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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?

#91
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm curious about some specific examples. Like can you explain a thought that came to you without words and then try to explain how you tried to explain it. I feel like my thoughts are entirely monologue reasoning based kind of.

The GP comment really resonated with me so here's my best shot at it.

When I'm searching my pockets with my hands, I might have just had a verbalized thought like "where did I put my keys?" This is followed/accompanied by the physical sensations of my hands searching my pockets, and if they don't find the keys there, I might reach out with mental "hands" to the places I might have left my keys, recalling what I've been doing, summoning the sense memory of placing the keys down. During the process, I might think things like "oh, I was in the garage earlier..." but parts of the thought are much less like talking and much more like tracing my fingers along grooves.

This is true of thoughts about the physical world, but I do it with abstractions too. When I'm considering the architecture of a computer application, every memory or bit of reasoning might not be verbal, but more akin to feeling different parts of a shape or trying to call to mind a sensory experience. I'll then very often, when speaking aloud, have to wrestle my way back into English. "The thing that connects to the other thing with the... options. Sorry, no, I meant, in the body of the POST there's a field named..."

This is partly why written communication has always been much better for me than talking out loud. I can edit what I said to more closely match what I meant. I can recognize and edit out extraneous thoughts that were necessary for me to find the right words but muddy the waters too much if I say them without explaining all the thought behind it.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#92
post #3

Problem solving is a well-explored field in experimental psychology. TFA is a bit unfocused, making both some generally supported speculations and some traditional ideas that haven't been supported. A very good survey is the edited volume, The Psychology of Problem Solving (Davidson 2003). Although TFA doesn't refer to it by name, "insight" problem solving is when you are stuck on something and then suddenly realize…

It's quite frustrating when writers like the author - who seem quite thoughtful and potentially useful to read - appear to pontificate on a field without seemingly being aware of it; using a great mathematician's thoughts on it as a springboard doesn't justify it as its not his field of expertise either.

The essay might be more useful grounded with references to the sort of thing you link to.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#93

I knew a really great programmer. He was also a classical pianist (and unrelatedly an astronomer). Well anyway he wrote large entire programs with mostly two character variable names. He usually conceives entire programs in his head and would write them out using whatever symbols were still available. Most of the time, I would see him sitting and swaying in his office chair and maybe touching fingertips while looking…

I would say that this is the intuitive, naive way of starting coding if no one has taught you coding or you haven't had to care about maintainability or other people reading your code.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#94
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I remember them for as long as I read it and then it goes away. It always baffled me when a movie adaptation of a book came out and people were really upset that the characters looked wrong. And I was just "... you remember what the people in books look like??". It turns out they do. I don't. When I read a book, I kinda retain the "feeling" of the characters and maybe one or two visual traits. I can read thousands of…

Yeah I never understood descriptions or who the intended audience of those long winded descriptive words is, but if other people have this magical capability of getting visual imagery out of it, I guess sure. It is hard to believe, but it must be the case. It is so hard to fathom that other people process things so differently, but I guess it can also explain a lot.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#95
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about some specific examples. Like can you explain a thought that came to you without words and then try to explain how you tried to explain it. I feel like my thoughts are entirely monologue reasoning based kind of.

The GP comment really resonated with me so here's my best shot at it. When I'm searching my pockets with my hands, I might have just had a verbalized thought like "where did I put my keys?" This is followed/accompanied by the physical sensations of my hands searching my pockets, and if they don't find the keys there, I might reach out with mental "hands" to the places I might have left my keys, recalling what I've be…

I am much better with written too, but more so I feel because my monologue under pressure from scratch wouldn't be as focused or systematic since in social situations there are so many random questions, factors, and things to process. While on my own I can let my monologue systematically work in its specific tempo without being interrupted.

Searching physical items is something I am terrible at, usually because my monologue doesn't care for it and rather would do something else or think about something else. So I tend to have monologue about something entirely other than searching and I walk randomly hoping I find the keys as a background process. Sometimes my monologue will get to a really interesting idea for me and then I just have to try it out and forget that I had to go outside in the first place.

It is really, really hard for me to direct my monologue to everyday routine activities.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#96
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP comment really resonated with me so here's my best shot at it. When I'm searching my pockets with my hands, I might have just had a verbalized thought like "where did I put my keys?" This is followed/accompanied by the physical sensations of my hands searching my pockets, and if they don't find the keys there, I might reach out with mental "hands" to the places I might have left my keys, recalling what I've be…

I am much better with written too, but more so I feel because my monologue under pressure from scratch wouldn't be as focused or systematic since in social situations there are so many random questions, factors, and things to process. While on my own I can let my monologue systematically work in its specific tempo without being interrupted. Searching physical items is something I am terrible at, usually because my mo…

> It is really, really hard for me to direct my monologue to everyday routine activities.

+1 to that, I would say it's virtually impossible for me, and I really entirely on nonverbal/muscle memory for said things, and that's the only reason I'm able to function at a "bathes and eats" level, much less gainful employment. It might not be neurologically accurate, but it sure feels like I have a verbal hemisphere and a nonverbal hemisphere.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reddit has roughly 400 million weekly users. You think all of them believe the same thing?

That's what the evidence suggests.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#98
post #75

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…

I can relate. May ask you how your relation with AI tools is? I tend to find myself translating my mental model into natural language, to have a machine convert it into code, then reading that code back to mental model. It's unnerving. It feels much more natural writing my mental model directly into code.

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#99

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…

often times the answer is instantaneous but the articulation takes ages to show people how to get from a to z

insight often lives in the ability to skip a b c d, then post processing is to allow mortals to understand

sometimes my verbal skills fail me and the steps are missing

this is why i disagree that if you can’t write it, you don’t know it

in another words, i may know the note to sing but not have the voice to sing it

Re: When is it better to think without words?

#100

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've always conducted my thoughts in an "uncompressed format" and then eternally struggled to confine it all into words. Only then for people to misinterpret and question it.

This resonates so much with me. To a point where I don't write/contribute in public forums out of fear for this misinterpretation.

Strangely, your post has made me push through that exact fear to write this, so any perceived misinterpretation has positively impacted at least one stranger. This is a good reminder for me that focusing only on negative consequences misses the unintended positive ones of still putting something out there, even if its not a perfect representation of the "uncompressed format".

Thank you for sharing, and I wish you a speedy recovery.

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