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The difference between ENTP and INTP

One way to look at it is this: They’re very similar, but the INTP’s greatest source of difficulty is interpersonal relations: Relating to others, being polite and socially smooth, gauging the right timing and mood, etc. – all the non-rational stuff that people do to please each other and make each other feel good.

With the ENTPs, the greatest Achilles heel is not so much manners, but conformity. INTPs tend to have little clue about manners and just “learn a script” that they can hide behind because they feel so out of bounds in a world where moods and feelings carry more weight than logical arguments. By contrast, ENTPs tend to have some flair for just when to say the right thing, the pitch, the mood that they are tapping into and so on. Socially, ENTPs don’t learn a script – they improvise and they love stating the same thing in new ways, each bringing out a difference nuance (where INTPs tend to favor the clearest or most correct way of saying something).

As with their dislike of conformity, ENTPs are also terribly impatient and much more disorganized than INTPs. INTPs, when left to their own devices, tend to develop routines where they deal with things in a factual, logical manner. For example, organizing the overall structure of a book is always the hardest thing to do for an ENTP. It’s like they can’t be sure that a given chapter will say the same thing two weeks from now that it says today. Everything changes according to moods. Compared to the ENTPs, INTPs tend to be more stable. With the INTPs it’s the relation to other people that is foremost problematic, it’s like they’re saying “Dear Lord, help me to survive in this world full of people who make no sense,” whereas with the ENTPs it’s more like “Dear Lord, help me to survive this bland conformity of predictable, zombified, unspirited, trite rehashing – give me something that is new.”