[Opabinia]

Anyone else describe their "connection-making" abilities as working kind of like this:

Like a piece of information just sits around in your brain until you get a new piece of information (potentially years later), and they just click, and that's how your aha moments happen?

 

[jd_]

Something like that. In a state of paranoia or stress you might find yourself making connections and seeing patterns that don't actually fit. I've made visio flowcharts which are more complicated than that Out of all the things I did when I worked in IT, it was my favorite thing to do and I was always delegated that task b/c I did in a day what it was taking other people a week to put together. Not to pat my back, I try to rarely do that, but that chart instantly made me think of visio.

It is more just a constant daydream though, my thoughts *come up* like a stream. There isn't much thinking involved. I can see one thing and instantly reminded me of everything a certain object has ever done in my life.

 

[Opabinia]

@jd_ , does putting the idea out there in reality help you see how it doesn't make sense?

 

[jd_]

yes.. that map seems more like Ni/Ti working.

Reality would be checking against Se... which, if not paid attention to enough, can make your mind think crazy things.

I see my Ni more like this... sorry if not totally accurate... but it's close enough

 

[Opabinia]

@jd_, I concur. I contemplated writing Ni-Ti but didn't want to focus too much on whether it was Ni or Ti or combination of both, or combination of everything. That's a great image; I might re-use it.

What I find both images have in common (what I was going for), was the explosion of thoughts that are simultaneously there and not there. Blurred until I choose to focus on something.

 

[MrJaxon]

An admirer's perspective...

I don't think I'm INFJ (I think I'm ISTJ, but undecided now), but I'm trying to learn about the Ni process. When I read a book or listen to a lecture my intuitive connections are less precise than yours appear to be. They're more like this:

Didn't take that picture, by the way.

 

[jd_]

I see this as the S mind

This could visualize the start of the Ni blur...

Then certain things become into focus...

 

[Opabinia]

@MrJaxon , that image is very fluid and slower moving. Is that how you feel it works? Do you think this is how your Ni works or your Si-Ne?

If you're ISTJ, then you are better with Si and Ne. From my observations, Si-Ne/Ne-Si connections are relevant to the immediate and very detail-driven. Books that are full of references to other specific things are what you would find most enjoyable. Whereas I could read the same book and be wondering what the author "meant" the whole time, not so much focusing on whether a particular named used referenced another character from a different book.

If I were at the same lecture, Ni would make me remember an entire idea and see how it is being connected to the one discussed. I wouldn't be able to tell you the details of the idea, just the importance of it.

 

[Kyrielle]

A vast galaxy where all thoughts and ideas and perceptions move in concert around a vast center (which I suppose could be interpreted as the Self or as the Purpose). Some of them are still unformed or raw data in the form of nebulae. Others are tight, organized solar systems--ideas that have been given more time to be subjected to the rigors of Ti. But the rest are mostly bright, shining stars of thought pushed into position by various connections so they spin and rotate with related thoughts.

 

[psynite]

I picture it as a set of points in space and boxes that are like ghosts that cover the points into single coherent ideas.

 

[jd_]

@MrJaxon , that image is very fluid and slower moving. Is that how you feel it works? Do you think this is how your Ni works or your Si-Ne?

If you're ISTJ, then you are better with Si and Ne. From my observations, Si-Ne/Ne-Si connections are relevant to the immediate and very detail-driven. Books that are full of references to other specific things are what you would find most enjoyable. Whereas I could read the same book and be wondering what the author "meant" the whole time, not so much focusing on whether a particular named used referenced another character from a different book.

If I were at the same lecture, Ni would make me remember an entire idea and see how it is being connected to the one discussed. I wouldn't be able to tell you the details of the idea, just the importance of it.

Correct, I'm much more concerned with the underlying IDEA or BIG PICTURE than I am with "facts."

My feelings towards them are beautifully articulated by Rorty.

"I aim to liberate the mind from 'the tyranny of facts.'"

"Reason can only follow paths that the imagination has first broken."

Hobbes also does this nicely...

""All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain."

 

[MrJaxon]

that image is very fluid and slower moving. Is that how you feel it works? Do you think this is how your Ni works or your Si-Ne?

I'm sorry that I cannot describe it in terms of the interaction of processes yet, since I'm just starting to study this system.

I can only give an example:
When I was reading Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", you could say the idea of dreaming was in mind as a backdrop the whole time. Suddenly, when Freud was describing the idea that microorganisms could rejuvinate themselves by conjugating, I realized "That could be the first dream!" I had a hard time fleshing out what that actually means, but in retrospect my "logic" would be like this: a dream involves the interior generation of other people (or really, symbols), that is, a society within oneself. If these two microorganisms conjugated, they would in effect be members in a single cell, a single dream. So there are two movements: the slower concept "dream" which swims downward as a giant mass while I am reading, and the one that tests and gropes until it thinks it has found an idea to bond with.

I'm sorry if that isn't clear...that's why the image was supposed to work better as a description...

I'll end with jd_'s statement:

Reality would be checking against Se... which, if not paid attention to enough, can make your mind think crazy things.

 

[Arclight]

Not sure how long this will remain here.. because it's copyrighted.
I can however not find another.

I have always said It's like building a scaffold around a globe.. So that I can see multiple views from different angles and reference certain specific points.
If Einstein was correct and every action has an equal and opposite reaction then a globe is better than a scale when you are looking at all sides of an issue. Just walk around to opposite pole and see what's there. But when you look at one side of a globe you can't see the other so you build a frame work to navigate all sides.

The problem for me and a few others who have expressed similar discord with this kind of thinking.
The frame work is the scaffold and it's takes time and patience to build.
It is built on perceived data and every bit of information allows you to expand that scaffold so that more of the global perspective can be revealed.
New information can sometimes simply be added .. The scaffold can be expanded and life goes on.
BUT..... Sometimes the information requires that the whole thing gets torn down and must be started over.
And this is why I believe the Ni mind can be stubborn and is reluctant to take on new information that threatens a long rebuild.
Sometimes it feels like the whole system comes crumbling down and it can take along time to put everything back up.
Especially if the if the frame work is built on fancy rather than reality.

Anyway.. The photo.

 

[Opabinia]

BUT..... Sometimes the information requires that the whole thing gets torn down and must be started over.
And this is why I believe the Ni mind can be stubborn and is reluctant to take on new information that threatens a long rebuild.
Sometimes it feels like the whole system comes crumbling down and it can take along time to put everything back up.
Especially if the if the frame work is built on fancy rather than reality.

Ah yes. That feeling. When it all crumbles. I know I'll be better off for re-building in the long run, but it's still such a mindfuck when it happens.

 

[Alaya]

I see it as the man in the cave that realizes the illusion behind the seemingly real. Looking through "the smoke and mirrors" so to speak, and seeing how the worldview of reality is just a system of interconnected parts that take shape in the complexity of our minds.

 

[Captain]

I see it as this

PLUS this:

When I experience something, the magnifying glass instantly goes where it's supposed to go, and sees the relationships and patterns between the different ideas.

 

[jd_]

@Captain ... so basically you are saying your mind is stuck in the late 70s to early 80s? Then, you hyper focus and are able to recall the intricate system of Reaganomics which is much like Spiderman's web that you shoot like a nerf basketball through the hoop of your mind?

=)

 

[Captain]

@Captain ... so basically you are saying your mind is stuck in the late 70s to early 80s? Then, you hyper focus and are able to recall the intricate system of Reaganomics which is much like Spiderman's web that you shoot like a nerf basketball through the hoop of your mind?

=)

Don't forget Van Halen.

The way I see it, each picture is like a smaller collage in itself. They're all set up in patterns. So we could say the collage above is just one picture from a larger collage. So, it's like seeing all the angles and possibilities within something.

 

[The Great One]

This thread is making Ni seem like even more of a blur to me.

 

[sitodocambia]

New information can sometimes simply be added .. The scaffold can be expanded and life goes on.
BUT..... Sometimes the information requires that the whole thing gets torn down and must be started over.
And this is why I believe the Ni mind can be stubborn and is reluctant to take on new information that threatens a long rebuild.
Sometimes it feels like the whole system comes crumbling down and it can take along time to put everything back up.
Especially if the if the frame work is built on fancy rather than reality.

That's me exactly! I just had an experience with that. A single philosophy class I took in college forced me to change my entire worldview. I was sad and confused for months before I was finally able to build it back up similar to the way it was before. I kind of see my Ni the same way but with critical points in the scaffolding. There are a couple of key facts, assertions, and beliefs that hold the entire thing upright and prevent it from collapsing. Once one of those facts are gone, however, the entire thing goes crumbling. That's what happened to me after that class, and that's why I think people who are Ni-dom ruthlessly defend certain facts and beliefs while almost not caring about other beliefs they have or facts they believe to be true. Once a critical point is removed the entire framework falls to pieces.