My First Time Holding A Sloth Today 😭

“I need some more water.” (X)

Maxwell has anger management issues

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (via philosophybits)

Starfish walking on land 😱🌠

Ni+Te versus Ti

It is easy to confuse Ni and Ti because they both share analytical properties.

Both Te/Ti are Thinking functions and use reason to evaluate data. They both look for cause-effect relationships. Te evaluates data for predictable rules and principles because it needs to take action effectively and efficiently, whereas Ti evaluates data for rules and principles that are internally consistent. Te does not care about the rules and principles in themselves as long as they work well for doing things effectively in the external world, whereas Ti cares about whether the rules and principles are consistent with other rules and principles, it is more systematic and wants to create a holistic and coherent theory regardless of whether or not that theory agrees with objective principles and, in order to do this, it needs to gather much more data than Te. Te sees a reliable cause-effect relationship and can move forward immediately, whereas Ti sees a cause-effect relationship and first wants to know what lies behind that relationship (the “why”) before it can move forward. Te utilizes easily observable formulas, whereas Ti utilizes elegant formulas it has created itself. Since they are both Thinking functions, they will sometimes agree about the truth of certain rules or principles but the path they take to reach agreement differs.

Ni gathers data from different abstract perspectives, trying to see something from many angles in order to accurately predict what might happen. This resembles Ti to some extent because it is also holistic in nature in terms of wanting to understand the bigger picture and it also wants to understand future effects. But Ni is a perceiving function so it is deeper and more sprawling and connects many different kinds of abstract relationships, not just cause-effect ones (e.g. metaphorical, symbolic, qualitative, logical, correlational, interpersonal, etc). Ti is a judging function so it connects concepts directly and efficiently by ruthlessly excising “irrelevant” information, whereas Ni takes in as much information as possible and links it to one’s knowledge in any way possible. Ni hoards all information, whereas Ti wants to take a knife to it once it is collected through the perceiving functions. Ti sees the world like a machine, with many different parts working together, but the parts are clearly separate and understood separately and then put back together into a closed system - anything unrelated to the “system” is cut away and dismissed. Ni sees the world like a network, but the parts are not clearly defined and not necessarily logically connected. So Ni needs a judging function to help it understand those connections more clearly. Ni needs Te to systematize itself.

INTJs use Te to make sense of Ni’s data in accordance with objective rules and principles, so Ni+Te can easily be mistaken for Ti. But Te has an outward focus and is action-oriented. Ni makes INTJs want to understand the world and Te makes them want to act on that knowledge either to realize potential or act in accordance with the future potential that they see. Ti is not as action-oriented. It focuses on discovering immediate effects rather than long range future potential unless it has another function like Ne or Ni to assist it, so Ti is much more limited and simplistic in what it can see compared to Ni+Te because Ni has a broader and deeper scope.

If INTJs get “stuck in their heads” and are too passive in life, they will start to feel uncomfortable because they have an underlying need to take action and achieve things because of Te. If they don’t listen to that need, they will feel restless, as though they are wasting their life. “Passive” INTJs who have not developed Te well enough are more likely to think they use Ti because their focus is too inwardly directed with Ni+Fi, meaning that they might confuse their lower Fi impulses as being Ti related (due to both being introverted judging functions and having the same structural framework). These INTJs just want to do what they feel comfortable doing according to their own understanding and ignore the call of Te/Se to take action to achieve goals and success, and this can eventually lead to existential boredom, unhappiness, or dissatisfaction or possibly an Ni-Fi loop.

more type comparisons

Shirts are crazy, your body goes in 1 hole and out 3

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Plato, ‘Theaetetus’

(via scientificphilosopher)

A demonstration of the physics of inertia. (Source)

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”

— Alan Watts