The (un)Importance of Intertype Relations

[Skeptic]

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If socionics lays claim only to proccessing pipes as you say, what authority does it have over intertype relationships? My response to that would be that the intertype relations only apply to blank slate people, those which have experienced nothing and are of equivalent genetic makeup, but then this implies that while the intertype relations are applicable, they are not the last word nor should they be paid abundant attention. I think this would be number "2" in the poll.

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It would be unkind and unreasonable of me to demand subjugation to my ideas based on subjective typings, my references to them are just my experience which led me to question the validity of intertype relations.

My basis for saying it is unreasonable is a mix of skepticism of an exact model applied to a diverse reality coupled with the question; 'what authority does socionics have over intertype relationships?', one which I have failed to answer completely myself and have come to ask it here.

The exact nature of my confusion is thus; I do not know why the conflicting information elements imply conflicting relationships. It seems to me that as EyeSeeCold said, functions are in a way a processing mechanism that recieves and outputs information, meaning IEs do not apply subjective value sentiments to that incoming information, meaning this responsibility is in the hands of the cumulative experiences and beliefs of the individual which will determine his reaction to that information.

... That would mean that the relationships of any individual are based on how he reacts to incoming information from others, and while this is closely intertwined with the role of IEs, the IEs do not supersede the individual

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I agree; I can only be sure of people's types who I have been around for many years. To be honest, I would not stake 10$ on the tentative typings I have for my many superficial relationships.

However, I disagree that intra-quadra have a default of comfortable communication. I would suggest that comfort and ease in the flow of information is more related to the frequently changing dispositions of the individuals towards one another and towards the information being disseminated.

...Not to mention intertype relationships don't have reach over unequal playing fields like relationships with parents, clients, siblings, bosses, pastors, psychologists blablabla which would mean a different set of conditions.

#5 is the correct answer. It's not the only thing I'm satisfied with typology-wise, however its the primary point of learning Socionics. I'm not interested in the personalities of Socionics in so much as what rationale brings certain types together under good relationships, and the dynamics of quadras. If these factors don't exist, none of the other correlations do. That is the sole reason why you can't trust type descriptions completely, and to some extent at all. If you don't consider intertype relations to be important, you're doing it wrong.

Well that's a bit of a dogmatic approach. Just because intertype relations have a reduced role means the implications of the functions and their interaction with other functions has any less truth; it just means they have less impact than they advertise.

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Unverified generalizations based on theoretical extensions… so, kinda like all Socionics, right? What makes this particular claim more audacious than the rest?

Odds are, if anything in Socionics is most approximately correct, it wouldn't be functions or sociotypes—but intertype relations. Since presumably the greater frequency and overlapping redundancy in intertypes would've ebbed out and corrected at least somewhat for possible error. I'm sure there's a more mathematically rigorous way to illustrate this, but lets say I'm Aushra and we fudge some numbers that I have a sample of 10 persons/type (160 people total) @ 80% typing accuracy. Meaning 128/160 people correctly typed, or 8/10 correct on avg. in each type—though ofc no way of knowing at the time who or what the mistypings were. Then say I use this group and study their various interactions with one another as a basis for deriving descriptions of each sociotype and intertype relation. What happens if I fuck up royally on a particular type where in reality only 4/10 of the persons assigned actually were that type? Obviously that'd greatly skew things and I'd likely misestimate much about that type. OTOH, error variations like this would be of little to no consequence to intertype understanding—you'd still have all those other pairings from the rest of the correctly typed people to draw conclusions from.

This claim is greater because it extends the authority of socionics from 16 (possible function combinations) to 256 (possible relationship combination).

I suppose I should replace 'unverified' with 'unverifiable' so long as there is no sure fire way of discerning type, and there is no method in sight that does this, so for the predictable future we will have to deal with their lack of verifiability and talk within the theory's claims and not about their physical support.

With a large enough group of reliably-typed people consisting of persons matched with persons… if you can demonstrate that a significant trend exists in raising each other's psychological well-being (however the researcher wishes to define+measure that) with known confounds appropriately mitigated… then honestly, what else is there?

Now sure, you can try and torpedo what I just said with far-flung 'what if this, what if that' possibilities, metaphysical considerations, and alternative explanations—great, I can do that too. But I'm speaking in the realm of what's likely and generally been true. I don't pretend to know the exact details and conditions of how a research design for something like this would literally be implemented—that would obviously take many weeks/months of expertise, thought, and preparation to do right. The point here is that the confirmation standards you're asserting here are unreasonable; I suspect the epistemic demands aren't nearly that intensive. Especially considering that experiments of this nature which test for phenomena like this are fairly routine and commonplace.

Well you have said yourself that the gathering of surely typed individuals is inconceivable, so the gathering of this data is nigh impossible anyway. My point is not that socionics lacks objectively gathered data, but rather that it makes claims about a complex matter by extending simple theoretical constructs with inductive leaps at conclusions, like the idea that Ni is complimented with Se in all real life situations (and it would have to be all situations, provided the individuals involved communicate their true sentiments, else the intertype relationships would not apply to all) with all potential individuals involved. My observation is that if that is the case, in order for Ni to be complimented in the way the intertype relations claim, it would have to have some universal purity in it that is common to all individuals' personality, communicative styles, beliefs, communicated ideas etc., which I have observed is not the case for there is a great disparity in the beliefs, communicative styles, etc. in members of the same type and dominant function, meaning a disparity in the way interactions occur between two individuals, undermining the claim that intertype relations apply universally.

Why would you think IEs somehow covered the entire breadth of human psychology?

If they don't, why do they claim to universally apply to relationships between members of certain types? I though they did because socionics does not selectively apply its hypothesis, but universally (intertype relations apply across the board).

Not sure what you're expecting from Socionics, and/or if you're applying it in lieu of relevant non-Socionics factors that ought to be considered.

I no longer expect socionics to accurately predict relationships; the point is I used to and have been met with these non socionics factors which I now feel greatly outweight the implications of intertype relationships.

Quite a lot. No they don't work 100% of the time; then again, few predictions work absolutely as prescribed 100% of the time in reality—especially when they deal with the complexities of people. Maybe you set your expectations too high, or you typed yourself wrong, or you're simply not considering them from their relevant perspective.

I could have done all those things you suggest, but even if my reality was structured in such a way that my type and the types in question were changed to a compatible intertype makeup I would still wonder how much error occurs when complexities are simplified so far as socionics goes.

[EyeSeeCold]

If socionics lays claim only to proccessing pipes as you say, what authority does it have over intertype relationships? My response to that would be that the intertype relations only apply to blank slate people, those which have experienced nothing and are of equivalent genetic makeup, but then this implies that while the intertype relations are applicable, they are not the last word nor should they be paid abundant attention. I think this would be number "2" in the poll.

It's pretty simple, actually. The many different people in this world "interact" through 16 types. As the information filters out, it deviates from the pure theoretical types and becomes unique due to environment, yet still contains the typical patterns. It is similar to being able to identify a foreign language; the actual content does not matter, it is the language that is potent. Therefore the "authority" these intertype relations have can range from (1%, 99%), though, in all truth, I don't think it is quantifiable, only being open to quality.

[The Ineffable]

However, I disagree that intra-quadra have a default of comfortable communication. I would suggest that comfort and ease in the flow of information is more related to the frequently changing dispositions of the individuals towards one another and towards the information being disseminated.

...Not to mention intertype relationships don't have reach over unequal playing fields like relationships with parents, clients, siblings, bosses, pastors, psychologists blablabla which would mean a different set of conditions.Well that's a bit of a dogmatic approach. Just because intertype relations have a reduced role means the implications of the functions and their interaction with other functions has any less truth; it just means they have less impact than they advertise.

Skeptic, listen to this, please!

Types are types, this is why they're called "types", they're neither programs, not actual persons with certain background. The same are values, they're simply values, preferences, inclinations, to pick one of two antagonist views on virtually anything.

I don't know how to explain you "scientifically" - if there's actually possible a scientific explanation to make the difference - but following that reasoning you'd be forced to dismiss the existence of other human types: male, female, child, adult (as types of personality), idealist, pragmatist, assertive, laid-back (this list could continue for pages) and the kinds of relationships between each with another.! These types actually emerge from the patterns of their activities and interactions, be them relationships or something else. You can't exactly predict how two people of these types would interact, but the general lines, the potential, the likely view on each other, and so on. All of us can tell what a scientific mind is, what a business one is, what a rocker is, what a "responsible citizen" is, what a non-conformist is... because we use models created by observing the social phenomena, not because we know or can predict what these people do on a daily basis. Typing people and relationships are simply a subset of sociology.

There's no magical difference between understanding how a type generally thinks or behaves and how it interacts with another type. Indeed I don't think that the exact 16 types of relationships are so easily observable (if they are actually true), neither do I acknowledge that they are useful for typing - and I disagree with these idiots who claim to type based on them (so exclusively the descriptions of the 16 types of relationships, "comfort level" and other bullshit). But on the other hand you IMO pushed this too far, to claim that the determination of the type of relationships between actual types (256 of them) is impossible to make and explain - this is what I disagree with. These are two different matters.