truth of it in my heart." Honestly, I can't blame people for wanting to slowly back out of a room if anyone says that.
Could this be one difference between NTs and NFs? That NTs treat discussions as arenas you enter in your quest to establish the objective truth as you see it? If I have a personal reason for being interested in a topic, alright, I'll discuss it. But at the end of the day, all experience is subjective. There's always the observer effect to take into account. And if someone feels happier thinking himself in the right about some inconsequential topic that neither of us has a stake in, sure, why not, it'll be good for his blood pressure.
STs are probably best at being right within the narrow area of their purview and expertise; they have both the postulating logic and the testing empiricism. that NFs are their diametrical opposite is telling of how wrong this thread is, like, ouch. sanity badge revoked instantly and irreversibly.
it would be more fair and accurate to say that NFs aren't just bad at being right; they deny the pertinence of correctness in it's entirety. they postpone confrontation with matters of truth ad infinitum and actively steer themselves and others from their consideration. it is their chief neurosis in life. their most characteristic and stand-out fuck up.
Very good observation here.
There's a difference between ENTx and INTx too, ENTx don't care about right in the same sense about INTx, it's more "right" action for ENTx. INTx are more concerned about "right" "principles". This comes from a 4d Te vs 4d Ti world view function difference.
ENTx are often experimental and entrepreneural, they risk being wrong in pursuit of getting closer to right since imo for ENTx they don't really believe in a concrete absolute rightness of things and have a consequential vein to them.
NF tend to proclaim their rightness in ethical manners, often rhetorical or self-pitying, "Nobody understand us NF's"...
Rhetoric. Woe is the NF.
Sorry Kim, gotta call you out here too. Rhetoric, woe is the NF.
I don't particularly think anyone's "right", for NT's it's all about achieving a outlier/novel correct result, outside of normative obvious domain.
I mean what I did calling Kim out is not ethically right. Since there are more diplomatic ways of conveying what I want to say, but that's not my preference.
Pretty much the whole concept of "rightness" is different for ethical vs logical types and for intuitives/sensors it's a secondary concern.
STs can be antisocial, overbearing, and selfish shitheads. If there ever was a type who needed to be slapped in the face and told how wrong they were, it's an ST. But of course, an NF isn't usually inclined to do that. So for whatever reason, STs know how to tinker and toy with and manipulate NFs to get them to spill their fucking guts about people - a code that they just can't seem to crack.
As backwards as it may sound, NTs are better with people than STs even though NTs are usually more dense and lost in the abstract. Intuition is a beautiful thing! Its ability to connect seemingly unrelated things is an NT's saving grace.
I would place unhealthy SFs in the type who needs a slap in the face and a one on one talking down to. STs, to me, just need that occasional public shaming on their more extreme opinions/habits to wisen up. But now that im thinking about it, there are moments that stand out for all the clubs where they just obviously needed a slap in the face because of their actions.
NTs fixating on something that just does not matter whatsoever and making an ass of themself/losing track of what should matter. STs having wildly outdated opinions on life in the modern world, and coming across as a bigot/sexist/juggalo because of it. SFs for those moments where you can't help but think, "How did their brain come to that conclusion?". And NFs for being so wildly open-minded that it occasionally fills up with so much bullshit, that we feel compelled to make people listen to our bullshit.
Projection is ordinary. Person A projects at person B, hoping tovalidate something about person A by the response of person B. However, person B, not wanting to be an obejct of someone elses ego and guarding against existential terror constructs a personality which protects his ego and maintain a certain sense of a robust and real self that is different and separate from person A. Sadly, this robust and real self, cut off by defenses of character from the rest of the world, is quite vulnerable and fragile given that it is imaginary and propped up through external feed back. Person B is dimly aware of this and defends against it all the more, even desperately projecting his anxieties back onto person A, with the hope of shoring up his ego with salubrious validation. All of this happens without A or B acknowledging it, of course. Because to face up to it consciously is shocking, in that this is all anybody is doing or can do and it seems absurd when you realize how pathetic it is.
While wildly subjective, my experience says this:tends to happen too. On the other hand, NT ideas are perhaps in more danger of just never going anywhere beyond empty theorizing. There's a part of me that is dangerously close to not caring as long as it's stimulating.NTs are better with people than STs
I think the reason for your sentiment is that intuition occurs, on some level, closer to the subjective psyche, and thus can form patterns which associate preconscious imagery of feeling contents (as opposed to genuine feelings) together in the "right" way in an automated occurrence, just that they may not be great at really tuning into the feeling judgment as an appraisal, or really be trying to hit their real feelings.
In fact, I'd actually go as far as saying a lot of "reading people" stuff really is more intuitive than ethical. Reading can be more of a matter of perception, after all. Our intuitions can also come with positive and negative tones vaguely attached, which help us glean the gist of what someone is like.
Whether someone deals with matters in accordance with feeling/ethical sentiment is distinct then.
Yeah, I mean I think it also really depends what you mean by being right. Cause Fs and Ts seem to have different neuroses that come out when arguing. It seems often that if somebody assesses a Thinker's arguments in a way that the Thinker disagrees with, they can lose their patience and become condescending; but if somebody disregards what an F finds agreeable, that somebody might end up having their character/credibility attacked and put into question on some level. So it would seem Ts are concerned with logical integrity in terms of right and wrong, whereas Fs see right and wrong through the prism of moral integrity - two different lenses of focus for Truth, one could say.
They're mostly more passive, receptive and less pushy. I would not necessarily say that this means they're "better", just less likely to start a fight.
Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit
Seeing as how NFs use ST functions to a limited extent and dualize with them, your claim that they deny basic empiricism, given your own association of ST with empiricism, is flat out wrong. You're being overly reductive, as usual.
I would think that the heavy humanitarians and the heavy researchers would have the greatest difficulty in communication, while the light humanitarians and light researchers would be able to see the "other side" with greater ease.
I havent read all the posts in this thread, just skimmed here and there.
What bothers me about the original post is that there's no differentiating between the topic/context. Are the hypothetical people focusing on humanitarian issues or philosophical/theoretical issues? Of course an NF is going to flail a bit when talking philosophical/theoretical topics. Like an NT will flail a bit when talking humanitarian related topics. Both are having to take a round-about-way of drawing conclusions or expressing ideas in the field they aren't that familiar with. An NT could make a great psychiatrist, paying attention to body systems, chemical and drug interactions, and reciting theoretical constructs of the mind. But when it comes to how all that is actually being experienced by the patient, affecting the patient's relationships, etc, the NF will shine.
Also, cog style differences. HP is good for some topics, CD for others, DA for yet others, and VS for still another. Are we comparing an LII to an IEE? Both are HP, but then there's the difference of focus mentioned in the previous paragraph. So it comes down to the topic/context.
Or are we comparing an ILE to an IEI? One is taking a CD approach, the other a VS one. What about an ILE vs LIE? Both are NTs, but again one is CD, the other VS. If they are both discussing a DA topic, will either/both sound more right than an EIE, or SEI who specialize in that style of thinking?
And then there's familiarity with the topic. This was mostly covered in the previous paragraph, but in this one I'm talking about which books/sites each has studied, what related experiences each has had, and how/what they learned from that experience, etc. This will vary even amongst identical types. If in doubt, watch the arguments/debates occuring between two LIIs, or two ILEs.
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
NFs have this ability to paint rosy pictures about people because they're humanists, empaths, romantics, humanitarians, etc. And since their duality and activity partners are STs, go figure. I know we all hate generic type descriptions, but if you read personality types "uncovered", the ST portraits are some of the most disturbing. You've got workaholic, slave-driving LSEs, antisocial criminal SLIs, harassment from SLEs, and LSI 'dutiful' tyrants. (The LSI profile isn't exactly up yet, but I want it!)
STs who have artistic capabilities are some of the most moderated versions of ST, and whenever they remove art and music from educational programs, you're left with T or F intensive without enough S to moderate it, and thus softening of STs slips out of the public's hands.
Last edited by IBTL; 10-15-2014 at 05:26 PM.
Using ST functions is exhausting as hell. It zaps so much energy from me, and I would imagine it's the same for other NFs. Working in Ti and Se vs Ni and Fe is like the difference between painting a picture and jackhammering a block of stone or consuming a glass of water versus eating a fresh jalapeno. But it can be done. (Sometimes I feel like this is why I find this site so exhausting and intimidating but refreshing and exciting. I try to be very genuine about what I write here, because I know who I'm up against.)
I pretty much agree with everything you said vis a vis the difficulty of using super-id functions but would put the case less strongly. You do pick up super-id habits and develop these functions over time. I think what you said would have applied to me a few years ago.
Getting back to his post:
NFs clearly orient themselves towards ST functions and appreciate them regardless of whether or not they use them, which makes the notion that they deny some property fundamental to ST functions illogical.
Last edited by xerx; 10-16-2014 at 03:39 AM.
it's not the "correct" result that they are trying to achieve. it's the result that fits their own views and particularities of their information metabolism. so where do NTs get such arrogant confidence that they are aiming for the "correct result" when their minds are as twisted and biased as the rest of them? one example of such twisted, lopsided thinking is the reply below.
there is no information element that is more empirical than the rest, be it ST or NF. each element only captures fraction of reality and is deficient without the rest.
I'm not sure why you're going into such a personal attack. Oh wait... you're...
Anyways not going there, ethics is ethics, it has it's place, within it's domain, keep it in that domain(which might overlap another domain but only somewhat) and keep personal attacks out of something like this.
As a intuitive type and not a rational type, it doesn't really matter what people think is "right", be flexible and do something interesting.
why are you trying to turn this personal? and no i do not type as NF, and I'm at a loss why you are taking replies in this thread so personally.
You personally attacked Labcoat. "one example of such twisted, lopsided thinking is the reply below."
And I'm a moderator here, it's my job to warn you if you personally attack someone.
And I never said you were anything. I said I wasn't going there.
Ethics is ethics, it has it's place, within it's domain, keep it in that domain(which might overlap another domain but only somewhat) and keep personal attacks out of something like this.
Please keep personal attacks out if and do not attempt to get personal with me.
it's not a personal attack if I find his reasoning biased or skewed and express my opinion about it
if you are a moderator you need to exercise clear-headed judgement about what gets posted here, not try to penalize or scare me or anyone else for disagreeing with someone else on this forum
Thanks Ann for this post. There's actually huge difference in every nf/nt/st/sf within the 4 cog styles since each cog style contains one of each club. Each type is quite unique and each individual even more unique.
I think the difference is that lecter addressed NF personality types while you addressed his line of thinking, and it was only personal because you critiqued the conclusion that he derived on his own instead of critiquing NT reasoning collectively. I don't believe that you were trying to single lecter out, but it's usually best to extrapolate out rather than in towards the point from which the information was formulated if you have a problem with it.
In other words, you don't want to single out the creator if you're trying to address the entire group and/or avoid shaming people by making an example out of them.
Was there a preponderance of Pyrrhonism in NFs in the old "raw data" thread? I think that would be better than the clusterfuck of shitslinging that is this thread.
I think lecter has an interesting idea in NFs avoiding the truth, and I could accept my pyrrhonist and non-falsifiable, etiological thought processes as being a result of being IEI.
Anyone who really understands Socionics knows that no way of thinking is universally better than any other. Each way of thinking is appropriate for an specific context of usage and weak in others. The Socion is a super-structure that combines the specific functional arrangements in a complimentary way. Its premise is that the weak points of any way of thinking can be backed up by the strong points of some another. Up to a degree, of course (there is no absolute complementarity).
In this sense, NT and NF being right depends on what are you talking about and what do you mean by right. For example, statistics can state that birth rate to be about 2.2 child per woman in a given population. NFs may accuse NTs of looking at reality from a too abstract point of view and would then point out the difficulty about (say) passing a law that sets a limit to the allowed number of births per woman (2 or 3? we have to choose integer numbers since you can't really see 0.2 children, or like a leg, playing in the park) . The NT would accuse the NFs for failing to understand that statistics aren't reality, but a representation of reality, and exist for the sole purpose of simplification of the analysis of it.
It's not a matter of finding out who is right because both of them are. What matters here is to determine which context matters: the "pure" truth of idealists, where no degree of falsehood is allowed or the "practical" truth of researchers that are contempt to produce working solutions.
In this sense, there is a scale on practicality ST > SF > NT > NF. It could be said that idealism is the most perfect form of reasoning but at the same time the most difficult to apply to reality.
Intuition is just a vague way of thinking, as opposed to specific thinking of sensing. Sensing is detailed which is an useful property when dealing with practical stuff. Intuition is good for generalizations (which is the basis on conceptualizing) and thus more broadly applicable.
Logic is a closed system while ethics is an open one. By this I mean Logic posses a finite, structured set of rules that are fixed and applied to everything. This gives logical thinking an edge when it comes to working with incomplete information, as it can deduct what is missing (at the expense of factual accuracy). On the other side, Ethics grows with information / experience and its rules become more and more sophisticated and precise over time. In a way, Ethics has a more detailed vision of the world, since it takes information as it is, without "rounding" it like Logic does.
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