Those people are called NPC.
Not everyone has an internal monologue
741–750 of 904 posts
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#742I would say I don't have an internal monologue. But that doesn't mean my mind isn't wandering all over the place. I don't talk to myself, I don't play out conversations in my head. Instead it's more like a collection of "thoughts", or "images", or visualizing myself "doing". I can get extremely caught up in this. There's also an awful lot of contemplating objects, observing features, visualizing how they interact. Ve…
Like you can actually see things in your head? Visually? With color and all?
Wait, you can't? I can also watch a movie again in my mind.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#743Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a left/right brain split specific thing or is there another thing going on? ever explore it? I can do neither of these things. One voice dominates, self speaking, reading, listening to another person talk to me - the rest of them get 'left behind'.
The trick is to read without sounding out the words in your head. Then since you're not thinking in speech when reading, you have room to listen.
Also, that way you can read alot faster, you just scan all words in a sentence and let your brain handle the translation of visuals directly to concepts.
For me it's a little bit of a struggle to read like that, I need to count in my or use my inner monologue otherwise to accomplish that, otherwise my reading slows down automatically. I'm sure you can train both ways of thinking.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#744Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I definitely am capable of thinking non-verbally, and I agree it can help with programming. But I just can't wrap my head around not having an internal monologue at all. How did you even write this comment? What was the process that led you to put together this particular series of words, if not 'hearing' them in your own mind as an expression of your thoughts first? Edit: Thinking on this more, I may not have had an…
I recall very specifically, when I was 3 or something, walking out onto the playground and realizing sentences are made out of words.
Learned myself to read before getting to primary school.
Also can bypass verbal thought. Can internally hear and visualize mostly anything. Don't recall not being able to internally hear or visualize things.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#745I've experienced both. From 0 to my teens or early adulthood (hard to tell exactly), I had no voice in my head really, only intuitions, images, not sure how it happened exactly, but I didn't need to consciously phrase things.
Fast forward a few years and my head is literally always a chat with myself, sometimes with others, sometimes about the past or the future. And I can tell that I very much liked it the other way more.
Edit : I also wonder if this can be trained one way or the other. I know that when I meditate for a while the chatter slowly declines.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#746Earlier 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...?
Poster said BFS, which is good, because DFS is probably a massive waste of effort that mispredicts reality (but is a more immersive daydream).
I found that in my late 30ies I shifted from an exhausting DFS to a BFS mode....and it has surely helped in tackling social and work complexities better. I have also discovered that I was unconsciously not giving my full attention to details ,especially over math/programming problems, I was always in a state of slight 'haze', but the whole thing was extremely well played by the brain...I really thought I was fully concentrated and paying complete attention, but only now I know that I can step to a deeper level, where I play back and forth multiple variables and remember better the connectivity of the problem. A decent analogy would be if you play piano and are going through a challenging part, your hands and mind are fully focused on the movements but doing so makes everything hard and stiff, and eventually you run out of steam very fast, with experience though you learn to microfocus on some parts and keep it loose on others...etc. seems fitting..
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#747I would say I don't have an internal monologue. But that doesn't mean my mind isn't wandering all over the place. I don't talk to myself, I don't play out conversations in my head. Instead it's more like a collection of "thoughts", or "images", or visualizing myself "doing". I can get extremely caught up in this. There's also an awful lot of contemplating objects, observing features, visualizing how they interact. Ve…
Like you can actually see things in your head? Visually? With color and all?
Yup, it's like a secondary space. Doesn't visually overlap with real vision, but it's still surrounding in the same manner as real vision.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#748Yeah, 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?
They're thoughts. That is their form. To use a software analogy, thoughts are the model . English words are one possible serialization . (Other possible serializations include other phrasings of English words, Japanese words, mathematical formulas, drawings, musical notation, and so on.) It's nonsensical to ask me for a more fundamental form of a thought in my brain. It'd be like having a program where you have a ref…
Thanks, first explanation about these voiceless thoughts that I could understand.
I think I can produce the same voiceless thoughts. But my voiced thoughts are crisp, clear and easily hold in memory compared to other modes of thinking.
I wonder, maybe that's why I'm excellent at talking about problems, understanding them at high level, but have so much trouble with acutal engineering.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#749I wonder... if people can differ in such a fundamental way what else can differ and also what are features that are always present.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#750Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't worry with age your brain will deaden. My mind raced, I learned somewhat how to chill it right out, and now it flat-lines far too much.
Almost 44 years, and the hurricane hasn't seemed to calm down. I just have fewer registers. :/
If it's any consolation you miss it when it's gone.