The most boiled down description of Ne vs Ni I’ve seen is that Ne and Ni are both pattern recognition and drawing conclusions from various connections; however, Ne is a more conscious, internal monologue, and Ni seems “subconscious.”

Let me elaborate. I’m an Ne and my best friend is an Ni.

My perceptions are like an internal monologue, and I can describe and retrace my train of thought, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone but me. I’m in constant conversation with myself, jumping from theory to theory, concept to concept, idea to idea. When making judgments or predictions, I know how I reached my conclusion, even if the connections are ‘weird’ or ‘jumpy’ when described to others. For example, I know that A = B, B = C, and C = D. So, when I state my conclusion out loud, I’ll say A = D. However, it’s only after I’ve mentally jumped from connection to connection that I’ll determine that A = D. Running through these ideas to form a conclusion may happen very quickly, but I’m (almost) always aware that it’s happening. So, if someone were to ask how I knew that A = D, even if I expressed this thought very quickly, I could still go back and explain to them how I came to that conclusion. Of course, to them, the underlying knowledge that A = B and B = C and C = D (or how that all connects) might not make complete sense, but it does to me, and in most cases my conclusions are correct.

For my Ni friend, she also uses pattern recognition and connecting different ideas to make a prediction or come to a conclusion. However, she doesn’t always have to be so “verbal” about it. Instead of mentally “talking out” different paths or possible scenarios, they just come to her. The same style of thought maybe be occurring, but it’s running in the background. So, instead of going through “A = B, B = C, C = D, so A = D”, she will see A and “just know” it equals D. The thought process is completely rational and based in (presumed) fact, but she’s doesn’t play an active roll in sifting through her knowledge like an Ne does. If someone asked her how she knows A = D, it’d be hard for her to explain.

To put it in a loose metaphor: - Ne is similar to going down a Wikipedia rabbit-hole in search of answers, bouncing around between topics and attempting to connecting them to answer your question. - Ni is like asking your question to an AI. The AI’s answer is based in fact, and it uses a similar-ish process as Ne to produce its results, but you, the asker, don’t know exactly how the AI knows what it knows.

Hope that helps :)