# Ti, Te and NF-ness



## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Would you say that typical "hard" sciences are Ti or Te or both? Would you say that "soft" sciences would be more NF? Essentially, I was having a conversation just now where I again (as always) ranted about the bias towards the natural sciences and how it's usually considered more legitimate than the social sciences I study. The problem as I see it comes down to this:

Natural sciences strive for quantitized data that can easily be sorted and organized and even generalized. The social sciences and humanities on the other hand strive for a more relativistic approach generally speaking (quantitized data can also be interesting to gather in the social sciences but the focus is certainly less prominent) and are more interested in seeing how reality is more fluid than a typical natural science models can explain due to the nature of the natural science itself. It's focused on quantitized data with repeatable results, but you can't always do this with people. 

It's hardly unknown that the natural sciences are clearly favored and seen as the more correct way of understanding the world. In terms of Reinin dichotomies I suppose one could say it could be a difference between objecitvity and relativity but I don't think it's that simple either. I think I am very much striving to find the objective truth when I perform my anthropology studies since I study reality _as is_. However, I also realize this reality as is differs across contexts so yeah.

Heck, even Jung complained about this when he initially presented his theory of personality type because it wasn't as easily quantitized and objectively studied. SeTi bias?


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

A majority of the time, in my experience, Te gets you further from a pure career standpoint in the hard sciences. To make fundamental advances, however, (most people will never do this in their lives in a career setting, due to lack of availability of opportunity and simply because it's bloody difficult!) often there was Ti involved. The use of Ji functions somehow involves introducing a murkiness, given that they're working on reasoning with things that aren't directly right in front of us to see, and it leads to a lot of very bad conclusions. But I do think to make very fundamental advances in science (some fields more than others), strong Ti is necessary. While ultimately the hard sciences must appeal to the objective, Ti may be very crucial in offering an actual explanation (once the data is taken, sorted, and analyzed, the ability to independently formulate statements about them and reason about these statements is still a Ji thing -- it absolutely involves subjectivity, in my experience, because all descriptions of objective phenomena are not exact, and the filter we use to describe them is ultimately a personal model, even if phrased in a precise language that is very quantitative in nature). 

As for the soft sciences, I would say Ji is more directly necessary from the very beginning at a high level. As always, my take is that a strong Ji _but with uncommonly strong intuition_ is needed for success in these areas. 

Mostly, I think natural sciences are favored because people believe they involve less BS-ing. It takes great subtlety to be able to realize what is really profound when dealing with the murky subjects a lot of "soft" areas deal with, whereas no matter how incapable of understanding the reasoning behind it that most are, hard sciences produce somewhat more easily recognized results. So the ignorant like to just generalize and claim all soft sciences to be BS.

In explaining people, a strong Fi, Fe, or both can easily come handy. The ability to analyze yourself effectively and determine your standing on many things can lead to the sort of analytical depth necessary to start analyzing others, but again, without a strong intuition, one will connect one's insights to observations about others in a pretty faulty way.


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## aconite (Mar 26, 2012)

I agree with most things @bearotter said. Even though I'm an ethical type in Socionics, I've always found hard sciences easier to grasp that soft sciences (it might or might not be related to being So-last as well). I'd say, though, that the perceiving is as important as judging; for example, in programming you have to use intuition - and in a laboratory you have to use sensing.

BTW, I don't think that natural sciences are better. We need both.


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

@Definitely, most certainly I agree perceiving is crucial like judging in the sciences. You will never find me claiming otherwise


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## Paradigm (Feb 16, 2010)

I've always found the "soft sciences" to be easier to grasp, even though it seems like I'm Ni-Te in both systems. I do love the so-called "hard sciences," but they tend to involve either too much memorization (boring) or too much math (dyscalculia). "Hard science" tends to work the opposite of my brain, too, from details to the big picture-- or does in school settings, which impedes my learning. While I'd love to go into medicine, I've been intending to go into linguistics and I have a large interest in psychology (both social sciences). The biggest kink in all of my interests is that I hate actually interacting with most people...


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## Figure (Jun 22, 2011)

I'm not worth a crap when it comes to hard science, math, and discrete mechanical subjects. When it comes down to memorizing the necessary basics, I either become bored and uninterested, or less often, interested in topics that demand previous knowledge of more basic things for which I cannot get much into because I never learned the basics. There's something about mechanical things that makes me cringe. I don't have the ability to use my instincts to figure them out without having memorized discrete factual principles. It's always taken me a long time, and a lot of trial and error, to come to understand a specific topic or system. 

But in subjects that are not as mechanical, or in which one can use the mechanics to their own perceptions, such as typology, I'm particularly good. This _could _involve people, but it doesn't have to. My job as a management consultant is great because I get to observe problems, choose my own system and set of assumptions, and go forward - there isn't a "right or wrong" before the outcome. _This _is what I don't care for about the hard sciences - they seem much more static-oriented than dynamic.

I'm most certainly an Ni dominant, but not an Fe user, with Fi and Te about equal. Kind of not an INTJ in some ways. But a _classic _ILI.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

LeaT said:


> It's hardly unknown that the natural sciences are clearly favored and seen as the more correct way of understanding the world. In terms of Reinin dichotomies I suppose one could say it could be a difference between objecitvity and relativity but I don't think it's that simple either. I think I am very much striving to find the objective truth when I perform my anthropology studies since I study reality _as is_. However, I also realize this reality as is differs across contexts so yeah.
> 
> Heck, even Jung complained about this when he initially presented his theory of personality type because it wasn't as easily quantitized and objectively studied. SeTi bias?


I really don't think it's got anything to do with Reinin... I'm Merry/Subjective dichotomy there but I prefer hard sciences very much. I can't even start to deal with soft ones. I can get as far as certain areas in psychology, the more "hard science" areas of it and I do like those a lot. The rest of psychology and other soft stuff I just ignore mostly. I did get quite disappointed in Jung when I found he complained about experimental statistics not showing any proof for his ideas about astrology. If he called this SeTi bias then I'm sorry I'm already biased and thus don't truly understand why it's even a bias 

A bit more on my approach vs hard sciences, I am definitely more theoretical than certain other people, in typology you'll call that a Ti bias and that's quite a good way to describe it. So for me it's always about a certain balance between the practical and the theory in science. To even begin to understand things in science, e.g. experiment results, I get a bit "disconnected" from the physical but I cannot get rid of the physical (that'd feel really bad!) and I don't even want to as that's what I like in the first place about hard sciences, that is that they deal with actual physical things. And the whole point of science is about building better and better models of reality so that's also a way to say you always need to return to it after the building of a model. 

Somewhere I used an analogy for my Ti-ish approach, that I mostly like to look at how the hardware and the software interface with each other. Describe and see and manipulate the hardware slightly indirectly on a software level.  Now of course, for simpler things I don't have to get too much into theory, I can just play with whatever thing and then "feel" the principles of how it works without consciously analysing much and that's easy to do and enjoyable but if we are talking serious science then that's a step up from here. Definitely more of a challenge but very interesting 




bearotter said:


> A majority of the time, in my experience, Te gets you further from a pure career standpoint in the hard sciences. To make fundamental advances, however, (most people will never do this in their lives in a career setting, due to lack of availability of opportunity and simply because it's bloody difficult!) often there was Ti involved. The use of Ji functions somehow involves introducing a murkiness, given that they're working on reasoning with things that aren't directly right in front of us to see, and it leads to a lot of very bad conclusions.


I would say it's only murky if you get too far from the real thing that you're reasoning about. Bad conclusions can then come about, sure. Another way to avoid/minimize such incorrect conclusions is of course by always trying to ensure that there is no internal inconsistency in the model. While at the same time you keep anchoring it to reality as much as you can. Basically... always check, "does this actually work?", "does this prediction always work?", "is this a still untested assumption used here?". And so on  




> But I do think to make very fundamental advances in science (some fields more than others), strong Ti is necessary. While ultimately the hard sciences must appeal to the objective, Ti may be very crucial in offering an actual explanation (once the data is taken, sorted, and analyzed, the ability to independently formulate statements about them and reason about these statements is still a Ji thing -- it absolutely involves subjectivity, in my experience, because all descriptions of objective phenomena are not exact, and the filter we use to describe them is ultimately a personal model, even if phrased in a precise language that is very quantitative in nature).


Very well put 




> Mostly, I think natural sciences are favored because people believe they involve less BS-ing. It takes great subtlety to be able to realize what is really profound when dealing with the murky subjects a lot of "soft" areas deal with, whereas no matter how incapable of understanding the reasoning behind it that most are, hard sciences produce somewhat more easily recognized results. So the ignorant like to just generalize and claim all soft sciences to be BS.


For me this is nothing to do with being ignorant about soft sciences. I know what that stuff is like, what it is about, I just find it way too subjective, too murky, I don't even begin to understand the idea of "profound" in the context of these sciences; call this a personal preference if you will. Also... there is some truth to some of the soft sciences allowing BS in too easily, it's simply more dangerous grounds in terms of that, easier to think up BS and harder to refute it.




> In explaining people, a strong Fi, Fe, or both can easily come handy. The ability to analyze yourself effectively and determine your standing on many things can lead to the sort of analytical depth necessary to start analyzing others, but again, without a strong intuition, one will connect one's insights to observations about others in a pretty faulty way.


Right, I don't even attempt to connect my observations at all in these areas.




Definitely said:


> I agree with most things @_bearotter_ said. Even though I'm an ethical type in Socionics, I've always found hard sciences easier to grasp that soft sciences (it might or might not be related to being So-last as well). I'd say, though, that the perceiving is as important as judging; for example, in programming you have to use intuition - and in a laboratory you have to use sensing.


I can show you people who use sensing in programming... not a problem at all. What kind of intuition do you think is needed in programming btw?




Paradigm said:


> I've always found the "soft sciences" to be easier to grasp, even though it seems like I'm Ni-Te in both systems. I do love the so-called "hard sciences," but they tend to involve either too much memorization (boring) or too much math (dyscalculia). "Hard science" tends to work the opposite of my brain, too, from details to the big picture-- or does in school settings, which impedes my learning. While I'd love to go into medicine, I've been intending to go into linguistics and I have a large interest in psychology (both social sciences). The biggest kink in all of my interests is that I hate actually interacting with most people...


Interesting you have a problem with going from details to the big picture. I don't know if that's even function related tbh. I see some people attribute bottom-up processing to Ni-Te and then I see some people attribute bottom-up processing to Ti preference and then saw some other people attribute it to S preference. And so on. At that point I kind of didn't care any more and I don't even see any valid reasoning anyway that can show how from one specific function preference it follows that you prefer bottom-up to top-down.

Btw for what this info is worth, I'm heavily bottom-up and that does work well in some sciences  And as for memorizing of details in heavy topics, I have my own method of doing it through some Ti-like analysis of the details first. 

Oh and in either linguistics or psychology, you don't necessarily have to interact with many people.




LXPilot said:


> I'm not worth a crap when it comes to hard science, math, and discrete mechanical subjects. When it comes down to memorizing the necessary basics, I either become bored and uninterested, or less often, interested in topics that demand previous knowledge of more basic things for which I cannot get much into because I never learned the basics. There's something about mechanical things that makes me cringe. I don't have the ability to use my instincts to figure them out without having memorized discrete factual principles. It's always taken me a long time, and a lot of trial and error, to come to understand a specific topic or system.


Interesting, with mechanic stuff, I do need trial and error too or a bit of help from already understood theory or principles. I doubt that's function related much. I've seen both ISTP and INTJ doing this better than me. The only difference between us is I don't cringe  I like these mechanical topics actually...


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

In terms of "hard" and "soft" science is this like in math?

The teacher wants the student to write down all of their mathematical solutions, equations, or work. 
The student wants the teacher to write down why it is imperative to do so and as to why I have to think like you.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

myjazz said:


> In terms of "hard" and "soft" science is this like in math?
> 
> The teacher wants the student to write down all of their mathematical solutions, equations, or work.
> The student wants the teacher to write down why it is imperative to do so and as to why I have to think like you.


I guess I do think math falls closer on the "hard" science aspect of things.


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

LeaT said:


> I guess I do think math falls closer on the "hard" science aspect of things.


In my metaphorical restatement of your metaphorical statement was doing away with the term science ,in which my Ti wants to indulge in, and replace science with the word math. Not as in is math "hard" or "soft" science, but instead is the views of the teacher and student compared to what you mean by hard and soft science. 
Teacher would be hard science view
Student would be soft science view


Or can you explain to me in a different way by the terminology of "hard" vs "soft". I kinda think you meant as hard science is data focused as to where soft science is more people focused.
as in my rewording of original post >.<


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

myjazz said:


> In my metaphorical restatement of your metaphorical statement was doing away with the term science ,in which my Ti wants to indulge in, and replace science with the word math. Not as in is math "hard" or "soft" science, but instead is the views of the teacher and student compared to what you mean by hard and soft science.
> Teacher would be hard science view
> Student would be soft science view
> 
> ...


Yes, what you wrote in the last paragraph.


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## LibertyPrime (Dec 17, 2010)

@LeaT

<.< Hmm there might be something to this. I'm ethical or F in socionics and if I can't connect what I'm researching to people or derive some benefit for living "creatures", something along those lines...then I'll lose interest. If we consider it like that then yeah Ts might be in for the knowlege while I'm in it for the personal or non personal benefit, thou my opinion may also be a a bit on the S side of things as I require things to be valid according to the scientific principle.

....which would make a part of psychology for example both an opportunity and an annoyance. Annoying because its full of unreliable ideas with no solid backing, tangents etc and an opportunity, because devising methods to test for validity is interesting / may lead to advancements.

For example the MBTI self report test is a very BAD way to test for type and you can't base any serious research on this instrument. Better methods need to be found, more precicely the one method that produces convincing, unambiguous, irrefutable, testable, and repeatable evidence.

*Maybe both can do both, just that they might be in for different reasons.*

Hmm maybe my view isn't so S, I score very high on inquisitive in the Big 5, thou the corelation between the 2 is very questionable.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Rim said:


> @_LeaT_
> 
> <.< Hmm there might be something to this. I'm ethical or F in socionics and if I can't connect what I'm researching to people or derive some benefit for living "creatures", something along those lines...then I'll lose interest. If we consider it like that then yeah Ts might be in for the knowlege while I'm in it for the personal or non personal benefit, thou my opinion may also be a a bit on the S side of things as I require things to be valid according to the scientific principle.
> 
> ...


Well, I second you on this. If there's no people-aspect I lose interest rather quickly. I'm much more interested in science that relates to people in some way although in a more theoretical sense. I want to know what makes people tick, but I am also interested in knowing motivations and reasons behind our actions, behaviors and beliefs. I want to know why a person is willing to make a specific type of art the way it's made and I want to see how this relates to society as a whole. What does it say about the artist and what does it say about people? 

I don't like the more impersonal view of the "hard" sciences. It bores me. Statistics doesn't say anything but people do.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

Rim said:


> ....which would make a part of psychology for example both an opportunity and an annoyance. Annoying because its full of unreliable ideas with no solid backing, tangents etc and an opportunity, because devising methods to test for validity is interesting / may lead to advancements.


That's totally how I view psychology. Some parts are unreliable, then some are more sensible and there are opportunities to improve the frameworks of thinking.  (Meaning power to more hard science based approach hehehe)




> Hmm maybe my view isn't so S, I score very high on inquisitive in the Big 5, thou the corelation between the 2 is very questionable.


Yes, why couldn't a big5 inquisitive not prefer scientific validity?




myjazz said:


> I kinda think you meant as hard science is data focused as to where soft science is more people focused.
> as in my rewording of original post >.<


+ 



LeaT said:


> I don't like the more impersonal view of the "hard" sciences. It bores me. Statistics doesn't say anything but people do.


Not sure why you two only see the statistics/data part in hard sciences. I think it's about more than that. But yeah, it's impersonal.


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## LibertyPrime (Dec 17, 2010)

itsme45 said:


> That's totally how I view psychology. Some parts are unreliable, then some are more sensible and there are opportunities to improve the frameworks of thinking.  (Meaning power to more hard science based approach hehehe)
> 
> 
> 
> ...


^^ the correlation according to how people made the connection between MBTI and Big5 is that S= none inquisitive and N=inquisitive, which I find highly questionable. I was hinting at that.

 yeah cold data is boring to me, I need a reason other then gathering knowledge to work with it.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

itsme45 said:


> Not sure why you two only see the statistics/data part in hard sciences. I think it's about more than that. But yeah, it's impersonal.


Not just statistics but just as an example. It's all quantitative.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

Rim said:


> ^^ the correlation according to how people made the connection between MBTI and Big5 is that S= none inquisitive and N=inquisitive, which I find highly questionable. I was hinting at that.
> 
> yeah cold data is boring to me, I need a reason other then gathering knowledge to work with it.


Yes I know about that correlation and about how it's not so strong actually, the correlation. That's why I said what I said. 

To me it's not really just about gathering knowledge but about understanding and creating.


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