Ni and time

[dreikin]

I agree with "intuition of patterns", but I want to point out that these patterns are usually not visual. Somehow a copy machine and a printer have more in common than copy machine and scanner. (copy machine kinda looks like a scanner, but scanner doesn't put ink on A4 paper).

And I usually can't pinpoint why one thing reminds me of something else. When solving a problem, I will suddenly remember, "oh wow, it's just like that situation and that would mean that the solution is ...". And when I tell someone the solution, I should never tell them how I reached the solution. I have to describe the pros and cons of my solution in stead.

The main thing is that the "flashes" usually don't feel like flashes. They are just normal direction of the thoughts and they seem totally logical. Similar to dreaming because in your dreams the weirdest things can seem perfectly logical. You don't realize until later that raining has nothing to do with drinking tea. Or at least it seems impossible to reach a conclusion to one situation using information from totally different thing. The real and strong flashes of problem-solving Ni insight are more rare.

Indeed, if they were solely or even usually visual, it would probably have to be called objective rather than subjective, and thus not Ni. Jung at one point (as I recall) said that intuition would often be described as a sixth sense or a feeling (not emotional).

I think that the flash of insight might be more likely to happen if you're engaging a rational function to do something, and the Ni suddenly interupts to say “here it is..”.

I don't think is about pattern recognition at all. I think it has much more to do with .

When I use , it's more along the lines of being able to predict how things will unfold over time...

- If I do this, then this and this are likely to happen.
- If I do that, then that and that will happen.
- If I do it like this, then things are likely to unfold this way.
- Oh shit that's not good, so don't do it that way.

When you're talking about a test like that with pattern recognition with objects that have physical shapes and sizes and a location perhaps, I think that's solidly in the domain.

I agree with that list, and in many ways it's much more what I meant on the IQ test part (which by this time I will say is a definitely bad example). However, none of these are intrinsically connected to time so much as sequence. I agree that “pattern recognition with objects that have physical shapes and size and location” has a lot to do with Se (and when I tried a few while looking for the linked image, I also found myself using a lot of Te to solve it – more than would be necessary if it were so much a part of Ni).

Yeah, this one is spot on, I think. I can't really do the Ni things listed, especially:

If I do it like this, then things are likely to unfold this way.

Instead, I always get almost perfect scores in the tests like dreikin's one

Score one more for that list...

I think we're redefining the functions a bit, maybe beyond recognition.

I don't see anything in Socionics that describes as related to pattern recognition in IQ tests. I think that's a bit far out.

As to going through the project-planning possibilities "if I do this, this will happen, if I do that, that will happen," that's not a function either. It's an activity you do; it appears to make use of a few different functions...a lot of to structure the possibilities, and possibly some to imagine what each possibility would be like. But it doesn't follow that this activity you do for advance planning is equivalent to .

Of course – functions rarely exist in a vacuum. However, you'll notice this is what I described above, in a manner: The Ni perception of some sequence of events is handed off to a rational function for evaluation.

It's a function of perception. Perceiving something. If you have a plan and you perceive the different possible outcomes of that plan over time then that's If you don't like what you see, you can use say to restructure to a better perceived outcome.

That's more INTp-ish though.

As an ENTj, maybe you have a group or resources, a system, or a product of some sort represented by . You then creatively perceive what you can do with that over time to get a favorable outcome. Say positive return on investment, generic "success", or whatever. You are manipulating your Te over time with Ni to get what you're after. An INTp sorta does the opposite and manipulates their perceived procession of events over time (Ni) with Te to get a more favorable procession of events.

An ENTj manipulates their Te creatively with Ni over time.
An INTp manipulates their time/event Ni structure creatively with Te.

Hmm, I believe you may be very useful to this thread to throw things into a Ni-producing perspective (since I'm pretty sure that whether I'm aware of it or not, I'll be speaking mostly from an Ni-accepting perspective).

I assumed when I read that about patterns that it meant patterns of events - like what events usually follow what events. Like the old "history repeats itself" axiom. They recognize what events are likely to follow a certain event.

Yes, that's a large part of what I meant...

I think the best way to think of Ni is "Intuition of Development."

...and I should note that I used “pattern” as a way of getting rid of the inherent time dependancy in title, but I think “development” fits much better.

"Intuition of patterns" is more at - which is also known in the world of Socionics as "intuition of potentialities."

The functions merely form the grammar of the psyche - how we put put together and interpret the world around us. They do not portend accuracy or knack, but are merely an accustomed way of dealing with information.

My conception of is "intuition of time on my own terms." This is the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of a perception of physical time, which is what often confuses people (and which is actually closer to ). The unit of time for -dominants is best summed up as "moments" - life is made up of moments, and ongoing states of awareness and being, rather than seconds and minutes and hours. And these moments are not set values - a moment can last for days, perhaps years, or less than a second. Furthermore, you can live in multiple moments at the same time on different levels of awareness and preoccupation. He lives on his own pockets of time. Because of this, the physical passing of time is a non-issue for -dominants.

Also, by the looks of it, there's a lot of confusing for in this thread...

By now, I think intuition of patterns is too broad a term to put as a function – we've already shown physical/spatial patterns may be Se, and developmental patterns is probably Ni.

“ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE” of a perception of physical time” - ie, subjective rather than objective, which is what an Xi should be. I like your way of putting that, but again, while this SUBJECTIVE inuition of time undoubtedly is very much a part of Ni, it would seem that Ni does not exclusively deal with this subjective time (ie, intuition of subjective time is a subset of Ni, but Ni =/= intuition of subjective time).

The functions merely form the grammar of the psyche - how we put put together and interpret the world around us. They do not portend accuracy or knack, but are merely an accustomed way of dealing with information.

This is exactly how I tend to understand/view socionics.

My conception of is "intuition of time on my own terms." This is the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of a perception of physical time, which is what often confuses people (and which is actually closer to ). The unit of time for -dominants is best summed up as "moments" - life is made up of moments, and ongoing states of awareness and being, rather than seconds and minutes and hours. And these moments are not set values - a moment can last for days, perhaps years, or less than a second. Furthermore, you can live in multiple moments at the same time on different levels of awareness and preoccupation. He lives on his own pockets of time. Because of this, the physical passing of time is a non-issue for -dominants.

This description of Ni is palpable to me. Almost makes me want to weep! As a matter of fact, I might just put some of it in my sig. I must give representation to that which resonates within me. This Ni description must shine! hee hee

So, StevENTj's plus Baby's descriptions to keep in mind..

You know, I just can't help but notice the parallels of how is describes in several segments here and descriptions in my "how I view reality" thread.

Notice in the last two parts how the recognition of the pattern is a perception, and unlike S, it has no (immediately) identifiable source, so it's an intuition. Further, unlike the Ne part of coming up with possibilities, it doesn't need to be checked (other than just a very quick verification, but..) – you know that's what it is

"you know that's what it is" - or in other words you've seen it, you've seen the answer, even if you, for some strange reason, like for instance somebody asking you a question at that very moment, forget the answer, lose your train of thought, that sense of "I've seen it" is still there.

Here it is explained through my methaphore of shapes. As I've stated shapes can be anything. There also exist mathematical-logical shapes.
They exist in a special form, they exist in a "web" of cause and consequence in a "forest" of logic: They are the intersection in the web.
Anyway, navigating in this web is complicated. Each point has a fixed number of paths to other points. You can travel to each point while in Ni mode, imagine that you are floating in space and there is this giant 3D web around you. But the purpose of the exercise is to discover connection in the web. So you try to do that.
A mathematical (logical) problem is when you are given two point in this web and you try to connect them. So you float around, look to which points a point is connected, can that path take you there, you look closely, what about that one, nope, there's got to be a way here somewhere *scratch head* and then it happens. In the corner of your eye, you though you saw a path that connects them, turn, look and there it is, *the path* that connects the two dots. In that very instant the path lights up, as if it is burning as you are traveling on it and a new shape is formed with a beginning in one point and and ending in another, "a flash of insight"

Very much what I meant in the wonderful visuals of snegledmaca. Since I first wrote this topic, I've been thinking that “intuition of connections” might be (part of) Ni, but so far it has seemed like that might be too broad (eg, relations [connections] between people). However, if we look at the posts here, you may observe that pretty much everything here is put in one form of connection or another. Here, we perceive the connection or sequence of connection between to points. “Intuition of development” would have to deal with the connections as something progresses – how this connects to this, then connects to this. Etc.. The first thing to notice is that these are subjective connections – as befits an Xi function – that they are perceptions – and thus irrational – and that they are mentally perceived – thus intuitions (come to think of it, there could be a wee bit of accepting bias to this. Comments, StevENTj?).

This may not just be patterns like on IQ tests and such. When I look at something, eg (and this is what brought this latter part to mind) a sink, I don't just see what it's physically possible to see (the counter, the faucet, etc), but the other elements that, from what I know of sinks and have experienced of them, but I see (mentally, and very much in a perceptive way rather than a judgmentive one) the pipes, the connections of the pipes, etc.. This even applies to elements that I have no idea what their purpose is, or the details of their workings (eg, imagine a circuit board - you may have no idea what all those parts are, or the meanings and purposes of those paths, but you can still imagine them, no?).

[...]By observing this entity I am observing the phenomenon [...] I will look at it and realize that for instance only that and that part of it is currently displayed. I can see those parts that are not on display[...]

Again, well put.

- If I do this, then this and this are likely to happen.
- If I do that, then that and that will happen.
- If I do it like this, then things are likely to unfold this way.

[...]These phenomenons change over time, they are dynamic. Some more then others. Some are totally static. They are also dependent on their interaction with other shapes. Just like real matter we observe, they can collide, fuse and so on[...]

The unit of time for -dominants is best summed up as "moments" - life is made up of moments, and ongoing states of awareness and being, rather than seconds and minutes and hours. And these moments are not set values - a moment can last for days, perhaps years, or less than a second. Furthermore, you can live in multiple moments at the same time on different levels of awareness and preoccupation. He lives on his own pockets of time. Because of this, the physical passing of time is a non-issue for -dominants.

That would be more states of being then moments. States of being would have a time frame and it could be used as a reference point (Moment) but without this additional context (Moment of what?) it is void.
And also that would be completely normal.
Or perhaps I am mistaken.

Would you mind elaborating on these last two parts? I'm not sure that I understand your meaning correctly.

Either I'm completely off-base and misinterpreting people here, or a lot of what is being described here is . Let's go back to Jung:

Introverted intuition apprehends the images which arise from the a priori, i.e. the inherited foundations of the unconscious mind. These archetypes, whose innermost nature is inaccessible to experience, represent the precipitate of psychic functioning of the whole ancestral line, i.e. the heaped-up, or pooled, experiences of organic existence in general, a million times repeated, and condensed into types. Hence, in these archetypes all experiences are [p. 508] represented which since primeval time have happened on this planet. Their archetypal distinctness is the more marked, the more frequently and intensely they have been experienced. The archetype would be -- to borrow from Kant -- the noumenon of the image which intuition perceives and, in perceiving, creates.

If you are tracing patterns between object and object, that is extroverted intuition. If you look at the world around you, and are forced to determine to what extent that world reflects your own archetypal associations - "visions" - (subject to object), that is introverted intuition. These associations or "visions", according to Jung, exist before one is actually conscious of them.

As per states of being v. moments, and "moments of what..." - that is exactly it. Not time itself, but an intuitive understanding of sequence. A sequence of thoughts, feelings, shapes, even, but really working from inside out as opposed to object to object.

Until I learn more about Jung's theory of archetypes, I'm going to be wary of using them for descriptive purposes of functions. I do agree that the intuitions tend to exist before becoming conscious that they exist, and have even seen scientific support of this, however.

..And here we come again to Ni not necessarily having to do with time, and being sequential.

needs to be called "fluid intuition." "Intution of time" is only a subset of what does.

Everyone read what snegledmaca wrote and thoroughly digest it if you ever want to have an idea of what is like.

Also, the functions become much clearer when you look at them in terms of information elements, so I strongly reccommend doing this.

“Fluid intution” - I like this one as well, and it fits well with the other definitions come up with here, as well.
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So, What we have thus far (as I see it):

Ni is the subjective mental perception of sequences. A fluid intuition, easily aware of how a sequence may develop.

Time is not an essential element of the sequence - however, it is a variable that in practice is so often present as to make it an essential element of Ni. But this is a subjective sense of time: not the ticking of the clock, but a sense of "when" more in the form of beats - a person with strong Ni may not be able to tell you how many seconds, minutes or hours something may take, but they can still indicate when it will most likely happen, before it does (eg, tapping their hand as they wait for person to walk to them, 'knowing' that the person is going to start talking to them about when they hit the fifth tap). It is also a sense of order - this before this, but after that - and connection - this to that to those.
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As a note, I've been thinking that Ni might be more along the lines of lineal intuition, and Ne more parallel intuition. I also think it might be possible that the other Xi/Xe splits might exhibit a similar dichotomy. One might see Ne as being most able to perceive an exploded diagram of a car engine mentally, while Ne would be most able to perceive the flow of it's workings.