Another broad theme that emerges from Aarcha's narratives about his world, especially his limited social world, is that he has great difficulty conjuring specific examples to support his ideas, when I asked him repeatedly. Sometimes, his examples contradicted or were not very much like the general principles he described -- like when he spoke about his slightly abrasive "protectiveness" over his sister's ideas, I asked for an example, and he talked about how she doesn't like eggs and he considers that it's important to consider that "it's standardly cool [in pop culture] to like eggs" (39:30 -- for what it's worth, I found this idea in particular very confusing), or how they discussed what were their favorite colors (41:40). Perhaps these were ideas that came to mind for him that weren't much like the theme he expressed of being protective over someone else's ideas -- but anyway he had difficulty articulating much specific detail. Another example of a directly inconsistent narrative (at 56:10), he said that over some time he changed his behavior to become less abrasively demonstrative about expressing his annoyance with other people and correcting their ideas, and less involved in debating things (these ideas first emerge a few minutes earlier, from the timestamp given might not be fully clear, for the whole segment listen from 51:30), then asked what changed (56:35), he says that nothing changed, that all of the things he does now and the kind of person that he is now, is the kind of person he always has been.
My typing of Aarcha is the IEI. The other interviewers all came to different other conclusions, so I will attempt here to explain some of the specific reasons why I reached my own.
Aarcha makes reference to his "lexical problems" and he speaks in more specificity about how his learning disabilities have affected his life and career, beginning around 59:45. The exact nature of the learning disabilities are not entirely clear, and probably not that important; we can certainly see some difficulties Aarcha has in regular communication between human beings, as alluded to with his complex speaking style above. As with all mental disabilities generally, the etiologies are not clear; maybe Aarcha's difficulties with attention and speaking are an extension of the personality variables of thinking slowly and carefully and wanting to present the self in a precise way, or perhaps, theoretically, the difficulties with speaking are some other condition that is extraneous to personality, and if we could remove it, the true personality could shine through more quickly. If anyone knows how to remove mental disorders to see the underlying personality, please comment below how to do it. Certainly it is true from hearing him talk briefly about his history with these difficulties that Aarcha's learning disabilities are in at least some respect responsible for the highly diminished nature of his social world and especially his career prospects. Whether or not these challenges are a natural feature, but unusually pervasive feature of a more usual personality, or a separate disorder, or some mix of both, is not very clear, and I don't think anyone else can know the answer to that either. My point in bringing it up is this: regardless of the etiology of lesrning disabilities, I think it is particularly useful to notice that Aarcha might not match our expectations of certain types especially in their styles of communication. At one point during the interview, I thought that Aarcha might not be the ILI, since the ILIs with Fi mobilizing would often have a more clear decisive characterization about the people around them, even if they are still unsure about how to evaluate their ideas of people normatively. But, in the context of Aarcha's overall difficulty with expressing himself clearly, maybe that's not the right expectation. At the same time, I would say that Aarcha's comments throughout the interview, when he can express them, were very candid and intentionally open, even in a potentially vulnerable setting.
Aarcha seems to be a clear introvert, he describes himself somewhere near the beginning of the interview as a "social extrovert", he elaborated that by this he means someone who gets energy from interacting with people, likely energy that he does not normally have himself. He describes himself subsisting almost entirely in a virtual social world, with pretty few other activities, at least few enough activities that he considers notable enough to tell us. This may become more common in the future, but the Ni dominant types are those most at home living in a mostly virtual world behind their computer screens, relatively disembodied, interacting with people mentally and with little need to go different places.
There is an unusually clear description of source fluidity at 14:00. Source fluidity is the idea that individuals valuing Ti/Fe do not prefer to discriminate between information from different sources (generally, people), instead, they will take information available from any source with a willingness to assess that source's motivation and biases, and deciding whether that information is correct or consistent, based on "the logic of it", and whether it is consistent with other information they know. It is fair to say that in his description Aarcha emphasizes the Ti part of whether information is consistent with his knowledge and could make sense in the way he understands things, than the Fe part about deducing unknown motivations of other sources. Source integrity is in contrast to source fluidity, preferred by Te and Fi valuing types, who prefer to be able to find sources (generally, people) that they trust, with which they can have unambiguous communication, or unidirectional flow of information, without having to filter it.
Aarcha's social anxiety that he describes, seems to betray a rather extensive conscious awareness and concern for how other people perceive him (This topic is under discussion loosely for the entire last 30 minutes of the interview, beginning at the question around 1:15:20). This is very unlike the ILI with Fe vulnerable or other types with weak Fe. Aarcha also speaks about his tendency towards being accommodating and his intentions to be sensitive to other people in certain circumstances (around 1:33:00). Likewise, he responded in the affirmative to my question about the authenticity of his self-presentation (at 1:26:45) It's possible that Fe suggestive types like the LII and LSI can be aware of, and quite nervous about, how other people are perceiving them -- usually this skill comes with growth and is not so accessible early in life. Aarcha is relatively young and, at a glance, seems like not a terrible nor excellent self-observer, it seems more likely that this focus would be coming from a type with strong Fe as opposed to suggestive Fe. I would also say that among the more clear topics that Aarcha talked about in an energized and clear-minded way, related to his lengthy discussion about his relationship to his sister, which I intentionally kept asking him questions about for this reason, roughly around 25:00 to 45:00. (In the spirit of disclosure, I have some outside knowledge not pertinent to this interview prior to starting, that suggested that this was among the more clear-minded topics for Aarcha to discuss). I think it would be fair to say that, while Aarcha has difficulty articulating the character of his sister and other friends and family members, he has difficulty articulating a wide variety of things during the entirety of the interview, and that he does have some things to say about the character of his sister and himself, and the interplay between the two of them based on the sorts of people that they are, although it took a little bit of time to get him to focus on them, he was much more interested in talking about his own thoughts and responses than the character of other people. This is broadly consistent with a preference for Fe, but also room for Fi, characteristic of demonstrative Fi in the IEI. Arguably, it can also match a Ti dominant type.
Aarcha describes himself as having a self-absorbed style of expression (52:20, the comment is out of context but the context is as a less serious aside anyway), but more pervasively as having a "silly" or "goofy" lighthearted style. Both IEIs and ILIs have a propensity for guardedness and "goofiness" originating from an tendency to see the world around them as unimportant, and to make fun of it in certain ways. When asked for examples of weightier, more important subjects, he didn't really describe any. But he came to this description over and over, that some things about him, especially the way that he was inclined to correct other people's ideas (or, as he pointed out, to protect, and "affirmingly make them believe their views that they already believe, better" 53:00) was simply, naturally his disposition, the way he often is. It seems to me that Aarcha has a pretty big naturally argumentative side, and that he lives in a world of intellect and ideas, critical of other people's contributions and with his own strong opinions about how to think about things. Alpha types like the LII do live largely in a world of ideas, but are not so naturally argumentative, and are more open-minded, receptive, and accommodating, and not always as definitively producing their own ways to think -- or to the extent that they are, they are more accommodating about other people's ideas and not so inclined to have clear judgments about them. In my opinon, Aarcha's assessment of other people has at least as much of a component of evaluating and judging other people based on their ideas as their character -- he speaks only very loosely about other people's character, it's certainly possible that in certain ways he judges other people by their character. By contrast, he somewhat more directly describes that he judges other people by his ideas "I mean, we're all people and we all [...] don't like something, we all have sentiments of disliking people when they believe something differently that we find annoying/asinine as hell and it's probably good to acknowledge that aspect of ourselves" (1:42:40). That judgment based on ideas, seems a little more clear than his judgments by character, although it is certainly possible that he judges by character as well. We see this archetype very often in the socionics community of IEIs who are more intellectual (and as Peter Bartl pointed out many years ago, more often in men) -- who nonetheless have a high focus on the way they appear to others (being intellectual and "nerdy" is an "acceptable" social role for men more often than women, although of course female IEIs can also sometimes be quite intellectual). There are many examples of this throughout the socionics community throughout the years, just to mention a few examples in my opinion for those familiar with the long history of the community, ArchonAlarion, Simon Jacobsen, and Paul Abrusley (aka hitta).
Another point, Aarcha spoke relatively later on in the interview about the idea of "social games" -- it is interesting and perhaps more likely for someone attuned to the emotional environment to describe social games, but probably a variety of other types might also discuss things in this way, and Aarcha's explanation of the reasons and dynamics for those social games, when prompted, was not very elaborate -- mostly again he spoke about his own possible foibles that people might view negatively. In my opinion, the evidence that Aarcha is focused on and aware of the way he comes across to others, his family and peers, is stronger than the idea that he is very aware of other people with hidden ulterior motives -- it is also not clear that he isn't keenly aware of that, and maybe there is evidence unrelated to the interview that he is inclined to attribute such motives in some cirucmstances.
Regarding alternatives and the other conclusions from the other interviewers -- the other types that were mainly discussed were ILI, LSI, and LII. I considered ILI somewhat more carefully during the interview -- I think it is preferable to see Aarcha as a beta introvert with Ti and Fe values. LII I didn't consider nearly as carefully in this current interview, I think Aarcha has some signals of being quite distant and reserved from the real world and also seems, as I said before, argumentative, in a way that makes all of the Ne valuing types quite unlikely. LSI, being the closest type to IEI, is more interesting, and maybe merits some more consideration. It is very easy for me to see Aarcha as emphasizing Ti and Ni and Fe, instead of Ti and Ni and Se, as the LSI might do. As noted above, the Ti dominant type, especially those that have leveled up their awareness in life, can be aware of the way they come across to others, indeed, they can be quite obsessively concerned about how they come across to others. So perhaps that is not impossible. But overall, I see suggestions that Aarcha has Ti and Ni and Fe, instead of Se, and I don't think it is preferable to think of him as a Ti dominant type compared to an Ni dominant type.
One rebuttal made by some other interviewers with different conclusions is that they liked many aspects of seeing Aarcha as IEI, but that they prefer Fi over Fe values. I already addressed that at some length. Another argument was that they did not think of Te vulnerable as very appropriate. If so, LSI or LII wouldn't help much since Te ignoring in my view, wouldn't be much different at all; Ti is still prioritized and winning, and Te is still absent. I don't have a difficulty seeing Aarcha as Te vulnerable, and seeing Ti as highly prioritized without Te. Possibly, this objection comes from Aarcha's critical nature and his tendency to focus rather decisively on the world of ideas, and opinions, and debates, and the way in which other people are inclined to think correctly and accurately about things. Certainly, those are features of how gamma NTs with Te and Ni think as well, but I think it is reasonable to see Aarcha as navigating the world of ideas and ideologies, and in a highly critical way, while prioritizing consistency, and concordance with prior expressed knowledge, rather than measurability and applicability; those topics weren't brought up in the course of interview (although things like, expressing other people's positions faithfully and with integrity so as not to misinterpret them, did come up, the meaning of which is more difficult to interpret). A difficulty thinking of concrete examples, and a concomitant propensity for unconstrained, magical thinking is something that IEIs tend to often have difficulty with -- with Aarcha there is no magical thinking that we can see from this interview, but there is an obvious dramatic difficulty with concreteness in his examples. Maybe it is less significant, if there are other speech problems -- but still, it seems more like an IEI's expression of Te to me than any of the other alternatives.
