Interview Lukas

I interviewed Lukas

I had a slightly difficult time with this interview, and I went down some wrong paths.

Major observations:

• Lukas has a slightly scattered discursive style. This is a rather general impression that I get from the range of topics discussed. Lukas does stop and think a lot and allows the conversation to get very directed by me, but still, I don't necessarily have any very powerful specific evidence to back up this claim. (Also, Lukas describes himself as "scattered" at 4:30).
• Lukas focuses most naturally on *what he does,* but does so inconsistently. For instance, at the very beginning of the video, Lukas seems a bit taken aback and unsure how to respond to the high degree of open-endedness in the "Tell me about yourself" question (which is normal). He then proceeds to start talking about some of the objective information about his life and *what he does* in his life, but only actually gives a small amount of disconnected information, and then relatively quickly, becomes unsure what to talk about, and stops rambling and asks for additional specificity. One could imagine watching other people, uncertain of what they should talk about in such a situation, talk at much greater length about what they do. Another example of Lukas failing to speak with uninterrupted attention to what he does, at 26:30 Lukas speaks for about 45 seconds about a job, and speaks ONLY about the features of the job, how long his breaks are, how much contact he has with colleagues and how this makes him feel, until after about 45 seconds I stop him and ask him what the job is (I rather doubt that an extroverted logical type would ever describe their job in that manner, without saying what the job is). Another similar example occurs at 46:30, where Lukas starts explaining a graphic design job but doesn't give detail about what the job is about.

We find Lukas at a point in his life, having graduated from his university studies only a very short time ago, when he is at a major decision point, in which most people try to decide on a career path. So, I spent considerable time, perhaps with didactic as well as diagnostic intent, discussing this decision, more time perhaps than was valuable; however, as an interviewer my goal was to talk with Lukas openly about this important decision occurring at this time in his life, and seeing what he thought about it. A few points emerged:

1. Lukas was not really sure about what to do with himself; one theme which recurred was a desire to keep his options open (normal, at this stage of life, but still interesting).
2. In a certain way, Lukas has not given a lot of thought to his career; he has some thoughts about it, but he seems to prefer to figure some things out later rather than making plans prematurely that he might feel restricted by.
3. Lukas spends a lot of time talking about what he is "interested in" (frequently occurring words: "interested" and "interesting"; we also explicitly discuss this topic at 17:30 and Lukas agrees with my observation, but doesn't comment further.) and, while relatively flexible, really does, I think, have a drive to primarily do things that are interesting.

My typing of Lukas is ILE. There are some additional observations that go into this typing.

• Lukas doesn't talk much about physical activities. While he had a few things to say in response to my question at 1:04:40 "What are your three favorite activities to do outdoors" -- he had trouble thinking of the third activity, and had not mentioned any of the three activities earlier (for example, in the "What kind of person are you?" question). He has very limited other things to say about his physical surroundings, in general. I concluded that Lukas was not an Si dominant type such as the SLI, even though in SLIs sometimes these types of comments are a bit muted and hard to find.
• Lukas spends very little time talking about individual character. Actually, there is almost no time in the entire video discussing the qualities of any other person, besides Luke himself, including when this discussion was more prompted. There was probably more discussion of (negative, angering) qualities of someone in the question at 1:10:00 asking about conflict, than there were in the questions that followed at around 1:18:00 about relationships and the direct question 1:27:30, "What about the friends that you had in college made them your friends" -- instead of answering this latter question by speaking about their character, he explained who knew who, who lived nearby, and what activities he liked to do with particular friends. It's not clear from his answer how closely he knew any different people. The greatest that was said about the qualities about his friends was "shared interests, shared values, things like that" and "We all liked to drink a lot" I conclude that a focus on Fi is less likely.
• Lukas is kind of ambiverted, expressing a range of activities to do with other people and in the outside world but also expressing a lot of nerdy, mental activities and time spent away from other people.

That said, besides ILE, the other type that would make the most sense, I think, is the IEE. In my opinion, there is a fair amount that Lukas has noncommitment and indecision characteristic of Ne types -- as we see for example in the restraint from strong judgment of the individual that took the car in the story about the conflict with the car. This story was not really conclusive about telling between the ILE and IEE. The delta theme of good-faith judgment, where judgment is slow and alternate explanations to "this person is evil" are preferred to quick conclusions, is on display in that story. However, ILE also is a type that prefers not to be judgmental; to tell the difference between ILE and IEE it is most helpful to examine other situations to see if there are any other times when it seems that the character of others is a principal focus of attention. That was the purpose of the subsequent few questions, and my interpretation from the subsequent questions, is that there is no evidence to suggest that character of other people is ever a strong focus.

Following the interview, Lukas and I had a discussion about this point, without reaching a strong conclusion. One thing that Lukas mentioned, correctly, is that the discussion about the guy who took the car can be seen as an evaluation of character and that Lukas expressed some negative feelings about that guy. It's true that despite the lack of strong judgment, that there was evaluation of character -- however, I contend that this is an easier situation to evaluate character of since the outcome of the situation is highly negative. If Lukas were the IEE (which may still be the case, as both delta NF types are often "shy" about displaying their inherently noncommittal judgment of others -- the IEE is still less shy). I'd like to see more evidence of good-faith judgment of other people to change my mind. I think there were a lot of opportunities to talk about people during the interview, but perhaps it would be more informative to ask Lukas about some specific people (it also felt to me, especially talking about the wide range of people at college in different cliques, that Lukas didn't keep very many if any people real close to the vest, but perhaps I'm wrong; I didn't ask him about it anyway).

I'm okay with seeing Lukas as having Te mobilizing and Fe demonstrative. However, it works just as well to see Lukas as having Ti creative and Te mobilizing -- where the focus on what people do is in relatively even competition with focusing on certain general structures and principles for understanding and interacting with the world. Some passive, inconclusive evidence for Ti: I think that there is some suggestion that Lukas has an ideological bent (for example of the discussion around 34:00 about political activism and the uncertainty around Lukas felt of how involved to be, as well as a past interest in Libertarian philosophy, briefly discussed around 1:19:30). There are some other small instances in the video which are not as easy to point out specifically where Lukas seems to be answering something based on a general principle understanding, and has an inclination to discuss the general principle, and doesn't think to address any specific supporting example -- I won't go through the video and find every such instance because that would be really hard, but one example, is at 36:30 through around 40:00 where I ask Lukas a complex question about how he wants to work, and he talks in general about how he liked working in certain ways, without reference to specific examples or details about those work environments.

I also feel that Fe mobilizing fits relatively well; at times in answering these last few questions about socialization, Lukas mentioned things like how he wants to be part of a community and he is bothered by being alone and not being part of a group (43:15) -- Perhaps this is rather general and not necessarily entirely conclusive. On the whole though, there are bits of nonconclusive, circumstancial evidence that lead me to solidly prefer ILE to other suggestions like IEE.

What are some other possibilities? LII comes to mind. It might be possible, but I don't think it is preferable; I would expect an LII to be less active and more consistent.