To develop some of the themes I mentioned yesterday:
Difference between T and F
It's difficult to distinguish between T and F when manifested in individual people. That's because T and F are both judging functions or "rational" functions (using Jung's terminology). Everyone has both of those functions in their top four stack, and everyone has different levels of comfort using them depending on their maturity, age, and level of personal development.
Typology descriptions reflect those problems: They have to focus on how T and F manifest themselves in individuals, and particularly in younger individuals: Because these days typology communities are largely composed of young people just discovering the typology field. So typology descriptions have to focus on just the most personal and salient points: Thinkers are logical and emotionless, while Feelers are illogical and emotional.
However, if you really want to see how T and F operate, the best approach is to look at an analog in society. T and F both get manifested in the larger world and the way the world runs itself. If you can spot that, then you'll have a better, broader grasp of their true nature.
So here is a simple metaphor (a "social analog") that shows how the two functions work and why there is so much tension between them:
Feeling = Community leadership, while Thinking = Laws at the national level.
F = Community leadership
In a large, diverse nation such as the US, there are many different kinds of communities:
--Urban communities, suburban communities, rural communities, retirement communities, communities that are good for young parents, industrial communities, white-collar communities, etc.
--Sports communities, fitness communities, vacationing communities, on-line communities, communities based around issues like school boards, communities based around issues like political activism, etc.;
--Black communities, white communities, Italian communities, Hispanic communities, Chinese communities, and so on;
--Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, Muslim communities, Christian communities, Fundamentalist communities, Wiccan communities, Atheist communities, and so on;
--Gay communities, conservative communities, progressive/woke communities, hippie communes, libertarian communities, etc;
--Pro-gun communities, anti-gun communities, pro-choice communities, pro-life communities, and so on;
--You get the picture...
Leaders at the community level tend to need good people-handling skills, in other words, Feeler skills. For example, if you're a pastor leading a church community, you probably don't need great legal skills. Instead you need to act as a pastoral counselor and help people work out moral and ethical disputes and calm down tensions between competing factions within the church.
To sum up: At the social level, Feelings are all about morals, ethics, building consensus, virtue, rewarding community spirit, altruism, etc. Communities play that role by providing the ethical and moral frameworks that make up day-to-day life. (Of course, Feelings can also be about the reverse of those things; Feelings can also be about things like fighting, punishing people you don't like, patriotism and going to war, etc.)
T = Legal system
When you look at that big list of communities that I provided above in the Feeler section, one word jumps out at you: Diversity.
Communities = diversity, and diversity is good. But if all those different communities are going to coexist in a single nation, you need a single system of uniform laws that applies to all of them. The legal system is the opposite of diversity.
The legal system = uniformity.
So when designing the legal system,
law-makers need to come up with uniform laws that apply to all communities equally and promote equity between the communities. But they also don't want the laws to be oppressive and force everyone to live exactly the same way, because that would kill off the diversity of the communities. So the legal system has to walk a fine line between being light enough to let all the different communities live their own way but also being heavy enough to enforce some basic rights and make sure one community doesn't oppress other communities. That kind of law-making need a very fine, logical touch. It needs logic and a non-emotional approach.
This sort of work tends to be handled by law-makers, national-level "think tanks," philosophers, politicians, political pundits, lawyers and legal systems, etc.
To sum up: At the social level, Thinking is all about weighing competing needs, coming up with legal compromises that everyone can live with, working out legally fair systems when it comes to taxing people and creating social safety nets for the vulnerable, etc. It requires a lot of logic and development of legal and philosophical systems to ensure equity and fairness. (Of course, Thinking can also be about things like building dictatorships and exploiting other countries around you...)
Community versus Legal system (F vs T)
Communities and legal systems tend to be at odds. Any one community generally doesn't want the national legal system to be so oppressive that it kills off the distinctive features of their own community. But at the same time, that same community often wants to enshrine their own values in the law, to the point of forcing other communities to live according to their rules. Example: Conservatives don't want to have to live by liberals' rules, but they're perfectly happy to make laws that will force liberals to live by conservative rules. And vice versa.
So the communities tend to be like emotional kids, trying to push their own values and morals on others. And law-makers are like the logical parents, trying to come up with a set of uniform, logical rules that enable everyone to live together equitably, fairly, and without favoring any one community over another.
To sum up: Thinkers and Feelers have to work together. People need communities in order to provide the ethical and moral frameworks that make up day-to-day life. But they also need the logic of an equitable legal system that balances the needs of different communities and doesn't allow any one community to get too powerful and wipe out the rest.
Conclusion
So that's the "social analog" for Feeling vs Thinking.
Feelers tend to be your community leaders, working out the ethical and moral frameworks that make up day-to-day life.
--Fe-Doms do this directly within the community, leading by social consensus;
--Fi-Doms tend to come up with more structured systems of morals, ethics, hierarchies, pecking orders, and so on for guiding the community at times of internal conflict.
Thinkers tend to work better at the national level working out philosophical and legal systems for running the nation as a whole and sorting out the competing needs of all the different communities.
--Te-Doms do this directly at the national level by working out the rules for the so-called "social contract." That is, working out the day-to-day rules for interaction at the national level. See that term in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
--Ti-Doms tend to work out the philosophical systems that underlie the legal system: What are "human rights"? What happens when certain human rights conflict? What's an equitable level of taxation (taking money from one community and giving it away free to another community)? And so on. You get the picture.