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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#431

Post by oh_sigh »

mayoff wrote: post #192

What Do You Care What Other People Think? , a book of Richard Feynman stories, has a chapter that ties into this. You can read the chapter here: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf He discovers that he can read while counting in his head at a steady rate, but he cannot talk while counting. When he tells his friends, one of them claims to be the opposite, and indeed proves that he can count while ta…

This has gotten me into a lot of trouble in my life. I don't use internal monologue to read - that means that I can be reading and listening to someone at the same time, and comprehend both. But, even if I can prove I heard and understood everything someone said, they inevitably view it as rude if I am reading something while listening to them.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#432

Post by CriticalCathed »

meowface wrote: post #255
thrwaway69 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, I am super self conscious of the otherwise ignored voice which reads everything I type and see. It is much sexier though than irl. I wonder why is that ? On the other hand, I can speak much faster yay. Why? Is your voice reading this comment too? Maybe. Do you feel like you are conversing with an oddly being? Maybe. I am alive. Where is my mind reading tech?

There are some theories that the brain may effectively contain more than one "proto-consciousness" (or perhaps some of them are actually "fully conscious"). Maybe 2 or 3, maybe a whole lot of them. If this is true, then when you have an internal "dialogue", you may be literally conversing with different sapient "beings". If so, who's actually the "you" there? Are you one of them, or all of them, or just kind of obser…

I think that the bicameral mind hypothesis makes sense.

Oh, and the phenomena wherein the disconnection of the hemispheres of the brain results in strange cognitive artifacts such as being able to give two different answers to one question, even questions like "what is your favorite color," points to at the very least some kind of parallel consciousness. Another hypothesis is that one hemisphere is the "speaking" brain and the other is the "listening" hemisphere. That is, only one of the consciousnesses can talk -- and that's the one we call "me"; maybe it should be "us."

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#433

Post by therealdrag0 »

UseStrict wrote: post #375
xvector wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Similarly until last year I never knew that people actually could visualize things when they closed their eyes. I thought it was more of a metaphor. But alas when I close my eyes it's darkness. Thankfully I have my internal monologue to describe things to me in that darkness.

When I close my eyes the images I can produce are no more vivid than the images I can produce with my eyes open. E.g., I can picture the car driving down the street behind me, or I can imagine a sphere in front of me. But in either can it's semi-transparent. It's like a hologram places in 3d-space relative to my-self, and it doesn't matter if my eyes are open or not. This is what I consider imagination. I thought this is how it worked for everyone.

How does this relate to what you're saying? Are you considering this visualizing things or not?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#434

Post by JabavuAdams »

kedean wrote: post #219
echelon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think that's pretty normal. I do it all the time. I can even "compose" my own music (it can be any genre, with any type of instruments, and even include voices), but I have no ability to play instruments myself. I'd love to get into music, but just don't have the time. My literature professor back in college said he "listened to" classical music in his head during his morning runs. I just assumed everyone did i…

Man I can't even imagine. I realize a while back that I don't actually hear music in my head when I have an earworm, instead I hear a representation of it made entirely of what would be vocalized sounds. So if I'm hearing the guitar solo from November Rain, its kind of like someone (me, really) going 'bowwwww owww nah nahhhh nah nahahhhhhhh wan nah nah nah nah wah wah' rather than actual guitar noises, but then it's…

Maybe it's a combination of both, and you're just more attuned to the nuance? It's funny, when you mentioned November Rain I did the guitar noises, in my voice, in my head. Great, now that's stuck in there. Thanks. But something like the Star Wars sound-track. I do hear a more instrumental version, although for parts that I can sing I also get some ghostly sensations in my tongue and throat.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#435

Post by blamestross »

Insanity wrote: post #177

For me, it's definitely the internal monologue. Worse is that I have a form of OCD (repetitive thoughts) so this monologue gets stuck in a 'loop' and I end up just repeating the same sentence, or part of sentences to myself. Drives me nuts. Makes me wonder if people without this 'internal monologue' experience this kind of OCD in the same way..

I'm OCD but I definitely don't internal monologue. I do get stuck in what I call a "simulation loop" as I play out possible scenarios in my head and I can totally talk in those, but I have to intentionally "pretend to talk to myself" to talk to myself. In general the only time I hear "a voice in my head" is when I imagine/simulate saying something to somebody else.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#436

Post by yak0 »

megiddo wrote: post #327
lqet wrote: post #314

I 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…

I use both modes. For speaking to people directly, I use an internal monologue. For coding or abstract though, I can feel the model.

Finally, I've found somebody like me. I was starting afraid about how my brain works. Can I hear the sounds? is that the sound? where are the words? Oh, here I can see now. Hmm, let me try thinking about a class and methods of a module in my codebase... no voice, no words. no images. what the fuck? how I can know that.. yes it's like feeling. Fuck now I'm starting to hear the voice of somebody else. Which was the my voice?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#437

Post by code_biologist »

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…

Chiming in as someone who experiences an inner monologue, but does not subvocalize while either thinking or reading. I don't think one implies the other.

I was taught to read without subvocalizing and I think I am a faster reader for it. I visually process "chunks" of text and hop from chunk to chunk. My SO subvocalizes and is a noticeably slower reader.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#438

Post by bigiain »

Insanity wrote: post #177

For me, it's definitely the internal monologue. Worse is that I have a form of OCD (repetitive thoughts) so this monologue gets stuck in a 'loop' and I end up just repeating the same sentence, or part of sentences to myself. Drives me nuts. Makes me wonder if people without this 'internal monologue' experience this kind of OCD in the same way..

I wonder if that's the same thing going on inside a brain as getting a song stuck in your head? That happens to me fairly frequently - the voices in my head will be repeating the same line or verse of a song over and over...

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#439

Post by in3d »

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…

Ketamine infusions can completely, instantly and seemingly permanently remove these racing thoughts, allowing you to only have them when you want them. Doesn't impact creativity either. Feels like the part of the brain responsible for running worrying scenarios quiets down and only brings them up to consciousness when necessary. There are several studies showing anxiolytic in addition to anti-depreesive effects. Doesn't work for everyone, though.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31339086

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#440

Post by shotashota »

This furthers my hypothesis that it is entirely possible we live in a completely different "reality". My red is different than your "red", so on and so forth. Just like its incomprehensible for me to imagine what additional color is there outside of my human range; your reality could be unimaginable to me too.

That is, I do not know what its like to be you. I don't think this necessarily mean that we live in different physical reality, its just that we come to interact with it through completely different means.

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