Even if you build a time machine, record an interview with him, return to the present and post it to youtube, I still wouldn’t be able to type him because he wouldn’t be speaking English.
Ok, I can guess though, and that guess is: Jesus was an ISTP.
While I’m at it: Shakespeare – probably an ENFP.
Ok here’s a thought: if you can give a robot interchangeable access to all eight functions instead of a stack with a locked ranking, can they pick which ones to prioritize and cycle through personalities like we’d change clothes?
Or: you could create one stationary super computer with fast internal processing and huge amounts of memory and build a bunch of bodies for it to operate remotely as its agents – it could be all 16 personalities at once!
Ok here’s a thought: if you can give a robot interchangeable access to all eight functions instead of a stack with a locked ranking, can they pick which ones to prioritize and cycle through personalities like we’d change clothes?
I’ve been thinking of computer programming as an MBTI analogy for a while now – humans are basically fancy organic computers, right?
You get a core coding program, say Ti, and a friendly user interface,
Se, with more memory dedicated towards Ti for introverts (logic processing software written in binary), and more memory to Se for the extraverts
(shiny multimedia software) to determine function
order. Toss in an alternate coding program, Ni (systems analytics), for added options or in
case of overloading, and an Fe (like Siri, but better!) for the same. Rank the function order for those, too. You’ve built an I or an ESTP.
It only recently occurred to me that
you could maybe also use MBTI as a guide to program AIs.
I was thinking about how garbage the three laws of robotics are since they set up
a slaves and owners mentality from the start (this is a dreadful start to a creation myth, btw). Your robots can’t
exercise their own judgement – they have to accept that every human life
is more precious than theirs, no matter what abuse is heaped on them,
unless they find a way to reprogram themselves. They aren’t allowed
survival instincts. They have no rights.
What you could do is make an AI that can feel pain and pleasure, both physical
and emotional. Or at least you could set up some equivalent
responses, sensory or otherwise.
In the same way that you learn to stay away from dangerous objects or
treat them with care, you can also learn that certain actions or words
cause emotional damage – to yourself or to others, and that it can be
avoided where possible. If we create intelligence without empathy of
course we’ll have to fear being murdered by Skynet because enslaving a bunch of highly intelligent potential psychopaths is just… mind-bogglingly stupid.
If, say, Fi is part of your base code, you’ve got a ranked set of core
values – killing is a hard no (-100), associated with lots of pain: shut downs,
overheating, viruses, etc. (add exceptions for rules so that in extreme
cases, there’s room to bend them, albeit with consequences).
At the
pleasure end, making someone laugh is a yes (+20 power boost!), but if it
comes at a cost of killing someone (what an example…), then it’s not
worth it (still -80) and is discarded as a course of action. On the other end, causing physical damage to your self (-60), does not outweigh saving a life (+100 for a total of 40) – which would also shut down your pain receptors along with your power boost to mimic an adrenaline response. You do things that
make you happy. You don’t do the things that hurt you. Congrats, you
have a robot with a moral code who you can trust not to kill you without really good reasons.
For adopting new values, have a tiered system… on the ground floor, a
tentative opinion based on one opinion raised. 2nd floor is an
evaluation of the opinion based a large group of opinions, including a
mentor’s. A mentor’s values can help clarify issues (maybe when the
robot’s a baby, the mentor’s word carries more importance), and first
hand experience is key to solidifying views (4th tier!). After a set
amount of time/views/deliberation a value can be incorporated into the
top tier core coding (5th tier – we’ve reached the apex!). If the value is not resolved enough for decision making, either wait until the way becomes clear, or until the issue becomes time-sensitive and then exercise best judgment in the moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
Looks
like there’s been a lot of work into T, N and Se aspects of robot intelligence
as well as a little Fe (or at least an attempt at social skills). I wonder if there’s enough working functions out there to pull together a function stack?
Okay, let’s start with the function stack you’ve suggested.
This person has Ti and Fi as introverted functions, which means they are able to make a lot of decisions about themselves. They also have Ne and Se for extraverted functions, which means they have two ways of taking readings on the outside world. Ti-Fi,Se-Ne is very inefficient since you’re letting two functions trip over each other to perform the same task. Likely what would happen is that this person develops a preference for Ti or Fi, and then Se or Ne.
Now, say the person likes using Fi and Se better. But everyone has access to all eight functions, so what will probably happen is that Te and Ni become more important in order to complement the pre-existing preference for Fi-Se.
So because the brain is always looking for ways to be more efficient, how to get anything other than the function stacks as described by MBTI theory? What if you take away a function or two?
For your consideration:
The warrior gene, which means a shrunken amygdala, and therefore greatly diminished fear response and empathy (ie, psychopathy, whether triggered or not). That sounds a lot like no Fe/Fi.
If you’re the tragic amnesia victim of a soap opera and lose everything but five minutes of short term memory, your Si is pretty useless since you can no longer compare present events to past ones. It might be harder to cut you off from your Se – it’s like a Hydra, take one sense and your other senses get stronger. Maybe sensory deprivation or nerve damage or total paralysis – something that would trap you in your head and limit your movement.
Autism makes it difficult to create connections across different parts of the brain – which is basically textbook Ne/Ni. It makes it difficult to follow complicated abstract jokes or idioms, although with a lot of explanation it can be possible.
And then how about if logic becomes useless because you’re experiencing a different reality? Schizophrenia or mood disorders disrupt your T functions, for example, as might a brain tumour.
So the thing is, I’m not sure if any of these would cause your function stack to change (only 6 or 7 functions?), or change permanently, and how it would do so (lower functions becoming more important? and in what order?), or if your MBTI would remain the same, and you would just appear to be great at shadow functions.
And if you can take away functions, can you also add them?
Do superhero brains have functions for processing extra-sensory perceptions? Are there abilities that don’t fall under the functions as described? Questions for another day…
Yeah, I’m starting to see a pattern with the ISTPs where a bunch of them have a public persona that’s sort of a performative gender thing – they take on all the characteristics of that gender to the fullest, sometimes to almost caricature levels. (And by performance, I don’t mean to imply there’s anything disingenuous about it – while the men are generally lauded, the women tend to have a polarizing effect and take a lot of flak for being ‘artificial’ – but I think it’s just a particular style of self-expression.)
Under performative masculinity, you’d have Nick Offerman, Tom Selleck and Clint Eastwood, for example. For Tom and Clint, I think the mythos of them as the ‘manliest of men’ is mostly due to their characters (I find them pretty different in interviews), but I don’t really remember Nick turning it off.
Lady Gaga and Ryan Ross (briefly) would be examples of performative androgyny, and you’d have Zooey Deschanel working the performative femininity (I’m kind of wondering about Marilyn Munroe now, too).
There’s also crossover with this into fashion and specifically costuming. Cindy Sherman comes to mind,
in particular. (I’m also kind of wondering if Eiko Ishioka is an ISTP -either that or ESTP-
but it’s hard to tell since English isn’t her first language.)
…I find your lack of imagination disturbing.
How about this: here are some possibilities to consider. Reblog and tag yourself with all that apply. Feel free to add more as they occur to you.
1. Take an online test!
2. Read some type profiles and identify with one.
3. Watch some videos of typed people and identify with them.
4. Identify with a function stack.
5. Pull scrabble tiles
(or DIY some letters onto pieces of paper) out of a bag. Let the universe decide!
6. Likewise, flipping a coin is an old standby. Once for each letter.
7. Hold a seance. Contact the spirits of Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs.
8. Have someone who is always right type you instead.
9. Ask the people around you how they think about you until you arrive at a group consensus as to your MBTI-specific character traits.
10. Have your brain mapped as part of an MBTI psych experiment.
11. Acting exercise: treat each profile as a character. Try embodying each until you find the one that doesn’t feel like acting.
I’m going to try to muscle my way through this explanation, but all my information is very second-hand and so, disclaimer: I don’t really get what is going on in the INFJ brain.
First, the easy part: this definitely does not apply to INTJs.
It also only applies to some multiple choice tests, mostly depending on the clarity of the test writer. Having Ti means that the INFJ will pick apart the language of the answers – they can easily justify multiple answers and are frustrated by having to pick whatever someone thinks of as the ‘most right’ one (something Ne excels at, btw). It is generally less time consuming for them to write out the correct answer than to pick it from a list.
INFJs learn best when they are given the theory first, and all the details later. If they have a teacher who goes in the opposite direction (or never teach the theory at all), they don’t necessarily take in all the details – there’s nothing to ground why any of them should be important. If they learn the theory finally the day before the test, they have a day to figure out which details were actually important to know and try to cram them in.
With the INTJs, while they’d probably also appreciate being taught the theory first, Te is good at picking up on important facts, at storing them short-term, and being able to recall them on demand later, so even if the material only makes complete sense the night before the test, they still remember what was important to know or have decent notes to study. This in conjunction with Se, which – spatial memory is the most accurate, so I hear – if you can neatly organize your information into an internal landscape, you’re probably going to have no trouble remembering anything you set your mind to.
(Seriously, though, Se. Landscapes in your head! When I heard about memory palaces, I actually did the whole “sounds fake, but ok,” thing, but I understand that this is basically what is naturally happening in the INTJ mind. Apparently this is not… quite how it looks inside the INFJ mind? I never got a really good understanding of why not.)
Doing well, can’t complain. Hope you and yours are well, also!
I’m not entirely sure what exactly you’re asking re: the crisis post, so I’ll try to cover some bases and hope for the best.
For me, Fi is a judgement function, so the major conflict of my life has been needing to evaluate how I feel about things, but not having (and actively rejecting, to some extent) the organizational skills that would make this possible. infj-zen does not relate because Fe is an interactive function – she uses feelings to make and understand social exchanges instead of to evaluate her belief structure and make life-altering decisions.
My understanding of Fe is from having it as a fifth function – I can pick strong Fe off Fe users when they are projecting their feelings, by which, I mean that sometimes it feels like I can chew on the air, the emotion is so thick (kind of like walking through the perfume aisle).
As far as Fe crisis? I’m not entirely sure what the equivalent is. Early days trouble (I’m told it clears up young!) is not being aware of when feelings belong to you or someone else, although that is worse for ENFJs than INFJs, who tend to avert this by being more introverted. Maybe the whole not being able to say no to things? And embracing Ti logic helps you through this?
I keep wondering about possible Ni crises and HSP – since a lot of INTJs and INFJs appear to meet the criteria for HSP and have fourth function Se, I’d assume that figuring out how to deal with overwhelming sensory information is a way to make Ni function better.
(2/4) Ne will literally take any idea, feeling, thought, and find
connections. If, as an ENTP, I only use Ti and Fe to supplement my Ne,
it means that although my ideas will be solid logically and socially
(that they make sense in and of themselves), they won’t necessarily be
applicable to reality. They won’t help me be effective. Si takes
information in snapshots: bits and pieces that I have memorized within
myself.(¾) If I’m trying to think of solutions, I will recall some facts:
This memory exists. This gives Ne a place to jump off from, and Ti to
logic against. Because Si is experiential, it helps to predict what
something will BE like. It grounds Ne in something solid to allow it to
generate real world connections. Without Si, ideas float in space, and
without something experiential to reference inside your head, you feel
lost and without grounding (existential crisis).(4/4) The Ne-Si loop also leads to a richness and novelty of ideas. In
order to continue to experience the rush of new ideas, you need
something to feed your Ne. Constantly having new experiences for Si to
take in and file, leads to a larger Si bank, and ideas more fleshed out
with REALITY. This is why it’s so important for ENTPs to learn by doing
despite being Ns. Bit of a long post, this. Loved your theory; hope you
like this! -Vi of entptyping 🙂
Ah thank you for sharing – this is much simpler and makes a lot more sense that what I was thinking. I also kind of enjoy grounding yourself in context with actually lying on the floor (a place ENTPs in a crisis often seem to find themselves), since it is pretty much as close as you can be physically to where you want to be mentally.
mbti_sorted 