Extraverted Intuition (Ne)

What does Lenore mean by "Extraverted Intuition"? (Often abbreviated "Ne".)

Quasi-Defining Statements

p. 196: "Intuition draws our attention to context and we adapt to sensory events in terms of it."

p. 197: "Once we've grasped a whole pattern, we can envision options that don't yet exist. Indeed, one of the drawbacks of Intuition is that it conjures up a future before we know very much about the present. For example, given enough elements to suggest a star or a square, we have a hard time not filling in the blanks and seeing the complete image."

p. 198: "...to leap from a few immediate cues to a quick impression of the whole..."

p. 223: "Extraverted Intuition would move us to unify our sense impressions with their larger context, thereby creating new options for meaning and response."

As a dominant attitude:

p. 224: "Extraverted Intuitives are right-brain types who deal with their sense impressions by unifying them into larger outward patterns. An ENP physician, for example, may realize, with sudden insight, that several unexplained symptoms are actually part of a single disease. As an Extraverted type, the physician has no doubt that the disease syndrome really exists. The pattern was always there, waiting for someone to discover it."

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Proposed Definitions

#1: What is manifest is a reflection of a greater reality

Extraverted Intuition (Ne) is the attitude that what is manifest (apparent, observable) is a reflection of a greater reality. The dinosaur bone hints at the dinosaur, the cloud hints at the coming thunderstorm, the thunderstorm is a reflection of the rotation of the Earth within its atmosphere. Whatever you find, there is something more to find: a broader context, a whole, which will change your understanding of the part.

#2: The unknown is filled with wonder

Extraverted Intuition (Ne) is the attitude that the unknown is filled with wonderful things. To make use of them, you must be flexible in your goals. If you try to set things up so that only something known to be good can happen, you close your eyes to the zillions of opportunities that you can't know or define in terms of what you know now. As more of the unknown becomes clear, the more it changes your understanding of the (currently) known.

To live, then, you need to continuously welcome the unknown, by always being ready to adjust in unanticipatable ways. What seems like a mistake is not a mistake when viewed in a larger pattern--and it's your job to find that larger pattern.

(Compare Introverted Sensation, which leads to the exact opposite attitude toward the unknown. Ne says to anchor yourself nowhere, so you can continuously adapt to exploit unknown opportunities; Si says to anchor yourself firmly to what matters regardless of change, in order to keep out the unknown and its attendant, unknowable risks.)

#3: Orientation by searching

Ne is curiosity (but of course it's not that simple). Describing it as "looking" isn't deceptive, because Ne as an attitude is one of seeing what's there. The idea is that possibilities are visible in the Ne sense.

There's a film called the Zero Effect. The main character is probably an INTP. A quote from the film that encapsulates Ne:

"If you go looking for something in particular, your chances of finding it are very bad, because of all the things in the world, you're only looking for one of them. If you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good, because of all the things in the world, you're sure to find some of them."

Even if you look for anything at all, and find nothing, then you found something. You just didn't find anything new, but this is an opportunity in disguise. That's Ne. It's the attitude that searching is inherently valuable because no matter what outcome you get you find something.

(Tangent: This also highlights the importance of Lenore's idea about developing the secondary. Ne by itself is very indiscriminate. There's a point at which "looking for anything at all" really risks being too randomly useful or too randomly pointless to be helpful. A dominant Ne type needs to be able to distinguish between the relative importance of things, or be able to identify the needs and people they really care about, to make the most of it.)

#4: The "outside the box" attitude

Extraverted Intuition (Ne) is orientation by what is outside the box and how it could change the way people are thinking if the box were expanded.

"The box" means the context that governs the way people are giving meaning to objects of attention. Going "outside the box" means broadening the context: exploring or including things that are outside the currently accepted definitions and assumptions.

Some examples: How would the restaurant industry change if really good, healthy food became available very cheaply? How would physics change if the speed of light were a constant in every reference frame? How would our culture change if we had portable phones that we could carry with us everywhere, instead of having each phone tied to a specific location? How would this organization change if we brought in my friend Terry? Terry brings a peculiar focus on the bottom line: that will alienate some people and endear him to others, likely causing various relationships and alliances to shift. See "Outside the Box" in Improv.

#5: Snapshot of Reality

Ne is no different from its Se cousin. It creates a singular snapshot of the current state of reality. Unlike Se which is sensory based, Ne is everything extra-sensory. This includes everything that senses cannot pickup. (Disclaimer: "Senses" are not limited to just the 5 senses, all additional sense must be included i.e. balance, acceleration, kinesthetic etc.) For Ne primary type ENTP that snapshot is dissected with the Ti function to see just how all of it works and fits together, while ENFPs use it to discern how to manipulate human relations and feelings. Einstein's famous thought experiments painted an impossible picture of reality which could then be studied.

This is what "outside the box" refers to, because human definition of box is an entirely sensory phenomena, everything is measured in terms of senses. Box defined in intuition would relate to this snapshot, which has a specific scope, its also a box. So Ne thinks outside the physical box, but it is within its own mental box. This isn't to say its inferior to true outside the box thinking which is actually Te.

To investigate this Ne and Ni must be compared. Ni would be the rolling of a camera, taking successive images of a situation until the events of which conclude. In order for this to have any meaning some arbitrary point must be defined by Extroverted Judgement. An investigation of a crime scene, probing witnesses for the events attempts to build a reconstruction of what occurred. Ni would piece together enough pictures to create a record.

Ne on the other hand simply takes an intuitive snapshot of the scene and uses the internal logic of the event. Specific occurrences within the event may or may not have happened because it is impossible for blood to splatter etc. etc.

When dreaming Ne paints a portrait of reality and then attempts to understand it (Ti/Fi), while Ni moves through frames to eventually stops at some arbitrary point (Te/Fe). Ni is brick by brick from the ground up, Ne is large scale demolition, taking large chunks of an idea and refining down. Ne is a completed sudoku puzzle and Ti makes all the numbers fit. Ni is a chess match where every move is recorded along the way and Te determines where something can move at a given time (also fits into gameboard exegesis). So Te is "Outside the Box" because it defines that it wants to go to another box, which is within a larger box (Ni). While Ti wants to study the current box, and Ne says "Hey there's this other box."

Whether you switch to another box as an Ne type depends on whether you want to study this box longer, because you are Ti dominant INTP, or whether you are Ne dominant ENTP.

This also fits with the Static/Dynamic qualities of Ne/Ni. That Ne wide angle snapshot is always possible, regardless of what reality is like now. While Ni is always in motion along a course of events.

#6: Exploration and transformation

Ne, or extroverted iNtuition, is dominant for ENxP, secondary for INxP, tertiary for ESxJ and inferior for ISxJ. It is an outwardly exploratory attitude that encourages us to change, reinvent and experiment with the external world in order to find new and interesting combinations and patterns. Ne looks for novel outcomes and imagines how the things around you could be changed into other, more interesting things. Ne sees new information as part of a larger, emerging, as of yet unseen pattern that extends far beyond the self, and whose meaning will continue to change as the context grows and we discover more of the all-encompassing pattern. Rather than directly confront an issue, Ne will often broaden the context until the issue seems insignificant by comparison to the much bigger and more expansive ideas it imagines.

As with all extroverted functions, Ne needs to be validated by external/objective information to have meaning. So Ne users will often have many ideas very quickly but not know if they're good until they hear other people's reactions to them, or have a chance to experiment and see what happens. Ne wants very badly to be understood and appreciated by others. Note that Ne songwriters (e.g. Brandon Boyd, ENFP) will typically write enough context clues and such into their work that you can put the pieces together and infer what they were thinking when they wrote it. They want others to put the pieces together and get it. They like to learn things via a hands-on, figure-it-out-by-experimenting-as-you-go, direct experiential approach (in this way they are similar to Se) but they are more focused on what their surroundings might be changed into than what is immediately tangible