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Does anyone else use the pronoun "we" to refer to themselves in their internal monologues? I'll often find myself switching between "I" and "we", for example, this morning I had to run the dishwasher and my internal thought was "We've got to run the dishes today" and then I laughed at myself for using "we"
Now that you mention it, I use the second person of "you."
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It's probably less of a difference than you might think. Dreams are generally less detailed than you might think from their portrayal on TV. What they are really good at are convincing the dreamers that they are a great deal more detailed than they really are, because they're on the "inside" of the cognition; you might "see" a vaguely round blotch of color like what you may see when you close your eyes, but you cogni…
How do you differentiate between the dreams being detailed and the dreamers simply being convinced of the dreams being detailed? It's certainly my impression that my dreams are extremely visually detailed, to the point that I'm often able to read things in dreams (and remember it later).
A good question. I've developed the same test that the "rationalists" sometimes use to tell if you have an opinion. If you can remember something in one way, and it seems to fit, but you can remember something in another and it equally seems to fit, then you don't really remember the detail of the two ways it seems to fit, you just have a vague idea.
I can draw you a map of my (real life) office. It will be fairly accurate within what I can see, and I can put down specific names. If you swapped two names, I could figure out that does not corresponding to my memory of the office. I remember when we went out to a team lunch two months ago, and I remember the specific order we sat in the booth, and many details about the specific booth we sat in. And to be honest, I would rate my memory as below average.
By contrast, I call to mind a dream right now in which I encountered a crowd of creatures on a hill. I definitely remember it was a "crowd". But... were there a few of them? Yeah... I suppose that fits. Or were there hundreds of them? Yeah... I suppose that fits. I remember they were about 1 foot high and basically the critter from Aliens... but did they have claws or hand-like things? Either fits my memory. Did they have long tails? I think so, yeah. Were they articulated or solid? Yeah... either way, really. I remember them as a "crowd of creatures like the aliens", but when I really drill down... I don't actually have that many details. Were I an artist, I could draw you a picture that fits my dream fairly well... but I could then turn around and draw a picture that in the waking world and light of day would be fairly substantially different, but that my brain would say matches the dream just as well.
I've read things too... but... what color were they? Usually I don't have an answer to that. (I think the common idea that "people dream in black and white" is inaccurate... people dream in not color. They encounter concepts like "words written on a sign" and they just plain don't have color at all. I occasionally do remember explicit colors, but it's an exception.) What was the font? Was it all uppercase? Yeah... maybe. Was it spread across multiple lines? I dunno, I can remember it either way pretty equally fluidly.
Don't get too caught up on these specific examples; for instance I can call to mind a specific instance where I would say concretely this text was on two lines, specifically. I'm not saying these details never appear. What I am saying is that for most people, I suspect if they examined their own dreams like this they'd discover it has less concrete content than they thought.
I would also suspect that there are the exceptional people out there who do dream highly specific dreams every night. But I bet they're the exception. Hard to know. Given the evidence that the act of recalling memories involves destructively reading them and then rewriting them back out, I would also suspect there's another group of people who actually have vague dreams and turn them concrete in the very act of remembering them, but I won't be able to prove or disprove that hypothesis pretty much until we have full brain simulation, so take that with the appropriate levels of salt.
(This is also useful for real life memories. I chose concrete memories I'm confident about like my office layout. By contrast, something like "the wall color or pattern of the hotel I visited a couple of months ago"... well... I know it's in the "boring beige" spectrum but beyond that I can mentally decorate it in any number of specific ways without it triggering any conflicts with my memories, so, I don't remember that. By contrast, I do remember the layout reasonably well. But I don't remember the counter colors, or even whether they were formica or granite.)
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you don't think "one" every time you do something once. just like that you can train to not think "one-two" and not to think "one-two three-four" and so on. gets harder the larger the number, but it's a matter of practice.
Like bars in music? Like I can put on the metronome to, say, tic-toc-toc-toc (different sound on 1 vs 2/3/4) and will intuitively know when I've hit 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 bars. I just feel it. I might be able to use this method for counting, just hearing clicks, and count to 16 bars or something, while doing whatever else, even though I am like Feynman in not being able to talk out loud while counting.
I do have times when I dialog inside my head but I don't think it's my normal mode of operation. Usually internal dialog happens after I've had a discussion that didn't go the way I would have liked, and I replay it over and over fine-tuning my arguments. It's too late but often those arguments come out later.
Instead of a dialo when I need to decide or cogitate on something I often turn on the internal music and the answer comes after awhile. I understand it something the agents in Minsky's society of mind. The agents are scurrying around looking for the answer while the supervisory function listens to a tune. The process doesn't work as well if I try to do it as an internal dialog - the dialog seems to get in the way.
This topic (comments here, the OP, and comments in threads elsewhere) exposes some conflicting definitions of what an "internal monologue" is or means. - Some people describe hearing their internal monologue, which I take to mean something like: they have an internal monologue, and it manifests as a voice that only they hear. These people are analogous to those who see things they picture in their mind's eye . - Some…
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…
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I think it depends on whether you want to feel like a good person, or be a good person. Living in the moment lets you feel better, because there's less to consider. Constantly examining yourself and those around you allows you to better react to those surroundings (even if some people don't act on it for various reasons, one of which might be getting too caught up in the examining and never doing). Like literally eve…
This is definitely not true, at least most people don't experience it this way once they learn meditation/mindfulness/etc. What happens instead is that if you are in the moment, you can much more easily see and feel which things actually exist in the current moment for you to consider, and to actually react to those surroundings that actually matter, instead of those that have been served up by the internal dialog wh…
That is what I tries to express by talking about moderation before. At one extreme you have what I outlined above, and at the other you have the person who always seems absent minded because they are always thinking about something else, and are rarely if ever giving their full attention to what's going on in front of them and around them.
I think when most people say you should "live in the moment" they are actually espousing moving that direction on the spectrum, which can be beneficial, even if reaching the end of the spectrum likely isn't. The point of all this is that being more mindful of your surroundings and living in the moment is probably useful most the time, until it isn't, because you've gone too far, where too far depends on the location, company, and circumstances, so there's no real "correct" answer.
The reason I even broached this is because it was already alluded to in this exact same thread, with:
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.
I can relate to that in some respects, even if only for aspects of my personality. In letting go of always being too overly concerned with exactly how I was perceived and interpreted when I was you to being able to let some of that go later in life, I noticed times where my not making sure to explain myself in extra detail probably left people thinking I was dismissive of their concerns (and there are probably plenty of times where I don't realize I was dismissive of their concerns, and I'm willing to bet that's more often now than in the past).
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If one builds an internal reality of mind that has others "speaking" in it, as if one has seen them do it, one is allowing one to remove their choice...at least internally. If one repeated what you saw to others, then that could also be spreading the behavior to others, thus removing the choice from target. Shame works this way, for example.
Could you rephrase this? I'm interested in your point, but the use of 'one' as an ambiguous pronoun (and contrasted in one phrase with 'you') makes this super difficult to parse?
I am not a shrink
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There was a blog linked here some time ago where the author turned off his internal dialog and was able to observe his more automatic behavior. I recall trying it on my way to work and was fascinated. It was not like meditation, but I was still suspicious of the safety. This piece just reminds me that I need to try it again, but I dont recall how.
Can you try to dig that up and share it with us? It sounds a lot like some versions of meditation, but I'd be really interested to read it.
Have no music on - following a melody feels similar to following speech to me.
Dont be around people who are talking. With practice you will be able to have them present and utterly ignore their words, so make sure they're not talking to you first.
Take a wide eyed look around your environment. Visually (or any way but verbally) imagine you are an animal (you are of course but one that doesnt speak). Look at objects purely visually and repress the urge to "name" them in your head.
If you find your inner dialog active dont "tell it" to stop, just focus on a the visual or other sensory experience.
I find when this works, some muscles spontaneously relax that hadn't noticed were tense. I'm not sure I'm getting as far as that blog I recall, but it really is interesting to observe things without that dialog. You can even perform tasks, unlike during meditation.
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…
A couple ways: 1) By thinking about them in other modes. I have an internal monologue, but it's not so much "the only way I can think" as "a thing that happens that comments as I think, and can be used to talk through things in my head". Eg: I'm also a pretty strong visual/spatial thinker, I can recall scents OK, and I'm reasonably facile with numbers; all of these sorts of thinking / recollection feel different as I…
I saw this viral tweet and I hoped that was more scientific information to read, because I'm a little confused. I don't see enough information here to even determine which type of person I am. Of course I've always heard of "internal monologue" and of course I think about things using language. But I also don't "hear" anything, and definitely not something that literally sounds like my voice speaking. But if I were t…
Hmmm It is indeed an intriguing topic to consider. I hear something like my own voice both when I am thinking throughout the day and when I am writing, such as right now I hear my “imaginary voice” speaking what I’m typing out. The idea of ones own voice is hard to describe. I perceive it as similar to what my voice sounds like, but from heard from within, almost like you’ve rolled off a bunch of the high-end. Imagin…
Super interesting topic overall. I wonder whether these people without inner dialogue are unable to recall music (with lyrics)?
I can easily "transform" my inner voice to be in the voice of Darth Vader (like someone here interestingly pointed out). I find it peculiar that there are people who cannot and their inner life must feel different than mine. I wonder how depression fits into this. I'd think you'd certainly be more prone to get depressed if you are able to tell yourself how stupid/worthless you are. I wonder how that manifests non-verbally.
Someone linked to an article by Feynman in this thread which demonstrated two different kinds of counting - using your voice and seeing the numbers visually. Quite interesting read: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf