Usually an INTJ wins an arguement because they are so damn persistant. (willing to sink a whole lot of energy just to show that their reasoning is right). I'm just glad there seems enough common ground and civility in this tribe that we don't split hairs for all eternity.

Well no, actually.

When I was younger, sure. Now I choose my battles.

I can remember feeling upset and arguing with people a lot, once upon a time. Now I say what I have to say once (if that), and then I stop.

Seldom is there a real opportunity to change anyone's mind about anything that matters. And just "winning" -- ie, bullying someone into admitting that I'm right -- is so much more trouble than it's worth.

I do tend to laugh a lot at what I hear, which I find much more fun than being right. Gets me odd looks in meetings at work, though.

It gets on my nerves when the other person is arguing from an unexamined position and won't make the effort to re-evaulate hir own "facts", despite hard evidence.

I find that it works best to ignore the ad hominems, present and re-present your case, and keep requesting for evidence for the other's position, quickly slaughtering erroneous reasoning.

Unf., if I'm not checking myself, my arrogance may get the best of me and I'll say something erroneous. I hate having my emotions get the better of me and hubris kicking in and biting me on the ass.

I used to be nicknamed "the gunfighter" because I couldn't turn down an argument but that gets *very* tiring.

Now that I am older I take malicious pleasure in waiting until someone complains about the very thing we discussed and say
"Just as I said."

If they weren't going to be logical earlier, they won't be then, but at least *I'm* okay with it.
Also learned in the course "dealing with Difficult People" that you can't change them, you can only change how you react to them. So now I let it get so far and then I walk away and
save some oxygen.

Discussions are ephemeral, results tell the tale.

Used to spend hours draining my energies and feeling exhausted afterwards in the naive conviction that people simply lacked information - actually what they lack is logic, you can't teach them how to be rational. So my suggestion is, get better at finding very sharp ways of dismissing others' foolishness, in a way that won't require further explanation. You won't accomplish anything anyway, but at least you will keep a sense of coherence and keep your energy.

This thread was a good Reality Check for me----- so I am not the only one who gets irritated when others argue from an unnecessarily emotional vs. rational point of view! I recently had to deal with a *supposedly* intelligent, rational, logical person who happened to be a superior at work (she's brand new-- there only a couple of weeks, so she has the title but doesn't know anything about our work environment or employees). The situation was that probably 20 of our employees have complained about one contract employee, because this person CANNOT do her job--- she's endlessly stupid, disorganized, silly, incompetent, argumentative, and refuses to follow our policy/procedure. She makes the same errors every day, and resists any efforts at improvement. She's just not cut out for the type of work she does, and nothing anyone says or does to help her seems to make any difference. We have maybe 15 different contract employees who come in to perform these same tasks, and she's the only one we complain about. Everyone's complaints are virtually the same--- and the contract employee's own supervisors have even written her up for the same issues, i.e. there's a pretty solid foundation of evidence that we're not making this up. So this "new supervisor" approaches me to try to pick apart why it is that I "have a personal problem" with this employee, why I "say" she can't do her job, etc. The supervisor has a PhD, and starts this psychobabble about all the possible, complicated psychological factors that are probably at play between us, trying to tie it all to our respective childhoods, etc. Then she came clean that she was going into all this because the employee had broken down into a big wailing crying spell---- which the new supervisor fell for, hook, line, and sinker. Her actual job performance is now off-limits for us to talk about, because her FEELINGS are hurt, and she's complaining that people are "harassing" her. Argghhhhhhhhh.

It was obvious that this supervisor was dealing with this from a completely *emotional* perspective---- none of us were allowed to say this person was incompetent, or should be fired, because...? Because the supervisor felt sorry for her. No amount of logic would sway her. If I said "there's really nothing to substantiate that this is 'between her and me'--- not with the same complaints from 20 other people", she said "butttttttt, we're not talking about those OTHER people, we're talking about why the two of you can't get along". When I tried to itemize essential job tasks that this employee has to do to be effective (and not foul up what the rest of us are supposed to do!), the supervisor said "butttt, that has nothing to do with YOU! What does HER job performance have to do with anyone else?". Everyone knows that if the person in that contract employee's position screws up, it can ruin the next 8 hours for the rest of us; a lot hinges on her work. When I said "but I run the department--- and it's my JOB to see that things go smoothly---- and this one person's mistakes and attitude are effecting the rest of my employees", all I got was a condescending look and "come on now, tell me what's REEEALLY going on between you two".

It was an interesting little "exercise"---- watching this supposedly intelligent person try to exclude all evidence, all objective standards re job performance, all factual/verified complaints from others------ all so that she could dwell on how the complaints "hurt this employee's feelings". I cannot STAND to be around people like that! Had my job not been on the line, I would've said "You are full of shit. What I see right now is that somehow YOUR 'feelings' have gotten into this mix, and are keeping you from seeing the facts. The employee cannot do the job, period, the end. I don't care about how she 'feels' about that. I don't care about how you 'feel' about it." Do these people ever get called on their shit, re their absence of logical thought????

People only drive me crazy if I have to work with them. : P

I'm reading a book right now by the author that wrote "Emotional Intelligence" awhile back. It's called "Social Intelligence." He postulates that a high and low road are in operation during our communications with others. The high being the analytic/reasoning process and low being emotional cogntion.

If most of our communication with others is distant such as online discussions we are unable to accurately determine the intended message content being conveyed. I kinda think INTJ's naturally place less importance on the low road and this may create stress in just about all forms of interactions with others.

I think everyone gets driven crazy by others at times. INTJ's are the ones who know its because we have superior argumentive/discussion skills ;-) .