# i cant understand ni?



## chad0 (Feb 7, 2015)

ok so can someone with ni just explain there exact thought processes eg if i were to explain ne thought prcceesses,'' the other day i was thinking about beer when i started thinking of the beer industry and from there industries in general and from there how industries affects local housing and from there how it would be for me to own a house,so ne goes from idea to idea from one to many notice i am now far away from the beginning subject
now how would you descrbe ni by using exact thought proccesses?


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

No one can.


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## Blue Soul (Mar 14, 2015)

This is my thought process: I just know but I don't know why I know (Ni), so then I let Te sort out the rest by looking for proof to support why I know what I already know.

This is also why ISTJs should be called the scientists, imo. INTJs have the least empirical way of doings things of the two, we're more like prophets if anything.


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## Dezir (Nov 25, 2013)

chad0 said:


> ok so can someone with ni just explain there exact thought processes eg if i were to explain ne thought prcceesses,'' the other day i was thinking about beer when i started thinking of the beer industry and from there industries in general and from there how industries affects local housing and from there how it would be for me to own a house,so ne goes from idea to idea from one to many noticed i am now far away from the beginning subject
> now how would you descrbe ni by using exact thought proccesses?


Ok, so Ni works with abstract. Perceiving information from anything that cannot be noticed with the 5 senses. This includes patterns.

However, unlike Ne, who looks for patterns between things you can see within the enviroment, thus possibilites, or observations _(USA and North Korea are the same concerning X)_. Ni looks for patterns within things you cannot dirreclty see in the enviroment but which has repercussions within the enviroment _(North Korea leaders' choice of rulling will never gain the support of their people, except on a superficial level)_, thus concepts, or impressions.

About Ni, I wish to add: (thus concepts, or impressions. Which are based on some evidence of course, and have a fair chance of being accurate with Ni as dominant or auxiliary function, in the same way a Ti-dom has a fair chance of being accurate with his logic without any formal training, but the key word is some, without a good use of Te, an INTJ may take is idea as indisputable truth without the possibility of being wrong, without undeniable evidence to support his/her claim). Ne also has all the chances of being wrong, but less likely than Ni; because Ne's observations are already facts, they just need to be noticed, Ni's impressions on the other hand are not facts but theores themselves. Theories need undeniable evidence to be considered truth, without that, they're just "more likely or less likely" to be true depending on how much supporting evidence and supporting contradictory evidence the given idea has.


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## TyranAmiros (Jul 7, 2014)

Read the theory of the Forms in Plato's _Republic_ (the Ne system is more akin to Aristotle's in the _Metaphysics_). 

To be reductionist, Ni can be defined as a theory of cognition based on the principles that (a) there is something True/Real that exists beyond mere sensory perceptions and (b) this "something" only manifests in debased/incomplete/uncertain form. Thus truly understanding what this Truth consists of cannot be easily undertaken and neither can it be easily explained to others. Yet this Truth is pervasive and all-encompassing; it cannot be brusquely discarded, but rather must be carefully studied, even challenged, as one gathers evidence that said Truth is, in fact, present in the physical world.


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## UnicornRainbowLove (May 8, 2014)

Blue Soul said:


> This is my thought process: I just know but I don't know why I know (Ni), so then I let Te sort out the rest by looking for proof to support why I know what I already know.
> 
> This is also why ISTJs should be called the scientists, imo. INTJs have the least empirical way of doings things of the two, we're more like prophets if anything.


But isn't that how all people think? Your intuitive mind gives you ideas and then you find evidence in favour or disfavour of it. That's just the brain trying to come up with usable information. An ISTJ does the same.


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## Dezir (Nov 25, 2013)

UnicornRainbowLove said:


> But isn't that how all people think? Your intuitive mind gives you ideas and then you find evidence in favour or disfavour of it. That's just the brain trying to come up with usable information. An ISTJ does the same.


His description was accurate but too all-encompassing. This is how everyone thinks of course. But it's the preference of thought that makes the difference. An ISTJ will not have big conceptual ideas by himself, because his mind doesn't look that way and he's simply not interested in that kind of things. Even with God, an ISTJ may or may not believe in God, but his reasons will never be a big encompassing about what life is and how God works on earth, but simply mere observations or sources or reliability found in the outside world, the closest to a "big encompassing about what life is and how God works on earth" for an ISTJ would be agreeing with such an idea already presented in a book, or presented to him by somebody else, never his own. It's not that they can't think, they simply don't like to think this way, they just take what it is reliable and supports their observations, and that is it. At least that's how I find it to be based on their function's explained + some experiences with some ISTJs.

As TyranAmiros put it quite well, there is this Truth and it needs to be found. The truth of how everything actually works, how everything is connected to everything not because humans made it so, but because this is how existance works. And the quest of Ni is to discovers this Truth, or at least parts of it. To put out a more complete and accurate image of the Truth than the average.

_"To be reductionist, Ni can be defined as a theory of cognition based on the principles that (a) there is something True/Real that exists beyond mere sensory perceptions and (b) this "something" only manifests in debased/incomplete/uncertain form. Thus truly understanding what this Truth consists of cannot be easily undertaken and neither can it be easily explained to others. Yet this Truth is pervasive and all-encompassing; it cannot be brusquely discarded, but rather must be carefully studied, even challenged, as one gathers evidence that said Truth is, in fact, present in the physical world."_


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## Jmm124567 (May 20, 2014)

Ni is about reconciling paradoxes. It's an unconscious process so with Ni a thought can come out of no where. 

I think I may have had an Ni thought the other day. I have a bit of social anxiety. I was thinking about how I'm scared to talk in front of people because I'm worried they will perceive me as weird then all of a sudden a thought popped into my head telling me that not talking in front of people makes me look even more weird. I think that could be Ni.


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## UraniaIsis (Nov 26, 2014)

The moment you mentioned beer I immediately thought _what flavor?_ and _if I could, how can/would I go about creating my own version?_ I began to think about some of the basic ingredients that are involved in making beer, what different ingredients may not have been used yet, what effects would those new ingredients have on the potential taste, how the smallest variation of an ingredient can alter a flavor, what fermentation technique to use, how long should I ferment the beer, what type of wood barrel to use, etc. 

My Ni only concentrates on one specific topic--beer--and the potential steps to obtaining a specific type of beer before it moves onto another potential flavor or recipe. My Ni sees multiple possible outcomes for just one subject alone. This is why Ni is prone to tunnel vision; it keeps going over and tweaking the possibilities of just one subject until it’s satisfied with a potential result. Your Ne will see more potential global implications than my Ni will. Any global applications of intuition I experience is usually an afterthought--unfortunately, sometimes well after the fact. My Ni catches potential minuscule bits of information your Ne may miss. Ne is a broad-toothed comb, Ni a fine-toothed comb.


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## chad0 (Feb 7, 2015)

UraniaIsis said:


> The moment you mentioned beer I immediately thought _what flavor?_ and _if I could, how can/would I go about creating my own version?_ I began to think about some of the basic ingredients that are involved in making beer, what different ingredients may not have been used yet, what effects would those new ingredients have on the potential taste, how the smallest variation of an ingredient can alter a flavor, what fermentation technique to use, how long should I ferment the beer, what type of wood barrel to use, etc.
> 
> My Ni only concentrates on one specific topic--beer--and the potential steps to obtaining a specific type of beer before it moves onto another potential flavor or recipe. My Ni sees multiple possible outcomes for just one subject alone. This is why Ni is prone to tunnel vision; it keeps going over and tweaking the possibilities of just one subject until it’s satisfied with a potential result. Your Ne will see more potential global implications than my Ni will. Any global applications of intuition I experience is usually an afterthought--unfortunately, sometimes well after the fact. My Ni catches potential minuscule bits of information your Ne may miss. Ne is a broad-toothed comb, Ni a fine-toothed comb.


finally someone has answered what i asked


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## UnicornRainbowLove (May 8, 2014)

Dezir said:


> His description was accurate but too all-encompassing. This is how everyone thinks of course. But it's the preference of thought that makes the difference. An ISTJ will not have big conceptual ideas by himself, because his mind doesn't look that way and he's simply not interested in that kind of things. Even with God, an ISTJ may or may not believe in God, but his reasons will never be a big encompassing about what life is and how God works on earth, but simply mere observations or sources or reliability found in the outside world, the closest to a "big encompassing about what life is and how God works on earth" for an ISTJ would be agreeing with such an idea already presented in a book, or presented to him by somebody else, never his own. It's not that they can't think, they simply don't like to think this way, they just take what it is reliable and supports their observations, and that is it. At least that's how I find it to be based on their function's explained + some experiences with some ISTJs.


I agree that ISTJs are relatively less interested in larger ideas simply because they're sensors. While they might believe in God, it is rarely due to having contemplated his existence for years. It's more of a bias toward tradition (largely speaking of course as faith is a large topic). 

What I don't agree upon is the assertion that Ni is the process of knowing something intuitively. The reason is that I don't believe N or NJ types have a preference for that over sensors. Coming up with intuitive ideas and have a bias toward believing in them is the lot of all humans and the only real way of somehow stretching that fact is to say that some people get better intuitions and know how to logically check their reliability because they're more intelligent. I would be perfectly comfortable talking about intuitors as being opposite of how you described ISTJs, but that wouldn't imply that they have a "preference" for creating intuitions. It would rather be that their intuitions are geared toward "seeing beyond", but even that notion I find to be problematic.




> As TyranAmiros put it quite well, there is this Truth and it needs to be found. The truth of how everything actually works, how everything is connected to everything not because humans made it so, but because this is how existance works. And the quest of Ni is to discovers this Truth, or at least parts of it. To put out a more complete and accurate image of the Truth than the average.
> 
> _"To be reductionist, Ni can be defined as a theory of cognition based on the principles that (a) there is something True/Real that exists beyond mere sensory perceptions and (b) this "something" only manifests in debased/incomplete/uncertain form. Thus truly understanding what this Truth consists of cannot be easily undertaken and neither can it be easily explained to others. Yet this Truth is pervasive and all-encompassing; it cannot be brusquely discarded, but rather must be carefully studied, even challenged, as one gathers evidence that said Truth is, in fact, present in the physical world."_


I can't claim that I fully grasp @TyranAmiros's post as I haven't head Plato's Republic, but from the look of it it appears to be a category mistake as well. Here Ni is equated with a philosophical agenda. Where's the intuition part? Isn't it rather something which Ni-types would be inclined to think rather than a cognitive function/function-attitude itself? Isn't it closer to Jung's descriptions of Ti as it relates to what things "are", while Ni has to do with one's relationship to the archetypes? 
My understanding is that truth is much more related to Thinking than iNtuition for Jung, and largely untouched within MBTI. Intuition, as MBTI uses it, is about being theoretical, original and creative, as if perception is geared toward such things.


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## Blue Soul (Mar 14, 2015)

UnicornRainbowLove said:


> But isn't that how all people think? Your intuitive mind gives you ideas and then you find evidence in favour or disfavour of it. That's just the brain trying to come up with usable information. An ISTJ does the same.


Not all people, ordering of processes would look different. 

In a way they do. The difference is that ISTJs base things on hard facts and experience, I base things on impressions and flimsy intuition.

And I'm no way saying that sensors don't have intuitions, they actually get strong hunches about things sometimes. But it would be a more occasional thing, the preference for leaning towards trusting them as their first go-to is not there. In the case of ISTJs, they'd abstract later down the line: subjective experience > objective effectiveness > subjective emotion > objective exploration.


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## Dezir (Nov 25, 2013)

UnicornRainbowLove said:


> I agree that ISTJs are relatively less interested in larger ideas simply because they're sensors. While they might believe in God, it is rarely due to having contemplated his existence for years. It's more of a bias toward tradition (largely speaking of course as faith is a large topic).
> 
> What I don't agree upon is the assertion that Ni is the process of knowing something intuitively. The reason is that I don't believe N or NJ types have a preference for that over sensors. Coming up with intuitive ideas and have a bias toward believing in them is the lot of all humans and the only real way of somehow stretching that fact is to say that some people get better intuitions and know how to logically check their reliability because they're more intelligent. I would be perfectly comfortable talking about intuitors as being opposite of how you described ISTJs, but that wouldn't imply that they have a "preference" for creating intuitions. It would rather be that their intuitions are geared toward "seeing beyond", but even that notion I find to be problematic.


About that "aha!", everybody can figure out things in an instant, Arhimedes the one who shouted "Eureka!" _(translated I have found it)_ when he suddenly discovered how an object in water works with bathing, is supposed to be an INTP. Everybody can suddely figure out something, it's just that Ni, especially Ni doms, are in their main element with concepts and ideas, thus for them an "aha!" in terms of such thing is normal, but for other types is appears like a certain breakthrough like "how could he possibily know that", while Arhimedes may have figured out how water works looking at water, an Ni may figure out what is the meaning of life looking at people's motivations and ressults of their interation, basically the same process of figuring things out just working with different kinds of datas. It's easier when you look at patterns taking everything into consideration rather than just simple what it is that we can see right now.

That "Ni knows things without really knowing why" is translated into more concrete terms "Ni makes intuitive leaps in data, skiping over a lot of information, which skips over a lot of middle work in between.". That "Ni knows things without really knowing why" it's true but it's an over-simplification which may lead to a lot of inaccurate assumptions.

Ni works in the realm of abstract, as a function it has no interest in reality but rather in ideas an theories. Even INTJs they are more of a Prohpet in temperament as opposed to a sciencits, that auxiliary Te logic is only a tool, to verify these Ni interpretations, a means to an end, not the goal itself. And having those valid ideas and theories already in their head leading to the Truth _(a long-ranged vision of how the world actually is, even not limited to this dimension)_ that non-Ni types would fail to notice because they don't have a preference for looking at those kidns of things _(they may consciously decided to look that way, as you may consciously decided right now to be more anchored in the present Se, but it's never going to be an automatic process, because it's not your preference)_ it's easy to connect the dots and say how things are while sounding like a magician because you have a lot of ideas and concepts to back your claim with. Rather than "Ni knows things without really knowing why" should be something like Ni makes intuitive leaps knowing things can't be otherwise because that would contradict a lot of things from their perception of Truth, that doesn't mean they are unable to be wrong, but they mean that they actually know what they are talking about, unless their goal is lying to you.

Intuition works with things that cannot be physically seen within the enviroment but still exists, patters.
- Extroverted Intuion, observations, looks at patterns and that's it, it's a pattern, it's there, it's a model, it's just a matter of looking there, you can't deny it.
- Intorverted Intuition, impression, looks at matters and applies their own logical reasoning to it, why is that pattern in such way, that's the cause behind it, and thus starting to see the pattern of another pattern that doesn't have dirrect repercussions within the enviroment but within that pattern, which for his part has repercussions within the enviroment, thus leading to a wholistic view of the world, pattern of the patters, Truth. 



UnicornRainbowLove said:


> I can't claim that I fully grasp @TyranAmiros's post as I haven't head Plato's Republic, but from the look of it it appears to be a category mistake as well. Here Ni is equated with a philosophical agenda. Where's the intuition part? Isn't it rather something which Ni-types would be inclined to think rather than a cognitive function/function-attitude itself? Isn't it closer to Jung's descriptions of Ti as it relates to what things "are", while Ni has to do with one's relationship to the archetypes?
> My understanding is that truth is much more related to Thinking than iNtuition for Jung, and largely untouched within MBTI. Intuition, as MBTI uses it, is about being theoretical, original and creative, as if perception is geared toward such things.


Well, simply put. The world works in a certain way, there is no deny of that, but what makes the way the world works this way ? why doesn't the world works otherwise ? well, there are certain reason for that. That cannont be sen in the realm of the concrete, something we can touch, smell, see, etc.

Think of it like a single formula, that makes sense for everything standing in the universe, but it's not really a formula rather an intercourse of elements, A leads to B, B leads to C, then A and C does D and this is how the A B C D works. 

Ti looks at consitency of logic free of facts. But the focus on what are the things that you automatically look at consitency of logic free of facts comes from the perceiving function, Ne or Se.

Te looks at the concicenty of logic based on facts. But the focus on what are the things that you automatically look at consitency of logic based on facts comes from the perceiving function, Ni or Si.

Thus the judging function gives to the preference for the way you ultimately feel confortable claiming what is correct / incorrect, but it's the perceiving functions that gives you the preference for the things that you look at.



chad0 said:


> finally someone has answered what i asked


Oh, that's what you asked



StoneMoon said:


> I came up with this analogy:
> 
> If an Ne user and an Ni user both saw an object, let's say a glass, the Ne user would pick the glass up, put it side ways, upside down, move it around to see what it looks like, the Ni user would not touch the glass but move around it themselves to see what it looks like.
> 
> ...


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## Ivaalo (Sep 19, 2015)

To be simple :
Ne : Starts from a point, ends with endless possibilities.
Ni : Starts from many points, analyses them to ends with one possibility.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Ivaalo said:


> To be simple :
> Ne : Starts from a point, ends with endless possibilities.
> Ni : Starts from many points, analyses them to ends with one possibility.


The thing about Ni is that the process is very much unconscious and is primarily associative, which means that you may get an impression of a thing in response to external stimulus which connects to an idea via the collective unconsciousness; it is therefore impossible to describe Ni because the Ni dom is not aware when and how they really use it. Ni, and intuition in general, is more about facilitating a connection between the conscious and the unconscious mind and its contents, which is more in line with how Jung thought of a "function" in the first place i.e. a function is a psychological mechanism or a cognitive tool that makes use focus on or perceive and make sense of external data in this particular way over other ways. It helps the psyche to leverage its understanding of the world. It's akin to a construction site where you want to build a house. External input would be all the building blocks that you use in order to build it, but the functions would be the tools. Ti would for example be more like a measuring tape or something, being acutely aware of how each part is logically defined in terms of size, shape, volume and weight in relation to other parts; Te would understand how to build the building the most efficiently so instead of being like a measuring tape, it would be a crane that attaches building modules to each other and so on. 

That analogy is an example of Pi, because it is subjective imagery, and exemplary of Ni as well. I mean, there's no real "thought process" involved, as much as it is understanding how an idea can be essentially expressed by another idea or vision that you have.



> If an Ne user and an Ni user saw a bunch of random shapes and colours drawn on paper, the Ne user would start adding more shapes to it to make sense of it/turn it into a picture they want, and an Ni user would cover parts of the picture with a template to make sense of it/turn it into a picture they want.
> 
> Ne: works externally, Ni: works internally


This example isn't terrible, though I think the Ni portion is shoddily expressed. It's more like Ni would notice a pattern among all the shapes, and would intuit a basic blueprint from which the other shapes come from. For example, a domestic cat and a lion are both two kinds of cats despite looking very different and living in very different environments etc. We can see that they are somehow related. Ni recognizes how both of them are cats. Ne would also recognize they are cats, but be more interested into what else it could be more than just a cat.


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## Groovy (Jan 4, 2015)

My Ni works by noticing things without my mind actually noticing them, and then all that info sorting itself out in my subconscious/mind on its own for me to use whenever I need to, it forms its own conclusions.


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## Schizoid (Jan 31, 2015)

Well, I have actually borrowed a few storybooks that have Ni doms as the leading characters in it because I wanted to study what the hell is Ni about. 

And this is what I've learnt about Ni:

Figuratively speaking, Ni is looking at a piece of jigsaw puzzle and automatically know how it's being pieced together. 

Ni is constantly putting themselves into the mindset of their opponent and constantly visualizing what their opponent might be thinking and where their opponent might be heading toward, and then Ni starts plotting and planning their next step accordingly. 
Ni is always ten steps ahead of their opponent, because they are always able to visualize the outcome of how something will turn out just by implementing XYZ action, and they are also able to visualize inside their mind what their opponents might be thinking etc.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

Here is Jung's go to example of a Ni-Dom:



> People with an overdevelopment of intuition which leads them to scorn objective reality, and so finally to a conflict such as I have described above, have usually characteristic dreams. I once had as a patient a girl of the most extraordinary intuitive powers, and she had pushed the thing to such a point that her own body even was unreal to her. Once I asked her half jokingly if she had never noticed that she had a body, and she answered quite seriously that she had not--she bathed herself under a sheet! When she came to me she had ceased even to hear her steps when she walked--she was just floating through the world. Her first dream was that she was sitting on top of a balloon, not even in a balloon, if you please, but on top of one that was high up in the air, and she was leaning over peeping down at me. I had a gun and was shooting at the balloon which I finally brought down. Before she came to me she had been living in a house where she had been impressed with the charming girls. It was a brothel and she had been quite unaware of the fact. This shock brought her to analysis.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## sinaasappel (Jul 22, 2015)

its a hunch type of thing


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## chad0 (Feb 7, 2015)

nice


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