Dance Battle (Te vs Ti?)

[elle]

So in my society class, my friend and I got into an argument. Our class was discussing the concept of adolescence, and me and my friend partnered up to define it.

I started by saying adolescence was a stage between being an child and adult, where the child starts to rebel and goes through a series of test or trials and errors to eventually come to maturity (it wasn't this exactly... it was longer, and still unfinished, um, lol, i'm not very consise sometimes - and i'm not sure i even wrote anything that sounded too similar to that. i forget.)

He said, "okay you have a few definitions in there, and they're trying to describe too much, it's almost contradictory. you're trying to put too many different concepts in one. adolescence should be just one encompassing concept.”

“Let’s see...look at the adolescence sheet of quotes we just got, there's a bunch of quotes from different people, and they all touch upon the concept of adolescence, some different aspect of it. They're all correct”

"Yes, but there's one thing that ties all these things together, and that's the one thing we should focus on.”

“But... I think it’s more accurate if we take into account all these different perspectives of what adolescence is. Don’t you think it’d be more accurate that way?”

“No, I don’t, actually. I think it’s less correct to do so.”

“How? Okay, for example, your water bottle, it’s correct to say it’s a water bottle, but if we go on to describe how it’s got a blue label on it, it’s got a cap on, etc. “

“No, see that describes this one waterbottle, what about other waterbottles that don’t look like this? Not all waterbottles have blue labels”

“Well you can say that waterbottles are usually clear, and hold water, portable. I think if you describe it in as many different way, or be as descriptive that you can, then the real meaning of it speaks for itself.”

“Okay, I know that you’re trying to make me be less closed minded and exact, but -”

“Don’t make me sound like a douchebag, I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Someone’s getting angry...”

“ I challenge you to a dance off!”


I see his point a little bit though, when nothing is stated explicitly, so you’re not defining anything at all. But I think that defining is unimportant if you don’t consider what the concept really means and expand on it, otherwise it feels like you’re defining the word with the word itself. Especially with social concepts, it’s not a matter of a dictionary definition.

Just for reference, I think my friend is an LSI. He looks like Hitta but a teenage Filipino version of him. Not that it means much, I just thought it was funny.

So is this an example of Te values vs. Ti?
an NeFi vs ISTj?


We both liked this quote the best though:

“A child becomes an adolescent when he realizes that all adults are not perfect. An adolescent becomes an adult when he forgives them. An adult becomes wise when he forgives himself."

And question for anyone interested:
Is adolescence a social construct? As in a concept made up by society, or are we giving a label to something that's happening?
There are cultures in the world that don't have a specific "adolescent" age, or at least not the kind that North America has.

[FDG]

I think this adolescence thing is bull. I never went through it, and many people I know never went through it either. So I feel like it doesn't even exist.

[Phaedrus]

I have recently posted on this forum about why definitions are usually rather irrelevant and unimportant in science, and the kind of science I have in mind is of course primarily Te-based.

Instead of demanding a definition of a concept, instead of asking what something really is, we could follow Karl Popper's advice. In science we should focus on problems, not words. And a good way to solve problems like this is to ask ourselves: We all agree that we can observe these typical characteristics of this phenomenon X -- now, what shall we call phenomenon X?

There are two parts of a definition -- that which comes before the "=" and that which comes after. When we try to define a word, we focus on the left side of the definition, for example:

Adolescence = a stage that a ..., including b ..., which c ..., but not d ...

Popper advices us to focus on the right side of the definition instead. We have this particular instrument by which we can measure something, but we don't know exactly what it's true nature is yet, because we haven't investigated all aspects of it. But for practical purposes we should give it a name. Okay, what do you want to call it? For example:

IQ = the phenomenon that is measured by tests of type Y.

The point is that it doesn't matter what we decide to call something. It is a waste of time to argue about the correct definition of a word, if we agree on what we are talking about. If we both know that we are talking about this (imagine both of us pointing at the same thing (the same object) that we both can observe, whether literally or in that we agree on typical manifestations of it). What about calling it "A"? You disagree? You want to call it "B" instead? Okay, it's no big deal for me -- let's call it "B" then.