Post by Kahawa on Oct 2, 2018 6:47:24 GMT -5
I've just finished reading Walter Isaacson's biography on Einstein. Great read, btw.
A number of things in there gave me a strong impression that Einstein was perhaps Ti (TiNe or NeTi).
He was somewhat of an 'anti-empiricist', not just ideologically, but actually. He loved to theorise, and wasn't very concerned with experimental data. He would write whole essays without quoting another source at all, just his own ideas, and at the end he'd throw in some ideas that someone could use if they wanted to do some experiments that would confirm/falsify his theories. He fought against the quantum gravity empiricists who accepted whatever their experiments confirmed. For Einstein, if it didn't make sense theoretically, he rejected their experiments, or at least their interpretations, but showed little interest in performing his own experiments. His intuition guided him, and was the reason he was right much of the time, but he had little interest in empirical data.
Also, his pacifism was more ideological than ethical, ie., he was convinced of the theory of non-violence, but later changed when he saw that that ideology was no longer tenable and that it didn't work like the thought it did. It reminds me of my own transition from pacifism to i-don't-know-what-to-call-it-just-stop-the-baddies-please.
And, his fashion sense, to me, sounds more Ti than Fi. Both Ti and Fi tend to be non-conformists, and when this gets expressed through fashion, I think there are some significant differences. Fi non-conforms through self expression. Ti non-conforms through self denial. Where Fi escapes the status quo, it does so by important unique expressions of the individual. Where Ti escapes the status quo, it does so more by rejecting the conventions and refusing to participate in embellishments. Einstein was a non-conformist in fashion, but he wasn't self-expressive. He simply didn't care about conventions. He would wear sandals or not wear socks or wear an old jacket, not to make a statement, or to express his individuality, but because they were comfortable and he didn't care about conformity. This reminds me a bit of the Ti-void, and how Ti tries to remove itself so as to be purely objective - pure truth is achieved when the individual is not a consideration, and Einstein smacked of this.
So, those are some of my thoughts after reading the biography. I have more, too, but they're less articulable.
A number of things in there gave me a strong impression that Einstein was perhaps Ti (TiNe or NeTi).
He was somewhat of an 'anti-empiricist', not just ideologically, but actually. He loved to theorise, and wasn't very concerned with experimental data. He would write whole essays without quoting another source at all, just his own ideas, and at the end he'd throw in some ideas that someone could use if they wanted to do some experiments that would confirm/falsify his theories. He fought against the quantum gravity empiricists who accepted whatever their experiments confirmed. For Einstein, if it didn't make sense theoretically, he rejected their experiments, or at least their interpretations, but showed little interest in performing his own experiments. His intuition guided him, and was the reason he was right much of the time, but he had little interest in empirical data.
Also, his pacifism was more ideological than ethical, ie., he was convinced of the theory of non-violence, but later changed when he saw that that ideology was no longer tenable and that it didn't work like the thought it did. It reminds me of my own transition from pacifism to i-don't-know-what-to-call-it-just-stop-the-baddies-please.
And, his fashion sense, to me, sounds more Ti than Fi. Both Ti and Fi tend to be non-conformists, and when this gets expressed through fashion, I think there are some significant differences. Fi non-conforms through self expression. Ti non-conforms through self denial. Where Fi escapes the status quo, it does so by important unique expressions of the individual. Where Ti escapes the status quo, it does so more by rejecting the conventions and refusing to participate in embellishments. Einstein was a non-conformist in fashion, but he wasn't self-expressive. He simply didn't care about conventions. He would wear sandals or not wear socks or wear an old jacket, not to make a statement, or to express his individuality, but because they were comfortable and he didn't care about conformity. This reminds me a bit of the Ti-void, and how Ti tries to remove itself so as to be purely objective - pure truth is achieved when the individual is not a consideration, and Einstein smacked of this.
So, those are some of my thoughts after reading the biography. I have more, too, but they're less articulable.
