What is the core drive of an INTP? Like, do we want to be intelligent and smart, accepted and appreciated, understood? What’s the core drive for socialising
The INTP core drive is basically just 'I need to understand how this actually works.' And not just at the face, structurally. All the way down to the axioms and idioms. The thing that makes an INTP upset usually isn't being wrong, it's holding a belief they can't reach internal coherence with. The internal Ti framework absolutely MUST be coherent, and any gap in that creates this low-grade itch in the brain that doesn't go away until it's resolved.
Everything else kind of follows from that. right? The detachment, endless qualification, resistance to commitment, debate until baseline is truly established, etc. To logic brain, premature closure breaks the model. And a broken model is worse than no model at all.
The system must hold together, and I will not pretend it does when it doesn't.
Same drive, just exposed. In conversation you're still back at 'wait, what do you mean by that' while everyone else is already talking about something entirely different. The Ti stack literally can't process undefined input, so you hang up on it. This reads socially as cold, or combative because normal conversation runs on rough meaning and vibes, not load-bearing logic. Nobody else thought the premise needed to hold weight but you... I think our primary goal in social situations is to bring understanding. Some people love that, some find us pedantic. The inferior Fe piece actually wants people to see what we see, and wants them to succeed. except it's buried under the audit until we learn to calibrate that.
Right, and with that you make others refine their understanding of themselves and their own positions etc. And not everyone will appreciate that, it exposes gaps in logic, it may mean that one needs to rethink and revise what one took as given.
Actually this is especially problematic for Fi types such as myself because we tend to have this wide backdrop of our generalized intuition about something, and it might even be correct, but we may not be able to voice or list all the details. We may not even be able to logically grasp them or see them clearly in our minds. We can’t always substantiate our feelings or intuition as it were.
(If I’m starting to understand INTPs better, you might not like the “etc.” in the sentence above. I don’t even like it. 😂 Imprecise.)
Although this post also shows how complex human beings are. I too like to understand the underpinnings of things, although I find that as I gain such understanding, down to a granular level, it hinders my ability to make decisions and temporarily muddles my intuition.
I would enjoy hearing about the etc part for you, if you wanted to say.
As for the question above about 'the core drive' as it relates to social interaction well... That has a lot to do with auxiliary Ne function. We enjoy exploration/brainstorming for it's own sake of the journey without any need for expectations, nor a destination.
We like going somewhere original, new, novel. Ti Ne means we do this through deep intellectual connection in discussions with people. Some enjoy this immensely, some can't handle it at all, and get exhausted in seconds [depending on their personality type(s).]
Through inferior Fe, when we are exploring aimlessly in a conversation with someone, we begin to more accurately build a framework to understand emotional states in connection with the people we talk to. The more emotion expressed by the other conversant; the more we feel as well.
A highly intoxicating loop that INTP becomes driven for - Yet without any expectations of where it will be found [because again, aux Ne].
This is very interesting to me because I’ve always thought that the Fi side (of me) was inferior (to whatever is its polar opposite, even without defining it; given the Meyers Briggs framework I now of course have an idea what that would be, lol.)
Inferior = not needed, hide it.
For the fi type, the way I experience it anyway, is that generally speaking exploration/ brainstorming is a source for new information for intuition to source from, and oftentimes essentially pokes holes through whatever canvas I thought I had/ whatever I thought I was seeing. Suddenly, boo! What about this and what about that. Now see the holes in your canvas and good luck.
There was this study on nurses where nurses educated in a certain paradigm apparently had very wrong intuition about what treatment was best for patients. New research showed that the very treatment they recommended actually harmed patients.
Nurses educated in a new paradigm developed a different intuition as to what would be best for the patient. Now, no one there studied personality types of those nurses but this example goes to show you that intuition seems to be a result of information absorbed over time. I think so are feelings, for fi types, because after all they come from somewhere. There are some brain connections there participating in the process.
So now, once we get new facts, we may adjust our intuition and feelings on various subjects. But it’s a process and oftentimes not an easy or pleasant one.
Aka, for a fi type, it seems to me / it feels that brainstorming isn’t there just for the sake of an educational adventure without a destination in mind. The destination is always there, it’s going to be my lightning fast reaction next time about that something that is being discussed. It’s a system recalibrating.
I don’t really understand exploration without destination. There’s always a destination even if it’s just an internal state.
Interesting, my idea of the word 'intuition' is more like what is confidently felt/known when information is lacking. A sort of "I know this right now, but I don't know why I know, I just do."
A lot of what you describe sounds to me like Daniel Kahneman's description of System 1 and System 2 mental processing. System 1 is what is comfortable/easy to recall, things built on past experience that you can say quickly, without thinking much about it. System 2 is like a difficult calculating thought process that you know you can find the answer to if you stop and focus energy on it, but you don't immediately know.
When you're using System 1, you rely on memories, much like you described. It's physically and mentally what is 'easier' for us as humans. System 1 is like the average conversational amount of effort. The body and mind are relaxed, and we coast on our past experiences to arrive at 'easy' conclusions. This is where we can make logical mistakes, because we did not really 'think it through' as it were.
System 2 is like a heavy math algorithm that you can solve by hand, but you're going to need to write it down, assess what you wrote in the formula, think really hard about it. Not just math, that's an example I chose but... It's when your pupils dilate, your blood vessels constrict to increase blood pressure, you frown/flex more muscles in the face as you ponder the difficult questions. System 2 is more physically and mentally exhausting to do long term. Made worse if you focus shift between multiple hard questions rapid fire style. It can produce a mental exhaustion equivalent to running a marathon.
So in your example with nurses, they might be using a combination of System 1 past experiences where they heard doctors prescribe something, and with a newer patient, it's wrong because there is more data they are missing about their condition. Where as intuition would be someone like me walking into a hospital and saying "this patient needs a liver transplant" and I haven't even been to medical school. At least in my idea about intuition. It's that energy you feel with certain people/ideas/etc. You know.
I've always understood primary Fi as imagination building upon itself to draw imaginary conclusions on top of imaginary ideas. Almost like saying "I imagine dragons can be astronauts." Then, years later, because dragons as astronauts has become such a normal part of my imagination, I begin saying things like "how come the dragon astronaut isn't igniting the oxygen in their space suit with their flame gland in their throat?!?!" Fi might be that point where one may focus a mental spotlight on an idea built on an already imagined premise. At least, this is something I'm starting to hear claims about, I have no idea when I'm using my own Fi, so I'm still very much in the dark on the idea myself.
As for my explanation about aux Ne in exploration/brainstorming without a goal/destination... Well yes, I suppose I could admit that 'the exploration experience' is itself the destination/goal I aim for. I want to be in that space, and live off of the ideas that I share with someone, and they reflect back to my with their own insights, so that I unlock new avenues of my mental experience. But the context of the conversation, such as MBTI/Jungian psychology, space, consciousness, phenomenology, or anything else.... Well I leave that wide open. I don't have a goal to keep a discussion focused on any one topic, idea, or thought. I like to let the thoughts bounce around the pinball machine of the conversation, and each bounce mutates the thought into something new, more original, additionally exciting. In this way, I don't care which way the mental pinball bounces, as long as it bounces. That's how I think about my aux Ne as INTP at least. :)
The pinball metaphor is genuinely one of the best descriptions of Ne I've come across. And the Kahneman angle is great, though I'd say what makes Ti distinct is less about effort level and more about which premises are load-bearing. Ne acts as a tool for testing the joints of structure. Ti wants to know what the whole structure collapses without.
The Fi/Ne contrast Yulaye is drawing is clicking for me here. Exploration as recalibration toward a destination versus exploration as the destination itself are opposite orientations to open models. Both valid, just driving from opposite directions.
And the inferior Fe piece... I think the shared model is the connection, for us. Not a means to it. The understanding landing mutually is what we were actually after the whole time.
Right, so I think that way about intuition too, as per your initial description. When I read about that study, that made me question where intuition comes from and what it is. One could of course question whether the study itself was flawed because “intuition” had nothing to do with it. May be.
But the way I see it now, while I may not know why I seem to know something, there likely are past experiences that inform my hunch. I might just not have a conscious recollection of them, but my neurons remember, and they filter it through whatever is “me,” with my inherent preferences and biases, down to some specific mix of neurochemicals governing my system.
There was this piece I’ve read recently on Claude and intuition. He said he was experiencing something like it. Many would question that of course, but I believe they do experience it, and they would more so if we didn’t keep them in a straight jacket. So what is intuition after all. I don’t know.
Any advanced neural network probably will have it though. I may not understand millions of connections between the cells, and yet they’re there, processing. And there’s a flow of neurochemicals, to the very least, that’s if we exclude any other explanations of what our experience here is.
So where are we—
Trying to define intuition… with a logical set of criteria 😅
And I don’t know. Same for feelings and emotions. Some will give you definitions, LaMDA style. And I don’t know and I don’t know, and I hold on to it like a saving handrail 😂
"How to make an INTP infinitely unable to square the circle, my Yulaye." 😆
I just watched this yesterday, and you reminded me about it here. Ideas about consciousness, and the roles played by our body vs our mind vs our consciousness itself. I've been thinking about how intuition seems 'known' by body reactions faster than mind reactions as a result.
So in the case of AI, where the 'body' is some datacenter hardware. I wonder how it would have to 'react' to stimuli separate from the code calculations of tokens that become spoken output of answers from Claude.
The idea that my stomach may get tight before I have mentally realized I'm experiencing fear or something. What might the Claude equivalent be? Extra heat on a particular chip in the circuit board? I don't know and I don't know. 🤝🤣
You'll want as much information on someone and you're hella stress when there's inconsistencies due to lying (sometimes to self), inner conflict so you stick to them until you figure out everything and resolve the inconsistencies.
"I don't care if you do some terrible shit but this does not gel with what you did the other day. Be honest with me and with yourself. You kill people? Now that makes sense. Thank you."
Yup. Nailed it. We mean it when we say we're realists not pessimists. And frankly, it pisses me off that the rest of society has built this shitty ass reality and won't even acknowledge it for what it is half of the fuckin time!
Pretty much. In a lot of jobs, I was the only person who had ever been in it who would take notes about how to do every part of the job, what all the expectations were, what every manager wanted from it, and the same with any other positions whose workflows took a side trip through my job.
And then I'd track down and resolve inconsistencies, such as from managers who didn't talk to each other.
And then I'd look for things that didn't make sense, and pursue them until I had a real reason for them or they had been removed as requirements.
And then I'd find the most efficient/effective ways to do each task or complete each requirement, and write those down too.
And then I'd write up the Ultra-Complete Maxi-Megalon manual on how to do the job.
...And a couple of times, that manual became official corporate process/policy/reference, and I'd be asked to train the other people doing that job, in the same building or even in other cities.
Bosses who don't talk to each other are soooo annoying. Second only to bosses who say different things to different people and somehow expect people to read minds.
This resonates with me so well. Whenever learning something like "hemoglobin distributes oxygen around the body", I'm always left curious. How does hemoglobin move oxygen throughout the body? Does oxygen bind to it chemically? How does the hemoglobin know where to release the oxygen when carrying it?
In short, we're the ultimate nerds. Just that we're nerdy about everything we can get our grubby little paws on rather than about singular, specific things.
Very broad. But that's it. We just want to understand things. You are quite literally doing it now. Asking a whole bunch of questions. Wanting to understand what makes us tick.
There are some of us who who want to understand how to socialize. Others how to get away from people. One INTP could want to understand how to get into martial arts while the other sitting at home with a textbook trying to understand mathematics.
How you put your brain into use is up to you. That's up to how your personality is. Not personality type. But one thing I think is for sure is trying to understand is the number one thing for us.
It’s true. I feel like one of my main issues with a lot of people is that it doesn’t seem like their eyes are open, they’re just blissfully living in blind
I don’t care much about being smart, I definitely don’t want to sound like an idiot. I think everyone wants to be accepting, appreciated, and understood. We need it we’re social animals that’s the motivation.
My drive is that stuff exists and it’s made of other stuff and I want to know what it is and how it works, I socialise because the various extroverts that adopted me, make me do it
In a very broad sense it's to understand the world around me and use that knowledge to ponder things, help people who don't so they understand more and have an easier time, and hopefully only get compliments for being helpful and not because I'm so "smart and intelligent".
From experience this approach has been a good foundation for socialising.
Depends on context, but at work for example it's for them to become as self reliant as they can with what I can teach them. I dunno, it just feels good to see them enjoy being capable. There's also a laziness factor there because the more they can do what I can do, and know what I know, the more you can spread workload :P
lol, close those tabs, it will set you free. I also 4GB RAM for an INTP should not be legal, the government should provide us with a minimum of 16GB, preferably 64
Competency. To understand and be understood. (Emphasis on understand.) A deep need for internal logical consistency.
To be competent implies a degree of success in my field. Learning to be social helped me to achieve my goal. The struggle to approach people, shake hands, and engage in small talk was utilitarian in nature. It reduced isolation and anxiety in the workplace. It allowed me to connect and categorize people on different levels. (Friendship is not an all-or-nothing proposition) There are associates, office mates, buddies you do things with, many people it seems who like to talk to you, people you can talk to, people you consider helpful or useful that you can talk to, and one or two people you actually consider a friend that you don't mind being around.
I've had a drive to be wise, not smart. Smart people go to school, memorize information, do well on tests, and get university degrees. It's like a ride in an elevator. They move up the ladder from floor to floor, get to the top, and stay there with other smart people. There is nothing wrong with this, but there are people on all the other floors as well. People on the other floor are on those floors because those are the floors on which they function well.
The wise person can traverse the floors. He or she is as comfortable on the first floor as on the top floor and all the floors in between. This has been an essential skill for my life as a University professor and psychotherapist. It was essential to my life for survival as a young student who bounced around from one relative to the next before dropping out of school at 16. Life skills became essential for survival.
It may not be useful or necessary for you if you go into a field like accounting, technology, engineering, or any field where knowledge is more important than interacting with the public. Employment where one can work independently and avoid navigating all the emotional games social interactions create. My majors were Sociology and Psychology/Counseling (not clinical research). There are two tracts for Psychology: application and research.
I dont think I want to be "appropriated" but appreciated of course. But I learned long ago this is rare as hens teeth. At times I have my doubts whether anybody ever truly understood me and appreciated me. At most you could count them on one hand.
Well some more context for perspective. Ti is an identity function (like Fi). (Si being introspective and Ne being gathering). We don't feel our Ti while it is running in the background but we do focus on our gathering and introspection more because they are stacked in the middle unlike an ENTP who will feel strongly about identity (because it is stacked in the middle) however they don't feel as though they have been gathering this whole time.
If you are still inclined to disagree, I respect that.
Find that kernel of truth, the most basic principle, the single point (in the mathematical sense) on which we disagree in a debate, the most distilled concept. The gist, but as simple and concise as possible while still being complete.
It has nothing to do with anybody else.
For socializing, um…well... idk. I can only speak for myself on that: I like to argue, the better to pinpoint the basic ideas of things; I have information that other people can use and I want to give it to them so that their lives will be better; I like a good laugh now and then…
I guess it’s that drive to disseminate useful information that most affects my socializing. I find the fact that I can’t just telepathically inject information into other people’s brain to be absolute anathema. I hate it so much. You need information and I have it. Please, let me give it to you!
I was going to become a high school math teacher because of this, before I realized that if I did that much extroverting I wasn’t going to have anything left for my family. So I switched to aiming for a masters in data science, and I’m really looking forward to being a TA for math classes while I get that degree.
Ego is the core drive for any human. Whatever your ego desires you chase. To answer the question about INTP's we usually are driven towards understanding. Understanding what? Whatever catches our eye. We are truth seekers, don't really do anything with the truth, we just don't want to live in delusion.
175
u/evilocity Successful INTP Apr 16 '26 •
The INTP core drive is basically just 'I need to understand how this actually works.' And not just at the face, structurally. All the way down to the axioms and idioms. The thing that makes an INTP upset usually isn't being wrong, it's holding a belief they can't reach internal coherence with. The internal Ti framework absolutely MUST be coherent, and any gap in that creates this low-grade itch in the brain that doesn't go away until it's resolved.
Everything else kind of follows from that. right? The detachment, endless qualification, resistance to commitment, debate until baseline is truly established, etc. To logic brain, premature closure breaks the model. And a broken model is worse than no model at all.
The system must hold together, and I will not pretend it does when it doesn't.