People get typing systems completely wrong

Hello everybody,

Been a long time since I posted something. There's something that absolutely ticks me off. It's that people just type people completely wrong. They use completely the wrong methods, wrong methodology, wrong thinking.

For instance, there seems to be this raging debate about John Lennon being INFp or ENFp. Oh my gawd. Is this real? John Lennon was neither INFp or ENFp. Why do people think those types? Because they look at his songs and go: "Wow, that's so hippie. Only a hippie would say those things. And the only types that could be hippies are INFp or ENFp." Like Lennon's Imagine song, which presents this naive vision of the world where there are no possessions, fights, religions, bla bla bla. Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong! That's not how you type people. What you're missing is a well-known phenomena of people -- people often present a fake side that's not "really" them. They present this "fake side" to the outside world, or to people they don't know well. What you *really* want is the "real side" -- you find this only after getting to know them. After being close friends with them...............or....simply reading the things about people who knew John Lennon well.

Anyway, once you take into account the phenomena of "real side" and "fake side", you can immediately start to ignore all of John Lennon's songs when trying to analyze Lennon's real personality. Peoiple just don't always try to be themselves, particularly when they are in the world's spotlight like that.

One more thing -- I read this incredibly stupid remark: "I'm an ENFp, and watching his videos, I think, wow, he's a lot like me". Wrong!!!!!! Ugh!!!!!! This pisses me off so much. Do you have any idea how easy it is to confuse types? Types look *so* similar. Just noticing, "oh wow we're similar" is *not* enough. Start thinking for *real*, please.

I once mistook an INFp for ISFp. Do you have any idea how close these types look, at least on the surface? Wasted a year of my life thinking I had Duality on my hands. Nope! It was just a Mirage, which is a common phenomenon, actually. Common to think that you have Duality, when it's just Mirage. That's why they're called Mirage relationships. Wow! Hasn't socionics really nailed some categories?

Going back to the John Lennon discussion -- ENTps are similar to ENFps, ESTps, and ENTjs. Just go read their descriptions. Oh, the ENFp who thought John Lennon was similar to him -- *by the way*, did you know that ENFps and ENTps are widely known to be similar? Yeah.......so your reasoning is not enough to tell that he's ENFp. You know he's similar to ENFp. Great. But go further.

Going back to the "people are fake on the outside" thought -- did you know John Lennon was fairly hypocritical about many of his songs? Like when a friend visited him and noticed Lennon was so rich. The friend said, "Imagine no possessions....", which is a line from the Imagine song. Lennon: "It's just a bloody song". Many more instances of such hypocrisy. Not going to list them out right now, since I'd like to actually get to the part about typing Lennon, ha!

Ok. What type is Lennon? Well, right off the bat, we can immediately tell he's not INFp. The most telling sign is that Lennon easily got into so many fights, said so many controversial things, and was just so emotionally detached from his own son. That is just....such a non-INFp thing to do. I fell in love with an INFp for a while -- I *know* this. I *know* that INFps don't get into fights. Arguing is like death to them. Man. When there was an argument, you should've seen this INFp's face -- she just cringed with pain. She just wanted to get out of there. It just looked like she was in so much pain. She tries to resolve the argument. Tries to delay the argument. "Let's go do something else!". Nope.......Lennon is *not* an INFp.

We can tell that Lennon dominant function is Ne -- another way of putting it is that he's ENFp or ENTp. So our ENFp earlier who remarked "he's similar to me" -- well, at least you got one thing right. .......................................................I just left this blog post for 20 minutes and now I feel bored....so I'll just write down some cursory thoughts.

Lennon is dominant Ne -- you can tell from his ex-wife Cynthia's comments that Lennon was constantly searching for something new. Check out her comments during the release of her book "John". Also, Paul McCartney said that the Beatles were a band that got bored easily, thanks to John Lennon.

OK, so choose between ENFp or ENTp. Well, hehe, I happen to know a bunch of ENFps as well. Fell in love with one. And John Lennon is not ENFp. Mostly because of his style of attack. ENFps attack by turning all your friends against you. That's not what John Lennon did. Against Cynthia for instance. He sued her. He hired a private detective. etc. etc.

Also the fact that John Lennon was incredibly emotionally detached. One good example being his own son Julian Lennon. Paul McCartney was closer to Julian than John Lennon. Man.

Ok that does it for me. I'm bored. Time to do something else.

By the way, people mistype Alexander the Great as ESTp. What a joke. He was also ENTp. There's 1 telling sign that immediately DQs him as ESTp. But that's a blog post for another day. See ya.

EDIT: I just read this comment from McCarney about Lennon: "His bluff was all on the surface."

Psychoanalyzing a person's dominant function

Determining a person's type is hard, so let's start with what should be the easiest question: how do you figure out what a person's dominant function is? The question is much harder to analyze than at first glance. First, you need to understand what each information element looks like. Second, there is huge variety among people, even among people within the same type.

It would be easier to start with what not to look at. A fairly common mistake many people make is a face-value judgment simply from meeting a person. The reason why this is a mistake is that most people don't show you who they really are when you first meet them. An ENTp/ESTp may come off as warm and friendly, but the reality is that most ENTps and ESTps are extremely calculating individuals. An INFp may come across as an ISFp when she invites you for dinner, cooks you food, but then turns out to hold her time very tight-fistedly. The point is, people are hardly what they seem.

Another fairly common mistake is to stereotype a person based on his profession. Simply because a person is religious does not mean he's a "Feeler" or "Thinker." It hardly means that. I have known both ESTps and INFps to be extremely religious. I have met INTps who have defended their faith to the death (figuratively). Additionally, just having a job in the tech industry does not make you a Thinker in any way. But I digress.

The real interesting question to discuss is the actual process of finding out who a person is. Here's what you should: catch them trying to solve a problem, or watch how they discuss topics. In the process, they almost always bring out their dominant function. The property is the following: "The influence of the base function on perception and core values is so strong that people tend to project these values onto other people: everyone else surely must want the same things that your base function strives for" (Wikisocion).

As with anything, the concept is made clearest through examples. The first example I'll bring up is my close friend, an INTj. Whenever I banter with him about issues, he often brings up a "rule" in the form of "It's a general principle of humans to..." or "In general, people dont'...". He analyzes issues starting from rules, which ties in very well to his dominant function of Ti.

The second example will be about someone I used to know well, an INFp. The dominant function is Ni, which is about time. When I'd discuss with her about doing something, she would very frequently use directives like "Wait until I've done so and so and so", or "When do you want to do something?" "Now?" "Maybe later!" or "I had such a goood time", or "Let's just have a good time." As an aside, I had mistyped her as an ISFp for the longest time ever (1.5 years?). Had I been armed with the skill to analyze dominant function, her Ni would've been as clear as day.

Anyway, that's all I have for today. I've got to get back to work, but if there's any questions or comments, please do let me know.

Why ENTps should, theoretically, learn the fastest

Another question that has puzzled me was: why exactly are ENTps supposed to be the best in understanding any new school of thought or scientific concept? Was it their insatiable curiosity? Was it that ENTps are thinking all the time?

The answer to the question is mainly a follow-up on my previous post, The Most Efficient Learning Algorithm. The takeaway from that post is that in general, people learn by reasoning general principles from specific examples. Once you have that result, it's obvious why ENTps (theoretically) learn the fast. I say theoretically, because it is certainly not always true in practice for a variety of possible exceptions. An ENTp's "Ne" works by generating all sorts of possible scenarios. So when an ENTp approaches a problem, he has a wealth of specific examples that he generated in his mind to analyze from, so he can just apply "The Most Efficient Learning Algorithm" with remarkable ease and readiness. And that's it.

Notice a couple very useful results. First, the ENTp will only learn fast in an area in which he has been generating ideas and thoughts. If he approached a completely new field, the ENTp would be starting at the same place as everyone else. Second, should an ENTp find himself in a completely new scenario, then he should immediately generate all sorts of scenarios to keep in his memory for analysis later. He should just keep generating new ideas, new possibilities, new scenarios, which is what he does best.

Efficient Algorithm (for humans) to Learn Math, Algorithms

How do you learn how a math equation, proof, or algorithm works? What's the fastest way? These questions have persisted in my mind as I go through school. The final answer that I arrived at was simply: work out an example of the algorithm in your head.

The learn-by-example algorithm is completely obvious in hindsight. That is perhaps the best and only way to learn concepts. In his Art of Computer Programming books, the "father of computer science" Donald Knuth said that the only way to understand how an algorithm worked was to give it an example input and see how it worked. When renowned physicist Feynman struggled to understand physics during his stay in Japan, he found that the simplest way to fully understand a physics concept was to construct some physical object that matched what his colleagues were describing, and then analyze the physics of that physical object, no matter how simple or ridiculous. To derive the new theorems of relativity, Einstein carried out specific thought experiments, not abstract mathematics. Every famous man of science has learned by thinking through specific instances! The concept was staring at me right in the face.

Another key to beating procrastination (part 2?)

Hello all,

I just discovered that there's a very simple, yet effective, tool for beating procrastination. It's just setting deadlines for yourself, and then striving to meet those deadlines. That's it.

EDIT: another very useful tool to use when you're first starting out is to pick some small goal to do. That'll at least get you moving, which you can then accelerate from.

An ENTP's "Life Rules"

Hey all,

Today's post isn't about socionics in particular. It's more about...rules that I live my life by. For several years now, I've been trying to figure out what rules I should be following in order to succeed. These rules aren't set in stone, but I thought I'd publish them here before I'd forget:

1. Time management is a myth. It's all about speed. Speed. Speed. Speed. Do what you need to do as fast as you can, as early as you can. If there's a homework assignment due, get started on it immediately. If there's an important TODO, do it!
2. "Flow" is important. I define flow to be the appropriate sequence of work that fits your energy fluctuations. Humans aren't machines. You can't just arbitrarily schedule work to be done. The work needs to have an order to them that'll conform to when you're active, when you're not so active, etc. As a tie-in to Socionics, this is all about Se.
3. Physical condition is extremely important, and relevant, to how well you work and how well your brain functions. As a tie-in to Socionics, this is about Si complementing Ne.
   
   As sub-rules: sleep is never a waste of time (Never!). Always eat when you're hungry. Always shower if you're feeling unclean, or a need to wash up.
4. Ask yourself: Are you willing to exert yourself to accomplish some goal? This is actually an important one for me. Most of the time, I do wishful thinking about the things that I want to do, not realizing that I might not have the time or the energy to actually accomplish it. So this important question acts as a especially nice reality check.

To conclude, I'd like to re-publish what I use this blog for. It's just an area for me to jot down my thoughts anonymously. For the first few months, psychology was the only thing on my mind. But that's changed now. My mind goes over a much broader range of topics now. To reflect that change, I'll be writing about anything that I want to write about. Anything's game :).

Plausible Theory on using Se for ENTps

I've been trying out a trick to push myself to do work: just ask myself whether I'm willing to exert myself to do the work.

The details right now are scant, mostly because I haven't thought it out thoroughly. But more details will come later.