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When is it better to think without words?

henrikkarlsson.xyz

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Re: When is it better to think without words?

#41

Post by treyd »

apricot13 wrote: post #18

This is one of those things that you don't really tend to think about (pun not intended!) until you experience a change in your thinking or meet someone who thinks like you do! > If we can avoid the compression step, and do the manipulations directly in the high-dimensional, non-linguistic, conceptual space, we can move much faster With my neurodivergent brain I've always conducted my thoughts in an "uncompressed for…

That description really resonates with me, it feels a lot like what I've been experiencing on and off for several months. I sometimes describe it like being able to see and examine an idea sitting in front of me on the table but having a hard time picking up and being able to manipulate it enough to write it out. Or like your fingers are working poorly like when it's very cold and you're not wearing gloves.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#42

Post by riwsky »

quacked wrote: post #37
agentcoops wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m aphantasic with no mental imagery at all so my inner experience could not be more different: it’s strange to explain, but I experience “unvocalized” language, which means the words are sort of just there without “hearing” them in my head—-I don’t have inner sound at all either and so the words don’t have an accent, for example. My thought moves at a speed much faster than speaking and I can read fast with high co…

What happens when you read descriptions if you can't skip over them?

what happens is that they're comparatively boring

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#44

Post by noduerme »

blubber wrote: post #43

Isn't it already too late, when you ask yourself that question?

Like, that's funny. But asking yourself that question might just be a step toward answering it. I grew up around a lot of autistic kids who had to train themselves to verbalize anything, but also to restrain themselves from verbalizing random thoughts. Then you reach an age where you start to spew out everything in words, and you have to learn that putting something into language too soon can strip it of its actual meaning and ossify it before you have a chance to fully examine it.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#45

Post by noduerme »

>> the moment when the solution to a problem emerges “in the shower” unexpectedly after a long period of unconscious incubation.

A lot of responses here seem to place this chain-of-thought on a spectrum between verbal and "vibe". I don't think that solving problems pre-verbally is actually at odds with verbal intelligence, or that a person must by definition be better at one than another. The pregnant, mathematical, nonverbal thought in the shower is only really useful if it can be organized and stated rationally at some point later. Likewise, the wordy explanation is useless without a well-reasoned theory it's explaining.

For me, I find that dreams help bridge this gap. Oftentimes I'll be struggling with a difficult mental model of a problem, and thinking of a lot of math in my head in the shower. But when I sleep, I'll have some dream that acts as a metaphor for the problem. Say, e.g. I'm thinking about how to time two independent processes to deconflict some data. I might have a dream about missing a flight because the plane already arrived but was announced at the wrong gate, and I'm running across the airport. Then I wake up and see the answer to the problem. Moreover, I then see how to explain the problem I just solved, using a metaphor that most people can understand.

As far as actually explaining it formally in writing, I usually test the code a zillion ways first and then write the documentation.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#46

Post by helloworld4728 »

A way that can be walked is not The Way

A name that can be named is not The Name

Tao is both Named and Nameless As Nameless, it is the origin of all things As Named, it is the mother of all things

A mind free of thought, merged within itself, beholds the essence of Tao

A mind filled with thought, identified with its own perceptions, beholds the mere forms of this world

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#47

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

shakna wrote: post #8
stavros wrote: post #6

But we all know thoughts aren't words, the words come after the thought. The proof is that you can stop your inner words mid-sentence and you still know what you were going to think, because the thought itself takes a few milliseconds, and happens before the words start.

I think a better way to show this, would be that anendophasia [0] is a thing. Some people have no inner voice, but aren't thoughtless automatons. They can still task-switch the same as everyone else. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38728320/

On 4chan and reddit, they actually believe that those without an "inner monologue" have no soul.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#48

Post by lll-o-lll »

quacked wrote: post #36
EGreg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have the opposite of aphantasia? How do you generate words ultimately?

I just learned that term today, but I guess so. I don't know how I generate words, they're just there. I type at about 120 wpm and speak very quickly as well, but as it's coming out I'm just flashing through different images in my head, often partial images from my own memory, and the words come out without paying attention to them, like out of a lower layer of consciousness. I write a lot of 300+ word messages at wo…

I first heard about “thinking in pictures” from Dr Temple Grandin, who is autistic and associates it with autism. Anyway, it’s also how she thinks and appears to be a super power when it comes to designing feed lots. https://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html

I imagine you also struggled with algebra? Being a non-visual abstraction.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#49

Post by godelski »

agentcoops wrote: post #34
quacked wrote: post #12

I don't have an "inner monologue" and don't think in words, only in images, but I've never experienced what this author is describing in terms of "nonsense words" or "hand vibrations". I was with some friends that were in a band together, and we got thinking about this topic, and ended up arranging ourselves from least verbal to most verbal. I was on one end, where all of my thoughts appear as emotions or images; on…

I’m aphantasic with no mental imagery at all so my inner experience could not be more different: it’s strange to explain, but I experience “unvocalized” language, which means the words are sort of just there without “hearing” them in my head—-I don’t have inner sound at all either and so the words don’t have an accent, for example. My thought moves at a speed much faster than speaking and I can read fast with high co…

What do you see when you close your eyes? Just light and colors? What about when you dream?

I ask because there's done research suggesting visual hallucinations while sleeping helps maintain the visual cortex's proficiency. IIRC it was just contingent on visual stimuli. Sometimes as I fall asleep I see a very bright white light, so something like that can count.

If you don't remember your dreams it might be interesting to keep a dream journal. It might take awhile to get your first entry. I kept one a decade ago and my first entry was "I remember but color blue" and it took a week. But even though I don't keep it anymore I remember most of my dreams and they are still quite vivid. Might be a fun experiment

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#50

Post by v7n »

shitter wrote: post #24
Aargau wrote: post #23

My wife was confounded when I told her I don't think in words. For her, it's a one to one correlation. She had assumed that all people think in this mode. I had assumed that all people think in "thoughts" and went through a separate step to articulate them. Made both of us aware of a difference in people. I don't feel vibrations or sensations though, and I definitely don't think in images. I only have a thought level…

You sound a little like me. I wasn't aware people thought like that until my partner told me her thoughts took the form of a constant stream of well-formed English. My default mode of thinking isn't natural language (though I can force myself to think this way, it's laborious, as the article mentions), nor images (I struggle with visualization), but more like abstract sequences of both logical connections and intuiti…

Adding a data point here for posterity, in hopes that someone researches this topic deeper. I recognise myself from the above, apart from "intuitive feelings" as I don't quite get what shi.. the person meant by that. My mother noted that from a very young age I was fascinated by books and indeed did an unreasonable amount of reading growing up. My sibling thinks with words. Visualisation of real things is a challenge for me, but I think I'm reasonably adept at solving more abstract things (e.g. mechanical linkages) in a somewhat visual-adjacent way that I call my "imagination". This extends to memories, as if you were to task me to picture a dog, I would feel much more comfortable picking a non-existing, imagined dog than any the dogs that I've actually seen or met, such as family members' pets. I do some painting and could wireframe-sketch this imagined subject for you and "fill in the blanks", but trying to remember any actual moment spent with those beasts is laborious and results in something akin to one-frame flashes that are immediately gone and can't be recalled at will. Inadequate memory formation/recall have caused me grief, but I have no trouble remembering for example number sequences.
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