Every J Function is Slightly Wrong: A Discord-Inspired Rant
Apr 28, 2018 1:08:23 GMT -5 by Gomux
Alerith, ayoungspirit, and 4 more like this
Post by Gomux on Apr 28, 2018 1:08:23 GMT -5
With the CT system as it currently stands, the material on Ti should match a few constraints:
Ti must have Compass-like features.
Ti must have J-like features.
Ti must be, in some sense, isomorphic to Fi.
Ti must coherently work in tandem with Fe.
So, Ti is a Compass process, internal and judgemental, but it runs dispassionately, and cannot directly judge on the basis of its own personal investments and affinities.
When you take a process like this and try to to remove personal investments, you're left with things like symmetry, complexity-within-simplicity, overall clarity, etc as ways to judge things. Granted, these are still sort of personal investments, but in a weaker sense. There is nothing in here about Ti necessarily driving towards objective truths, even though it may subjectively feel like it does. Dispassion is no guarantee of objectivity.
Rather what we are looking at is a list of aesthetic critera. In a certain critical sense, Ti operates primarily on an aesthetic basis.
Of course, Ti often does have a penchant for clean logic, but this is not because Ti is especially logical, rather, it's because contradictions are especially ugly.
Here's a good example:
"Hey everyone, we explained all the behavior of a turbulent fluid in a rotating container. We used three unrelated equations to describe phenomena at different scales and ground them through a best-fit simulation to stick the right constants in there. Now we have a program that can predict the outcome in any particular case."
This would be scientifically valid and maybe valuable, but it is an extreme Ti cringe moment.
Why? Because it is an ugly solution.
"Wait a second, I only object because it's clearly not based on the fundamental principles behind the phenomenon," says some Ti user. This is bullshit. If the fundamental priciples themselves were really that ugly, that Ti user would be real broken up about it. I would be.
A while back on Discord I suggested that "cease all thought and die in a cave [insert mysticism here to make it seem more positive]" is a lopsided expression of something else, that Ti must also have a constructive expression of some kind. It makes much more sense to see "remove the unclean thoughts, return to the emptiness" as a relatively common edge case and not the core idea.
The Myth of the Void is what you get when a Ti user hasn't found any pretty systems.
Otherwise, it doesn't make much sense when you compare it to typical Ti operation, because under normal curcumstances, increasing Ti is not a movement towards mental void and detachment. We do see very Ti heavy people being socially inexpressive sometimes, but we don't see extreme Ti-heaviness accompanied by lack of concept construction. If anything it's the opposite.
Compare Zen-like states, which seem very P-like, and they tend to specifically, explicitly not include the sort of conceptual delineation and value judgements that define what Compass behavior is about.
The reduction of everything and absolute detachment and voidness does not make great description of the core of Ti, it's more like a general trend line that has been extended too far. Healthy Ti strives towards aesthetically pleasing frameworks.
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Don't think of Ti as abstract logic, or, for that matter, of Fe as social relations.
Why? Because everyone can do both those things.
It's almost as bad as saying that Se is the five senses and Si is memory.
Rather, try this out:
Fi/Te does fact and deduction.
Fe/Ti does framework and context.
And overlay on that what I've written about before:
Je does local reasoning.
Ji does universal reasoning.
Fi includes facts about universal truths, this naturally tends to cover things like fundamental good and evil as well as absolute, inalienable identities. It also covers hardline deductive structures about absolute truths, these of course can include a lot of strict systems of ethics which we do see in Fi users, but they also very naturally include the algorhithmic and hard science topics that many Fi users are so mysteriously good at. This is really great because we can use the same explanation to cover two very different observed aspects of Fi. The emotional attachment is possibly just an aftereffect in a sense, caused only because so much of the material Fi covers is both emotionally charged and absolute.
Note that the assumption that sciencey Fi types are actually doing it all from subconscious Te is kind of odd, heavily reliant on four-dichotomies-like assumptions about T vs F. Machines therefore T. We don't see exactly that same sort of thing as much in Te-leads. It's good to account for Fi doing it, it really seems like that.
Te does facts and deduction in a locally applicable context. This is actually what we normally think of as logic, in a colloquial sense. It takes the universals accepted by Fi, and the details of the situation and hand, and from considering both can deduce many things. More on this later in this writing.
Ti deals with universal reasoning about framework and context. That is, how good are the frameworks overall? Which are worth using? And a lot of the direct content is stripped out, so again, aesthetic critieria are employed for framework improvement. Coherence, symmetry, neatly encapsulated complexity, and so on. Refining, comparing, modifying frameworks. Thought skeletons as we've called them before.
Fe deals with local reasoning about framework and context. That is, how do we work within the context of a given framework? Critically, working in the context of a framework is not inherently social but does beecome implicitly interpersonal much of the time in practice. This gives us a way to talk about Fe that isn't just about social skills. Additionally, it gives us a deep Ti-to-Fe structural connection as they would both think about frameworks in a specific way that Te/Fi do not. One issue we've had with Ti/Fe is they've been set up like they're working against each other for most purposes when each function axis should really be doing two halves of the same job.
Fe uses "Out Of Place" as a contextually sensitive category that can replace "Does Not Exist".
This applies in two ways:
1. Allows context switching with minimal cognitive dissonance
2. Applies well to social relations and presentation adjustment
An example of the first is translating terminology to a specific topic and only using the correct in-context material, not bringing in outside knowledge from different modes of thought unless it's thoroughly appropriate to the context being worked in.
An example of the second is assessing an interpersonal situation relative to the context at hand, the expectations of that setting, the mood of the participants. These factors change the frame of interaction, and Fe is good at working within a particular framework.
It seems there's a common trend in Fe/Ti types, when encountering a contradiction, to assume it means they're missing something in their interpretation system, and try tease out bad terminology or to find a better framework thatcan account for both items.
This ties into both Ti wokring on nicer frameworks, and Fe working within specific contexts. That's because the two parts of any given function axis are doing two halves of the same job.
In contrast to the context/framework approach of Fe/Ti, Fi/Te has firmer and more context-invariant ideas about what is good and true (via Fi). There may be a bit of a Fi/Te blur between "Out Of Place" (or "expressible in this context") and "considered to exist" that can cause friction between people from different J-axes. Examples include "Why can't I express my true self by [insert any out-of-place behavior here]?", or "I wasn't being rude because it was true".
A quick aside about the Fe hero myth:
We can probably agree Fe Heroism has a specific sort of pattern, it can't just be any big action taken for a good reason.
Well, if you've been reading the above, you won't be surprised to hear that Fe heroism is context-related.
And we do see that very often, Fe heroic actions are context-dependent. They depend on stuggle and conflict, and if you were on the other side, you'd be bravely fighting for them. That's totally fine and does not necessarily present a moral quandary for Fe.
Unlike, say, Utilitarianism, which prescribes the same behavior from any context and is extremely unheroic even when doing great things. It's a more Te/Fi inspired morality.
The Virtue/Honor sort of values used in the Fe hero myth specifically do not care if you are the antagonist. You can be a virtuous and honorable antagonist and the recipe is basically identical to that of a hero. The purity myth is an Fi alternative to this, where it matters what side you're on because it's about advancing Absolute Good, not about acting Heroically.
Onward to another major soapbox, Te:
There's a common portrayal of Te doing quick-and-dirty approximation for pragmatic purposes, and Ti doing thorough consideration that less efficiently arrives at deeper truth.
Note that this is only true if you assume that Ti thought skeletons are in fact the inherent outlines of deeper truth, i.e. "Ti is right about everything assuming that Ti is right about everything".
We get distortions as a result of these portrayals, in particular, when Mr. Te (no relation) encounters them, I bet they look like the following:
Ti: The ability to think logically about what makes sense and how exactly things work.
Te: A combination of common sense, work ethic, and disregard for precise thinking.
Mr. Te is going to pick "the ability to think logically about what makes sense and how exactly things work," because this actually IS an excellent description of him. He'll then type his supervisor at work and several Fortune 500 CEO's as Te types, so it won't seem like Te is suspiciously absent from the world. When he encounters Miss Ti her ideas will sounds like philosophical navel-gazing to him, and he'll type her a heavy N-lead or something.
Te is not only the most rational function, but also the function that cares most about truth.
(Ti and Fi will emphatically agree on the importance of these things, but when asked tend to give bizarre definitions of the words 'reason' and 'truth' that do make sense in themselves but don't match the colloquial usage of the terms.)
It's usually Te types that pride themselves on being rational, accurate, and objective, or to make a clear intentional attempt to adhere any of these things.
("It just makes the most sense to explain it this way, come on, think about it," says the Ti type.)
Weigh in below about this disorganized mass of thoughts.
Thanks everyone for arguing about these ideas on Discord.
Ti must have Compass-like features.
Ti must have J-like features.
Ti must be, in some sense, isomorphic to Fi.
Ti must coherently work in tandem with Fe.
So, Ti is a Compass process, internal and judgemental, but it runs dispassionately, and cannot directly judge on the basis of its own personal investments and affinities.
When you take a process like this and try to to remove personal investments, you're left with things like symmetry, complexity-within-simplicity, overall clarity, etc as ways to judge things. Granted, these are still sort of personal investments, but in a weaker sense. There is nothing in here about Ti necessarily driving towards objective truths, even though it may subjectively feel like it does. Dispassion is no guarantee of objectivity.
Rather what we are looking at is a list of aesthetic critera. In a certain critical sense, Ti operates primarily on an aesthetic basis.
Of course, Ti often does have a penchant for clean logic, but this is not because Ti is especially logical, rather, it's because contradictions are especially ugly.
Here's a good example:
"Hey everyone, we explained all the behavior of a turbulent fluid in a rotating container. We used three unrelated equations to describe phenomena at different scales and ground them through a best-fit simulation to stick the right constants in there. Now we have a program that can predict the outcome in any particular case."
This would be scientifically valid and maybe valuable, but it is an extreme Ti cringe moment.
Why? Because it is an ugly solution.
"Wait a second, I only object because it's clearly not based on the fundamental principles behind the phenomenon," says some Ti user. This is bullshit. If the fundamental priciples themselves were really that ugly, that Ti user would be real broken up about it. I would be.
A while back on Discord I suggested that "cease all thought and die in a cave [insert mysticism here to make it seem more positive]" is a lopsided expression of something else, that Ti must also have a constructive expression of some kind. It makes much more sense to see "remove the unclean thoughts, return to the emptiness" as a relatively common edge case and not the core idea.
The Myth of the Void is what you get when a Ti user hasn't found any pretty systems.
Otherwise, it doesn't make much sense when you compare it to typical Ti operation, because under normal curcumstances, increasing Ti is not a movement towards mental void and detachment. We do see very Ti heavy people being socially inexpressive sometimes, but we don't see extreme Ti-heaviness accompanied by lack of concept construction. If anything it's the opposite.
Compare Zen-like states, which seem very P-like, and they tend to specifically, explicitly not include the sort of conceptual delineation and value judgements that define what Compass behavior is about.
The reduction of everything and absolute detachment and voidness does not make great description of the core of Ti, it's more like a general trend line that has been extended too far. Healthy Ti strives towards aesthetically pleasing frameworks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't think of Ti as abstract logic, or, for that matter, of Fe as social relations.
Why? Because everyone can do both those things.
It's almost as bad as saying that Se is the five senses and Si is memory.
Rather, try this out:
Fi/Te does fact and deduction.
Fe/Ti does framework and context.
And overlay on that what I've written about before:
Je does local reasoning.
Ji does universal reasoning.
Fi includes facts about universal truths, this naturally tends to cover things like fundamental good and evil as well as absolute, inalienable identities. It also covers hardline deductive structures about absolute truths, these of course can include a lot of strict systems of ethics which we do see in Fi users, but they also very naturally include the algorhithmic and hard science topics that many Fi users are so mysteriously good at. This is really great because we can use the same explanation to cover two very different observed aspects of Fi. The emotional attachment is possibly just an aftereffect in a sense, caused only because so much of the material Fi covers is both emotionally charged and absolute.
Note that the assumption that sciencey Fi types are actually doing it all from subconscious Te is kind of odd, heavily reliant on four-dichotomies-like assumptions about T vs F. Machines therefore T. We don't see exactly that same sort of thing as much in Te-leads. It's good to account for Fi doing it, it really seems like that.
Te does facts and deduction in a locally applicable context. This is actually what we normally think of as logic, in a colloquial sense. It takes the universals accepted by Fi, and the details of the situation and hand, and from considering both can deduce many things. More on this later in this writing.
Ti deals with universal reasoning about framework and context. That is, how good are the frameworks overall? Which are worth using? And a lot of the direct content is stripped out, so again, aesthetic critieria are employed for framework improvement. Coherence, symmetry, neatly encapsulated complexity, and so on. Refining, comparing, modifying frameworks. Thought skeletons as we've called them before.
Fe deals with local reasoning about framework and context. That is, how do we work within the context of a given framework? Critically, working in the context of a framework is not inherently social but does beecome implicitly interpersonal much of the time in practice. This gives us a way to talk about Fe that isn't just about social skills. Additionally, it gives us a deep Ti-to-Fe structural connection as they would both think about frameworks in a specific way that Te/Fi do not. One issue we've had with Ti/Fe is they've been set up like they're working against each other for most purposes when each function axis should really be doing two halves of the same job.
Fe uses "Out Of Place" as a contextually sensitive category that can replace "Does Not Exist".
This applies in two ways:
1. Allows context switching with minimal cognitive dissonance
2. Applies well to social relations and presentation adjustment
An example of the first is translating terminology to a specific topic and only using the correct in-context material, not bringing in outside knowledge from different modes of thought unless it's thoroughly appropriate to the context being worked in.
An example of the second is assessing an interpersonal situation relative to the context at hand, the expectations of that setting, the mood of the participants. These factors change the frame of interaction, and Fe is good at working within a particular framework.
It seems there's a common trend in Fe/Ti types, when encountering a contradiction, to assume it means they're missing something in their interpretation system, and try tease out bad terminology or to find a better framework thatcan account for both items.
This ties into both Ti wokring on nicer frameworks, and Fe working within specific contexts. That's because the two parts of any given function axis are doing two halves of the same job.
In contrast to the context/framework approach of Fe/Ti, Fi/Te has firmer and more context-invariant ideas about what is good and true (via Fi). There may be a bit of a Fi/Te blur between "Out Of Place" (or "expressible in this context") and "considered to exist" that can cause friction between people from different J-axes. Examples include "Why can't I express my true self by [insert any out-of-place behavior here]?", or "I wasn't being rude because it was true".
A quick aside about the Fe hero myth:
We can probably agree Fe Heroism has a specific sort of pattern, it can't just be any big action taken for a good reason.
Well, if you've been reading the above, you won't be surprised to hear that Fe heroism is context-related.
And we do see that very often, Fe heroic actions are context-dependent. They depend on stuggle and conflict, and if you were on the other side, you'd be bravely fighting for them. That's totally fine and does not necessarily present a moral quandary for Fe.
Unlike, say, Utilitarianism, which prescribes the same behavior from any context and is extremely unheroic even when doing great things. It's a more Te/Fi inspired morality.
The Virtue/Honor sort of values used in the Fe hero myth specifically do not care if you are the antagonist. You can be a virtuous and honorable antagonist and the recipe is basically identical to that of a hero. The purity myth is an Fi alternative to this, where it matters what side you're on because it's about advancing Absolute Good, not about acting Heroically.
Onward to another major soapbox, Te:
There's a common portrayal of Te doing quick-and-dirty approximation for pragmatic purposes, and Ti doing thorough consideration that less efficiently arrives at deeper truth.
Note that this is only true if you assume that Ti thought skeletons are in fact the inherent outlines of deeper truth, i.e. "Ti is right about everything assuming that Ti is right about everything".
We get distortions as a result of these portrayals, in particular, when Mr. Te (no relation) encounters them, I bet they look like the following:
Ti: The ability to think logically about what makes sense and how exactly things work.
Te: A combination of common sense, work ethic, and disregard for precise thinking.
Mr. Te is going to pick "the ability to think logically about what makes sense and how exactly things work," because this actually IS an excellent description of him. He'll then type his supervisor at work and several Fortune 500 CEO's as Te types, so it won't seem like Te is suspiciously absent from the world. When he encounters Miss Ti her ideas will sounds like philosophical navel-gazing to him, and he'll type her a heavy N-lead or something.
Te is not only the most rational function, but also the function that cares most about truth.
(Ti and Fi will emphatically agree on the importance of these things, but when asked tend to give bizarre definitions of the words 'reason' and 'truth' that do make sense in themselves but don't match the colloquial usage of the terms.)
It's usually Te types that pride themselves on being rational, accurate, and objective, or to make a clear intentional attempt to adhere any of these things.
("It just makes the most sense to explain it this way, come on, think about it," says the Ti type.)
Weigh in below about this disorganized mass of thoughts.
Thanks everyone for arguing about these ideas on Discord.
