Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Not everyone has an internal monologue

ryanandrewlangdon.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 904 posts

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#671

Post by jacobush »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #563
bananamerica wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it is so satisfying when a conversation hits a branch you worked on for hours on end! Very useful for dating and job interviews. Especially for people with foot-in-mouth disease [1] [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foot-in-mouth_disease

As a man with Aspergers, that sounds so useful.. and while I can often simulate conversations in my head, real-world conversations with real people almost never play out the same way. It probably has to do with having little ability to intuitively understand what other people would think.

Maybe but it's also very hard to predict what will happen in general I think.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#672

Post by slacka »

abathur wrote: post #657
jessriedel wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people who experience having an internal monologue: Suppose you see a bagel on the kitchen table in the morning and decide whether or not you're hungry enough to eat it. Does that process involve an internally experienced stream of words (whether "audible in your mind's ear" or not) like "I'm pretty hungry" or "I bet that bagel would taste good"? Is this what it would be mean to have an internal monologue? Becaus…

I don't think so (because this can be a short, impulsive decision), but it wouldn't surprise me if some experience it like this. My personal experience (in the non-audible group) is that the "role" this voice is playing is a bit more supervisory/executive. It thinks about what I need to do tomorrow, or the next three steps on my current project, or that I really need to carve out time to go to the cleaners some morni…

> a supervisory/executive

Yes this is how it is for me. I can eat the bagel without consulting him, but he speaks out the words of this post that I'm writing or any email/report. When I'm on autopilot like driving or playing a game/sport I don't hear him. But if I want to think about plotting a different route or a changing in strategy, the voice will talk me through it.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#673

Post by ec109685 »

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…

What do people do without a monolog when they are asked to count something silently? Isn’t keeping track of the current number a form of monolog?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#674

Post by freetanga »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #238
LordFast wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...?

I think it's a question of balance. I was too far on the side of not living in the moment, and spending lots of time on what-if scenarios. I think that I might have veered too far to the other extreme now, and my capacity for empathy is suffering a little.

Fully agreed. I was like this (overthinking what if’s) for many years, and the amount on energy spent on this left me spent to actually go and live in reality. The upside was having a plan for nearly whatever life threw at me - but discarding hundreds of alternate plans. Now as I grew older I have learnt to be much looser with life steering, as we are not in full control anyway. Just have a general direction of what you want to do, and spend the rest of your energy here and now...

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#676

Post by JohnBerea »

okareaman wrote: post #574
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…

That sounds like hell to me. I don't have an internal monolog. I think in visuals. I am a quiet person. I am a better programmer for it I think. I visualize the structure of a program I am writing and pair programming would also be hell for me.

It's not necessarily either-or. I have an internal monologue for most things but much of my math and programming thoughts are conceptual.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#677

Post by cregaleus »

RealityVoid wrote: post #407
rladd wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think almost entirely in images, usually moving and relating to each other in 3D space. There are words mixed in, but when they come up they are usually just single words or a phrases which are attributes of something I'm thinking of, or an action I should take. Sometimes I think more in words, but that's usually when something is really unclear to me or if I am obsessing over something. I think that years of train…

I'm pretty much the same, but my internal monologue sometimes manifests itself as, I don't know how to describe it, but, as "feelings". This is somewhat usefull, but I need a more formal method sometimes to explain me to myself.

I'm starting to think that I have a weak minds eye. I can not easily mentally visualize ideas, but I do feel them.

When I am thinking about something new there are no words, images, etc. just feeling my way through ideas. It feels kind of like acting on instinct. For example if I am wrestling with an idea I get an impression of "resistance". Feeling my way through the path of least resistance from impression to impression.

I do say words, or see flashes of images but only for ideas that I have already felt out. Words are kind of a breadcrumb trail so that I can retrace the exact train-of-thought that I had taken before and images like mile-markers.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#678

Post by JohnBerea »

People without an internal monologue: Are you able to listen to a spoken sentence and then replay that sentence in your head? Do you have any audio-type memories?

If so that's basically what it's like for the rest of us, just with the words rearranged into whatever sentence we're thinking.

Post reply on HN