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The model certainly does predict that you would be predisposed to do that, yes!
As an INFJ who naturally wants to see everything, particularly other people, in terms of patterns and underlying meanings (even in cases where these "underlying meanings" may admittedly be delusional), there are few things that tickle my brain more than systems like MBTI which allow me to view people as individuated instances of stable generic archetypes, whose behavior can be explained by (or at least, statistically correlated with) underlying hidden variables. But it is precisely because I am highly conscious of this subjective bias within myself that I am all the more conscious of the need to submit my thinking to critical inquiry.
Well, no, they're not swept under the rug. It's simply an axiom of the system that when one of the perception functions is introverted, the other must be extroverted, and similarly with the judgement functions. "You're seeking on the outside what you lack on the inside", would be the poetic way of phrasing it I suppose.
With a large enough sample size and a precise enough conception of all the "cognitive functions", this could ultimately form the basis of a research program for empirically checking the model's predictions, although, as I have to reiterate, it's ultimately not behavior we're looking to validate, but rather internal phenomenology and underlying thought patterns. And because two distinct underlying thought processes can manifest as the same external behavior, any attempt to empirically validate the model will result in endless fractal complexity (you have to ask people to introspect, and you have to trust them to be honest, and you have to verify that we all agree on the meanings of the key terms and we're not talking past each other, and so forth. This does not in any way imply that the study of internal phenomenology is fruitless or pointless. It simply means that phenomenology is more of a task for philosophy than it is for empirical science).
Funny that you bring up Si in particular, because the most dramatically successful empirical prediction of the model to date for me came when I asked someone about Si, which I'll get to in a moment. I agree that the description of Si you quoted is vague and vulnerable to the Barnum effect. You really need to synthesize a lot of examples and a lot of different descriptions of the functions from different angles before a clearer picture starts to emerge. But nonetheless, I would submit that even the vague description of Si you quoted is already more interesting and less horoscope-like than you might expect.
What does it mean to think in a "stable" and "linear" fashion, anyway? Does everyone think the same, or do we think differently from each other? Could some people legitimately be described as thinking in a more stable and linear fashion than others? Consider for example the description that urquan (who I believe to be an INTP) gave of his thought process, and compare it to the description that FistfullOfCrows (who I believe to be an INTJ) gave of his thought process. urquan's is intrinsically highly verbal, while FistfullOfCrow's is only verbal after some conscious effort. I would submit that based on these descriptions, they don't think in the same way, and that furthermore urquan would be described as the more stable and linear one. This immediately raises a number of further questions: how many different "ways" of thinking are there, anyway? Are the two descriptions I cited just mere idiosyncrasies that are unique to the individuals in question, or could they represent isolated instances of more general patterns? Could your "way of thinking" be correlated with other psychological and behavioral traits?
Si-dominants (so, people who use Si as their "dominant function", the ISTJs and the ISFJs) seem to be more likely to report experiencing the external world through a sort of hyper-subjectivized lens, where direct sense perceptions are automatically associated in a literal, ineluctable way with memories and concepts that have personal meaning to the individual (I will simply include as a universal qualifier over all statements here that everything in individual psychology must ultimately be statistical rather than deductive, and not all "Si-dominants" will report the same experiences). An ISTJ on reddit described his experience as follows:
This is not how I experience the world. There's no Barnum effect going on here. The phenomenological experience described here is completely and utterly alien to me. I don't believe I've ever had any experience that could really be termed as a "flashback", much less an "automatic" one, even much less to the point that they became "annoying". I have personal memories, certainly, but choosing to explore them is always a voluntary process.
The Si-dominants seem to report experiencing the highest rate of involuntary flashbacks, although I have seen them sporadically reported among "secondary" and "tertiary" Si users as well. In general, any type that uses Si as one of their main functions seems to report an increased vividness of detail in personal memories, and simply a greater capacity for retaining personal memories in general (this could include both memories of personal life events, and "personal" memories in the sense of "I have a vivid memory of exactly what was on that Wikipedia page that I looked at last night"). One INFP (tertiary Si user) said that they were one day struck by a flashback of an unpleasant memory that was so vivid it was almost as if they were reliving it. I have simply never experienced anything like this, and I'm not even sure if I'm capable of having such an experience. In terms of raw sensory impressions, personal memories of actual events from my life seem to be about as vivid as imagined simulations of experiences I've never even had before.
Back to that "empirical success" I was talking about: based on a few facts about my mother's behavior and biography, I immediately narrowed her type down to ISFJ. There were simply no other choices. This is a Si-dominant type, so I would expect her to be more prone to experiencing these flashback sensations. She's never talked before about experiencing anything like this phenomenon in her life. But, I decided it would be an interesting test of the model, so I simply went and asked her, "mom, kind of a weird question, but do you ever just look at something, say in the house or when you're out walking or whatever, and you get a strong flashback that's kind of like-" and before I could even elaborate further, she immediately responded with, "oh my God yes, all the time!" And she launched into quite a vivid description of the experience. Frequently these flashbacks are to specific events from different points in her life, although sometimes they have a more abstract and ineffable "ancient" quality, which she always interpreted as visions of a past life (she's devoutly religious). She learned from a young age that not everyone has these types of experiences, so she learned to keep quiet about them and not share them. When I asked her if this is where her preference for routine comes from (she is extremely ritualistic in her behavior), she responded with "yes, that's exactly it! New experiences won't give me the flashbacks. I always like to have them with me, they help me feel safe and grounded". (I do not consider this to be a leading question. I too am rather a creature of habit, but in my case, that's simply due to a generalized anxiety about future possibilities. Describing my preferences as being related to any sort of "flashback" process is, as I have already stated, simply absurd to me.)
So, all in all a very fascinating event. Of course, one data point does not a successful model make. But, if nothing else, I am extremely grateful to MBTI for alerting me to the existence of these "exotic" phenomenological experiences, even if the distribution of these experiences in the general population does not ultimately match the distribution that would be predicted by MBTI.
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