[PUG] Intuitives contrasted to Sensors

First, your description of intuitives has some inaccuracy. An INTP or ENTJ sure does not trust their "gut feeling" or "sixth sense" in the manner an INFJ does.

What an intuitive really is is a person who sees connections and the "big picture" much more easily and naturally then a sensor does. The NJs, who use Ni, do this by (this is really abstract, but the only way I've ever experienced Ni) looking closely at the muddy, unclear lake of the mind and waiting for tiny bubbles of unconscious thought to come to the surface. They rely on the barely perceived connections and "jumps" the mind makes.

The NPs, who use Ne, see things as a web of possible connections. While an Ni will often make big, unforeseen leaps in connections, Ne will arrive at the same place, but will have a record of "little jumps" they quickly make. Ne sees this record as a branching tree, and it could have gone 9 other different ways at each little jump...there are just so many places to go.



The reason you hear a lot of bad talk about sensors from intuitives is for three main reasons:

1. Sensors are the vast majority, and the minority of intuitives often feels displaced, unvalued, and finds nearly any environment they walk into to be set up for the sensor mindset. We have to struggle really hard to feel comfortable and acceptable to the sensor-dominated society around us.

2. The negative recipriciation effect: Intuitives, having to struggle, and just having a natural desire to understand the big social picture, understand the value of sensors in society. We don't want to have to be carpenters and store managers, it's not our thing. Sensors seem to have a much harder time reciprocating this appreciation (which is where my ultra catchy name for this effect comes from!). They constantly reinforce this disdain of "nerds," "hippies," "weirdos," and whatever else is commonly an intuitive domain. Even thoughtfulness, which intuitives hold in high regard (but are not necessarily better at doing) is seen as bad. My family displays countless classic examples of this behavior (and they're all guardians), and growing up I was thought of as purely "messed up."

3. Lastly, sensors generally are not as intellectually adept as intuitives. It's not their domain: they live primarily in the concrete, where intuitives live primarily in the connections in their head. Sensors have other gifts that I never could even attempt to aspire to, so this isn't a value judgment. The more arrogant of intuitives (I'm admittedly guilty of it too) recognize that they are just a little different.

Related to number 3 is the thoughtless automatons that inhabit our everyday life...who are mostly sensors due to the population difference. Again, arrogant intuitives see this. But this is misguided, I've met some really thoughtless intuitives (I see an INTP one daily) that are swept by the currents of society, but because we see so many sensors, and so many automatons, the connection is hard to shake.

 

ISFPs are known as the "Intuitve sensors"
They are artists for gods sake.. how could they not be intutive??.

And remember we use all 8 functions and have a little of all the 16 types within us.

 

S's seem to be more likely to be alcoholics.

 

Agreed.

 

Duty described it wonderfully.

I think one of the most common things encountered that causes sensors to get a bad rap, is that there are many who are unwilling to look at things from an intuitive standpoint. Intuitives largely (not all) will try to look at things from a sensors standpoint, because of an intuitives inate drive to understand things from multiple standpoints. Sensors, usually don't come to think of this as nesscerry. Thus causing the intuitive to think the sensor is unable to grasp them. This is more often an issue with Si, and less so with Se.

 

Yes, this is very true. I've very often, especially with my family, gotten from sensors that looking from an intuitive point of view is somehow even defective. It's very stressful, especially when you have the knowledge of where that thought of their's comes from, yet they won't give you the time of day in your explanations.

 

Not quite, and some of the opposite is in effect tbh. Ni is like an astronomer looking through a telescope at a very distant planet...and then warping there. It has an easier time seeing things "from the inside" of that planet, yet is constantly looking into deep space so it can get inside other planets.

Ne is more like a spaceship that zooms from planet to planet, but views each one from the top-down "outside" view it gets from orbit. At the same time, Ne has a much easier time making a star chart, as it knows where it has been and doesn't have to "recalibrate" every time it goes to a new place like Ni does.

ISFPs are certainly the irregularity of the sensors, perhaps along with their ISTP cousins. More then a sensor-dominated society, we live in a sensor judger-dominated society. Even more, we live in an extroverted SJ society. Te and Fe are the primary extroverted functions you will see in our culture (and therefore the ones that will have the most outward effect), coupled with the Si sensing function. Now, we INFPs and INTPs have another slap in our faces as we have that monstrous Ne vs Si leap going, but ISFPs and ISTPs have to face being the opposite of the Te/Fe dominated culture just as much.


Thing is, you guys have more support, although it is certainly not the norm. SJs will just call you guys reckless or absent-minded. Intuition is another thing beyond what SJs generally understand or appreciate. They just don't get it in the first place, whereas they understand you, just in a twisted and erroneous sense.

So what happens to us is we generally are completely uncatered to. The office I work at is chock full of examples of a very sensor-influenced environment that pays no regard to intuitives (every job I've ever had has been like this tbh). Public school, the media...nearly all the institutions that are everyday parts of our lives are run to appeal to sensors.

 

ISFP's and INTJ's are the only types that use Both Fi and Ni in the highest possible positions, giving both of them a very clear sense of self, and who they should be and who they want to be. They are able to understand it without much inner questioning. It's rather efficent (although very easy to be messed up).

 

Great thread NAI I relate.

I think a big part of the problem is that in type descriptions the "intuitive method" is presented as if it is without cost, the devil as they say is in the details so an intuitve can be making leaps and bounds doesn't mean any of those leaps or bounds are accurate or useful.

 

True. The problem is when we aren't given the chance to make the useful leaps or when the leaps are denounced because of short-sighted/close mindedness...which is what I've been talking about this whole thread.

 

Se is like Ni in that it views the planet from the inside...it lives on it. Unlike Ni, it doesn't spend its time viewing other planets in a telescope, because, lets face it, this planet ROCKS! Just check out all the pretty flowers, hot deserts, lush forests, and all the people that live here! Isn't this great!?

Then whoosh...Se is unexpectedly warped to another planet to try the new experiences there. This is fine by Se, because it is so in the moment that it sometimes doesn't even know that it switched planets (and certainly didn't do it deliberately)! Pretty adaptable really.



Si owns a spaceship like the Ne's do. However, Si will find a corner of the galaxy that it really likes...the star formations really make it comfortable here. Instead of exploring the rest, it starts to build up a little star empire in this corner. Before it knows it, it has quite the star empire and it wakes up to realize, "Well, my empire is way off in the corner here, but it's a well built, comfortable empire. I'm satisfied."

When not running its star empire, the Si takes time to revisit planets that it has been to in the past. They had such great information and experiences on those planets, even if I didn't know it at the time!

 

That is a great comparison Duty.

 

Intuitive rule, sensors drool, didn't you know?

 

I like sensors. I used to be jealous and annoyed that I wasn't an SP when I first took the Mbti. But whatever. I'll wear my Infj badge because I'm just about sure that I am one. I never got the whole looking down on sensors thing, though.