Not everyone has an internal monologue • Hacker News Board

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#271

Post by yesenadam » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:28 PM UTC

TOGoS wrote: post #200

robofanatic wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And now I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do. This is funny. I can't imagine anyone doing that. There is no end to that. Like imagine someone thinking while walking down a lane "I am walking down the lane, and now I am going to turn left ... " this is endless ...

This is what I don't understand when people claim things like "language is required for higher thought" or whatever (no link but I'm sure I've seen that claim numerous times across various articles). We necessarily do plenty of thinking without words. Certainly you can be someone who focuses more on the words or less on the words, and maybe word-based people are naturally better at talking because their thoughts are…

A google came up with this long article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the language of thought hypothesis, which seems fascinating. Mentions Turing, NNs etc..

"The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH) proposes that thinking occurs in a mental language. Often called Mentalese, the mental language resembles spoken language in several key respects: it contains words that can combine into sentences; the words and sentences are meaningful; and each sentence’s meaning depends in a systematic way upon the meanings of its component words and the way those words are combined. ..

LOTH emerged gradually through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and many others. William of Ockham offered the first systematic treatment in his Summa Logicae (c. 1323), which meticulously analyzed the meaning and structure of Mentalese expressions. LOTH was quite popular during the late medieval era, but it slipped from view in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From that point through the mid-twentieth century, it played little serious role within theorizing about the mind.

In the 1970s, LOTH underwent a dramatic revival. The watershed was publication of Jerry Fodor’s The Language of Thought (1975)."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#MentCom...

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#272

Post by xvector » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:28 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #262

This isn't so hard to understand if you've ever meditated. It becomes clearer that the internal monologue is a process that just runs on its own almost endlessly, and the feeling that we control it is mostly just an illusion. You can test this for yourself by trying to find out what your next thought is going to be. You never know until you have it, which indicates that the process is spontaneous and involuntary. I h…

I never knew that people actually thought verbally! I always thought it was a figure of speech.

I mean, I can "think verbally" if I try really hard... even then, it's more like me imagining myself saying something rather than actually thinking verbally.

Wow. I don't know what to think.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#273

Post by DonaldPShimoda » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:28 PM UTC

vojta_letal wrote: post #187

n00b123 wrote: post #164

Interesting topic (and comments). 1. I do inner monologue. And I have to say, sometimes I get scared from what I "hear". I don't mean sometjing like "I hear voices telling me to kill everyone", but nasty, brutally cynical, sometimes outright violent thoughts. They feel alien to me, because on general level I consider myself "the good guy", but one the other hand they don't feel like someone else whispering me evil th…

Sometimes I have a "how awful would it be to do XY" moments. Usually something brutal. But it always makes me pay even more attention to not doing that very thing even accidentally because I definitely do not want to break stuff or hurt someone. Yet it makes me a bit nervous. What if I actually decided to do that? Fortunately it never happens when I'm under influence. Do I need help?

As others have said, these sound like typical intrusive thoughts.

The most common intrusive thoughts are, I believe, the "call of the void" ones (also known as "high place phenomenon"). You might be driving down the freeway and think "What if I drove into oncoming traffic?" or standing on a cliff at the end of a hike and think "What if I just walked off the ledge?" There's also some common less-morbid ones, like "What if I kissed my boss right now?" or "I just want to scream in the middle of this board meeting for no reason." Your immediate reaction should usually be to dismiss the thought as disturbing and move on with your life. If you find this dismissal to be difficult... that's when it can be worth checking out with a psychologist.

One hypothesis [0] for this phenomenon is that it is actually a post-fact reconstruction your brain is doing. Really, it's that your subconscious was uncomfortable with some imminent danger and forced you to compensate without thinking, and then you start thinking about what just happened. "Why did I suddenly step back from the ledge? Huh, must've been thinking about jumping off."

Another hypothesis I've read (which I can't find a good link to at the moment) is that it's some self-test mechanism. Your brain kind of sends a false "What if?" signal, and you should dismiss it because of the discomfort. This dismissal causes heightened awareness of the danger imminent and causes you to be more alert and thus be safer.

Again, though, these are pretty normal. That link I shared estimates that 50% of people have experienced the "call of the void". It's really only an issue if they're extraordinarily frequent (like... all the time), or if you genuinely feel tempted to act on them. Intrusive thoughts are not always indicative of suicidal ideation, but have also been linked to OCD and similar anxiety disorders (because they're a weird coping mechanism, when you think about it).

[0] https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-th...

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#274

Post by allovernow » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

There's no way this doesn't have some sort of influence on other skills and abilities. Possibly good or bad. Studies on such effects in monologue lacking people would be fascinating if they showed differences.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#275

Post by easymodex » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

vojta_letal wrote: post #187

n00b123 wrote: post #164

Interesting topic (and comments). 1. I do inner monologue. And I have to say, sometimes I get scared from what I "hear". I don't mean sometjing like "I hear voices telling me to kill everyone", but nasty, brutally cynical, sometimes outright violent thoughts. They feel alien to me, because on general level I consider myself "the good guy", but one the other hand they don't feel like someone else whispering me evil th…

Sometimes I have a "how awful would it be to do XY" moments. Usually something brutal. But it always makes me pay even more attention to not doing that very thing even accidentally because I definitely do not want to break stuff or hurt someone. Yet it makes me a bit nervous. What if I actually decided to do that? Fortunately it never happens when I'm under influence. Do I need help?

"The call of the void"

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#276

Post by psalminen » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

natechols wrote: post #118

40acres wrote: post #105

Unfathomable to me. My mind is constantly racing, playing out different conversations, interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my thoughts on things (one day I'm the president of the US talking about foreign policy, another day I'm a big tech CEO navigating the diversity questions). I constantly have something in my ears to tune myself out, podcasts or music. After being diagnosed w/ ADHD I realize I'm…

It took me until my mid-20s before I realized that not everyone thought this way.

It took me until my mid-20s to be able to drink enough to make this go away (at least for a short time).

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#277

Post by edmundsauto » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:30 PM UTC

olyjohn wrote: post #191

n00b123 wrote: post #164

Interesting topic (and comments). 1. I do inner monologue. And I have to say, sometimes I get scared from what I "hear". I don't mean sometjing like "I hear voices telling me to kill everyone", but nasty, brutally cynical, sometimes outright violent thoughts. They feel alien to me, because on general level I consider myself "the good guy", but one the other hand they don't feel like someone else whispering me evil th…

I feel the same way on the 2nd layer you're talking about. I feel like I can plan out a big project in my head, and see it, and understand it. But when I try to verbalize it, I get really flustered. I just want to zap the idea into someone else's head so that I don't have to explain how it works, because I'll inevitably do a poor job until I start working on said project.

Trying to explain it is part of understanding it. Our brains do a really good job of lying to us. They tell us they understand the topic, while ignoring what we don't know because it's harder to conceptualize.

I think it was Feynman who said you don't understand something unless you can teach it.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#278

Post by stephen_g » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #253

For those who do inner monologue - I worry about telling you about this. It might make you wish you didn't ever realize it. So.. spoiler in the next sentence. When you start talking in your head, pay attention to your vocal cords and the area around them... Notice anything? They're probably moving like they would if you were actually talking out loud. Have you ever noticed how you tried to talk really fast in your he…

Interesting - while I can make myself do the ‘silent talking’ thing, my normal internal monologue is usually disconnected from my movements basically completely.

It’s pretty normal for me to be thinking ahead or of other things to say while speaking at the same time. I do some music gigs here and there, and if I know a song well enough, I find my mind drifting and monologuing on random observations about the venue, or people around me, or even something completely random, while also singing the normal words to the song and playing guitar!

I’m not sure who is more “normal”, or if there even is a “normal” here!

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#279

Post by nibbula » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #152

echelon wrote: post #65

I dream up movies and songs and all sorts of rich fantasies in my head, and I do this constantly. As a consequence of this, I never get bored as I've got an incredible imagination to lean on. I think about movies I want to make, startups I want to create, the change I want to put into the world. New songs on my commute, goals I want to accomplish, what I could do with time travel. I'm always working on the structures…

This isn't healthy. You should go on a meditation retreat. Or drop acid. This is what Buddhist monks call the monkey mind syndrome.

It is not only healthy, but a great ability to be respected and cultivated. It is also good to learn to not do this. Saying it's unhealthy is like saying /dev/random is unhealty, but /dev/null is, or stars are bad but empty space is good. Both are quite useful. (let's please not have that talk about cryptographic qualities of /dev/random). My experience is that if you can easily tap into endless creativity and also experience the calmness of no-thought at will, you will have greater abilities than average in most situations. Meditation, among other things, can help you be more adept at either.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#280

Post by hnick » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

LordFast wrote: post #225

pazimzadeh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be like that, and it was helpful in many ways as I seemed to always be ready for wherever a conversation might go. But I wasn't living in the moment. Now I actively stop myself from simulating the various branches of potential conversations. It feels good to live in the moment (shaking my head a little when I feel it starting helps). The downside is that I don't have as many prepared responses and am more e…

Why is it a bad thing for your brain to be running DFS all the time? Is it a wasteful use of time? Does it cause behavioral issues? Is it a personal choice? Or...?

For me personally it seems to make it impossible to get to sleep. Which makes me tired, and less resistant to rambling trains of thought. Repeat ad infinitum.