“Is It Better To Be The Reed In The Spokes Of A Battle Wheel Which Splinters The Chariot Of Hope, Or

INTJ vs INTP cognitive mechanics - an analysis based on an observation

With study of the cognitive functions I'm finally starting to recognize what INTJness actually feels like.

The other day, I was going through a programming tutorial as part of a larger book on the functional programming style. I was modifying the example slightly to produce a different output, and suffice it to say it wasn't working. I called on my INTP, who is doing the same tutorial, to see if they could figure it out.

Basically, my approach was trying to "tap into" my Ni, looking over the script from a zoomed-out perspective and getting a feel for where the problem might be. I get the general feeling that the second half of a certain function isn't working. I test this assumption, I was right - so now I try to narrow down in my mind where it "seems off", and come to a vague conclusion that it's probably the order of execution. I test this assumption. It works. The example is now working as expected. I don't have a clear, 100% understanding of why exactly the order of the statements was causing the particular bug, but I move on, because I realize that this kind of error is more of a general silly-mistake in how I wrote the algorithm, and isn't something instrumental to the greater goal - which is understanding the mechanics of the functional style.

My INTP friend, in contrast, looks at the script not from a zoomed-out perspective, but goes through the logic, one step at a time, analyzing exactly what each statement does and the effects it has - and how the result should look at each point in time, and why, until they figure out exactly what was wrong and why. They didn't just get a vague intuitive understanding of how to fix it and move on, they understood in detail how every single component interplays with every other, why the statement execution must be in this order for the algorithm to work, and all the other ways changing the order of the statements would affect the output. They have understood all the mechanics of the algorithm through pure logic, and it took them much longer to move on than it did for me - but unlike me, who was doing the problem for its general purpose within the goal of understanding functional programming, they felt that understanding the algorithm (which on its own is not related to functional programming at all, and is just a modified sort algorithm), was something they wanted to understand all the components of, regardless of whether it is meaningful to the purpose of the assignment.

This felt like a very illustrative moment in understanding the differences between how INTP and INTJ approach problem-solving. Of course, as INTJ I am also compelled to learn the mechanics of all sorts of things, even those irrelevant to the overarching goal of whatever the book or the tutorial or class or the thing I am studying is right now - but I would tend to note them and set them aside for later to learn, as something separate from the process. I went back over the sort algorithm with a more Ti approach myself later, after I had grasped the concepts in the chapter I was working on, and was ready to take a break. The first "goal" was gaining an understanding of the concepts in that chapter of the tutorial, and I did not allow myself to be distracted from this purpose - but when it was done I went back to the algorithm I got wrong and Ti-ed my way through the logic, step by step. But this happened in a separate process from doing the tutorial, and a separate timeline - I didn't allow the "working on this chapter" timeline to fork into the subprocess of working out this unrelated algorithm error for any longer than it absolutely needed to.

For my INTP friend, however, following this unrelated tangent - right then and there, in the middle of the process of understanding the chapter and in the same timeline - was something perfectly natural. It was natural for them to make many "deep forks" in the path to understanding the chapter, almost so much so that they may not even make it through to the end of the chapter, and instead get lost in the study of the forks and tangents along the way. As an INTJ I just could not do this - I would feel very mentally unsettled about this.

I feel the INTP approach with Ti/Ne is very thorough but incremental and undirected in its understanding; the Ni/Te approach of the INTJ is a lot less thorough, and more "overarching" - focused more on setting up the "skeleton" or the inner structure of the framework first, and then filling it out with details - and being always painfully conscious of the shape of the path one is following. Almost as if there is always this voice nagging you that this item may be irrelevant right now, come back to it later. It is like an architect trying to capture the overallness, or a writer trying to synthesize the outline of the entire story out of thin air first, and then refining all the generalities and fleshing them out. The coherent whole comes first, and is always there and always something one is deeply conscious of, and driven by. It is like the INTJ is going through every process with a general (usually not very detailed) map or compass that they follow, always internally tugging them back to North, whereas INTP is wandering through all the nooks and crannies of the landscape without a map or a compass, and seeing what kind of fascinating mental discoveries they have on the way. They may have a purpose in mind, but it can be diverted away from indefinitely and come back to later, if there are more interesting paths to explore on the way - whereas for the INTJ the interesting paths will be noted and come back to later, as it would feel "wrong" in a fundamental way to divert away from the purpose.

I still have a difficult time figuring out how Ni worked the way it did - I suppose part of it is that I already have a decent amount of programming experience, and was able to subconsciously extract a deep pattern from what I had experienced before, without knowing where exactly I had seen this before or what it was based on. My intuition was like a synthesis of patterns I had extracted before - like a deep-learning algorithm "figuring things out" from intermediate representations. This may be why it required a lot of Se input and Ti-type analysis in the very start of my programming study before I could begin to "grasp" it, as it served to "feed" my Ni with raw materials and structures to synthesize patterns and meta-patterns from, and later synthesize hunches like this. So now I can often "feel" the way to solve something, without explicitly working through the logic.

Naturally everyone who gains proficiency or experience in some field finds themselves doing this - as humans we are equipped with all the cognitive functions, after all - but as an INTJ it is my first instinct to do this to everything, and is my most visceral response to a problem - and the impulse to analyze with Ti usually comes later, as a conscious decision. As far as I understand it, for my INTP friend it was the opposite - the first response to a new concept or a problem is to analyze it and all its components and understand every small piece of the mechanics - even if they get an Ni "hunch" about what is wrong, they tend to not trust it as much, and the impulse to analyze is first and foremost.

Just some rambling observations on Ti and Ni mechanics.

I wish it were possible to skip the beginning stages of friendship and just become best friends immediately.

Coherence as a virtue is praised too much

Music asks 6, 22 and 39.

Hello! :)

6. a song whose bridge takes you out

I couldn't find the song in Spotify, so I had to give this one. The atmosphere and the bridge gives the song a different life I think

22. a song that tells a story

Ooo so I think all songs tell their own stories, and each one can be interpreted in hundreds of ways. Since it asks for one song lol I had to choose this one, it tells a tale like one of those Inkheart Trilogies.

39. a song you recommend to the person asking this

I wasn't sure what songs you liked, so I thought I'd choose a poem! But it has been sung beautifully

Charles Wright, Nine-Panel Yaak River Screen

my five year plan? read a lot of books. visit museums. walk through woods. stand in a river. adopt a little kitty. drink lemonade while sitting in a rocking chair on my porch.

Rained yesterday. went upstairs and sat on a wall for the best part of an hour with my legs folded and eyes closed. spiritual experience. 

It’s odd how the only time you are hit with a profound feeling of despair or any kind of hopelessness is when you either have nothing to do or when you are at least not actively engaged in something, I’ve had people tell me that that is why they keep themselves busy all the time, boredom breeds nihilism, etc. But isn’t that also implying - basically acknowledging, however unconscious that might be - that without the presence of an ever hovering distraction, everything is essentially arbitrary ? ( i.e the current state of matters is so terrible that you need a constant diversion to keep from falling into depression) How inattentive do you need to be to not notice that ? Maybe, just maybe, everyone is always in a hurry because of this need for their thoughts to revolve around some external thing ? Societal Indoctrination of behaviour ? Inadvertent familial conditioning ? What is it ?

“you can’t forget your mother tongue” okay but have you considered bilinguals and polyglots whose first language isn’t english and whose development during adolescence was shaped by consuming content and media only in english and have ever since viewed that second language, foreign to their own, as a better outlet for their emotions and thoughts? as Yiyun Li said “it is hard to feel in an adopted language, yet impossible in my native language.”

🌼 poems that held my hand in may 🌼

Nocturne, Li-Young Lee

Your Name, Vahan Tekeyan

Sonnets to Orpheus 2;29, Rainer Maria Rilke

I stopped going to therapy, Clementine von Radics

Miyazaki Bloom, Nina Mingya Powles  

The Quiet Machine, Ada Limón

When we two parted, Lord Byron

Fragment, Amy Lowell

The Want of You, Angelina Weld Grimké

When Did It Happen?, Mary Oliver

Alone, Sara Teasdale

Peace XVIII, Khalil Gibran