Do you agree with this statement?

[Rubicon]

If you can't type yourself, it's ridiculous to think you can type other people correctly.

[ashlesha]

no. i think looking at your relationships with other types can help you type yourself. and i think its harder to try to see yourself clearly from the inside than it is to analyze other people.

[silverchris9]

Actually, no. Sometimes when you're too close to a person and have too much non-socionics stuff invested in a particular typing, it can be easier to mistype because you can't get enough objectivity or you can't get those other factors out of your head. This is also why it's hard to type family members.

[krieger]

I agree with the statement and see nothing wrong with it.

[Creepy-Pied Piper]

Removed at User Request

[Creepy-Pied Piper]

Removed at User Request

[krieger]

Why? Its a purely Ti based decision.

If you can type a person based on what little information you receive from them just by observing them, you can type yourself on the basis of the same information by observing your own behavior and habits.

You always have more information about yourself than you have about any other person. The amount of information is several orders of magnitude greater in most cases.

[Gilly]

Why? Its a purely Ti based decision.

If you can type a person based on what little information you receive from them just by observing them, you can type yourself on the basis of the same information by observing your own behavior and habits.

You always have more information about yourself than you have about any other person. The amount of information is several orders of magnitude greater in most cases.

The thing is, we have a perspective on others, namely the luxury of being able to observe their behavior from an objective standpoint, that we do not have on ourselves. Therefore the assumption that one has a better understanding of one's own type than others rests solely on the individual's ability to subjectively contextualize their own experience, whereas typing others rests on the ability to discern patterns in others' behavior and identify their character.

Basically, typing oneself and typing others require entirely different processes and methods of observation, and are therefore not necessarily commensurate or directly correlated.

[Rubicon]

The thing is, we have a perspective on others, namely the luxury of being able to observe their behavior from an objective standpoint, that we do not have on ourselves.

Yeah, that's what I'd tend to think. You can get bogged down in the details..

[Mattie]

I would agree with the statement for two reasons. The first being you need to know how you interact with certain IMEs, because this creates a bias on how you see it in others, and it's something you need to be aware of. For instance, if you are unaware you are NeFi, you're going to notice , , , and more in others, and are more likely to translate all , , and information through when trying to type others, and to not be aware of it will completely skew your typings.

The second reason going to outside of Socionics, not being able to type yourself means you mostly don't have a strong self-awareness, and I find it hard to accept that someone who isn't really self-aware can fully understand someone else enough to accurately type them. It would seem that they would be typing off of very superficial data because they are unable to empathize in this manner (not saying they can't empathize at all) since they don't have a starting point to see how another person is different.

I actually don't think there is much of a difference in typing yourself and others, if you were to see (as labcoat said) what you type in others to yourself. Being able to discern what is type-related and what isn't is something you have to learn for typing yourself and others, you're just constantly exposed to more non-type related information when typing yourself.

At the same time, I can see the ambiguity of how the terms are defined in Socionics and how that can lead someone to not know how to type themselves. Because we all ultimately step away from Socionics with an individualized understanding, there's room for there being a problem with the theory, or at least the method it is available to us, to not be able to see how to type yourself. But given this, I don't think you should be able to type other people based on this situation, though I'd completely understand it.

[Gilly]

I would agree with the statement for two reasons. The first being you need to know how you interact with certain IMEs, because this creates a bias on how you see it in others, and it's something you need to be aware of. For instance, if you are unaware you are NeFi, you're going to notice , , , and more in others, and are more likely to translate all , , and information through when trying to type others, and to not be aware of it will completely skew your typings.

Your typing methods sound completely foreign to me. Please explain what you mean by how you "see" functions in others and how and why your self-typing affects this method of observation.

I'll go first, to show you what I mean: in learning to type people, I first developed a generalized understanding of the functions, and learned to spot their usage in behavior by applying the general nature of each function in my observations of people, moving on to refine my understanding of how each type uses each function differently due to their different positions in Model A and the functions they are blocked with. So you see, I don't understand how that is affected by self-typing.

The second reason going to outside of Socionics, not being able to type yourself means you mostly don't have a strong self-awareness,

That's a massive assumption you're making right there. Understanding yourself and understanding how you fit into a logical box are two entirely different things.

and I find it hard to accept that someone who isn't really self-aware can fully understand someone else enough to accurately type them. It would seem that they would be typing off of very superficial data because they are unable to empathize in this manner (not saying they can't empathize at all) since they don't have a starting point to see how another person is different.

I don't think people have to be self-aware to understand how others fit into categories or to observe how their personality fits with a certain mode of information metabolism...furthermore typing someone else is not entirely dependent on understanding how they are different from you That sounds like a bad way to type people to me.

I actually don't think there is much of a difference in typing yourself and others, if you were to see (as labcoat said) what you type in others to yourself. Being able to discern what is type-related and what isn't is something you have to learn for typing yourself and others, you're just constantly exposed to more non-type related information when typing yourself.

There's a difference, though, between typing someone's external behaviors and general personality, and compiling what you know about yourself and making it fit with a personality type.

At the same time, I can see the ambiguity of how the terms are defined in Socionics and how that can lead someone to not know how to type themselves. Because we all ultimately step away from Socionics with an individualized understanding, there's room for there being a problem with the theory, or at least the method it is available to us, to not be able to see how to type yourself. But given this, I don't think you should be able to type other people based on this situation, though I'd completely understand it.

Ambiguity of terms is not the only thing that can mislead a person in typing themselves...see my other post and the above.

[Creepy-Pied Piper]

Removed at User Request

[krieger]

The subjective view of oneself is something one has in addition to the objective view of oneself. The two are easily sepparated. The fact that you have all kinds of facts about your inner life available to you on top of the objective facts you know about yourself is just another reason why typing yourself is easier than typing others. Its just more information, none of which can bring about a deteriorative effect when handled properly.

Now if someone were to not handle the info properly and to let it color their perspective in all kinds of intractable ways, my judgment might change slightly, but certainly not for the more optimistic. Such a person would be a bad typer by default.

[Trevor]

If you can't type yourself, it's ridiculous to think you can type other people correctly.

I somewhat agree with this.

[munenori2]

I don't 100% agree with it, maybe overall. I have an ILI friend who had a very hard time to type himself but could (and can) relatively accurately type other people. I think that's because he can see anything through different perspectives and the validity in different approaches, but unable to tell what's "his" - and the same view I have about other ppl. So although they're not totally accurate, it would be unfair to dismiss all their typings based on that .

The thing is, we have a perspective on others, namely the luxury of being able to observe their behavior from an objective standpoint, that we do not have on ourselves. Therefore the assumption that one has a better understanding of one's own type than others rests solely on the individual's ability to subjectively contextualize their own experience, whereas typing others rests on the ability to discern patterns in others' behavior and identify their character.

Basically, typing oneself and typing others require entirely different processes and methods of observation, and are therefore not necessarily commensurate or directly correlated.

+1

[redbaron]

I agree with silverchris and gilly.

[Kyon]

The subjective view of oneself is something one has in addition to the objective view of oneself. The two are easily sepparated. The fact that you have all kinds of facts about your inner life available to you on top of the objective facts you know about yourself is just another reason why typing yourself is easier than typing others.

But those facts about one's inner life are all colored by one's internal perspective. Typing yourself necessitates introspecting on yourself - since it is the individual him/herself who is doing this, it adds an inherent element of subjectivity and innate bias, as our typing of ourselves will inevitably be colored by our self-perception and identity (which is itself colored by many things - past experiences, personal beliefs, group identities, etc.). In essence, your statement would require self-perception to be an objective and fact-based thing, when it is actually anything but.

This is why it's often much easier to type others, to focus on extrospection rather than introspection - one can much more easily do so from an objective, factual lens, being not personally tied to the people one is typing. That also shows why it's often difficult to type family members, as has been stated previously in this thread. Given familial ties, one will always have a deep subjective aspect in their views on family members.

[marooned]

Not really. I think that oneself is going to be more difficult to type than others in a lot of ways because it's harder to see oneself from the outside having to experience all the ever-changing thoughts and feelings inside one's mind constantly. It's easy to lose objectivity concerning oneself I think.

[Rubicon]

I don't 100% agree with it, maybe overall. I have an ILI friend who had a very hard time to type himself but could (and can) relatively accurately type other people. I think that's because he can see anything through different perspectives and the validity in different approaches, but unable to tell what's "his" - and the same view I have about other ppl. So although they're not totally accurate, it would be unfair to dismiss all their typings based on that .

Yeah.. for some people it seems an irrelevant thing that they can't type themselves.. like they're still seeing reality clearly regardless, but for others it seems to throw their perspective out of whack. I guess they're the type who are thinking too much in terms of intertype relations.. so it's like they're inserting their faulty view of themselves in the picture all the time when they shouldn't - therefore their picture spins around constantly. :-p Though perhaps their framework is somewhat correct..

The second reason going to outside of Socionics, not being able to type yourself means you mostly don't have a strong self-awareness, and I find it hard to accept that someone who isn't really self-aware can fully understand someone else enough to accurately type them. It would seem that they would be typing off of very superficial data because they are unable to empathize in this manner (not saying they can't empathize at all) since they don't have a starting point to see how another person is different.

I don't think that an ability to empathise is a prerequisite to understanding people. You're speaking subjectively. :-p

The subjective view of oneself is something one has in addition to the objective view of oneself. The two are easily sepparated. The fact that you have all kinds of facts about your inner life available to you on top of the objective facts you know about yourself is just another reason why typing yourself is easier than typing others. Its just more information, none of which can bring about a deteriorative effect when handled properly.

Now if someone were to not handle the info properly and to let it color their perspective in all kinds of intractable ways, my judgment might change slightly, but certainly not for the more optimistic. Such a person would be a bad typer by default.

Hm I don't think that's necessarily true. Actively sorting information about a person isn't the only valid method of typing. What about intuition? And what do you mean by the subjective and objective views of yourself being easily separated? Like who you are versus how you come across?

[anndelise]

I believe that being able to see

• * how the information elements explain the ways in which you yourself process information
• * how different situations/behaviors of yours can be explained in various ways
• * what extenuating circumstances may be in effect, and how those are affecting you
• * being aware of how the same behavior of yours can have different intents/processes
• * being aware of how the same intent/process of yours can lead to different behaviors

can help you more accurately type others.


When we type other people, we are doing so based on limited information.

What information we look for is at risk of being biased, such as when we believe that someone is X type, and we look for behavior that supports the belief that someone is X type. Or when we like someone, we're at risk of looking for proof of similar values of information processing. Or disliking someone can put us at risk of finding dissimilar values of information processing.

When we type other people, we often do so based on a particular situation or particular 'locality'. For example, typing someone based on how they interact on a theoretical forum may tell us how they are on a theoretical forum, but not how they are with family, friends, in class, in real time social settings, etc. Typing someone based on their writings, when they have time to rethink and edit what they are writing ignores the initial information processing they started out with.

When we type others, even asking them questions, we are not aware of all the little thoughts that go on in their heads before they actually answer. For example, "Do you like music?" (while not a socionics question is similar to questions often asked when typing someone), and the answer is "yes", you still have no idea WHAT the person is thinking about when they are answering yes, what aspects of music do they like? are they thinking about listening to it? dancing to it? playing it? editing it? synthesizing it? music theory? exploring world music? etc etc etc.

Another example "Do you like to be with large groups of people or small groups of people?" (which IS a common socionics typing question, regardless of relevancy) If they are thinking "large groups of people", what do they consider large? What kind of setting? Are they thinking of partying at a club where there is a bunch of other people partying, or are they thinking of a football stadium crowd, or are they thinking of a lecture hall? When thinking of small groups, are they thinking of sitting around with family, or going out with a friend or two to a movie, or playing board games, or going bowling, or going with 10 people to that football game, or playing tennis, or going to a book club, etc? Some situations of 'large groups of people' are more acceptable to a person than other situations. Some situations require smaller groups. Some people think 10 is a small group, some people think more than 2 is a large group. What is this person thinking of when they are finding the answer to your question? What are YOU thinking of when you ASK the question?


When we type ourselves, many of us often do an 'ecology check' to see if it's true, to check if we are right. Does our type fit all aspects of our lives, and which ones doesn't it, and what parts of our type shows up when and under what conditions? Since we live with ourselves, and have access to our minds at all times, these things become noticeable over time. Inconsistencies show up, etc.

But when we type others, we aren't so much looking for truth, as we are a simpler way of perceiving the person...a short hand, so to say. For many, there's no desire to check to see if the given type fits the person and all aspects of the other person's life. For some, they don't even want to get into understanding or knowing about the other person's life. Since we don't have access...or don't want access...to the person's mind etc, we are 'free' to believe anything we want to about the person. And for many people, once that belief or judgment is there, they have no desire to check for accuracy or anything else. And many are even loathe to let go of previously held beliefs.


So yes, I believe that if you want a better chance of typing others CORRECTLY, it's important to know how the information elements can be used to type your own complex glory.

[Brilliand]

The second reason going to outside of Socionics, not being able to type yourself means you mostly don't have a strong self-awareness, and I find it hard to accept that someone who isn't really self-aware can fully understand someone else enough to accurately type them.

I doubt that self-awareness would help much when dealing with (or typing) people very different from yourself.

[717495]

Self-awareness has nothing to do with being able to type yourself.

[Brilliand]

Self-awareness has nothing to do with being able to type yourself.

I wouldn't say nothing... though I'll agree that it isn't a deciding factor either way.

[Mattie]

Your typing methods sound completely foreign to me. Please explain what you mean by how you "see" functions in others and how and why your self-typing affects this method of observation.

What you quoted wasn't me talking about my typing methods, rather how IMEs interact with one another. All of your odd numbered IMEs will be filtered through or stuck in the scheme of your leading IME, so you are generally oblivious to your role IME, push aside your ignoring IME, and understand your suggestive IME to be congruous with your leading IME information, but not something you're constantly aware of. So if you didn't know your leading and role IMEs, you can't be conscious of what information you're intentionally skewing (when it comes to this process, not skewing overall).

I'll go first, to show you what I mean: in learning to type people, I first developed a generalized understanding of the functions, and learned to spot their usage in behavior by applying the general nature of each function in my observations of people, moving on to refine my understanding of how each type uses each function differently due to their different positions in Model A and the functions they are blocked with. So you see, I don't understand how that is affected by self-typing.

For my typing method, I only use "evidence" that leads to IMEs, so only identifying -leading, -creative, etc, and not , NF, N, EP, etc. My hunches and such usually get vibes for whatever, but I don't base my typing purely off of those feelings. My awareness of IMEs have come from learning what they are originally on a base, dichotomous beginning, and then viewing as best as I can what another person tends to observe, and the methodology of their reasoning (putting aside skill-based qualities). Over time, I have come to understand how certain IMEs make me feel, and that these feeling coincide with my type, so now when I get a certain feeling when talking to a person, I have a more accurate hunch to go and "prove." The OP question could really differ from person to person, because I've always known my type and can seen how my interactions with others bring out type relations and IMEs.

Behavior overall is something that can be interpreted differently from person to person, so if you think that different types can view behavior differently, then not knowing your type will keep you unaware of what your bias is. The moment your mind starts to interpret anything, your type is theoretically at work, and therefore coloring what you see (and of course, the rest of you is coloring what you see as well). So, for example, an SiTe who doesn't know they are one will most likely be more sensitive with , and anyone who displays "-like behavior" (whatever that is, I can't say I type by behavior/traits) are more likely to be typed as an -type, while an FeNi who doesn't know their type would have a higher threshold before really noticing "-like behavior."

That's a massive assumption you're making right there. Understanding yourself and understanding how you fit into a logical box are two entirely different things.

If you are aware of what it is that is being boxed, then you'd know how it'd be boxed. It's more of knowing what information is relevant, and what isn't. So, if you're looking to put away your fruit produce after shopping, you're going to know if you have fruits, what they look like, and all other sorts of information about them. The problems arise when you don't know what fruits are, therefore not knowing which of your groceries are considered fruits, or not even knowing you need to put away the fruits in a particular place. So it's either you don't understand yourself, you don't understand "the box," or you don't understand what information is related to "the box." I realize this is overly simplistic, but I don't know how else to explain what I'm getting at.

I don't think people have to be self-aware to understand how others fit into categories or to observe how their personality fits with a certain mode of information metabolism...furthermore typing someone else is not entirely dependent on understanding how they are different from you That sounds like a bad way to type people to me.

I probably worded that badly seeing that others took issue with it as well. I meant it as having the ability to understand yourself, to know what is you and not you, allows you to understand what is and is not when it comes to a particular person. If you think you're the large conglomeration of traits and information that can never be sorted, or if you're never introspective to understand what truly aligns with yourself and what doesn't, you'll have less of an idea of how to apply this to people. Instead, the person who doesn't really have a sense of self-awareness paired with an understand of how they relate and differ from others (the type of empathy I'm talking about here, not being able to feel others' feelings) is going to apply more meaning to superficial qualities that don't really bear much significance to that person's type. My observations have been that people who are chronically unsure of their type tend to cite a significant amount of superficial data in other people in attempt to relate themselves to it and affirm a type.

There's a difference, though, between typing someone's external behaviors and general personality, and compiling what you know about yourself and making it fit with a personality type.

I agree, and I'd say the problem would be typing by external behaviors and general personality. Though, going by your logic, why wouldn't you ignore everything about yourself except your external behaviors and general personality? If typing yourself is so different from typing others, isn't that an issue? Should how you type others and yourself be a lot more similar, if not exactly the same? Because if they were different, that means only people can type themselves, and you can't really type others.

I don't think that an ability to empathise is a prerequisite to understanding people. You're speaking subjectively. :-p

I think you're taking my usage of empathy to a broader concept, even after I stated it not being so. You're speaking as subjectively as I am; I'm not claiming to be always objective.

I doubt that self-awareness would help much when dealing with (or typing) people very different from yourself.

If you don't know how you're affecting someone, and what it is about you that does that, I think that would matter. Just knowing who you are, if we're going to take this just as a term, is kinda paramount to knowing your type.

Self-awareness has nothing to do with being able to type yourself.

lol Something tells me this is a sensitive subject for you.

[Mediator Kam]

One more confirmation that you're Se instead of Ne. I mean it.

I also agree with the statement. Typing yourself is the first step, clearly. Just try to call me Se

[1981slater]

If you can't type yourself, it's ridiculous to think you can type other people correctly.

Not necessarily, perhaps it depends on the typer/typed

For example: we hear others trough our ears, but we hear ourselves through internal channels.

[Aiss]

Neither agree nor disagree. I think it makes it less likely to type others correctly, especially if you're trying to figure out relations at the same time. Though it's perfectly possible that someone who isn't sure of their type will be capable of more accurate typing than someone who knows their type, but for example believes a lot of stereotypes. In general, I'm highly suspicious of any claims that include a lot of typings and little understanding of socionics, especially newbies who ask about basic concepts and describe their relations with people of various types at the same time. It's ridiculous because if you don't understand the theory, the only way you can type is by stereotypes associated with given type or quadra, or some other group, and on top of that, you probably don't understand its influence on relations either. Some may claim that without starting to type people, one won't understand the theory in the first place, and they may have a point - but there's a pattern of people's early typings being very often wrong, and unless they're tentative to begin with, they only lead to further misconceptions.

To make the long story short, both ability to type yourself and to type others are correlated with understanding of socionics.

[Gilly]

What you quoted wasn't me talking about my typing methods, rather how IMEs interact with one another. All of your odd numbered IMEs will be filtered through or stuck in the scheme of your leading IME, so you are generally oblivious to your role IME, push aside your ignoring IME, and understand your suggestive IME to be congruous with your leading IME information, but not something you're constantly aware of. So if you didn't know your leading and role IMEs, you can't be conscious of what information you're intentionally skewing (when it comes to this process, not skewing overall).

Alright so now I'm not sure of how this is relevant to the conversation.

For my typing method, I only use "evidence" that leads to IMEs, so only identifying -leading, -creative, etc, and not , NF, N, EP, etc. My hunches and such usually get vibes for whatever, but I don't base my typing purely off of those feelings. My awareness of IMEs have come from learning what they are originally on a base, dichotomous beginning, and then viewing as best as I can what another person tends to observe, and the methodology of their reasoning (putting aside skill-based qualities). Over time, I have come to understand how certain IMEs make me feel, and that these feeling coincide with my type, so now when I get a certain feeling when talking to a person, I have a more accurate hunch to go and "prove." The OP question could really differ from person to person, because I've always known my type and can seen how my interactions with others bring out type relations and IMEs.

Everything you say here seems to be inconsistent with the idea; your typing methods don't seem to have anything to do with "comparing" yourself to other people, but rather your impressions of the functions and their tell-tale markers. Where does understanding one's own type come in?

Behavior overall is something that can be interpreted differently from person to person, so if you think that different types can view behavior differently, then not knowing your type will keep you unaware of what your bias is. The moment your mind starts to interpret anything, your type is theoretically at work, and therefore coloring what you see (and of course, the rest of you is coloring what you see as well). So, for example, an SiTe who doesn't know they are one will most likely be more sensitive with , and anyone who displays "-like behavior" (whatever that is, I can't say I type by behavior/traits) are more likely to be typed as an -type, while an FeNi who doesn't know their type would have a higher threshold before really noticing "-like behavior."

Fair enough, but I don't see how understanding one's own type really brings this into question. Even if one's own type affects how we perceive others, knowing one's own type doesn't necessarily contribute to our different perceptions, except perhaps to color it with bias.

If you are aware of what it is that is being boxed, then you'd know how it'd be boxed. It's more of knowing what information is relevant, and what isn't. So, if you're looking to put away your fruit produce after shopping, you're going to know if you have fruits, what they look like, and all other sorts of information about them. The problems arise when you don't know what fruits are, therefore not knowing which of your groceries are considered fruits, or not even knowing you need to put away the fruits in a particular place. So it's either you don't understand yourself, you don't understand "the box," or you don't understand what information is related to "the box." I realize this is overly simplistic, but I don't know how else to explain what I'm getting at.

Well yeah it IS overly simplistic, that's the problem. Even understanding oneself and understanding the theory is not enough; there is quite a bit of translation and grey area about what goes where, and especially when it comes to people who have more amorphous or adaptive personalities, the distinctions are not always clear.

I probably worded that badly seeing that others took issue with it as well. I meant it as having the ability to understand yourself, to know what is you and not you, allows you to understand what is and is not when it comes to a particular person.

But the processes of determining "what is me" and "what is not me" are totally different; examining the self takes an entirely different perspective and, consequently, uses an entirely different information set. We simply don't understand ourselves in the same manner that we "understand" other people; we have much more subjective and impression-reliant information on ourselves, whereas our observations of others rely more on their external behaviors and our more general impressions of their personalities.

If you think you're the large conglomeration of traits and information that can never be sorted, or if you're never introspective to understand what truly aligns with yourself and what doesn't, you'll have less of an idea of how to apply this to people.

I'm not denying that it's a factor, but it's just obviously not a make-or-break factor like you, and so many other people, tend to make it out to be.

Instead, the person who doesn't really have a sense of self-awareness paired with an understand of how they relate and differ from others (the type of empathy I'm talking about here, not being able to feel others' feelings) is going to apply more meaning to superficial qualities that don't really bear much significance to that person's type. My observations have been that people who are chronically unsure of their type tend to cite a significant amount of superficial data in other people in attempt to relate themselves to it and affirm a type.

But Socionics isn't the end-all-be-all of self-understanding; it's possible to understand oneself without having a full grasp on what is relevant or irrelevant to different functions and how they are applied to determine one's type. And even then, it's perfectly possible to develop subjective correlations and understand the functions sufficiently to type others, without fully grasping how they apply to oneself.

I agree, and I'd say the problem would be typing by external behaviors and general personality. Though, going by your logic, why wouldn't you ignore everything about yourself except your external behaviors and general personality? If typing yourself is so different from typing others, isn't that an issue? Should how you type others and yourself be a lot more similar, if not exactly the same? Because if they were different, that means only people can type themselves, and you can't really type others.

Because you CAN'T ignore your own subjective perspective on yourself; that's ignoring the most relevant information you could have on the subject! Focusing on external behaviors only goes so far with other people, too; you have to understand how someone's mind works to truly type him/her.

What it comes down to is a matter of perspective: we simply don't see ourselves the same way we see other people.

[Mattie]

Alright so now I'm not sure of how this is relevant to the conversation.

Like I explained, you are going to color information through your leading IME. Again, for example, the odd numbered IMEs will be filtered through your leading IME, so if you're not aware of your leading IME when typing, you will be overlooking and rationalizing certain types of IAs out of their context unbeknownst.

Everything you say here seems to be inconsistent with the idea; your typing methods don't seem to have anything to do with "comparing" yourself to other people, but rather your impressions of the functions and their tell-tale markers. Where does understanding one's own type come in?

I touched upon it here:

Over time, I have come to understand how certain IMEs make me feel, and that these feeling coincide with my type, so now when I get a certain feeling when talking to a person, I have a more accurate hunch to go and "prove."

Understanding how I process information and therefore how I react to the use of certain information keeps me aware of how I influence another person (so, when I use on a valuer, the reaction will most likely be different from those who value , but if I didn't know that, well...) when typing. Seeing how my type fits me, what it's "jurisdiction," if you will, is, allows me to understand what is applicable to type others. For instance, knowing my type, I can tell in retrospect that if someone was to type me by my behaviors the past couple of years, I wouldn't have been strongly typed NeFi, but most likely one of the -leads, which I find to be more distant than NeTi or SeFi. So, understanding how my type fits me, what is related and not related allows me to apply that to others. With someone who doesn't know what is and is not type related about themselves, they most likely can't understand what is and isn't type related about others.

Fair enough, but I don't see how understanding one's own type really brings this into question. Even if one's own type affects how we perceive others, knowing one's own type doesn't necessarily contribute to our different perceptions, except perhaps to color it with bias.

Uhh, how does it not? If you understand that you are more likely to notice something and not notice other things, you will be on the look out. If you realize that you find certain behaviors permissible and others not, how isn't that making you more aware? I don't know how you can say "I know my type, and know I have a certain bias, but I can't separate this bias from what I perceive." It's like saying you can never attempt to objectively analyze something. While I can understand a sort of knee-jerk ethnocentrism/subjectivity to how you perceive something, I assume when you're typing someone you're trying to do it in a manner that isn't entrenched by biases that can throw off your typing. Like looking for "evidence" that support your gut feelings.

Well yeah it IS overly simplistic, that's the problem. Even understanding oneself and understanding the theory is not enough; there is quite a bit of translation and grey area about what goes where, and especially when it comes to people who have more amorphous or adaptive personalities, the distinctions are not always clear.

No, the example is simplistic, but the idea isn't. Even if the theory is incorrect, it still has a process and parameters that you can easily use to categorize whatever information is necessary. Socionics is outlining a particular set of qualities to be organized into what is a type, and everyone has these things to be organized. If people are "adaptive" enough to not know what their traits are, then that's an issue of being self-aware; that person still has a consistent set of qualities to be organized by Socionics, they aren't "special" in any way. Plus, your personality isn't what's being measured by Socionics, so if a person feels like they have a constantly shifting personality (which, actually, everyone does, which is why MBTI types tend to change over time), that doesn't factor into the "box" that Socionics is organizing you into.

But the processes of determining "what is me" and "what is not me" are totally different; examining the self takes an entirely different perspective and, consequently, uses an entirely different information set. We simply don't understand ourselves in the same manner that we "understand" other people; we have much more subjective and impression-reliant information on ourselves, whereas our observations of others rely more on their external behaviors and our more general impressions of their personalities.

I'm guessing this is different from person to person. What is me and not me is all one process for me. I feel like it's been a part of me for my whole life, and I understand others don't have the same ability or process. I tend to find those who are socially confident and adept tend to have a strong idea of what is and is not them, and when you have a working understanding of how you, as a defined whole, relates to everything else, you are less likely to get caught up on superficial details when trying to understand others, because you understand similar superficial details don't describe you wholly. My personal observations, of course.

But Socionics isn't the end-all-be-all of self-understanding; it's possible to understand oneself without having a full grasp on what is relevant or irrelevant to different functions and how they are applied to determine one's type. And even then, it's perfectly possible to develop subjective correlations and understand the functions sufficiently to type others, without fully grasping how they apply to oneself.

Looking to my past posts and arguments, you'd know that I don't think Socionics encompasses us all, and as I've already mentioned here, isn't dictating our personalities. I don't think an understanding of Socionics leads to an understanding of yourself, completely that is. I find that Socionics is more of a reorganization of information I'm already aware of, that sets up a relationship between bits of information I didn't see before, not making me aware of said information. Which is why I included the second part in my original post, I think that if you're not already aware of this sort of information, you'll have trouble finding out what Socionics organizes.

Because you CAN'T ignore your own subjective perspective on yourself; that's ignoring the most relevant information you could have on the subject! Focusing on external behaviors only goes so far with other people, too; you have to understand how someone's mind works to truly type him/her.

Again, if you can't objectively or critically analyze something, that sounds like another issue all together. You CAN, momentarily, ignore that information. You'll definitely be like "But, well, this was because of this that can't be observed this way, and..." Well, that's not the point. And I'd agree that you can only go so far with another person this way. I would say typing by behaviors overall leads to this issue. The problem here is that the person cannot assign a value of relevance that each detail behind the behavior has; and I think that goes to self-awareness. Knowing what's relevant or not overall, to what's relevant or not to the type. If you can't tell what's relevant to a Socionics type for yourself, you can't tell what's relevant for someone else's Socionics type.

[Creepy-Pied Piper]

Removed at User Request

[Rubicon]

Just try to call me Se

Se Se Se Se Se Se SE SEE SE SEE !!! :bighugz:

As I've frequently said, typing isn't that deep. You don't have to know anything personal about someone in order to correctly type them. Nevertheless, if you seriously lack a very basic working knowledge of your own behavior patterns, affective tendencies, situational reactions, etc… then I think you're pretty much SOL when it comes to reasonably understanding the same of other people.

Not having to know anything personal about someone... well wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that knowing everything personal about yourself could possibly um muddy up the waters in trying to type yourself... or at best be rather irrelevant information then?

For example: we hear others trough our ears, but we hear ourselves through internal channels.

Yeah!

[Absurd]

I agree. Although bear in mind that people who "know" their type, don't know their type at all. Not all of them, but ...

[Jarno]

If you can't type yourself, it's ridiculous to think you can type other people correctly.

Mostly true.

[Aiss]

Hypothetically, you wouldn't need to understand the types themselves if you understood the intertype relations; you could type indirectly through intertypes alone without knowing the actual type of any single person beforehand. Say you had 4 people (W, X, Y, Z) with the following intertypes between them:

W, X: Conflict
W, Y: Quasi-Identical
W, Z: Supervision (+)
X, Y: Duality
X, Z: Business
Y, Z: Illusionary

… so on, so forth. You can quickly narrow down possible types for each this way. In this particular case, I'd probably need 1 more person in the relation matrix in order to isolate a single type for each, but I'd have to write it out to verify. There's more on this sort of here.

Lol, unfortunately an "understanding" of Socionics usually means lots of stereotypes. :\ (those who've read the Filatova book will know what I mean). You have to move beyond the limited theory in order to get at anything substantive.

Understanding ≠ knowledge. You presume a very specific interpretation of "understanding".

Also, there might have been a reason I've mentioned not understanding socionics' influence on relations. I do think understanding and being able to type these is related - or at least correlated with - capability for typing people. If your best friend is in your opposing quadra, you're unlikely to get the relation right without actually looking at types. Most people would shoot at the same or neighbouring, at least. And I don't mean it as a specific case, but rather an illustration of a broader problem.

I agree. In the end these types were created by observing people, based on their behavioral and observable thinking patterns. Of course, if someone acts so well all the time that he/she is externally "another type" that's fine, but he will technically be the observable one, otherwise acting will not be justified. It's like saying "I use to steal but I'm not a thief. You don't know me".

This is crazy.

Yes, I agree, assuming this view on what what "the theory" means: not necessarily a profound understanding of the Information Aspects, not necessarily complex dichotomies, but at least the descriptions - with exactly their values, highs and lows + correct understanding of the functions. Capacity to discern what's type related and extract patterns. Basically not making the trivial noob mistakes like:
- considering all assertive people as Se
- confusing Si with "comfort"
- confusing Strong with Strong+Valued (like stating that an Te Id uses Te)
- confusing the meaning of Socionics *Terms* with the meaning of other *terms* of the same name. Capitalization for this purpose makes sense to me, although some people ignore it as well, eg. polikujm's assertion that the Creative function is related to human creativity.

Understanding ≠ knowledge. I don't think it's possible to clearly define the understanding of anything. It's necessarily subjective as we can't even completely convey it. This is the same case as teaching - knowledge can be easily offered, understanding cannot, it's a matter of individual progress, even as parts of reasoning can.

Those are some good examples, though I'm not sure I agree completely with the one relating to strong and valued. In many ways it makes sense to me that unvalued elements would play a part.

[Creepy-male]

If you can't type yourself, it's ridiculous to think you can type other people correctly.

Yea at first glance, but sometimes people have more complex personalities and lives than other people, so it really depends on the circumstances.

[Azeroffs]

It depends on how you type people. If you try to relate people to yourself, and you type mostly through subjective means, hell no you can't type people. LII who think they're ILI are not going to type people they really get along with as alphas. F types who think they're T types will have problems when comparing people to themselves and will likely type more people as T types by comparison. It's just not going to happen with subjective typings. If you type according to how a person fits descriptions of types/IEs etc, I see no reason why typing yourself is in any way related to how you type others.

Also sometimes a person's type is just unclear. Just how you might be not be sure whether a particular person is ILE or LII when typically you can easily distinguish the difference, you might not be sure of your own type.

[krieger]

It depends on how you type people. If you try to relate people to yourself, and you type mostly through subjective means, hell no you can't type people. LII who think they're ILI are not going to type people they really get along with as alphas. F types who think they're T types will have problems when comparing people to themselves and will likely type more people as T types by comparison. It's just not going to happen with subjective typings. If you type according to how a person fits descriptions of types/IEs etc, I see no reason why typing yourself is in any way related to how you type others.

But how is the fact that you do or don't get along with a person entirely subjective? Isn't it just something that can be quantified and established based on observations? And if this "fact" does not fit into the framework of determinations you have made about the types of the people in your surroundings, doesn't that signal that your self-typing is wrong?

I just don't see how someone who types methodologically could end up mistyping him/herself when s/he gets the typings of others right. It's just another part of the picture, and it's the part you have the most information on by far.

[Brilliand]

But how is the fact that you do or don't get along with a person entirely subjective? Isn't it just something that can be quantified and established based on observations? And if this "fact" does not fit into the framework of determinations you have made about the types of the people in your surroundings, doesn't that signal that your self-typing is wrong?

I just don't see how someone who types methodologically could end up mistyping him/herself when s/he gets the typings of others right. It's just another part of the picture, and it's the part you have the most information on by far.

This would not be relevant for someone who doesn't use relationships when typing - and I'm sure you'll agree that relationships aren't necessary for typing people, just helpful.

[krieger]

This would not be relevant for someone who doesn't use relationships when typing - and I'm sure you'll agree that relationships aren't necessary for typing people, just helpful.

whut? Of course they are necessary for typing. You can't just ignore the parts of socionics that you don't like. The intertype relations are also one of the few substantive claims of the theory. They are what makes socionics capable of being framed as a scientific hypothesis, contrary to the MBTI, for example, which doesn't make predictions beyond the claim that type is stable. They are one of the few things in socionics that are falsifyable, so they are vital to the task of learning to type correctly.

What I'm trying to say is, without the intertype relations, socionics is a dogma. With the intertype relations, it is a set of predictions that can be verified against experience. The topic of the thread is not whether a person could type dogmatically, or "according to the dogmatic canon", but correctly, so verification is important.

[ilikesex]

Inevitably, people who havemistyped themselves do not seem to understand the influence of their own type socially and are not able to apply the types of others to social situations either



also, there are people who are not aware of their own type, but who know this and do not consider themselves any type, that are able to observe and correctly interpret the influence of the types of other people.