# Ni vs Si - Memory



## Serpent (Aug 6, 2015)

I would add more words but it's almost midnight here and I'm going to collapse any moment. I trust you to derive what I had in mind, the context, from the title. I'll summarize it, nevertheless. Compare, contrast and differentiate Ni and Si with respect to memory, recollection, nostalgia, etc.


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## Kizuna (Jul 30, 2011)

Ni- how I remember something is I (my unconscious) put everything associated with a time period in one box and it is stored away immediately, meaning that I don't sit there and "remember days long past" very often. What's inside each box becomes a general theme for that time, details fall away, everything is extremely blurry and unfocused, except for a few very precise moments that were burnt into my memory. They seem fresh and colorful every time I decide to replay them (mostly, it's a person's face in a particular situation). The rest is like a huuuuge pixelized "something". My SiFe mom seems to remember EVERYthing and everyone, from where someone put a book to a person she barely even knew some 35 years ago. It's amazing, the sheer amount of raw detail in her memory! I truly admire that, I wish I could remember all the stuff I find interesting. Downside for Si- bad things are remembered just as well. Luckily for me, I forget most of the hurts --except for the real serious ones-- along everything else xD I feel that even if I don't consciously remember things, my unconscious has absorbed the information just fine, it's just that I don't have a direct access to it.

Having Si at the very end of my function stack, I have such a bad memory for everyday life-related things and details in general that it borders on retrograde amnesia. In a conversation I can ask a person twice if they have a sibling and forget it anyway. To activate Si I have to REALLY need that information at a certain moment. I'll remember things I didn't even know I knew when the time is right and the situation (firmly) asks for it. I'll be extremely surprised at my unconscious capabilities  (what Si users would laugh at though xD).

My Ni remembers the condensed version of things, compressed into one idea and, I think, related to the appropriate archetype from the collective unconscious.


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## Pancreatic Pandora (Aug 16, 2013)

Speaking for myself, I'm not a very nostalgic person. I'm not one to reminiscense the past often, when I do it's more in the form of normal memory. That means I consciously try to recreate a situation I've lived in my head so as to remember something or I realize the connection between something that's happened in the past with something else. Memories usually come to me on their own through a series of connections that are usually related to what I was thinking of, I think. I have no objects of personal significance at all. Because I'm not a sensor I don't tend to pay much attention to my surroundings and thus my memories are lacking when it comes to sensory details. It's like a kind of blury recapitulation of events.

PS: I'm an INTJ.


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## surgery (Apr 16, 2010)

Pancreatic Pandora said:


> Speaking for myself, I'm not a very nostalgic person. I'm not one to reminiscense the past often, when I do it's more in the form of normal memory. That means I consciously try to recreate a situation I've lived in my head so as to remember something or I realize the connection between something that's happened in the past with something else. Memories usually come to me on their own through a series of connections that are usually related to what I was thinking of, I think. I have no objects of personal significance at all. Because I'm not a sensor I don't tend to pay much attention to my surroundings and thus my memories are lacking when it comes to sensory details. It's like a kind of blury recapitulation of events.
> 
> PS: I'm an INTJ.



What is your Ni like then?


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## S8on (Nov 23, 2013)

My take on it:

Si remembers what things are. It takes in meaning of what exists (Ne) to understand what is.

Ni remembers what things mean. It interprets what is (Se) to understand meaning.


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## LibertyPrime (Dec 17, 2010)

T_T neither is memory...omg I'm going to cry! Q_Q ITS PERCEPTION....PERCEPTION!!!!
Intuitives in general do not pay as much attention to physical details, while sensors do. The difference in memory comes from this.


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## Serpent (Aug 6, 2015)

FreeBeer said:


> T_T neither is memory...omg I'm going to cry! Q_Q ITS PERCEPTION....PERCEPTION!!!!
> Intuitives in general do not pay as much attention to physical details, while sensors do. The difference in memory comes from this.


Ah, I should have phrased my OP better. But then again, I was half-asleep and as it turns out, I had completely forgotten about this thread's existence. My short-term memory sucks. 
I was basically curious about how an Ni user's perception of the past would differ from an Si user's perception of the past.


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## Pancreatic Pandora (Aug 16, 2013)

surgery said:


> What is your Ni like then?


That's a very broad question lol. Like, regarding memory? I remember the same things I normally perceived when I originally experienced an event, minus some details I might have forgotten. And Ni itself perceives abstractions of reality in the form of symbols or archetypes. It interprets archetypal objects, people, situations that, according to Jung, and if I remember correctly, are drawn from the collective unconscious, an uncoscious (duh) recollection of the knowledge of humanity as a whole. Thus you can interpret images symbolically, associate a series of events with an archetypal development of a situation, think of stuff in terms of their esence (like Ne does too, I believe) rather than on a particular concrete object, etc. That is Ni in a nutshell.


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## LostFavor (Aug 18, 2011)

FreeBeer said:


> T_T neither is memory...omg I'm going to cry! Q_Q ITS PERCEPTION....PERCEPTION!!!!
> Intuitives in general do not pay as much attention to physical details, while sensors do. The difference in memory comes from this.


Isn't that the point though? That the difference in focus causes difference in memory? So whether we call it Ni vs. Si or "functional trends of memory from Ni vs. Si users," or even "functional trends of memory from N's vs. S's," it's more or less the same thing, isn't it? Just a slight difference in terminology.

I don't think the intention was ever to imply that Ni and Si _are_ memory (as if the entirety of memory can be defined by these two cognitive functions) - just that they appear to handle information differently, which then affects how things are remembered and what is remembered. So I think it's really just one step of meaning off; rather than _being_ the "thing" (memory), they have a significant _effect_ on the thing.


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## LibertyPrime (Dec 17, 2010)

LostFavor said:


> Isn't that the point though? That the difference in focus causes difference in memory? So whether we call it Ni vs. Si or "functional trends of memory from Ni vs. Si users," or even "functional trends of memory from N's vs. S's," it's more or less the same thing, isn't it? Just a slight difference in terminology.
> 
> I don't think the intention was ever to imply that Ni and Si _are_ memory (as if the entirety of memory can be defined by these two cognitive functions) - just that they appear to handle information differently, which then affects how things are remembered and what is remembered. So I think it's really just one step of meaning off; rather than _being_ the "thing" (memory), they have a significant _effect_ on the thing.


Yeah similarly how my Ne focus makes my recall of events and details different from them, there is also the problem of the phantasm. There are various other factors contributing to an individual's interpretation of reality. Function preference being only one of these.


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## Aelthwyn (Oct 27, 2010)

interestingly my INTJ friend seems to have a very 'sharp' memory, moreso than me. Like me she will share stories about her past although she is a little lest interested in talking about it because it's just boring to her I guess. She does tend to remember trivia. 

For me with Si tertiary, I love to reminisce and I do have a pretty detailed memory of the past. I do enjoy reliving moments, bringing up as much detail in my mind to make them feel real. As a kid I used to lay awake in bed and the day would pretty much run through my head verbatum a second time, but that got old especially on bad days so I forced myself to get out of the habit, if I hadn't I'd probably have an even better memory. I have a much worse memory for recent things like where i set down my purse or how long these cookies need to bake that I read two seconds ago before I stepped back over to the oven. 

I find my memory is strongly tied to familiar places, so once I move, or go to class in a different room, etc. I start to loose access to a lot of memories dealing with the time during which I was frequently in a particular place. I find it disturbing actually when I discover that my memory of certain times in my life are fuzzy, and if most of it became fuzzy I would feel rather like I'd lost myself, lost my anchor, it would leave me feeling very vulnerable and scared and uncertain. 

My memory also works from writing - if I write down a note so I can remember it later I often don't need to actually read the note, the act of writing it makes me remember it. When I read a book or watch a movie I usually need to read/see it at least twice in order for me to remember it years later.


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## Octavian (Nov 24, 2013)

I remember with more clarity, childhood fantasies than I do events and people. Generally speaking I'm quite liable to forget faces and recent occurrences. If you mean memory in the academic sense however, I had a professor jokingly say that I appeared to have the textbook memorized. 

I have an INTJ friend that was once staring out at the baltic sea while on vacation. She intended to unwind, relax, and do nothing work or school related, but as she started out at the sea, she suddenly started laughing hysterically because she realized that she was envisioning the brain hemispheres over and "related" to the sea, along with associated neurological content.

I experience Ni in a similar way in that nature itself, or imagery that I had previously conjured up, will sometimes appear as I consider a topic, place, thing, person, or etc. Appears entirely unrelated to the actual thing at hand, but makes perfect sense and contains the totality of my understanding.

For example, I once sat outside to eat lunch and watched a line of ants marching. A day later as I was taking an exam for economics, I got to a question about the circular flow of income. As soon as I read it the image of those ants appeared but in different formation, basically acting out this model:










I found it quite odd that I spent so much time staring at the literal model, yet envisioned ants in a grassy field walking out of a factory and house bringing shit back and forth, acting out an economy like humans.

And that's a very tame example of the imagery my mind comes up with.

But generally speaking, with the Ni-doms I know personally, we all conjur up memorized things with our imagery.


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## yet another intj (Feb 10, 2013)

surgery said:


> What is your Ni like then?


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## MNiS (Jan 30, 2010)

*Si memory as it relates to objects:* Will remember the physical details and internally categorize it according to how the person perceives it to be or how it makes the person feel or what they think.
*Ni memory as it relates to objects:* Relies heavily on context and will forget the physical details while retaining a few abstract facts about the memory.


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## Arceus301 (Dec 27, 2013)

Phantasmagorical said:


> Ah, I should have phrased my OP better. But then again, I was half-asleep and as it turns out, I had completely forgotten about this thread's existence. My short-term memory sucks.
> I was basically curious about how an Ni user's perception of the past would differ from an Si user's perception of the past.


 @FreeBeer Unrelated note, memory is perception of past qualia, so phan didn't need to explain himself for he wasn't confused nor would anyone be since most people are well versed that yes T_T they are perception functions this epiphany never arrived to us oh Jung's second coming.

On another note I agree with most of the posts here, I happen to love this topic 

I'm afraid anything I would have to say would be taking away from the conversation and not giving to it but I do love the commentary


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## Cellar Door (Jun 3, 2012)

yet another intj said:


>


Unless of course this happened to you before, then it's Si.


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## Cellar Door (Jun 3, 2012)

Octavian said:


> I remember with more clarity, childhood fantasies than I do events and people. Generally speaking I'm quite liable to forget faces and recent occurrences. If you mean memory in the academic sense however, I had a professor jokingly say that I appeared to have the textbook memorized.
> 
> I have an INTJ friend that was once staring out at the baltic sea while on vacation. She intended to unwind, relax, and do nothing work or school related, but as she started out at the sea, she suddenly started laughing hysterically because she realized that she was envisioning the brain hemispheres over and "related" to the sea, along with associated neurological content.
> 
> ...


I think this might be N in general, I do the same exact thing. It's like when I look at the world, I don't really see things and notice what they are as much as I see the metaphors they represent and how processes are analogous to others. A literal representation would be how calculus is the backbone of several different areas of science and social science. So you could see the exact same equation to describe product demand as a function of price as a object moving through space as a function of time. You can cross reference the rules and boundaries of both areas of study and imagine price as a physical object moving through space and the physical forces acting on that object are analogous to market forces, or whatever. Math's tie to science is pretty obvious, but I think the analogy holds. It's like how you could look at a sped up aerial video of a metropolitan area, or flip through google map traffic view, and see the cars pour in to the city in the morning and then leave at night. It's like the streets in and out of the city are arteries and veins and the city is a giant heart with the cars being our blood cells. I remember as a kid in school looking at a plant leaf under a microscope and seeing the cells in an array (or at least what looked like cells, I thought there were cells), and then looking at the wall of the room to see the stone bricks and thinking that the entire school was sort of built by large stone leaves. It was like the patterns of nature and reality were repeating themselves.

Is this sort of how you think or do you think differently?


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## candiemerald (Jan 26, 2014)

I tend to remember events by the way they made me feel, and not at all by the detail. I remember things in vague auras coupled with moments of sharp clarity. I remember how I felt at the time, and what I thought at the time, much better than the actual physical details of the event. I have an excellent long-term memory, but am terrible when it comes to remembering when events occurred - specific dates, etc. So when I recall an event it's all about the abstract state of mind I was in at the time, my emotional parameters, etc - my memories are very distinctly my own, all tainted with my subjective viewpoint, and generally recalled with a lot of analogy and meandering interpretation, and unrecognizable to anyone else who lived the same thing, since what I valued at the time most probably didn't even notice (plus, the moments are always overlaid with all my thoughts and imaginings, which are as real to me as the actual events).

My ISFJ brother also has an excellent memory, but while my memory is like a vague, misty plane punctured by occasional lights which signify especially relevant events, his is like this sharp and perfectly detailed map. He recalls _everything_ - all the dates and details, all in perfect order, not the jumble that is my memory. The past to him is clearly stamped and labeled and neatly put away in the appropriate place. It's a frightening gift, his sharp memory, and makes me envious.

Also, my past feels very fluid. I'm often shocked by my memories, when I relive them, because I _completely_ relive them when I do - feel again the pain, or the happiness, or whatever, just as raw as if it was happening now. When I remember the past it's as if it's still occurring, it's happening to me in some other dimension simultaneously with the present, and I can mentally transport myself back to that little bubble of time which is still happening to some other version of myself. While my ISFJ brother views the past _as the past_, as something that happened that is now finished, a path that's behind him.


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## niss (Apr 25, 2010)

FreeBeer said:


> T_T neither is memory...omg I'm going to cry! Q_Q ITS PERCEPTION....PERCEPTION!!!!


You were doing great, up to this point...



> Intuitives in general do not pay as much attention to physical details, while sensors do. The difference in memory comes from this.


But here you've veered off course. Si and Ni are both subjective and detail oriented. Neither one are directly related to memory, yet they both interact with stored memories to understand the object before them - as do all types. The difference in cognitive function is how it uses the stored memory - what is emphasized and how a conclusion about the concept is arrived at.



LostFavor said:


> Isn't that the point though? That the difference in focus causes difference in memory? So whether we call it Ni vs. Si or "functional trends of memory from Ni vs. Si users," or even "functional trends of memory from N's vs. S's," it's more or less the same thing, isn't it? Just a slight difference in terminology.
> 
> I don't think the intention was ever to imply that Ni and Si _are_ memory (as if the entirety of memory can be defined by these two cognitive functions) - just that they appear to handle information differently, which then affects how things are remembered and what is remembered. So I think it's really just one step of meaning off; rather than _being_ the "thing" (memory), they have a significant _effect_ on the thing.


Not what is remembered - that is values - impressions based on what is important to us ... what we felt and experienced.

Cognitive preferences are related to how we use those memories to understand new concepts - what we emphasize.


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## candiemerald (Jan 26, 2014)

@Octavian loved that description.


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