Se vs Ne

"I'm not a planner. I don't like plans of any sort, so I believe in a true following of instinct, and that's a difficult thing to describe because it's not just doing what you want to do. That's not following your instinct. That's a very sort of impoverished idea of it, but really following your instinct in the sense that you keep yourself always open to possibilities, and when the possibilities come, you recognize them, and you go with them." - Helen Mirren (an ESTP)

"Each human individual should think as if he is the first on the earth; he is the Adam or the Eve. Then ... you can open to infinite possibilities. Then you will be vulnerable, available; and the more vulnerable you are, the more available you are, the greater the possibility of life happening to you. Your attitudes function like barriers; then life never reaches to you as it is [because] it [would have] to fit your philosophy, religion, ideology, and in that very fitting, something dies in it. What you get out of it is a corpse: it may look like life but it is not." - Osho (an ENFP)

As IDRlabs has said, "Ne and Se can resemble each other insofar as they are both adaptive, novelty-seeking and on the lookout for possibilities in the external situation." One can often mistake Se types for Ne types, especially if the Se type in question uses the term "possibilities." So one may ask what is the difference when an Se user says something along the lines of being "open to possibilities"? Is it just as simple as the possibilities being of a more grounded/physical nature? Well let's find out.

When Se types (SPs) uses the term "possibilities" they primarily mean options and variations that exist within the current situation. The key mental operation is receptive awareness and responsiveness. They are attuned to the opportunities and paths that become apparent in the immediate context – whether it's a social interaction, a creative task with set boundaries (like a script), or sensory information. They excel at skillfully navigating and utilizing the potential that is already present.

Ne types (NPs) by contrast see "possibilities" as something that can be generated, discovered, or accessed by actively changing perspectives, questioning assumptions, and reinterpreting the existing situation. Their key mental operation is cognitive reframing and active construction. They focus on altering their understanding, letting go of limitations, and actively seeking out new, often intellectual, areas to create or unlock potential that isn't immediately obvious or defined within current boundaries. As beautifully illustrated by Terry Gilliam:

Terry Gilliam: "2001 had an ending that I don’t know what it means. I don’t know, but I have to think about it. I have to work, and it opens up all sorts of possibilities, and probably the next person I speak to has a different idea of what that ending means. So suddenly, we’re in a discussion, and now we’re talking. Ideas come out of that, and that’s what I always want to encourage.”

Ne aims to go beyond the perceived limitations of the current reality or understanding. As Myers has said regarding N types, they “regard the immediate situation as a prison from which escape is urgently necessary.”

In other words, Se is more oriented towards perceiving and working fluidly with the "possibilities" inherent in the current situation, while Ne focuses on transcending the current situation (or the conventional interpretations and ideas of the time) to actively generate or access new realms of possibility. 

To further showcase what I mean regarding Se vs Ne, take this quote from Madonna (an ESTP):

Madonna: "You can be open and observant in any situation. I mean, in a work situation, watching people on a set of a movie or whatever. ... There are endless possibilities of ways to absorb the information."

By contrast here is a quote from Jack White (an ENFP):

White: "When I was growing up, they didn't know it was the blues. I didn't know it was the blues, you know. It took me until I was, like, 20-something years old before I realized, 'Wow, that's exactly what these rappers are saying, exactly what Blind Willie McTell said, it was exactly what Blind Lemon Jefferson was saying.' These are the same stories of struggle and pain and love and violence that we've been hearing for a long time. So once you let your brain understand that and click into that, it opens up a whole range of possibilities of what the blues can be, and then you just can't help but fall in love with ... all aspects of the Blues." (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZWjY4tb4Q)

As shown, Madonna's quote emphasizes being "open and observant in any situation" and seeing "endless possibilities of ways to absorb the information." Showcasing how Se users find potential within the concrete and immediate circumstances. She's not transcending the situation as much as noticing the various ways to engage with and learn from what's happening right in front of her.

By contrast Jack White's quote illustrates how realizing the connection between the blues and rap "opens up a whole range of possibilities of what the blues can be" demonstrating Ne's ability to see connections between seemingly different things, leading to new and broader understandings and potential avenues (in this case, for musical exploration). He's not just working with the existing definition of blues; he's expanding it through an assoicative connection.

From this perspective one can say that Se and Ne are very similar, just that Se deals more with actuality whereas Ne "skips over" what's presented (mentally leaving the original stuff behind) via conceptual association, hence why Ne (or just N types in general) have a knack for referencing things don't seem like they directly pertain to the immediate context or topic at hand. As Ignacio Ramonet said of Fidel Castro (an ENFP):

"His thoughts branch, [to him] everything is connected to everything, and the branches form long chains of links. The pursuit of a subject leads him, through an association of ideas, through the recollection of such-and-such a situation or person, to call up a parallel subject, and another, and another, and another, until we are far from the central issue – so far that the interlocutor fears, for a moment, that he's lost the thread."

Now with all that being said, does this mean that Se users are limited to the actual occurrence or that Ne users are incapable of shifting their focus on inherent situation? No, functions are about habitual and instinctual preferences (our "why" of our philosophical worldview and not the "what") but it does not say anything about one's ability. As Jung said of ESPs, Se can and will conceptualize (N), but it's moreso for the sake of enhancing Sensation. So in other words, while one can find Se types that seem to have these off-the-wall ideas, if one digs deeper one can find that these abstractions are really in service for Sensation rather than the other way around:

Tyler the Creator: "[I like] making what feels good! Right now I'm into the color match-up of purple and baby blue, and I know I'll be over it in the coming months, but as of right now it just looks good in my eyes."

By contrast the inverse is true of Ne (or N types in general) with that being sensation is in service for Ne. The Ne type may not even notice it themselves but, all else being equal, objects for Ne types instinctually are starting points from which they can mentally spring off. As van der Hoop as said, a fact is only valued if it contains, to the Ne users eyes, something beyond it. For illustration:

Jack White: "It would have been lame for the White Stripes to use the color red because it looked cool, you know, it has to have meaning behind it, it has to come from someplace that has a deeper story so that if you dug into it you could go deeper and deeper with it, so image for the sake of image is no good. I think that's sort of dead art, but if it has meaning from the get-go things will make themselves, you know, like what we're doing now has a lot of these icy blues and pale blues of the stage production that we have and the artwork for the album, and those came from a pale blue guitar that I had used in an old public school amplifier I was using during the recording; those blues in there exemplified themselves throughout all of that, and if people want to dig deeper into those colors, they can, instead of it just being something [like] 'they put a purple light on me because it looked cool, it doesn't have any meaning to it at all, just purple.' It'd be better if it meant something, I think." (Source; https://youtu.be/9rpIF_U_QLY?feature=shared&t=148)

Of course in the context of art one shouldn't expect an Se types art to be devoid of "read into it" meaning or that an Ne types are are devoid of visual/auditory merit. Any type (if given the resources and time) and create anything, what type measures is one's, as Boye Akinwande put it, "conscious attention (and inattention) that an individual directs towards the contents of consciousness. According to the psychodynamic approach, the functions exist as meta-perspectives that, in theory, are divorced from psychic contents. Rather, they operate as lenses that fundamentally bias the way we conceive of, structure, and relate to information in the psyche." Plus one's judging functions play a role in that too as it can make the Se and Ne type's creations devaite from what is generally expected of them.

So to summarize, Se focuses on the ever-changing "what is" and explores it's inherent variations while Ne moves away from "what is" in an effort to imagine "what could be" by making abstract associations. Se is about fluidly engaging with the "givens" while Ne is about transcending it through conceptual leaps.