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Inner Speech

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Re: Inner Speech

#71

Post by HKH2 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #67
HKH2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Chinese, if you just put 'big' and 'small' together, you get 'size', and if you just put 'big' and 'not big' together, it means 'Is it big?'. By the same token, juxtaposed memories are questions or suggestions. I think it's the logic before logic.

That's a really interesting tidbit about Chinese. Can't think of anything similar in any language I know, though. Does remind me of those primitive languages where the word for "forest" is just the word for "tree" repeated two or three times.

In English, we have 'oxymoron', and 'chiaroscuro' from Italian, but Chinese has a lot of words with contrasts, the yin and yang etc.

Re: Inner Speech

#72

Post by failingslowly »

vidarh wrote: post #49
xwolfi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then, by which mean did you "ask yourself the same" ? Or is it that you cannot imagine a conversation ?

I have aphantasia, but I still say I "imagine" things (in the visual sense; I find it funny that this notion of visualising things in our mind is so ingrained that "imagine" has broadened to refer to the other senses) because I still clearly recall or imagine imagery in a way that means I can mentally operate on them. E.g. I can draw things I imagine, or describe them, or "mentally navigate" spaces I remember with ea…

You said you have aphantasia, then you listed a number of ways in which you can mentally process images, so I couldn't really understand what you were missing. Then I went and did the aphantasia test, and apparently I have hypophantasia, so I guess that explains it.

I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme?

Re: Inner Speech

#73

Post by scruple »

sparks1970 wrote: post #36
neoberg wrote: post #19

I'm not sure if I have inner voice or not. Do you really "hear" a voice? I can imagine concepts as well as construct whole sentences in my mind but there is no actual voice that I'm hearing. Is this what's called inner voice?

Same here. This video was interesting to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNQyubd9ARc&t=60s in it you are asked to shout "I like crickets" and then to whisper "I like crickets" again, in your mind and not out loud. The presenter then claims, "The volume is the same because you can't change the volume of the voice in your head, only the tone and pitch." My experience of trying this is that I can produce the phrase…

I can't shout or whisper in my inner voice. Wild. It'd never occurred to me to even try. But I absolutely have an inner voice. In fact, it's very noisy and sometimes I wish it would shut the fuck up. It's also oftentimes critical and forces me to action.

I also have aphantasia, so it's not words on a screen, it's literally me talking to myself in an internal dialogue.

Re: Inner Speech

#74

Post by vidarh »

failingslowly wrote: post #72
vidarh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have aphantasia, but I still say I "imagine" things (in the visual sense; I find it funny that this notion of visualising things in our mind is so ingrained that "imagine" has broadened to refer to the other senses) because I still clearly recall or imagine imagery in a way that means I can mentally operate on them. E.g. I can draw things I imagine, or describe them, or "mentally navigate" spaces I remember with ea…

You said you have aphantasia, then you listed a number of ways in which you can mentally process images, so I couldn't really understand what you were missing. Then I went and did the aphantasia test, and apparently I have hypophantasia, so I guess that explains it. I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme?

> You said you have aphantasia, then you listed a number of ways in which you can mentally process images, so I couldn't really understand what you were missing. Then I went and did the aphantasia test, and apparently I have hypophantasia, so I guess that explains it.

This is similar to how I found out - I assumed what I experienced was what people meant when they talked about visualizing things, and it took a long time before I realised that a lot of them meant it very literally when they said they could "see" things.

> I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme?

Ed Catmull, ex-president of Pixar, has aphantasia, and he found that artists at Pixar where not all that more likely to be able to visualize well [1], so the "programmer art" bit is far more likely to be down to practice and interest (on average, at least). I think it's more likely that the better you are in a field, the less time you're likely to have to devote to getting good in another field. Of course there are always exceptions.

But his sample was hardly representative, and so it's hard to tell whether it makes a difference. Maybe it does, and people who work at Pixar, including non-art staff are just more likely to be sufficiently interested in art to overcome extra difficulties.

That said, for my part I was decent at art when I was younger, but my drawing style was different when "imagining" things than when drawing something I had in front of me. But I also suspect I'd commit "programmer art" if I tried again now, at least without a lot of practice.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256

Re: Inner Speech

#76

Post by mandmandam »

sparks1970 wrote: post #36
neoberg wrote: post #19

I'm not sure if I have inner voice or not. Do you really "hear" a voice? I can imagine concepts as well as construct whole sentences in my mind but there is no actual voice that I'm hearing. Is this what's called inner voice?

Same here. This video was interesting to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNQyubd9ARc&t=60s in it you are asked to shout "I like crickets" and then to whisper "I like crickets" again, in your mind and not out loud. The presenter then claims, "The volume is the same because you can't change the volume of the voice in your head, only the tone and pitch." My experience of trying this is that I can produce the phrase…

I can change volume and tone.

There's something quite arrogant about groundless declarations of other's mental limitations. The other example that comes to mind is the notion that people only dream in black and white - so daft.

Re: Inner Speech

#77

Post by jcrites »

sparks1970 wrote: post #36
neoberg wrote: post #19

I'm not sure if I have inner voice or not. Do you really "hear" a voice? I can imagine concepts as well as construct whole sentences in my mind but there is no actual voice that I'm hearing. Is this what's called inner voice?

Same here. This video was interesting to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNQyubd9ARc&t=60s in it you are asked to shout "I like crickets" and then to whisper "I like crickets" again, in your mind and not out loud. The presenter then claims, "The volume is the same because you can't change the volume of the voice in your head, only the tone and pitch." My experience of trying this is that I can produce the phrase…

> The presenter then claims, "The volume is the same because you can't change the volume of the voice in your head, only the tone and pitch."

Very interesting, and not at all true for me. I can imagine shouting "I like crickets" with a near ear-splitting level of volume, tantamount to the force of a storm with a shockwave. Imagine an anime scene where a character is radiating power, arms raised into the air, like Saurman calling a storm down upon a mountain in LOTR. When I imagine this substantial level of volume, my muscles want to start to tense, like my body wants to brace itself for an impact.

I can also imagine whispering the same thing. It is actually difficult to reduce the volume of the whisper down as low as I'd like it to go (as low as I could hear), but it's substantially lower "volume" than the shout.

I can get the volume even lower if I imagine someone else, or a voice from somewhere else, whispering it.

> I can think in words so that I can prepare to write something (like this) but there is no audio.

I can do all of these. I can think as a sequence of abstract thoughts, with no audio component (this is most natural); I can think as a sequence of words, which are optionally rendered as audio (I would do this if sounding out an unfamiliar word), and I can render audio in the mind as a particular voice (i.e. my voice or someone else's, similar to a deepfake). I could imagine Barack Obama speaking any arbitrary words in his particular style of dictation. "My fellow Americans..."

My most common kinds of "inner voice", though, are not speaking actual words, but ideas. They are often critical, or perhaps playing devil's advocate in some way. In fact, thinking using actual words is uncommon for me, unless I specifically need language in some way, so the "inner voice(s)" appear as a kind of alternative narrative to whatever my primary thought process is.

Re: Inner Speech

#78

Post by jcrites »

mandmandam wrote: post #76
sparks1970 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. This video was interesting to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNQyubd9ARc&t=60s in it you are asked to shout "I like crickets" and then to whisper "I like crickets" again, in your mind and not out loud. The presenter then claims, "The volume is the same because you can't change the volume of the voice in your head, only the tone and pitch." My experience of trying this is that I can produce the phrase…

I can change volume and tone. There's something quite arrogant about groundless declarations of other's mental limitations. The other example that comes to mind is the notion that people only dream in black and white - so daft.

I do think it is interesting to explore, compare, and contrast the operating modes and limitations of our minds.

Like you, I can also vary volume and tone of an imagined voice. I can make it arbitrarily loud, but there does seem to be a limit on how quiet I can make it, unless I'm imagining hearing a voice from elsewhere.

I don't think I dream in color, though, but I wouldn't call it black and white either. It's more like I'm dreaming of objects in an abstract space where color isn't relevant. I have memories of my dreams from time to time, and those memories aren't of a scene with color in them. I absolutely dream of conversations, and so perhaps I dream with audio, but I'm not exactly dreaming visually. I'm dreaming of circumstances. I can totally believe that other people might dream in color though.

Re: Inner Speech

#79

Post by shunyaekam »

What is the difference in inner dialogue in happy vs unhappy people?

I guess the inner voice is what one strives to just observe and let be while meditating. After a good meditation session I feel less mentally tense (eg not clinging on to superficially important todo items).

Seems like inner voice is related to mental state in a major way. I have pretty severe adhd and am unmedicated so my inner voice is more like an old radio inbetween stations (= chaotic).

Re: Inner Speech

#80

Post by _tom_ »

I do either, depending on the situation. For me, verbalizing things, internally, is like writing things down - it allows for more organization and review. (Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)

It's clear to me that the main ideas come non-verbally first, and then I translate into words.

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