SM's biological theory of MBTI

[scorpiomover]

This is going to stretch over several posts.

Biological parallels:

The 4 functions of Thinking, Feeling, Sensation and Intuition, have biological parallels:

1. The Thinking function corresponds to the nervous system.
2. The Feeling function corresponds to the endocrine system.
3. The Sensation function corresponds to the sensory clusters all over the brain, that deal with vision, hearing and language.
4. The Intuitive function corresponds to the neocortex, that deals with hazard perception.

Extroversion and introversion also have biological parallels:

Extroversion corresponds to the Sympathetic Nervous System.
Introversion corresponds to the Parasympathetic Nervous System.

The brain also has a conscious self, and an unconscious self. I am unsure of the biological parallel at this time.

 

[scorpiomover]

How the functions work:
Let's take the Sensory system, more specifically, vision. When you see a blade of grass, what do you actually see? Your retinal cells get signals indicating little dots of light hit their photo-receptors. Those signals then get fed along the optical nerve to the vision centres of the brain.

So when you see grass, all you actually see are little dots of green. How does the brain change "dots of green" into "blade of grass"?

Also, other collections of little dots of green become "green car". How does the brain know the green dots are a green car and not a blade of grass?

So the Sensory system can take dots of different colours, convert them into a 3D image, and then identify different shapes within them, providing you with almost a Heads-up display overlaying your visual data.

So it's doing a massive amount of data processing, by performing image processing.

What if someone spliced their optic nerve and sent in signals from a computer? The Sensory system would just see that as image data, and process it similarly. So then it could be used as a general-purpose abstract problem-solving machine.

The same could be done with all the endrocine system, the nervous systems, and the neocortex. Data can be piggy-backed onto their systems, so that they can problem-solve.

However, each system will have its own technology and each technology has its own quirks that are emergent properties of its design. So the functions would all be able to solve most problems, but in different ways. Each will have their own quirks, that the others would not.

 

[Old Things]

Thanks for sharing!

 

[onesteptwostep]

It's interesting. I think if someone made a good video about it it'd be more impactful. There's a huge MBTI craze is South Korea so this has some potential to turn into money

 

[ZenRaiden]

Yes, interesting stuff.
I wonder about feeling and endocrine connection.
Do you think in your model its appropriate to say that thinkers have lower arousal threshold for having their neurons forced into more fluid activity.

For instance as a thinker I often hear people say things like "Don't bother"" Don't think about it" etc.
It feels like we thinkers tend to think even about things others tend to not think about.

How would your model account if you can explain it, for why INTP brains are so dissociated between thinking and action.
We tend to think lot more than we act.

ENTJs INTJS ISTPs and ENTPs INFJstend to act lot more in congruence with their thinking.

INFP also tend to act less in line with how they feel and think.