How do I distinguish "dimensionality of functions" from functions themselves? For instance, Tm = Ni?
(Ignore the asterisks. I pasted from my iPod and it's adding weird formatting characters at the ends of paragraphs.)
So I'm slowly, gradually adding to my socionics knowledge. I've been going to wikisocion and exploring the secret, hard-to-find pages, and I found the page about "dimensionality of functions." This idea makes sense to me, and I'm excited to read more about it. Are there any articles in English that go into more depth?
However, I'm confused now and I'm changing my interpretations of things that I thought I already knew. I know that I can sometimes look at the future of my own life, and project a trend. I can say that if I keep doing X, my health will get worse, and things like that. I thought I was using intuition briefly, so, to me, it seemed like I was "using a weak function."
But now this "dimensionality" idea makes it seem like, instead of "briefly using Ni," I was just "seeing how IM aspect 1 (or whatever) changes over time." (How WHAT changes over time? The information stream? Your knowledge? What?) I might have been using the fourth dimension of my first function (Si) instead of using Ni. How would you distinguish between Ni and Tm?
Similarly, the "experience" (Ex) dimension might resemble sensing, no matter which type you are. All types are capable of seeing visual images, hearing sounds, and feeling sensations, etc, and that all becomes part of their "experience." Even when you read a book, you use your eyes to see the words. In some ways, "experience" (Ex) and sensing resemble each other. And it turns out that Ex is the last one you lose as you progress towards weaker functions with fewer dimensions. Everyone still uses their senses, or, at least, some part of their bodies (the brain is a physical body part) to interact with the world. When all else fails, you're still using your physical body to do something.
How would someone use Tm with Ni? Would they observe "how things develop over time" "over time?" This is starting to sound like Calculus class and derivatives (that was a long time ago for me!). How time changes, over time? What exactly would someone be DOING if they used the Tm dimension of their Ni function?
So anyway, I've believed for a long time that I was "temporarily using Ni" in those moments when I would look at the future of my own life, but now I'm wondering if I was really using the Tm dimension of my Si function.*
I once saw a blogger who I typed as possibly EIE. He wrote a post about becoming a vegetarian. He saw vegetarianism as "one simple rule: never eat any animal products of any kind," while I myself see vegetarianism as a complex, difficult lifestyle filled with hundreds of rules and information you need to know (how do you get the nutrients that you are no longer getting from animal products?) which is one of the hints I used to type him as EIE. The "one simple rule" to deal with an aspect of reality is a sign of someone's weak functions. He said from experience (Ex) that he temporarily stopped eating all animal products, and felt better physically for a while, and that was all he needed to convince him. But I was predicting that a few years from now in the future he would be going to the doctor because of anemia or something -am I "using the Tm dimension" of Si?
Do you "use" the dimensions? Or should I say some other word for what you do with the dimensions? Can you switch them on and off, focus your attention upon them, or what? How does one experience one's own functions' dimensions?
(My own "one simple rules" for Fe are: If someone says "How are you doing?" always say "Pretty good, how are you?" or "Not too bad, how are you?" even though you're NOT doing "pretty good" and the story of how and why you're not doing pretty good is something they don't understand and don't care about and never will. Meanwhile, expert ethics users can convey warmth or sadness or genuine concern or whatever they want to convey, while I myself am limited to merely conveying that I'm kind of sick today or I'm tired or I can't wait to leave work and go home - and that's if I'm feeling especially friendly and willing to talk at ALL about "how I'm doing.")
Anyway I got the impression from wikisocion that the dimensionality theory was well developed in Russia and that a lot of people knew about it and were writing articles about it. I would love to know more. This concept intrigues me. It almost seems like something a person could have control over, do something with, or focus more attention upon. I like knowing techniques that I can actually use to do something. (Look up Edward de Bono's books to see the kind of thing I'm talking about.)
I already know some examples of people who were weak at something and had to "follow a rule" instead of doing whatever was appropriate in the situation. I notice it most often with a couple of SLEs I work with at McDonald's. To make a long story short (note, after rereading this paragraph, I noticed that I made a long story long. Sorry.), we cook a lot of meat ahead of time and keep it in a heated cabinet and take it out when we need it. We should use the oldest stuff first to make sure the meat doesn't sit there for hours.*
But the SLEs will always "follow a rule" that somebody told them, something like "take the meat from the top tray and work your way down to the bottom tray." We have other ways of indicating which tray to use - you can push a button that makes a number light up next to the tray. The SLEs always ignore the lit up number and take from the top tray because some manager in the past told them to take from the top tray. They are incapable of doing something different depending on the situation ("Normally we try to go from the top down, but for various reasons, sometimes the oldest meat is in a different place, so you should also read the lights next to the trays, and then decide which one is oldest.") It's like they're more scared that a manager will SEE them taking from the "wrong" tray, because if the manager was standing far away from them, the manager couldn't see that they were using the lit up tray, because it's harder to see the lights from far away. So they don't want to get in trouble.*
But anyway it seems as though they are unable to use "situation dependent" judgments for Si functions (Si = It's very important to use the oldest meat first because it gets yucky and makes you sick when it sits there for four hours heating and drying out) and instead they can only blindly follow a rule that someone else gave them, and keeping the meat fresh and edible is of less importance than possibly being seen by a manager who might yell at them for taking meat from the "wrong" tray.*
It seems like they were using fewer dimensions of Si than I usually use there. They followed what they thought was the most important "norm" (Nm) but couldn't decide which norm was most important in the situation, or didn't care, because they were more concerned about their preferred Se function. *
It annoys me every time because I always forget that they don't bother to look at the lit up numbers and I forget that I have to do things their way and think the way they do in order to get them to use the right tray. I forget it because I dislike it - I dislike thinking about managers yelling at people and misunderstanding why people do what they do. (And by the way, they almost never yell at anyone for taking from the wrong tray. Our store has a very apathetic culture compared to other stores.) *
So is that a correct observation? Is that, or is that not, an example of someone using fewer dimensions of the Si function, in favor of using their preferred Se functions?
And are there more articles about dimensionality in English?
And when DO I use Ni for real? I'm still trying to figure out when I'm really using it instead of using the Tm dimension of my Si function.
Sorry, what was supposed to be a quick question turned into a huge blog-length post. By the way I might not answer back for a few days because I'm not using the Internet at home, I'm using it at the library and wi-fi places. * * *