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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#861

Post by hipjiveguy »

jodrellblank wrote: post #315
skinkestek wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With me it is often less words and more action movies: getting innocent people out of harms way, looking for cover, looking for anyone like minded who might be able to help block the doors and try to ambush an attacker together with me. Calling the police, whispering the address etc etc. Not sure if it would work if anything happens, but this is one of the thing my mind keeps itself busy with as I walk through the ci…

Pretty much describes The Last Psychiatrist's writings about Narcissism and The Matrix generation. "When the time comes the Universe will make it so I save everyone and know Kung-Fu, because I'm innately a hero so of course it will". https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/03/what_was_the_matrix....

I always thought the Matrix missed a huge philosophical opportunity.

Instead of humans feeding the Alien/AI need for energy (batteries), they feed their need to be human.

They tap into the dreams, and lives of humans, not for energy, but for their souls.

They need each individual human, and through infinite permutations of life, with infinite combinations of love and hardship, through infinite Matrix's, are the ultimate voyeurs.

They're trying to analyze what makes life worth living, because they don't feel anything. Or, they have been God like for so long, they feel nothing, and need to feel something real again.

So, they limit their own senses inside the construct of human existence, which is less, but in ways they can't understand, much much more.

Ultimately, the Matrix is the AI/Alien search for life.

Neo's path to victory is the only path anyone wants. Every heroes path is the one that makes him a hero, not a loser, and is the only path that matters.

Anything else is a lesser permutation.

It is the path of the soulless, to search for their soul.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#862

Post by lostcolony »

yetihehe wrote: post #703
AlexCoventry wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. That almost never works IME, though.

In my experience it typically doesn't work, but sometimes it can work and is good to keep your mind busy IF you have some free time. It's just rehearsing, essentially what dreams are, but in daytime and more controlled.

It doesn't work in the sense of predicting the conversation, but do it long enough, or, do it with iterative deepening, and even though you probably won't nail the specifics of how the conversation goes, it WILL frequently prepare you in broad strokes such that the actual conversation's twists and turns won't throw you, even if they do surprise you.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#863

Post by K0SM0S »

jodrellblank wrote: post #847
kazarnowicz wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incorrect understanding of the nature of the movie, imho. Neo is a philosophical super-hero, not a physical, and so it's unfair to compare him to physical super-heroes. The character is established in the scene where he wakes up, having done something on his computer. He has books on philosophy (Simulacra and Simulation). He's obviously been searching for a long time, and his _mind_ is something most minds…

That's way beyond me. What is a " philosophical super-hero " - in what way is any amount of philosophy heroic at all, let alone super-heroic?

I don't think it's "beyond you", I think it's so simple you passed right above it.

A "philosophical super-hero" in the context of Matrix, circa 1999 is something along the lines of:

Everybody's asleep like Jim Careys in the Truman Show. Reality is not what we think it is. We're all slaves, we're all miserable even if we think we're happy. It's all a lie. “They” control us. “They” know and keep us ignorant. “They” are the reason why we suffer so much and we're not even fully aware of it.

Enters Neo. Neo is a cool dude who should have been Will Smith but he declined to do Wild Wild West — crazy sci-fi in the machine seemed less blockbuster-worthy than big machines exploding in the Far West, yeah, that was a bad call. But I digress.

Neo who's not black, unlike Morpheus, is not like the rest of us. No no no: he's AWAKE(ning). He's woke, man! Like F, this should have been Will Smith, that smug look haha. Oh boy, I digress. Not that Matrix itself is boring but.

Then there's Zion. It's really the Bob Marley ideal, because why not, heaven can only be full of hippies of sorts, and the idea is that if humans "escape" the bad guys, they can all go party to Zion. Cue NOT Laureen Hill, that was a fail honestly.

So, imparted with this supreme Knowledge about “them” and heaven and Morpheus' BFF and so on, Neo can do a whole lot of cool tricks because he now "knows". And there he goes, solves the puzzle in a trilogy because that sounds nice, and the good people are now free. Probably. Or not. Who cares at that point. The whole story was never about that anyway.

So, that's the level-1 "philosophical hero". He just "gets it" and that makes him stronger. There's also a big nod to human versus machine in that the Matrix, the bad guy-s, they don't understand "love" the way we do, and Neo.. well, he's the romantic you know, he loves Trinity and that's the key to his ultimate surviving. “A truly original take on what it means to be human”, said nobody ever who wasn't born the day before.

So, yeah, I'm sure you can see all of that, and (rightfully imho) thought it wasn't much "philosophy" material.

HOWEVER! there's level-2. For the "woke" people among us, you know, those who "get it" like Neo. (I'm joking but I think it's a little bit like that, there's a smugness to Matrix fans, even those who seem to indeed "get it".)

This is my liberal interpretation of level-2. I've looked at YouTube videos analyzing the movies because frankly I didn't get it, like you. And then I had my own "awakening" in life, but it's much less glamorous than Neo, it means shitty experiences for stupidly long times and then somehow emerging the other side and being alive enough to tell about it. Long story short, I kinda "get" what they possibly mean. It's as old as the oldest mythologies conceptually, e.g. the "Maya" in Hindu (Sanskrit: “magic” or “illusion”).

So the matrix is an image for "whatever you think is impossible", the opposite of what is sometimes termed "abundance" mindset — I can't do this, I'll never have that, this is impossible for me, etc. It's a veil on reality, and critically self-imposed, of our own doing in a modern interpretation, more agnostic about gods if you will.

Anybody who does something in this world must at some point on the way remove such limiting thoughts, usually much wider than the mere topic — whether business owner, moviemaker, musician, scientist, etc. In HN of all places the sample is skewed as hell, but some of us probably see that most people are self-imposedly very limited in their "possibles".

I could elaborate but you get the gist. Everything else is filling with analogies and good moviemaking, probably, or not, whatever, who cares at this point.

Level-3 exists, some people do that: they take pop content and slap philosophical references because "quotes" and "easter egg". But then they elevate the easter above the egg and we're all dying of an empty brain because Matrix is now officially better than the Odyssey and La Comédie humaine combined.

Did any of this speak to you, should you have read even just 1 paragraph? :D

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#864

Post by WillDaSilva »

nprateem wrote: post #623
WillDaSilva wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment has helped assuage some fears of mine regarding meditation. I've been meditating most days for the past month now, and plan to continue to do so, but just within the past few days I've realized that I no longer effortlessly see amazing colours and shapes whenever I close my eyes. I'm worried that meditation is diminishing that creative aspect of my mind that produces such vivid imagery automatically. Ide…

> see amazing colours and shapes whenever I close my eyes Are they fractal shapes, or like you'd see in a kalaidoscope perchance?

Not fractals or like a kaleidoscope. I'm not sure I have the words to explain it in any understandable way, and I'm certain that I lack the skill to do it justice. Usually it starts as blots of colour/brightness, as well as gradients (both radial and linear), and some more exotic images. Then if I keep paying attention they'll start to morph into all sorts of different things. These can be abstract imagery (not entirely unlike a kaleidoscope I suppose), but more often the abstract imagery is just a backdrop or peripheral image. Where I'm looking I'll see the images morph into objects, people, locations, etc., and most strangely, concepts. I'm not sure how to explain that last bit, but sometimes in these visualizations I'll just see something that is very clearly a concept/idea itself. I don't have much control over what I see like this, unlike daydreaming where I have almost complete control, or sleep deprivation induced hallucinations where I have control proportional to how awake I am. What I can do is when I see something that I like and want to see more of, I can focus on it. This generally helps prevent it from morphing into something different, but it only works for so long as I can maintain a strong focus on it, so I inevitably lose my grasp on it after some time.

Typing this all out now I realize it sounds strange, and I haven't heard anyone else talk about this in particular. For reference I have low-grade synesthesia (among a whole host of mental abnormalities compared to my peers), my family has a history of mental illnesses, and I'm just about the most neurotic person I know. I have never used any illicit drugs (including marijuana, which is fortunately now legal in Canada). I've considered trying LSD or psilocybin, but I'm worried about having a bad trip. I have however experienced many sleep deprivation induced hallucinations, as well as several fever dreams, dissociative episodes, and panics attacks. I've been told by a trusted source that fever dreams can be somewhat similar to using psilocybin.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#865

Post by roryokane »

admiral33 wrote: post #523
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's so slow and frustrating that the melody in my head just disappears. Use a microphone to record yourself humming the melody first, so you can get the original back if you forget it. Separately, I'll mention that imitone ( https://imitone.com ) works surprisingly well. The transcriptions don't come out perfectly by any means, but they provide a base that you can then clean up.

Logic also has this functionality built in

For instructions on using Logic Pro X to convert humming to MIDI notes, see https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/131522/21473 (an answer I wrote).

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#866

Post by xf00 »

abathur wrote: post #319

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…

IIRC, Chomsky's theory on this is that human language is first internal and is the basis for all human thought. He doesn't mean an internal 'voice', but some primordial, grammatical imperative to producing thought in a certain way. This resulted in all of the world's spoken languages and would explain rapid language learning rates in newborns.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#867

Post by bemmu »

silvermay wrote: post #800
bemmu wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't have "movies of thoughts and images playing in my head" in waking life, but I do start having visual dreams. But I've only once been able to actually observe them beginning, usually I just wake up in the morning with no memory at all of the transition.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#868

Post by feanaro »

jerf wrote: post #822
feanaro wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

"How do you differentiate between the dreams being detailed and the dreamers simply being convinced of the dreams being detailed?" 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 deta…

After having read your comment, I can say with certainty that this is not the level of doubt I have. I do in fact dream by experiencing actual visual qualia. And not just visual, really, but of all senses. This does not happen every night, but the feeling when it does not is one of forgetting the dream after I wake up, not of the dream not having detail. Sometimes I'll remember the actual sensory details of a dream immediately upon waking, but forget it later on in the day, leaving me only with vague impressions like you say.

It also does not feel as if I am fabricating the details upon retrieval of memory, since the memory of the sensory information is immediate and fades with time, the same experience as when you see something, but then look away. At first, you'll have a strong memory of the sensory experience, but gradually it fades. So unless I am for some reason able to instantly fabricate strong sensory information from a vague concept only upon waking up, but not, say, hours or days later, then this theory does not explain my particular experience. For some particular dreams, I remember vivid imagery and other sensory information years after they happened.

Meditation and dream journals seem to increase the effect of either having or remembering dreams with vivid sensory information for me.

Your comparison with waking memories and experience seems apt, because the two phenomena (dream experiences and waking experiences) seem like they are one and the same, perhaps only differing in average ability to retain memory or salience of experience. And just as some dreams are less salient than others (at least if going by strength of memory), waking situations tend to also differ in this regard. When you are on autopilot or lost in thought, your awareness of your surroundings and of the happenings around you decrease, and so does the salience and strength of the resultant memory of the experience. This makes me think the only real difference between dream experience and waking experience (for me) is the level of awareness/consciousness, which tends to be lesser for dreams, but not necessarily so (i.e. there is overlap).

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#869

Post by b0rsuk »

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.

I struggle with the same thing, and I don't appear to have Aspergers. Where are my superpowers?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#870

Post by mannykannot »

abathur wrote: post #845
mannykannot wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To no-one in particular. It is as if I were going to speak my thoughts on whatever the topic of the moment is. To me, that seems very different to listening to a voice. Thre's no homunculus, virtual or otherwise, telling me what to think. I wrote elsewhere that this might just be an illusion - how it seems to me when, and only when, I am paying attention to what it is like to think.

Ah, that clarifies somewhat. The framing feels odd to me. If I'm rehearsing as if I were going to speak my thoughts, I'm concerned with trying to communicate. I'm trying different turns of phrase, levels of detail, and organizational strategies. The descriptions I've seen so far make me think people who "hear" the voice loosely subdivide into groups who feel like they're talking to themselves and hear the voice, peop…

It is not really rehearsing, at least not as you set out in your last two paragraphs. It is more like the first draft of that process, and if it were spoken, it would probably seem incoherent.

When I am doing something specific, such as composing this reply, then go on to rehearsing it explicitly as you describe.

There is also visual imagination, but that seems to be secondary unless I am thinking through a physical process. This might explain some of the incoherence, as my monologue does not to explicitly identify the entities in my mind's eye - I can pick them out indexically.

These issues may have some relevance to the philosophy of the mind, as philosophers often seem to assume they can gain insight into general principles through introspection, but with there apparently being several significantly different ways that people experience thinking, any one person's experience will not be the whole picture.

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