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Notes -
So what happens when a Fi gets programmed with highly neurotic/anxious software? Are they discernible to other people as any different from an Fe?
Good question! Under the schema I've presented, they could end up as behaviorally identical, yes. But I don't see that as much of a problem. The point isn't really to talk about behavior (nor is the point even to "sell" you on any particular theoretical view), but rather the point is to talk about the underlying phenomenological experience / thought pattern behind the behavior (which is what Jung's thought is really all about in the first place; the "personality type" stuff, based as it is on behavioral stereotypes, is just a ruse for the normies). Two people can exhibit identical behavior for very different internal reasons.
I believe I've shared this anecdote on TheMotte before, and it's one of the anecdotes I reflected on when introspecting on my own "herd animal" nature. When I was young and naive in the early 10s and I first discovered wokeism, I was immediately taken in by the "vibes". It just felt really good, y'know? I wanted to be a part of a group, I wanted to base my identity on a group, I saw that these people were enjoying themselves and I wanted to be part of that so I could enjoy myself too. But relatively quickly, my rationality kicked in and I realized that their actions violated principles of fairness and impartiality that I held to be important, which made me not want to be woke anymore.
So the movement was from sentiment (based on what I perceived to be the sentiments of others), to dispassionate analysis. And due to typical-minding, I assumed that this was essentially a universal human experience; of course everyone makes vibes-based decisions to determine their identity, and if anyone says they don't, they're probably lying because they're ashamed to admit it. But now all this stuff has got me thinking, well, maybe it's not a universal human experience. Maybe there are (neurotypical) people who don't weigh the vibe in the room, don't care about the vibe in the room, maybe they don't even perceive the vibe in the room because they've deemed it not even worth their time to assess it (obviously in the case of someone with say Asperger's, it would be different because their ability to pick up on emotional and social cues is actually compromised). In their case, they might make the opposite movement, from dispassionate analysis to sentiment: first a dispassionate "well, everyone seems to think woke is right, and they probably have good reasons, so I'll believe it too", but then their own internal "alarm bells" start going off indicating that it doesn't fit their own personal identity. And they could do all this without ever consulting the overall "vibe" of the collective. So we could have two individuals who exhibit identical behavior via very different processes.
Of course the point being, there is no way to observe these underlying processes behaviorally, you just have to introspect on yourself or ask others to introspect on themselves and report back.
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