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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#771

Post by kazarnowicz »

baddox wrote: post #284
username90 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of course I think about things using language. "of course", no most of my thoughts are not expressible in any language. Why would they? Thoughts are so much richer than any language can possibly express. How to solve this physics problem? If I had to do it via a monologue it would take forever. Same with programming. Instead I just think the thoughts directly and just solve the problem without verbalizing anything.…

> Thoughts are so much richer than any language can possibly express. I'm not sure about that. Couldn't it just be that we sometimes don't understand our own thoughts? If you can't describe one of your thoughts with language, I would say that you must not understand that thought. And of course we sometimes have thoughts which we don't understand. I think that understanding our own thoughts is something that needs to…

Perhaps thoughts is the wrong word, since they as a concept often are associated with words, but the things that go through my mind are concepts, and I often have a word label for them, sometimes it's right there, sometimes it's not. Sometimes I have concepts in my head that have no label, and that I can express, but the concept which I can imagine in a few seconds often requires a couple paragraphs to describe directly.

Another argument for OPs view (with the caveat above) is that these concepts must predate speech. We have an imagination before we have speech, and that obviously doesn't require words.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#773

Post by Francute »

I will wide this question a little bit based on my own experience...

1. Some people report that they can have multiple conversations at the same time in their minds. I find that really hard to do. For example, if I simulate a conversation between two people in my mind, I can't easily make one interrupt the other (and make both to talk at the same time). Is this an easy task for you? (However, I can think on a song and put that as a background music while I'm talking without losing any thread)

2. About the comment in this blog of "I saw in TV and would wish that to be a thing", that kept me thinking; I'm not good at drawing, can you "draw" in your mind? (In my case, if I start with a face, I make the hair, then their eyes, then the nose, but I started to forgot how the hair was drawn. Can't keep my draw in my mind...)

3. Meanwhile, I do have experience coding, and I can make some pretty persistent "sequence & activity diagrams" in my mind. I've found myself using that kind of "diagrams" in my mind to drive the thinking of other people when I try to explain myself about an idea. Now I'm thinking that is not the best way to do it... But, Can you do this also pretty easily? It is possible to sense if the other person is able to do something in his mind that you can not reproduce?

4. So, my experience is coding, what about your own experiences? What can you do in your mind related to that activity? For example, do musicians here, able to make music in their minds while keeping/updating its sheet music? What about other roles?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#774

Post by jkhdigital »

hoseja wrote: post #730
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not the parent, but the general process would be: form a kernel of a thought, this is largely subconscious process. This thought is made up of meaning-and-context-rich symbols specific to my mind. Refine this thought, resolving contradictions and various logical weakpoints. Translate this thought into speech, losing much of the information content because language is a tool created to holler at your fellow hominids a…

Language is a way of communicating abstractions from one abstraction machine to another; of course information content is lost, but that is only because it must be transformed and compressed to fit into the narrow channel of audio signals that humans are capable of both producing and detecting.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#775

Post by fouc »

etrk wrote: post #569
fouc wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’d heard that this is, to some extent, impossible, because everybody subvocalizes when they read. Wikipedia supports this, but I guess the goal is to minimize subvocalization rather than to eliminate it completely? “Micro-muscle tests suggest that full and permanent elimination of subvocalizing is impossible.” I know this is true for me. If I press the tongue to the roof of my mouth while reading, I can’t stop the m…

It's hard to avoid subvocalizing when you're thinking about avoiding it. It's like not thinking about the pink elephant.

I feel like that experiment would be easy to contaminate..

Sometimes if I'm stuck in speech/subvocalizing mode it can take awhile to get out of it.

I think the easiest way to tell if I'm subvocalizing or not by checking my current reading speed. Subvocalizing can slow things down.

Also I think I'm more liable to subvocalize during fiction, with lots of dialogue involved. Acting out the characters in my head slightly.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#776

Post by aedron »

Verbalizing your thought process is invaluable for validating that what you are doing/thinking actually makes sense. For developers, just think about all the times you have started explaining some code problem to a colleague, and instantly come upon the solution, simply by verbalizing ideas. The other person doesn't even have to say anything. There is even the concept of 'rubberduck debugging', where you explain things to a rubber duck, and it helps solve the problem.

I have often thought about what the experience would be of living entirely without verbalized thoughts. Like, obviously ideas and concepts exist separately from their verbal representations, so skipping words would be a more pure and effective form of thinking, right? But lately I have come to the belief that words are a necessary scaffold for organizing more complex ideas. Without them, I think we would simply be unable to put together complex enough models to understand things at the level we need to function in our complicated world. Like making diagrams helps with analysing domains.

It is proven that lack of verbal stimulation leads to slower develoment in children, possibly for the same reason. I think it is also the mechanism by which people who spend a lot of time alone (think castaways) eventually go insane - due to the lack of an external validation mechanism.

This understanding would seem to indicate that people who don't have an internal monologue would be less capable of expressing/understanding complex ideas. I would be very interested in knowing if that is the case.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#777

Post by alfromspace »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #24
1980phipsi wrote: post #12

This reminds me of some other recent articles about topics like aphantasia (no visual imagination) and severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM). People who have these conditions do not realize how different other people think.

I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree). I didn't realize that, for example, "mental image" was not just, like, a metaphor for thinking. When I close my eyes, it's black. Just, black. Well, you know, depending on how bright the lights are, etc.

>When I close my eyes, it's black. Just, black. Well, you know, depending on how bright the lights are, etc.

Maybe you already know this, but non-aphantastic (heh) just see black too. When we visualize something, it's a very different experience from seeing anything at all. It's more the knowledge of "if I could see this thing, this is how it would look".

I'd be very interested in knowing what really happens in our brains. It feels like stringing together a bunch of information and assembling a spectral "print preview" that you can't really see.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#778

Post by stolsvik »

A small observation: I’m Norwegian, but can speak English fairly well. When I lived abroad for a while, after some time I suddenly noticed that my thoughts had switched language (it switched somewhat back and forth, though). This still happens when I have longer conversations with foreigners, thus typically speaking English. However, thinking in English goes slower and is a bit limiting, as my English is still way worse than my Norwegian.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#779

Post by meeton »

aedron wrote: post #776

Verbalizing your thought process is invaluable for validating that what you are doing/thinking actually makes sense. For developers, just think about all the times you have started explaining some code problem to a colleague, and instantly come upon the solution, simply by verbalizing ideas. The other person doesn't even have to say anything. There is even the concept of 'rubberduck debugging', where you explain thin…

So I'm one of these seemingly non-verbal thinkers, including when I code.

I think it makes me more capable of _making use of_ complex concepts. I came into programming through mathematics, and I treat them both as aesthetic exercises. When I'm building a system in my head the solution usually appears visually, and ideas overlay themselves over the problem as aesthetic "feels". Yes it's a lot like being a visual designer: I can step back, view the solution, and just 'see' if it looks right.

Why should we structure our solution like this? I can't easily put it into words but it just... would be more natural like this. And then a few days later the reason it was correct becomes liminal and I can explain it properly. It lets me hold more ideas in my head and make use of them all at once. When picking up a new idea I can grasp the underlying concept, see the symmetry with ideas I already understand, and slot it into place.

Of course it has major downsides too. It's an effort for me to put my full ideas into words. Coding, like anything worth doing, is a team sport. If I can't vocalize my ideas then half the time that makes them worthless, especially when the decisions are important and therefore contested. I tend to make mental jumps that lose other people, and lose track of what state other people have.

Also, and this is in line with what you said Aedron, it does make it harder to check the details. I'll make silly mistakes because checking them isn't part of my mental construct. I can chase a half-formed idea for a day before realizing my mental picture was off, and I didn't catch it because I never put the problem into words. Pracical-but-ugly hacks don't occur to me because they aren't aesthetic. I'm worthless at remembering my girlfriend's friends' names.

This year I'm focusing on moving slower, writing more things down, and talking to people more. So far it's been really helpful. But I don't think I'd have got to where I am now, or be able to solve the kinds of problems I do, if I was a mostly verbal thinker.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#780

Post by summerdown2 »

rocgf wrote: post #757
TimTheTinker wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From my experience, I think a lot of it is due to the fact that you can't really surprise yourself. In the conversation in your head, you try to always be the 'winner' of the debuate, and part of that is to try and come up with remarks from your 'opponent' for which you have gotcha replies. Except you know what your 'opponent' is going to say because that's you. In real life, the opponent is someone else and they may…

Interesting. I tend to think you can surprise yourself. I write stories as a hobby, and my characters often surprise me.

I'd say it's down to two things:

a) Having to imagine a different personality's perspective, and

b) Having some time to think of a better answer than the off-the-cuff one.

Point a tends to happen whenever I make an effort to see the world from someone else's point of view, or make up an imaginary character to have a conversation with.

Point b tends to happen in my own head when I get quiet time - like during a long walk or shower and a thought I'd never imagined before comes up.

It can have some predictive power, too. Imagine, for example, there's an important negotiation coming up. You'll be sitting on one side of the table wanting the things you want. It does help to put yourself in the opposite seat mentally, thinking about what they want to get, and how you'd go about trying to get it. Maybe even trying on for size the best arguments you might make for their position.

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