As with perennial Hacker News favourite Aphantasia, the discussion does leave me with the distint impression that the spectrum of reported condition is more a function of our inability to convey and compare the inner experience, than of variation in the inner experience itself.
People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
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Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#72Hey, it’s me! I’m one of the “inner silence” folks, in case anyone has questions. Didn’t realize y’all heard voices until five years ago.
Question: What happens when you're reading? For me, my inner voice kind of repeats it, if that make sense. Can't wrap my head around what "understanding" would be without that lol.
When I read normally, I hear it in real time. There’s a “default” voice, or I can make it a character voice at will. If I want to read a lot faster, I switch the voice off. I seldom do that.
Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#73A couple of years ago, I learned that other people see images in their minds. Now I learn that people hear voices in their minds in a way that is dramatically different to mine. When I am thinking, there is pure silence and blank-ness in my mind. I don't see anything in my blind mind's eye, and I don't hear anything in my deaf mind's ear. It seems that I can create a monologue in my mind, but I have to be consciously…
If you do not have any discursive thought, I am curious how meditation is for you. Must be incredibly simple and easy.
And pointless. Meditating isn't any different from not meditating.
Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#74There is also aphantasia [0]: the inability to voluntarily create mental images in one's mind.
When people say to visualize or imagine something in their head, they actually mean that quite literally. These people can actually see visual images in their head.
My understanding is that some people are also unable to control it, so when you say something they immediately conjure an image.
In my case, I can take concepts and ideas and think about what it would be like to have that mental image, but I can't actually see it. It feels more like as if I were simulating having that mental image rather than actually having that mental image. I can add properties like sound or physics, but it has to be deliberate. My way of imagining things still lets me get easily lost in thoughts and daydreams though.
I can hold the concept of a ball or cat in my mind without instantiating. My ability to conjure mental images is limited though. For example: with a concept of Tony the Tiger, even if I instantiate it I couldn't tell you how many stripes he has.
When people talk about the heart or soul, they're referring to the "place" where their conscious experience happens. If you believe in dualism then it would distinguish between your soulspace and meatspace. If you don't believe in dualism then your soulspace is just a virtual space simulated within meatspace.
Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aphantasia: Is there a simple test or procedure we can use to make it easier to decide to what degree we have this or not? It just seems like a topic where expectations can differ a lot. Since it's hard to clearly explain what visualizing feels like and doesn't. Some people might even be very normal and yet disappointed and think they are missing something. I don't think my mind's eye is particularly strong for examp…
There are some spatial intelligence tests that essentially require mentally rotating and flipping 3D objects in your mind's eye. That could maybe be one way. Can't speak to the quality of this test, but here's one that might apply: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/iq/visual-spatial-i...
I don't think this tests aphantasia at all really. I have a very weak mind's eye and I've always been able to score very highly on visual spatial recognition tests. I can still conceptualize and rotate items even if I can't picture them clearly.
Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#76How do we know we are all talking about the same thing? Sometimes my thoughts feel very ‘verbal’, lots of words, and other times I can think through complex things without any words entering my conscious mind at all. And there’s a full continuum between those extremes. Usually it’s somewhere in the middle, and it’s hard to say if I am thinking with an ‘inner voice’ or not. Do others really experience just one extreme…
I'm exactly the same as you. When I do have an inner voice it's essentially like talking to myself but without actually mouthing the words. But it's not present at all times, it's mostly there when I want it to. I can also create mental pictures in my head - but it's not like looking at actual pictures at all. I'm pretty convinced that it's possible that we actually all experience the same and just have difficulty explaining what our thinking experiences are like.
Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't read the article yet but since you're offering... how do you "think through" problems? Example, this was a dialogue I had in my head this morning: "Avenue X has a lot of stop signs which is annoying. But Avenue Y is narrow and it's garbage-pickup time, so I can get unlucky and really stuck behind a garbage truck. That's not worth the risk, I'd rather deal with the stop signs so I am taking avenue X" What is…
I find difficult to believe that people articulate their thoughts. It sounds too slow to be practical for the every day tasks. I have the (surely wrong) impression that people rationalize their thoughts after the fact with words. I can e.g. read poetry in my head with a voice that captures the sounds and the meaning of the words, but if I'm solving a problem there's no way words can keep up. But I can hear me can say…
Yeah, same here. My first reaction to GPs question is that there would be no debate. I dislike being stuck behind garbage trucks more than I dislike having to stop at stop signs (aka I dislike variability in my commute, so I'll take a slower, but more consistent route every time) so the choice would always be the route without the risk of frustration.
Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#78I find that the “fuzzy” visualizations I get just in the course of ordinary thinking become more vivid the closer I am to falling asleep. If I focus on them it becomes like a mixture of being asleep and awake.
Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#79This is very interesting. I always thought I had an inner voice, but the experiences in this article are completely different than mine. It's just myself speaking to myself, there's never any preconception that it's someone else or a different voice. It's something that isn't present all the time—I can generally engage it when I want. Though, I notice when writing this that I'm dictating my writing non-vocally.
I live with someone who experiences auditory hallucinations. These hallucinations are always telling her deepest darkest fears to her, and she's unaware that its coming from within her. It makes her a little agoraphobic, but even if she doesn't leave the house she hears these voices through the walls and thinks the neighbors are talking about her. I believed her once, but everywhere we move, the neighbors always have the same very intimate things to say about her. I try to point out that logically it's impossible for all these unrelated people to know these things and to talk about them using the same exact language, but it doesn't help. Maybe in the moment it does, but the voices are too persuasive to overcome.
Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices
#80I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…
> Some of my most interesting thoughts I don’t have the words for at all.
That's a really interesting idea, I wonder if leaning so heavily on language can limit our available thought-space. Certainly a Sapir–Whorf tie-in there!
I find when I over-do it with coding I can't stop thinking about everything in terms of coding related concepts and it drives me nuts because I can tell it's gumming up my clarity of understanding