Not everyone has an internal monologue • Hacker News Board

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#791

Post by raducu » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #788

I would say I do both...but also what about "visual"? :-) E.g. when programming I often "see" patterns and shapes of code/data. Its not like a photographic memory and its hard to explain - I'm not "seeing" something I am used to seeing with my eyes (like actual code or whatever) but I have this sort of visual concept in my head of what the data is "shaped like" and I can "see" it. Hopefully this wont be taken as a bi…

Of course you are "seeing" patterns of code, structure and so on.

Just like a mechanic is seeing or, a sportsman is seeing his next moves and so on.

Even blind people "see" the same way, they still have a visual cortex and understand spatial relationships.

So I'm pretty sure if someone did not have this type of "sight", they would have very low IQ.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#792

Post by nyxtom » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

I have found myself in this mode of thinking for quite a while, sometime in recent memory I started thinking through writing and taking an honest look at my information diet. As a result, seems that things are much quieter with the internal dialogue. I can also attest to this change seems to be a consequence of staying active as well. Not sure why that's the case, but perhaps I'm not as reliant on thinking in that way as I used to be. I can definitely see how it would be an advantage give the onslaught of information being processed.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#793

Post by krishicks » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

For those that don’t hear a voice in your head, do you get songs stuck in your head?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#794

Post by fomojola » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

swinglock wrote: post #733

fomojola wrote: post #640

Very interesting: this is one possible explanation for all the times I've heard someone say something that doesn't make sense to me, and I go "Can you hear yourself right now? How did that sound to you when you thought about saying it". And I guess the answer is no: they can't. This might genuinely be the first time they've heard those words uttered.

Sorry for the unsolicited feedback and I know that it was an example, but to me saying that in particular is quite rude. If you did not understand what your peer said you would likely get a better response if you said you did not understand and try to ask a question to have it phrased in another way.

No apologies necessary: I generally try to be as generous as possible when interpreting people's words. In pretty much every case where I've actually done that the person I was talking to agreed that the words didn't quite match the intended message.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#795

Post by kedean » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #477

kedean wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in a very spatial way. I can roughly imagine objects or scenes as something like a 3d graph of connected points. I can imagine the facade of my house if I close my eyes only by sort of tracing its shape, in which case I can feel my eyes moving along that dimension as I do it. I cannot imagine a person's actual face, which I'm told is really weird, although I'm very good with recognizing them when I'm shown th…

See, what intrigues me about this is I wonder if you're just more nuanced and precise in your description. I always thought of myself as being very visual, and I'm like ninety-nine point something percent of spatial ability, and yet your description seems like a fairly accurate description of what I experience. The problem is that the descriptions depend on so many subjective things. For instance what does it mean to…

That's what I always thought originally, but from when I've spoken with other people about it, it's not the normal way of 'visualizing'. In particular, not being able to do things like imagine a persons face is pretty odd. Similarly, when i'm told to "imagine you're in your childhood bedroom" or "imagine you are on a hot desert island", I can't get anything going, while I'm told most people will construct a detailed mental scenery of it.

Like growing up, I always assumed that those scenes where someone's imagination goes wild and they envision other characters doing crazy things (see: the entirety of Scrubs) were just a literary device, but apparently that's at least sort of close to how a normal brain actually works.

The DRAM comparison is pretty good. Or like having a plastic film over the world that you need to press down on to see anything through.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#796

Post by kedean » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #504

kedean wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 followed up by the singers legitimate voice. That is super interesting! I would assume that if you audiolize instruments as you making instruments sounds with your mouth, you would audiolize other people as you mimicking them as well... I mean, when I read…

If I try to do it right now, I can only really generate a sort of average tone that I associate with them, or maybe a phrase they say commonly. I can't really synthesize a new sentence though, so there's something in there relating to memorability too. If I try to imagine my wife saying things that I know for a fact she said this morning, I just hear myself imitating her.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#797

Post by dangerface » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #107

For myself personally, it depends on what I'm thinking about. Thinking about writing this sentence, I hear each of the words I'm going to type in my head before I type them. However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And now I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do. I have to imagine that's the case for at least most people. Thinking out complicated abstract co…

> Thinking out complicated abstract concepts in internally verbalized words just seems like it would take forever.

I do this but the internal monologue fits the time it takes me to do the thing or I go onto the next thing. It gives me a good sense of progression, what I have accomplished and the goal im focused on.

If the task is routine like buttering toast the monologue is about something else.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#798

Post by lordmauve » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

didibus wrote: post #705

ip26 wrote: post #646

I 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?

If you cannot do that you have Aphantasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#799

Post by opless » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

OGWhales wrote: post #283

I took mushrooms once and only about a month after the trip did I realize I hadn’t been using an internal dialogue since the trip. It started up again and hasn’t really stopped since. It was unnerving.

I had an experience similar to you, but after a nasty bump on the head.

In my concussed state, all my trains of though, critics, and general random thoughts all stopped. It was like a holiday.

:-)

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#800

Post by silvermay » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #416

archagon wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I knew how to switch on this power. As it stands, I seem to be pretty good at grasping the abstract “shape” of problems, in a way that short-circuits words, but I can’t flow forth with conversation or write believable dialogue to save my life. My thoughts are entirely fuzzy. Sometimes when I’m very sleepy, I can simulate friends and relatives talking to an uncanny degree, but not at any other time.

Interesting, one of the signs that I’m about to fall asleep soon is also that I accidentally feel my thoughts as if they were said by another person.

I know I'm falling asleep when the movie of thoughts and images playing in my head becomes more like watching something play out on its own than thinking it myself. The thoughts and scenarios stemming from myself become more vague and start to come from somewhere else, basically transitioning from inner-monologue narration of images to compiled dreams that I no longer have control of. However, if I think about my own falling asleep as it's happening the self awareness wakes me up.