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more amusing when we look at his business practices. I would venture to say that there few<br />
company Presidents who bring a math book to work.<br />
It is rather surprising how much time Bowditch managed to squeeze in for mathematics. Referring<br />
to his youthful days, Bowditch noted, "Before nine o'clock in the morning, I learned all my<br />
mathematics." His biographer/son observed, "There is no doubt that taking the whole year together,<br />
he got as much as six, and perhaps eight hours a day, for his mathematics, besides the time devoted<br />
to his business and other pursuits." Bowditch seems to have made very good use of his time.<br />
One of the interesting differentiations Keirsey makes between NTJs and NTPs is that the former<br />
tend to be more focused on a single project than the latter. As Choiniere and Keirsey (1992) put it,<br />
"[NTJs] focus sharply and very single-mindedly on their ever-present projects, rather like a<br />
flashlight whose beam is very narrow but very intense and stable." NTPs, by contrast, tend to flit<br />
back and forth between a more varied assortment of projects which sit at varying degrees of<br />
completion. We see this tendency in Bowditch's habit of working at length (i.e. years and years) on<br />
the same project, i.e. translating Laplace.<br />
However, the NTJ focus does not mean that INTJs will not learn about everything they can lay their<br />
hands upon. It was observed of Bowditch that, "His intimate friends have often been surprised at<br />
finding him conversant with subjects apparently the most foreign from his favorite studies; and one<br />
of the most profound scholars among them observed, that he could hardly form an adequate<br />
estimate of the extent of his general attainments." Bowditch was capable of sticking with his<br />
projects for decades on end, but he still gobbled up information on quite diverse topics.<br />
Many an NT has gotten a comment like, "What are you learning ____ for? What good could that<br />
possibly ever do you?" (In fact, many NTs ask this question themselves, particularly during<br />
school.) As an NT, Bowditch had a justification for being a knowledge vacuum cleaner: "...when<br />
any doubted about the importance of any kind of knowledge, because, for the time, it seemed<br />
useless, he would reply, 'Oh, study every thing, and your learning will, some time, be of service. I<br />
once said that I would not learn to speak French, because I thought that I should never leave my<br />
native town; yet, within a few years afterwards, I was in a foreign port, and I became sole<br />
interpreter of the ship's crew, in consequence of my ability to speak this language.'" NTs believe,<br />
deep in their hearts, that whatever they are learning about will come in handy some day. As a child,<br />
I used to imagine a scenario where an evil witch would capture me and refuse to let me go unless I<br />
could answer obscure trivia questions correctly. The witch was stunned at my arcane knowledge<br />
and ended up screaming in rage at my shocking knowledgeability. (Clearly, an NT fantasy.) I didn't<br />
need life experience to know that knowledge would come in handy "some day." I simply knew it<br />
instinctively at the bottom of my little NT heart. Then I found real life ways to justify that belief.<br />
Moral Character<br />
Sabin (2006) summed up a series of studies on type and moral reasoning by noting that,<br />
“Researchers have generally found Introversion (I), Intuition (N), Thinking (T) and Perceiving (P)<br />
to be influences on higher levels of moral judgment.” (read here) Essentially, higher levels of moral<br />
reasoning are characterized by (for example) the ability to untangle grey-area moral dilemmas, or to<br />
pick a right course that society would ordinarily frown upon. A good example would be, “Is it okay<br />
for Robin Hood to steal from the rich to feed the poor?” One might say, “No, you should never<br />
steal.” Or, one might say, “Even though stealing is wrong...here’s a justification.”<br />
One might expect that INTPs would be the most moral folks on the planet. Actually, it just means<br />
they're good at rationalizing. INTPs can justify the most surprising things using their advanced