This idea is actually where the NPC meme of several months ago originated
Not everyone has an internal monologue
381–390 of 904 posts
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#382Yeah, this is crazy to me. (I'm hearing these words in my head as I'm typing them.) Like, what form do your shower thoughts take if you don't have an internal monologue?
This topic is what spawned the "NPC" meme on 4chan, for anyone interested.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the same way you would talk about the concepts out loud to someone else. But isn't this extremely exhausting and time-consuming? And if it indeed works this way, then where do you think the idea you are trying to formulate in your inner monologue comes from?
I suspect the author is exaggerating a bit when he says it's the only way he thinks. I also have the "narrative voice" but I absolutely can think about things without the voice, it just doesn't feel as much like "thinking", if that makes sense. There are some things that are explicitly visualized, like an object I'm thinking about, where I wouldn't say in my head "I am imagining the sun. It is bright. Etc. etc.". I'd…
This is how it seems for me, too. When I pay attention to what I am doing, it seems as if I am thinking in complete sentences, but if I then try to write down the idea that I have just been thinking about, I find that it takes a lot of editing to turn it into coherent language. Furthermore, I cannot really say anything about what it is like to think when I am not paying attention to doing so, so maybe it is just how I explain my experience of thinking to myself.
Perhaps experiments using techniques such as PET scans might reveal if there is something more characteristically linguistic going on in those of us who feel we have an internal monologue.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#384I have a serious question to people here describing themselves (as I understand it) as thinking in words and whole sentences: How can you think about concepts which cannot be put into words or for which no words exist? Do you have to come up with elaborate verbal descriptions of abstract concepts in your head before you can think about them? If so, don't you think that any verbal description is essentially incomplete…
What is a concept which cannot be put into words?
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#385This doesn't make any sense to me, even his example: 'One person even mentioned that when they do voice overs in movies of people’s thoughts, they “wished that it was real.”' How can they form the thought 'I wish that was real' if they have no monologue? And to convey that thought they just open their mouth and spew forth a sentence with no knowledge of its shape?
A while back I discovered that I have aphantasia. I can construct elaborate ideas that are wholly visual in my head and describe them to other people in great detail but I cannot visualize an ounce of it in my own head. I've since read accounts of illustrators and graphic artists who are successful in their fields and who draw for a living and yet they also have aphantasia. I think this internal monologue thing probably isn't terribly different. FWIW, I _do_ have a _very strong_ internal monologue.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#386Diagnosed ADHD here. I just have this constant low-level music video / hurricane of ideas / songs / designs / trajectories going in my head. Started high-school at 11, university at 15. Played tennis competitively to provincial level.
That's a really crude approximation ... will try to clarify. I do have an internal monologue, but often I'm not speaking to myself verbally. As I'm writing this, I'm hearing it in my own voice, in my head. EDIT> "hearing" is approximate because I don't feel anything in my ears, and it's different from hearing a recording of my voice. I don't feel my ear-drums moving, e.g. I just have the very clear sensation that I am speaking these words, and I can even feel them on my tongue, although my tongue is not moving. When I'm thinking, but not writing, it's more visual / tactile. The impressions of ghostly visuals, but I'm not actually seeing anything, just feeling that they're there. Like I can feel and spin a cube in front of me, but I'm still seeing the monitor, not the cube. I know where all the vertices, are though.
Often have that anxious feeling in the chest like I want to blurt something out, but am keeping it in. So ideas fly in, but too fast for words. Words are much too slow for thinking. But a feeling of um .. ah ... er .. um is about the only internal vocalization I can get as these ideas crash and pull in different directions.
I often have to explicitly speak out loud or monologue to give some momentary permanence to my thoughts. Otherwise they just kind of get whipped away and tattered in this mental hurricane.
And yet, I can just happily sit and look out a window, but I'm experiencing some combo of really, really, looking at things and bouncing around in my head.
Speaking of not really understanding how different other people's experiences are -- my vision is starting to deteriorate now that I'm in middle age. It's so crazy to me not to be able to see everything. Like, people would tell me that they can't see my face without their glasses, but I had no real appreciation of of how different this would be. I'm bummed out that I can't see individual hairs from across the room, lol.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#387Something I discovered within the past year is that if I know a song fairly well, I can "play it" silently in my head, and be entertained. The experience isn't quite as emotionally resonate as listening with headphones, but it's not so far off either. It's useful when I'm bored. ...can anyone else do this? I actually find it supremely weird.
I haven't done it for many years but you've reminded me that I could sometimes play songs in my head and actually hear it. Only very softly though, like old-fashioned headphones on a very low volume.
I still have music in my head very often - I play piano and I'm always getting ear worms, but it must be at least 20 years since I last physically heard my mental music playing. I wonder if I can get it back?
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
With me it is often less words and more action movies: getting innocent people out of harms way, looking for cover, looking for anyone like minded who might be able to help block the doors and try to ambush an attacker together with me. Calling the police, whispering the address etc etc. Not sure if it would work if anything happens, but this is one of the thing my mind keeps itself busy with as I walk through the ci…
Pretty much describes The Last Psychiatrist's writings about Narcissism and The Matrix generation. "When the time comes the Universe will make it so I save everyone and know Kung-Fu, because I'm innately a hero so of course it will". https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/03/what_was_the_matrix....
A tangent on this: superheroes are creatures/concepts as old as stories though, from the oldest myths of Ulysse and Atlantis to Superman and the Force and indeed Neo. It's a whole category, perhaps the all-time biggest (think who fits the profile of "historic superhero", you'll be surprised who goes in that basket, even if we believe their life/deeds were real and not 'super').
I mean, stories, right.
I personally risk the assumption that the outer manifestation of these shared inner delusions of grandeur is called "civilization". I would actually call it "aspiring" to greatness, and if it's a disease, then it's the best we ever got.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#389Feels like I flip flop a bit. As in, I can hear myself thinking while I type this, but most of the time my thoughts are more abstract (as in, I'm having a hard time writing out an example of one since they're not verbal). I find that after reading a lot, my brain is more talkative.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#390I find this fascinating.
I sometimes hear the voice (for reading and certain types of thinking), but sometimes I don't / can't.
For example, I always do when reading, planning, or consolidating ideas. I can't do it when writing code, or thinking design ideas.