# What is Ni?



## Jmm124567 (May 20, 2014)

Doesn't it have to do with future planning and can be good at manipulating? For example say a black person felt his white neighbors were racist so in the middle of the night he spray paints a swastika on his own house and in the morning tells people racist white people must have done that and that there is white racists in the neighborhood. Wouldn't this be Ni style thinking?


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## Ninjaws (Jul 10, 2014)

That sounds more like Te: Cause and effect.
"If I do this, then that will happen. If that happens, this other thing will happen that plays right into my hand."


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## Jmm124567 (May 20, 2014)

Ninjaws said:


> That sounds more like Te: Cause and effect.
> "If I do this, then that will happen. If that happens, this other thing will happen that plays right into my hand."


Then how does Ni work.


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## Dao (Sep 13, 2013)

Jmm124567 said:


> For example say a black person felt his white neighbors were racist so in the middle of the night he spray paints a swastika on his own house and in the morning tells people racist white people must have done that and that there is white racists in the neighborhood. Wouldn't this be Ni style thinking?


That isn't Ni. That's just craziness.


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## Convex (Jan 5, 2015)

Dao said:


> That isn't Ni. That's just craziness.


It's smart, assuming he executes it properly.


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## Dao (Sep 13, 2013)

Convex said:


> It's smart, assuming he executes it properly.


Because defacing your own house with an embarrassing swastika that will cost time and money to remove is smart.

Besides, is Ni inherently 'smart'?


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## Telepathis Goosus (Mar 28, 2015)

I don't know. My dad is an ENTJ and I have attempted to probe at his thought process before, but all he says is that when dealing with intuition- "it's just a narrow sort of linear thing- I can't explain it- I just get an idea sometimes and stick with it."

He's the only NJ I know, sadly, I'm still trying to work out Ni myself. :dry:


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## Convex (Jan 5, 2015)

Dao said:


> Because defacing your own house with an embarrassing swastika that will cost time and money to remove is smart.


I suppose it is difficult to determine how effective his method was, taking account the variables, and the lack of details in the original story. For example, his goals have to be stated in order to determine efficiency. 



Dao said:


> Besides, is Ni inherently 'smart'?


No.


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## EndsOfTheEarth (Mar 14, 2015)

Jmm124567 said:


> Wouldn't this be Ni style thinking?


Not in my universe. Ni is the awesomest power in the known realms, especially good at drawing non-existent conclusions for the sake of feeling like you got closure. Basically you can make up anything you like, and you'll probably believe it as long as a similar pattern for it occurred somewhere in your life previously. :laughing:

In your example Ni would look like this. 

John suspects neighbours are racist. 

John: Hi Bob! Waves at cranky old white guy who lives next door and incessantly trims roses.
Bob: Mumbles, walks away while making a dismissive hand gesture. 
John: OMG! He won't talk to me because I am purple, this neighbourhood is so racist. I had that feeling things were going that way. Especially when I was at the shop on the corner and they served some other non-purple person before me. Obssesses over this thought then comes up with the bizarre conclusion that the neighbours are in fact planning a lynching this week. Makes plan to be away and to send to the dog to moms house....just in case.


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## Dao (Sep 13, 2013)

Ni synthesizes meanings based on recognizing patterns. It also considers implications and predicts probable outcomes. Unlike Ne, which expands, broadens topics and considers extraneous possibilities, Ni is sharply focused and analyzes things from multiple angles. And whereas Si reasoning is more like a connect-the-dot process, Ni is more comfortable making inferential leaps, skipping some dots. Ni is big-picture reasoning and can be wrong when not grounded properly in Se.


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## Jmm124567 (May 20, 2014)

Dao said:


> That isn't Ni. That's just craziness.


No, it's smart subversion. Draw a small swastika on a part of the house were it can be painted over. The media may pick it up. There are people who do tactics like this to bring attention to certain issues. I was reading about a gay waitress who says a family wrote something homophobic the receipt and the media picked it up but it has been said that the waitress may have written it looking for attention.


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## Dao (Sep 13, 2013)

Jmm124567 said:


> No, it's smart subversion. Draw a small swastika on a part of the house were it can be painted over. The media may pick it up. There are people who do tactics like this to bring attention to certain issues.


Or a personality-disordered waste of time depending on your mindset, values and objectives? Either way there isn't enough information in the scenario to tell whether he used Ni. We have little insight into his thought process before and during the crime.


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## Jmm124567 (May 20, 2014)

InSolitude said:


> Not in my universe. Ni is the awesomest power in the known realms, especially good at drawing non-existent conclusions for the sake of feeling like you got closure. Basically you can make up anything you like, and you'll probably believe it as long as a similar pattern for it occurred somewhere in your life previously. :laughing:
> 
> In your example Ni would look like this.
> 
> ...


Sounds like paranoia and anxiety. Doesn't INTJ then use Te to try to get empirical evidence to confirm there intuition. INTJ's though do seem prone to paranoid schizophrenia later in life. I suspect it is an Ni-Fi loop. Without there Te-Se they lose touch with reality.


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## EndsOfTheEarth (Mar 14, 2015)

Jmm124567 said:


> Sounds like paranoia. Doesn't INTJ then use Te to try to get empirical evidence to confirm there intuition. INTJ's though do seem prone to paranoid schizophrenia later in life. I suspect it is an Ni-Fi loop. Without there Te-Se they lose touch with reality.


It only sounds like paranoia because of the illustration. Your example sounds like paranoia too. I'd like to know where you are sourcing the idea that INTJs become paranoid later in life because I've never heard of that before.


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## ScarlettHayden (Jun 8, 2012)

NIgh, the end is nigh.


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## Jmm124567 (May 20, 2014)

InSolitude said:


> It only sounds like paranoia because of the illustration. Your example sounds like paranoia too. I'd like to know where you are sourcing the idea that INTJs become paranoid later in life because I've never heard of that before.


Bobby Fischer, Unabomber, John Nash. All genius INTJ's who developed paranoid schizophrenia. It does seem common among INTJ's but I am not saying they all do. Without there Te and Se they lose touch with reality which is partly what schizophrenia is. Its more common later in life because there Fi needs to develop.


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## Jmm124567 (May 20, 2014)

InSolitude said:


> It only sounds like paranoia because of the illustration. Your example sounds like paranoia too. I'd like to know where you are sourcing the idea that INTJs become paranoid later in life because I've never heard of that before.


I'm wondering if I use Ni. I have anxiety disorders like OCD and I know I am left-brained which narrows me down to being an SJ or NJ. In that situation isn't John reading Bob's body language. Isn't that Fe? I have done things like what you described. My social anxiety makes me a bit paranoid and cynical about people.


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## Ninjaws (Jul 10, 2014)

Jmm124567 said:


> Then how does Ni work.


Look at my first comment. I didn't look at the content of your message, I looked at the meaning behind the content.
I'm not concerned with what you used as your example, I immediately try to find the message behind it.

This is basically how my Ni views the meaning behind your message:

"If I do this, then that will happen. If that happens, this other thing will happen that plays right into my hand."

Ni is subjective however, so the translation from you to me might not be ideal. But in general, the meaning is retrieved.


A good contrast is the message of Dao:

"That isn't Ni. That's just craziness."

She doesn't look at the meaning, she looks at the content at face value. She reacts to the content of what you said. This is not Ni. The fact that she calls it craziness means it is her perception of your message. That would be Si.

So basically:
Si - Personal perception of a message
Ni - Personal perception of the meaning of a message


I might be confusing Fi with Si in Dao's message, if so I apologise. It get's quite confusing to keep all the functions apart.


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## Dao (Sep 13, 2013)

Ninjaws said:


> She doesn't look at the meaning, she looks at the content at face value. She is reacts to the content of what you said. This is not Ni. The fact that she calls it craziness means it is her perception of your message. That would be Si.


I didn't take it at face value but thanks for putting words in my mouth and functions in my head because I did not share my inner thought process out loud anyways. :/


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## Glory (Sep 28, 2013)

The example sounds more histrionic than anything.


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