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I disagree with the initial premise, i.e., that: > "We think in a voice in our head. Anyone trying to type has to first put it in a voice in their head before
by ken 9y ago
I disagree with the initial premise, i.e., that:
> "We think in a voice in our head. Anyone trying to type has to first put it in a voice in their head before typing. You’re transcribing your inner voice onto the keyboard. When you speak it’s quicker."
Anyone who has heard me speak probably realizes I don't think in voice. I can type as fast as I can talk because words->bits (or words->sounds) isn't the bottleneck. Thoughts->words is.
Feynman [pdf: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf] noted this, too. Some thinking can't easily be done in words. Some people don't naturally think in words.
There's a TV show about an autistic young doctor which, for all its flaws, tries to show how a person can have great insight even when they can't articulate well. I hope it might help inform the public understanding of other mechanisms of thought.
Spoken language is wonderful as an art form or as a tool but I find it troubling when people with one mode of thinking can present theirs as the only kind, and then use it to push their agenda on others. I suspect this is behind the "open floor plan" office fad, too.
- Someone 9y agoYes, it seems as bad to me as the similar ”We think in a voice in our head. Anyone trying to read has to speak out what is written.”, which was considered true until the invention of “silent reading” (https://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Manguel/Silent_Readers.html https://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Manguel/S...) However, there may be some half truth in that statement: to type as fast as text spoken at top speed you must use stenotype. I’m not sure that means speaking, in general, _is_ faster than typing, though, as a) it involves the extra handicap of having to process the spoken sound, and b) typing may be faster in the common/average/mean case.
- cassianoleal 9y agoI truly agree with this. I still remember the first time I heard of that idea of thinking in words. It was from my Portuguese teacher (I'm Brazilian) on 6th or 7th grade in school. I was blown away by that idea so I started observing my own thoughts. In very few occasions I had words come to my mind that described what I was thinking. Most of the time, thoughts were very abstract and indescribable, or simple sensorial information (shades of colours whose name I didn't know, smells that I couldn't name or describe even if I wanted, sounds, etc). Regardless, there seems to be people who think everybody thinks the same way, and the most vocal ones seem to be the ones who consider thoughts to be 100% language-based.