Originally Posted by
Jonathan
If we say that Te is about facts, and checking facts, don't we still have to distinguish it from facts related to other information elements?
It seems that there are certain "facts" of an Se nature. If we observe the objects around us, through our senses, we are making sensory observations of facts. It would appear that this is still Se, even though it concerns facts.
A similar issue comes in saying that Te is about "what works." In the movie directors thread, I suggested that Hitchcock may be a Te-ego-block type because he was so focused on "what works" (what works dramatically; what works to affect the audience and keep its interest). If, instead, he was SEI, that may suggest that his singular emphasis on what works dramatically is perhaps not an expression of super-ego Te but rather something else.
In my observation, it appears that what Expat and other LIE types do, rather than focus on "facts," is to evaluate which facts are relevant to making a specific logical case. That is, Te is more about relating facts logically for some specific purpose. Te, it seems to me, is not expressed by someone simply knowing and memorizing lots of facts, or spending a lot of time checking up on raw facts. Rather, it is a logical skill, related to Ti except in the dynamic rather than static context. It involves understanding which facts would most effectively and efficiently solve your problem, make your case, etc. This also may cause a shift of one's position, based on the facts one has discovered; but it is not actually the facts, but the facts as logically connected.
As to checking the validity or the "reality checking" that I think Gamma NTs do, I'm not as sure that this applies to Delta STs in the same way. It appears that Gamma NT involves a Ni conceptualization that must be constantly be updated to reflect Se reality, as mediated through Te. This may be seen by the following process:
Information -> Ni idea of what may be going on -> Te ideas on how to test the idea and make it work -> Se results of the experiement -> Te interprets whether the results really contain substantially different information that would require altering one's idea.
However, Te with Si may not involve as much of a "revision" process, as Si might possibly tend to lead to focus on more concrete, "settled" information.
One other issue: While it seems fairly clear to people what acc-Te looks like, at least in LIEs, there have been some divergent views on what crea-Te looks like. It seems that with crea-Te, there is an emphasis on finding out what reality is like, and (especially with ILI), a certain continual "revision" process to reflect reality. However, it may not involve as much actual external effort in being involved in checking facts. That is, I would expect an LIE to be be more energetically involved in activities that would be used to understand the world around one, whereas an ILI would still be oriented to the same goals but would spend relatively less time and effort on external activities for gathering information, and more time conceptualizing the information.
The challenge, in that case, is distinguishing between "Ti > Te" and "Ni > Te."