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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?

#71

Post by yapyap »

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…

I get what you’re saying, in my own way.

But what I do not get is how you would convey these thoughts to someone else that thinks the same way as you, seeing as these thoughts don’t neccesarily seem to be contained to words or sentences.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#72

Post by MrLeap »

verisimi wrote: post #33
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's why when you meet someone who thinks like you the depth of conversation and thinking you can achieve together is vast and also incredibly liberating! Your no longer limited by words in same way. Hmm.... I have to say, while I like the idea of being unlimited by words - the state of 'purer communion' is one I have frequently sought - I think it is far more likely that what is going on is that you mind is proj…

> Both people in the conversation imagine that the other 'gets it' - a delusory and false assumption

'getting it' isn't an all or nothing thing. It would be an illusion to take it to an extreme.

The idea of some people in your life being able to get you better than others, more quickly and with fewer words, is a fact of life. Comparative human connection bandwidth can be estimated by vibes, history, outcomes.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#73

Post by a5c11 »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #65

Thinking without words has 2 main problems imo: - You are unable to verify that your ideas are logical and not just feelings (i.e. the feeling of something being logical, the feeling of x and y being related, etc). The confusion between fact, logic and feelings is all so common in ASC - You are unable to get a third party view on those ideas (language is the only form of telepathy we are capable of)

You definitely should read the whole article. The author says that wrapping ideas in words at later stages is important to complete the process of inventing. It's all about the initial processing, to free your mind from language's constraints, because language is indeed constraining. It feels like multiplexing numerous parallel streams of thoughts into a single spoken channel. You have to do it at some point, but only when you are confident you know what those parallel streams carry. Otherwise you will get mess.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#74

Post by thehyperflux »

yapyap wrote: post #71
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…

I get what you’re saying, in my own way. But what I do not get is how you would convey these thoughts to someone else that thinks the same way as you, seeing as these thoughts don’t neccesarily seem to be contained to words or sentences.

I believe the idea is that people who think the same way will find it easier to interpret the true nature of the thoughts behind forms of words which may be less comprehensible to people thinking in other ways.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#75

Post by fjfaase »

In the family of my maternal grandfather there are many individuals who are much better at science but have difficulty with language (often in combination with dyslexia) in school. I have some evidence that those individuals (myself included) have a significant higher non-verbal IQ (20 to 30 points) than verbal IQ as categorized by the WISC-V intelligence tests. I often struggle to express my ideas with words. When I think about algorithms it is often in 'abstract' visual images. While developing software, I find myself searching for functions/methods a lot, because I often forget their names or the order of the parameters.

Academic performance is strongly correlated with the verbal components of intelligence. I wonder if there are other people who know that their non-verbal IQ is measurable higher than their verbal IQ.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#76

Post by yapyap »

godelski wrote: post #49
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 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 interesti…

It’s odd, I experience aphantasia in the way that I am a words thinker, able to talk with myself, the whole 5 miles.

But I am also able to have very vivid dreams, given that I sleep at the right time, around 22:00 - 24:00 and being sufficiently tired also seems to help. They seem very real when I am dreaming them but when I wake up I can remember the thoughts of imagery but can’t recall any real images or pictures or visual recollection except that I seem to have had them in the moment.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#77

Post by nuancebydefault »

verisimi wrote: post #33
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's why when you meet someone who thinks like you the depth of conversation and thinking you can achieve together is vast and also incredibly liberating! Your no longer limited by words in same way. Hmm.... I have to say, while I like the idea of being unlimited by words - the state of 'purer communion' is one I have frequently sought - I think it is far more likely that what is going on is that you mind is proj…

Well this is why that the non-verbal part of communication conveys most information. A single video call tells more than a million words.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#79

Post by Etheryte »

yapyap wrote: post #71
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…

I get what you’re saying, in my own way. But what I do not get is how you would convey these thoughts to someone else that thinks the same way as you, seeing as these thoughts don’t neccesarily seem to be contained to words or sentences.

This is easiest to recognize in the creative arts, but really you see this in every domain. A musician tapping a rhythm or humming a tune might make no sense to a layman, but another musician often understands what they mean right from the get go. Not because they necessarily know the piece, but because they think about music in a similar way.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#80

Post by pramodbiligiri »

ethersteeds wrote: post #35

On that note! I am an intensely verbal person, with words and narrative as my primary mode of thought. This essay and discussion reminds me of a desire I've felt before to develop the muscles, so to speak, of thinking without words. Does anyone have any advice or techniques to that end?

Perhaps do activities like manipulating physical objects (carpentry?, Lego, Rubiks cube), games like Tetris, or complex body movements where verbalization won't be of much use. Or standard Quantitative Reasoning problems from entrance exams. A few years back, the wordcel vs shape rotator debate/binary was being discussed online: https://roonscape.ai/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words?r=53sw

I'd come across this book "Visual Thinking in Mathematics" (https://www.amazon.in/Visual-Thinking-Mathematics-Marcus-Gia...) which goes into some of this.

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