Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

Human Design seems like unscientific babbling to me. First of all the connection to astrology should already be a huge red flag and it mixes random stuff and magically we come up with four personality types (then later a fifth one is "discovered"). Shockingly these can be arranged into exactly twelve profiles.

It may be surprising to you but as someone who is well read in mentalism I can fairly confidently tell you that a 95% match is not hard to fabricate in readings. Admittedly is the area of mentalism I don't perform but I have read plenty of theory. Your HD reading was probably based on Barnum statements/cold reading. If you're interested to learn more about this I'd suggest "The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading" by Ian Rowland. For a more fun exercise, get a reading at a medieval fair or from some "medium" (please don't pay a lot) and compare it to your HD reading.

My takes:

1. The existence of “rubber duck debugging”, and a whole bunch of studies on verbally explaining a concept indicate that language is essential for thought. In rubber duck debugging, programmers tell their problem to an object and this is beneficial in finding the solution. There are studies that show when we verbally teach material to someone we remember it better. Also the act of taking a test increases learning and memory, but why should this be if learning is secondary?

2. Everything we know about memory tells us that externality is essential for memorizing something. If there’s nothing visual, aural, or sensory then it is unlikely to be remembered. Language acts as an externality even as inner speech, meaning that thoughts can be said in language (ascribed onto the words) and remembered for short-term and long-term memory. A thought without externality seems more like a passing whim, unrooted in any more permanent mode of cognition and thus liable to be forgotten. I can imagine thinking in visuals, melodies, words, but if there is a kind of thought that isn’t occurring based off of these then it probably can’t be sophisticated.

> I have the same experience of being "unable to stop thinking".

I am doubtful that anyone can truly stop thinking. But people can have more or less awareness of their thoughts, and they can be having thoughts that they don’t consider to be thoughts. For example, if you notice that your shirt is wet, that is a thought even if you don’t “think” anything about it.

I haven’t personally tried one, but I believe the purpose of a sensory deprivation tank is to create an environment where your thoughts are unavoidable.

I'm not convinced it's a fact we all think as differently as implied. Try and get a room full of people to even agree what "internal dialogue" means or whether you actually hear a voice when you recall it.

> But people can have more or less awareness of their thoughts, and they can be having thoughts that they don’t consider to be thoughts.

Yes, that is my experience. If I try not to have thoughts, then what happens is not that thoughts stop happening, it's that I stop noticing them until they're more fully developed. This "not noticing" results in a relative lack of remarks upon those thoughts, but the thoughts themselves are not made of or depending on language. They just are things. Technically, they are "derived meaning".

When on psychedelics I can have thoughts that not only don't depend on language, but don't have language. It's not possible to describe them because they represent indescribable things. It's possible to feel them and interact with them in a way that seems to makes sense to me, but it's not possible to communicate them. If I try, they can actually result in words being generated, but those words sound like a bad phone autocomplete - stuff like "can have a haves and take a three sixteenth quarters" (real excerpt from a past trip).

(My guess is that my brain has some sort of internal format that real-world concepts are translated into in order to be operated on. That's the "meaning" that gets derived. I wonder if psychedelics allow me to create or perceive meanings that no real-world concept would ever actually translate into, and therefore don't have any way to communicate as a real-world concept.)

> I am doubtful that anyone can truly stop thinking.

This statement is a perfect example of benrutter's point:

> - We all secretly believe that deep down, everyone experiences thought like we do.

Don't be so sure that nobody has thoughts that can truly stop, even just for a short time.