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Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

thesignalist.io

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Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#101

Post by theendisney »

theendisney wrote: post #86

Something funny i discover: i had thoughts or tried to explain something decades ago and made a drawing. Some of these are just a circle with some arrows. Turns out it is really hard to make a drawing bad enough that you dont know what it is. It sometimes works better than even a written description. So you can just doodle in a notebook and tell yourself you've written it down. If you look at it regularly im sure rec…

A different funny that should be archived here with the above.

Assuming you can type well.

Take a sentence, put your hands on the keyboard with the intend to type it but dont do it.

Some time later dont try to remember the sentence but just put the hands on the keys and let them type. Its really funny seeing the text come out of your keyboard buffer muscle memory.

Some japanese guy said he played with the concept and reported that he could fit a whole paragraph or a list of things big enough that he couldnt recall it without using his hands. He could do an invisible abacus to recall it.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#102

Post by vonunov »

felooboolooomba wrote: post #81
Chance-Device wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I found this genuinely funny. It’s called an internal monologue. Google tells me that it’s the majority position with 30 to 50 percent not having one. Personally, I find it very difficult to understand how people could not think in words, like you were speaking to another person. Obviously you also have mental imagery and sound etc, so not everything is just words. Internal speech is one channel of thought, but…

> Obviously you also have mental imagery I personally don't since I suffer from aphantasia. Perhaps I also suffer from not having an internal monologue?! I do think in words but not in complete sentences, it kind of happens much faster.

Look into "worded thinking", "unworded speech", "partially worded speech": https://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/codebook.html

See also papers from Hurlburt and others on "unsymbolized thinking" and surrounding topics

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#104

Post by jaggederest »

Havoc wrote: post #20

I don't think the out loud or someone listening / reacting matters at all here. Suspect it's entirely this: >The thought that was comfortable as a vague impression has to become a sentence, and sentences have structure. It's not unlike what people like PG say about writing improving thinking...it's the being forced to go from fuzzy directional notions to something you can put on paper in that will stand up to critiqu…

I find this whole concept very interesting, because unless I'm translating it for external reception, my thinking is largely non-verbal - generally more spatial-visual, proprioceptive, or purely tacit than auditory, and I find words to be, at least by that standard, frustratingly limited.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#105

Post by Daneel_ »

innerconvo wrote: post #59
crims0n wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a difference between having an inner monologue, and imagining a conversation with another person in your head.

Created a throwaway for this, but is this not what people do? Not so much imagining a conversation in your head, but playing through a conversation with "the other side" of the coin (be it an idea, plan, problem, solution etc) which are both yourself if that makes sense. Is this not what the inner monologue to yourself is? Your inner is conversing with your outer monologue. Hard to explain. Would consider myself to b…

For people who think in words maybe? I don’t have an internal monologue, so it’s quite foreign to me.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#106

Post by Unearned5161 »

jaggederest wrote: post #104
Havoc wrote: post #20

I don't think the out loud or someone listening / reacting matters at all here. Suspect it's entirely this: >The thought that was comfortable as a vague impression has to become a sentence, and sentences have structure. It's not unlike what people like PG say about writing improving thinking...it's the being forced to go from fuzzy directional notions to something you can put on paper in that will stand up to critiqu…

I find this whole concept very interesting, because unless I'm translating it for external reception, my thinking is largely non-verbal - generally more spatial-visual, proprioceptive, or purely tacit than auditory, and I find words to be, at least by that standard, frustratingly limited.

I think that’s part of the point. Execution at its core is mastering the art of projection onto a lower dimensional space.

Taking anything from up in the mind out into the real world, be it a physical action, a speech, an artwork, requires you to make decisions about what’s load bearing and what’s not.

So the more practice you get translating your thoughts into words (or another medium), the better you get at executing.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#107

Post by aaron695 »

Havoc wrote: post #20

I don't think the out loud or someone listening / reacting matters at all here. Suspect it's entirely this: >The thought that was comfortable as a vague impression has to become a sentence, and sentences have structure. It's not unlike what people like PG say about writing improving thinking...it's the being forced to go from fuzzy directional notions to something you can put on paper in that will stand up to critiqu…

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Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#108

Post by jaggederest »

Unearned5161 wrote: post #106
jaggederest wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this whole concept very interesting, because unless I'm translating it for external reception, my thinking is largely non-verbal - generally more spatial-visual, proprioceptive, or purely tacit than auditory, and I find words to be, at least by that standard, frustratingly limited.

I think that’s part of the point. Execution at its core is mastering the art of projection onto a lower dimensional space. Taking anything from up in the mind out into the real world, be it a physical action, a speech, an artwork, requires you to make decisions about what’s load bearing and what’s not. So the more practice you get translating your thoughts into words (or another medium), the better you get at executi…

The "another medium" is doing a lot there, I think the translation between my understanding and expressing it in words is the weakest aspect of software development at the moment, in addition to the entire physical world. Dancing about architecture, if you like.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#109

Post by anitil »

jackyinger wrote: post #88
theendisney wrote: post #86

Something funny i discover: i had thoughts or tried to explain something decades ago and made a drawing. Some of these are just a circle with some arrows. Turns out it is really hard to make a drawing bad enough that you dont know what it is. It sometimes works better than even a written description. So you can just doodle in a notebook and tell yourself you've written it down. If you look at it regularly im sure rec…

I draw a lot to figure out engineering details. I used to make beautiful drawings in diagramming software (draw.io and the lil). But man, it took a lot of time. Now I scribble on printer paper unless it’s something I plan to share.

It takes me ages to draw my diagrams (I use excalidraw) but I find it so enjoyable because it forces me to slow down and check what I think I know

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#110

Post by s5300 »

felooboolooomba wrote: post #31
slwvx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the out loud or someone listening / reacting matters at all here. Suspect it's entirely this: >The thought that was comfortable as a vague impression has to become a sentence, and sentences have structure. I often construct full sentences in my head. And have conversations with my mental model of some other person. In full sentences

> I often construct full sentences in my head I've only ever heard that associated with schizophrenia, but I don't even know if that's true or not.

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