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People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

theguardian.com

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Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#181

Post by smeej »

clairity wrote: post #69
josephg wrote: post #15

I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…

yes, note that nearly all of our thoughts are subvocal/subconscious. some folks have a more active and/or efficient surfacing mechanism than others though. and a few folks have an overactive vocalization system where most of their subvocal thoughts actually come out of their mouths. i'm always partly fascinated by these folks (just walked past one today), since i tend to be relatively economical in my vocalized thoug…

I probably look like those people, but I wonder if their experience actually is as you say or if it's like mine.

I do talk to myself out loud, constantly, but it's still actually only a very tiny percentage of the thoughts that are in my mind. I wonder if it would look like most of my thoughts were coming out of my mouth from the outside.

At any given time there are at least 6 tracks running in my head, sometimes twice that many, thinking about all kinds of different things at varying levels of depth.

The mouth can only give voice to one of them at a time, though, so it helps me prioritize. It normally directs my actual actions so that the voice that gets the practical life things done can be heard over all the other ones just running in circles around problems until they finally break open.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#182

Post by Sosh101 »

japanuspus wrote: post #140

There is a theory in evolutionary psychology that consciousness is tightly coupled to inner voices (voices of the Gods) [0]. Personally I find the theory compelling, but I do not know how well accepted it is. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...

Are you suggesting that people without an inner voice are less conscious?

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#183

Post by new_guy »

The seminal work on this is "The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind - Julian Jaynes"

People used to think this voice was "God"

Personally I don't have this "inner voice", it's something you lose (if you ever had it) when you mediate and develop your consciousness.

[0] https://book4you.org/book/1124752/f435ef

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#184

Post by new_guy »

lucideer wrote: post #177

> Most of us have an inner voice Citation? I've seen informal Twitter polls on this and most respondents (like me) said they have no inner voice. I know that's not a very scientific source, but though this is a "science journalism" article I see nothing referenced to back up this claim. It almost seems as if it's just the writer's opinion/assumption?

It's like those bullshit "studies" that claim you can't "dream in color", "can't read in dreams", "can't see new faces" etc etc and you're just left wondering if that person has ever even dreamt in their life.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#185

Post by akacia »

I do have inner voice but I don’t feel a constant need to use it, I can think and understand thoughts without it - actually, it’s hard for me to vocalize more complex thoughts. If I’d have to vocalize everything then my mental capacity would be severely limited. I suggest you to try to get rid of it and you’d surprised how much faster you can think in pure concepts.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#186

Post by johnchristopher »

Wait a minute... I thought I had internal monologue because I can hear myself speaking thoughts and myself talking to myself (it's like talking out loud but in your head) but reading some of the comments here it seems like people have multiple inner voices and that's what they mean by internal monologue ? I don't have inner voices, there's only me up there (and I do a lot of self pitying and most of the monologue is on a rail and I do dialogue but it's role playing, not other voices with their own mind).

Do most people mean "multiple voices" when they say "inner monologue" ?

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#187

Post by johnchristopher »

garaetjjte wrote: post #127
boc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? For me it's easy to "fly" around my neighborhood just by closing my eyes and remembering what the streets and trees and houses look like as I take a lap. I can see off into the distance, I can see the sidewalk cracks, I can see people... all of them are obviously fuzzed versions of reality but nonetheless they're rela…

>So wait, if you close your eyes Is this just figurative phrase or some people need to close their eyes to visualize images? I can imagine things, but they are not real visual stimuli that I see, they are more abstract going directly to the mind. Thus it doesn't matter whether my eyes are closed or what I'm looking at, it is independent from real sight.

It's easier for me when I close my eyes because I don't have to consciously ignore what I actually see. But I can totally get in the zone with opened eyes, generally when I let my mind wander (on a train or bus trip or on a walk for instance).

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#189

Post by throwaway-jim »

johnchristopher wrote: post #186

Wait a minute... I thought I had internal monologue because I can hear myself speaking thoughts and myself talking to myself (it's like talking out loud but in your head) but reading some of the comments here it seems like people have multiple inner voices and that's what they mean by internal monologue ? I don't have inner voices, there's only me up there (and I do a lot of self pitying and most of the monologue is…

Have you tried changing your inner voice to some one else's voice? I'm usually have 1 primary voice but I can synthesize anyone's voice. For example, if I'm reading something that I know was written by a woman my brain automatically makes up a female voice for it.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#190

Post by rags2riches »

floatingatoll wrote: post #11
Bellend wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I don't know if I have the voice or not. I seen this on a video (Joe Scott maybe?) a couple of weeks ago and I wondered too. I don't know the difference between thinking and inner voice. Like if I am approaching a road, I don't recall an inner voice telling me to stop but I don't know if that is valid as an example. The question might be too broad but how do you know you have no inner voice?

Other people apparently hear perceptible voices talking to them. Those cartoons about a devil and angel on your shoulders aren’t just cartoons, it turns out, I guess. I’m not really great at explaining it :)

The problem is the devil and the angel both talk with the same voice. The trick is to recognize who's talking anyway.
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