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Not everyone has an internal monologue

• hnmullany 7y ago
  I have a friend who has no mind's eye - it wasn't until he was in his late teens that he realized that other people can imagine places/images in their heads. And was flabbergasted.
• oxplot 7y ago
  Relevant bit from Feynman talking about how he found that a simple act of counting in one's head can be different and all its implications. I suggest watching the other videos from the same interview. Lots of fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y
  • Insanity 7y ago
    Also described in "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman!", which I absolutely recommend reading.
• crorella 7y ago
  I can do both interchangeably and always assumed everyone could do the same!
• kls 7y ago
  I found the revelation that people don't do this fascinating. I guess I assumed it was part of the human experience. I had a conversation with a buddy of mine about what language he thinks in one time, due to English being a seconds language for him and it is funny because looking back on that conversation we both assumed that internal monologue was just a default. I did notice a pattern in the minority of people that do not internal monologue, where overwhelmingly populated by females.
  • baroomba 7y ago
    I didn't until some time in my childhood when one suddenly developed (I remember feeling puzzled when it happened, though I don't remember exactly when it happened). I still don't know if mine's "normal" or even how to find that out. I wouldn't say it's constantly active, exactly, if that's what normal is.
  • LordFast 7y ago
    Same here, I first read about this I think a few months ago back here on HN. Prior to this I had made the assumption that everyone has an internal dialogue. I'm 36.
• gshdg 7y ago
  There are also people who code-switch. I sometimes monologue and sometimes think abstractly.
  • TacticalTable 7y ago
    This is interesting, because this is close to how I'd describe my thoughts. Occasionally I can go fully abstract with good focus, but most of the time I'm monologuing. Do you ever find yourself struggling to switch over to abstract thought because the monologue is just a duplication of effort?
    • gshdg 7y ago
      Yes. I find monologue useful for analysis, but abstraction necessary for creativity. Sometimes I have to distract the analytical part of my brain with a simple puzzle game or something in order to think abstractly/creatively.
  • doodpants 7y ago
    Me too. Sometimes I notice my internal monologue is slowing me down, so I turn it off and let the thoughts flow without converting them into words. Other times, I feel like the abstract thoughts are coming too quickly, so I'm like "woah, slow down there!" and work my way through the same thought process again in words, to assure myself that I'm not skipping steps and jumping to conclusions.
    • mikelevins 7y ago
      That sounds like my experience. Though the slow working-through doesn't always have to be in words. It can be in pictures or in orderly logical lumps of knowledge that I don't have a good name for.
  • jrauser 7y ago
    I'm like this, but when I have too much caffeine I notice that it's harder to turn the monologue off. It becomes a little shouty in fact. Brains are weird.
• LinuxBender 7y ago
  I've never heard my voice in my head. When I hear folks talk about it, I assume something like this scene from a game where the character Jaina is blaming herself for numerous failures. Though perhaps the 1984 version of Dune would be closer? [2] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDj2aaxixxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDj2aaxixxo [ WoW Spoiler: Realm of Torment] [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A54yfyi00dI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A54yfyi00dI Dune: Fear and Pain
  • Covzire 7y ago
    Can you not "sound out" words in your head while reading? Is that the same thing or something else entirely?
    • LinuxBender 7y ago
      I can, but never have by default. I assume folks are talking about a behavior that is not induced consciously, as if they have their own situational narrator.
• MikeWazowski 7y ago
  I figured everybody had internal monologue. Sometimes when I'm at work and in the zone, in the moment I realize I'm not sure if my voice was in my head or if I said it out loud on accident.
• RickS 7y ago
  Does this impact literacy? Are there any famous writers that lack the inner voice? I feel like yapping to myself all day was critical to developing writing/verbal skills.
  • UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Anecdotally (on my own example) this might be true, with verbal skills anyway.
• UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  Interesting. I've been actively suppressing verbalization whenever it comes up as far as I can remember -- it is annoying af, as annoying as those silly tunes that get stuck in your head. Not sure if that actually affected amount of internal monologue I do have, but I definitely don't have it on all the time. Mostly when rehearsing an actual past or expected conversation.
  • TacticalTable 7y ago
    Do you have any tricks on suppressing verbalization? I've found that it feels really wasteful when I realize that half my thoughts are just acting as a translator for the abstract side, instead of keeping it abstract until I get to something I need to verbalize.
    • UnFleshedOne 7y ago
      I sometimes do a mini meditation, quietly ignore the stream and it goes away. Or sometimes I try the opposite, forcefully suppress it. I find that both have kinda the same effect -- all useful thought process get interrupted, including the abstract part.. :/
    • asdasdasdasdwd 7y ago
      Maybe try reading using a speed reading app. I use Comfort Reader [0]. When the words fly by really fast you have to stop sounding the words in your head or won't be able to read the full sentence. For me thinking is like writing and reading to myself so it helps. [0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.mschlauch.comfortreader/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.mschlauch.comfortreader/
• daenz 7y ago
  Could internal monologue a vestige of bicameralism? >Bicameralism[Note 1] (the condition of being divided into "two-chambers") is a hypothesis in psychology that argues that the human mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind.[0] 0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)
  • lovegoblin 7y ago
    From your own link: > The primary scientific criticism has been that the conclusions drawn by Jaynesv [i.e., bicameralism] had no basis in neuropsychiatric fact.
    • empath75 7y ago
      Weirdly, I think that his theory makes sense without leaning on bicameralism at all. Internal monologues could be a recent development with very few obvious physical changes in the brain that caused it, and the cultural interpretation of it could have changed. People think of the idea of 'the mind' and 'the self' being obvious and self evident, but they are anything but, and it took a lot of brilliant philosophers and poets to come up with words to talk about it and metaphors to use. It seems completely believable to me that bronze age people did not have a clear understanding of what thought was and what was doing the thinking.
      • coliveira 7y ago
        My opinion is that the "internal talk" is a result of our adaptation to human culture from the last thousands of years. This happens because several thousand years ago we had no language, at least not as developed as in the modern world. I guess the same is true for hearing music inside your mind, since there was no music (as we understand nowadays) a few thousand years ago.
• bpodgursky 7y ago
  > I would tell them that I could look at myself in the mirror and have a full blown telepathic conversation with myself without opening my mouth and they responded as if I had schizophrenia. One person even mentioned that when they do voice overs in movies of people’s thoughts, they “wished that it was real.” I think this author has an inaccurate understanding of people who do not have an "auditory" inner monologue. Think of it this way: a lot of people don't vocalize text as they read it. I do not. I am still able to read, and I still "understand" what is being read, but I don't need to turn it into voices and sound it out, to gain that understanding. Tbh, I find it slows me down. Inner monologues are the same way. People still have rich inner "conversations" even if they aren't vocal ones. Which is what I do -- I'm not really sure the best way to describe it, but I'm able to have a "debate" between inner arguments without mocking it out as two people talking to each other (I mean, I can if I want to -- but I find it unnecessary and slow, personally). I'm sure a lot of people are the same way. I think the author is getting a bit high on the idea that he has a richer inner life than the people around him, and needs to think about alternate interpretations.
  • nilkn 7y ago
    My interpretation is that the author isn't referring to people who suppress vocalization by choice but rather to people who can't enable vocalization in the first place.
• c_o_u_n_t_s 7y ago
  Similarly, not everyone can visualize things in their mind. Pixar's founder Ed Catmull did a survey of Pixar employees and, interestingly, there wasn't that big of a skew of artists who are able to mentally visualize. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47830256 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47830256 I wonder if there's an intersection of people who do not have an internal monologue nor a "mind's eye?"
  • altacc 7y ago
    My wife has this. One day we had a similar realisation as the article’s author. It was fascinating to discuss and explained so much about how we went about making choices over anything visual, from clothes to home decor (I tend to be in charge of both for our family as I can visualise). I use visualisation a lot for work, especially when designing or understanding process flows, so not having that ability seems so alien to me.
  • mhandley 7y ago
    I'm a very visual person, but I can't visualize faces at all. I have no problem remembering faces, but I can't visualize them. When I'm fully awake, I can sort of visualize other things, but it's never perfectly clear. But when I've just woken up, I can lucid dream, and then I can consciously visualize really complex 3d structures, and design mechanisms in my head much more easily than I can using CAD software when I'm fully awake. The brain is truly amazing and very odd sometimes.
    • GistNoesis 7y ago
      What about visualizing the picture of a face ? Or alternatively, like you seem to be able to visualize 3d structures, can you imagine a wax or clay sculpture of the face of the person (i.e. if you have a sculpture laying around which has a face take a look at it and try to visualize it in your head), or a coin head profile. Once you get it to successfully visualize with one way morph it continuously into the case you don't successfully visualize yet and push the frontier. For example if you get it to work with a small sculpture try it with a bigger one. Or try to look at a real person face as if it was a sculpture or an object. Try changing the way you gaze at the face. Sometimes, even more so with people we care about, we don't look at them like we would look at an object but we are rather trying to look at the soul behind the mask.
• 1980phipsi 7y ago
  This reminds me of some other recent articles about topics like aphantasia (no visual imagination) and severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM). People who have these conditions do not realize how different other people think.
  • godshatter 7y ago
    I'm one of those that has aphantasia. No visual or auditory imagination for me, so no running monologue in my head, or view of sentences. Or, if it's happening, I can't hear it or see it. Thoughts come to me as concepts, and sort of just pop into my head. Had no idea until a year or two ago that this wasn't how it worked with everyone.
    • marknadal 7y ago
      How many thoughts/ideas/things can you process simultaneously? I can probably do up to 8 different subjects/thesis, but I also can imagine in: audio, touch, sound, color, space, abstract, visual, time, taste, smell, linguistic, and hyperdimensional. Couple of these things I had to practice though.
      • godshatter 7y ago
        That's a hard question for me to answer. I know it sounds weird but "I" am not the one doing the thinking. It happens elsewhere in my brain; I only get notified of the results. So my answer is either 1, 0, or "no idea", depending upon how you look at it. I can keep track of a lot of pieces of a large process or program all at once, but it's happening in the abstract, I guess. This might just be a communication problem, though. In terms of the senses, I can walk into a busy scene and take everything in. The sounds, the sights, the smells, etc. I seem to be more situationally aware than a lot of other people I interact with. Just no record button. Notes I make to myself or overall impressions stay, but I would not be very helpful as a witness to a crime if I wasn't trying to memorize what I was seeing in the specific. This is a difficult thing for me to "look at", in some ways I don't do much thinking at all, but am still successful and am thought of as that guy that can figure out the problem when others are stuck.
• mabbo 7y ago
  I've been fascinated by this concept ever since I studied American Sign Language in university. When I spent enough time signing, I stopped thinking in words. My thoughts became more abstract, quieter. It was actually kind of nice, peaceful. I don't know that I was any smarter or able, but it was a notably different experience in a minor way. But then I graduated, moved, and stopped spending 1-2 nights per week at the campus pub signing with other students. And it all slowly went back to a loud internal monologue instead.
• coldpie 7y ago
  I wonder if this is related to (forgive the term) grammar-nazi-ism. I'm pretty sure I don't have any inner-monologue, at least the concept of it sounds weird to me. I'm also super picky about grammar: if someone writes "its cold out today" I have to re-read the sentence to try to understand it. I don't "hear" "it's cold" in my head, I parse "its (posessive) cold" which doesn't make any sense, and I have to go back and re-read it to fix the writer's error.
  • ramblerman 7y ago
    I'd say your grammar nazism comes from the fact that you are visually oriented. The mistake just looks wrong. And as a visually-oriented person you would also be less likely to have an inner monologue.
    • Zenbit_UX 7y ago
      For me it's more about a and an, if someone were to write: "I installed a HDMI cable" my inner monologue will actually yell as it passes over the "a" to heavily emphasize the mistake. Depending on how annoyed it is, it might even respond... "Really? Did you really install _A_ HDMI cable today? Really? Maybe you installed _AN_ HDMI cable?" Acronyms are generally the worst for a/an situations as depending on if you personally pronounce the acronym as a whole word or spell it out in letters the rule might change.
    • mikelevins 7y ago
      I have experiences like those of the previous poster, but I also experience when listening to speech, so it's not specifically visual, at least for me. And no, I don't experience speech visually (unless I'm reading a text transcript).
  • wozer 7y ago
    I wonder: does not having an inner monologue imply that you never ruminate or worry excessively?
    • mikelevins 7y ago
• zadkey 7y ago
  The hardest thing for me to come to own up for myself is not just taking responsibility for my own inner monologue, but realizing that thoughts encompass much more than my inner monologue. I have wordless thoughts are deeper, more subtle and these things are thoughts too. I have to take responsibility for these as well. It makes sense once you think about animals, who don't have a formal language yet clearly are capable of thought.
• Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Something I discovered within the past year is that if I know a song fairly well, I can "play it" silently in my head, and be entertained. The experience isn't quite as emotionally resonate as listening with headphones, but it's not so far off either. It's useful when I'm bored. ...can anyone else do this? I actually find it supremely weird.
  • RIMR 7y ago
    I can play a whole song in my head, and then realize that I don't know the words, and when I try to get the words out of the song in my head, I can't understand them, because my brain only committed the musical parts, not the lyrical parts. I can even hear the vocals, they're just gibberish until I make a conscious effort to memorize them.
  • echelon 7y ago
    No, I think that's pretty normal. I do it all the time. I can even "compose" my own music (it can be any genre, with any type of instruments, and even include voices), but I have no ability to play instruments myself. I'd love to get into music, but just don't have the time. My literature professor back in college said he "listened to" classical music in his head during his morning runs. I just assumed everyone did it based on sample size 2.
    • _0ffh 7y ago
      >No, I think that's pretty normal. I do it all the time. [Edit: Currently I "listen" to a lot of Georgios Papadopoulos, heh!] >I can even "compose" my own music I can relate! Unfortunately, I'm totally untrained regarding music. I once tried to enter one of the melodies in my head (simplified) into a music program, and it took forever, because I had to find the correct notes by trial and error: "Not that one. Neither that one. Still wrong. Not quite. This one is it! Next note..."
      • manmal 7y ago
        I think this kind of trial and error is actually the best way of learning an instrument. My guitar teacher did exactly what you did (but on a keyboard) when he was a kid, and even got feedback from his parents on whether he hit the right keys. He's a hell of a guitar player now, surely among the (subjectively) very best in my country.
• jasonlotito 7y ago
  And then there is Aphantasia[1]. I didn't realize this was a thing. When people spoke about picturing something in my mind, I always assumed they weren't being literal. Discovering they were was shocking. It's such a foreign concept to me, to picture something in my mind literally. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
• baddox 7y ago
  I saw this viral tweet and I hoped that was more scientific information to read, because I'm a little confused. I don't see enough information here to even determine which type of person I am. Of course I've always heard of "internal monologue" and of course I think about things using language. But I also don't "hear" anything, and definitely not something that literally sounds like my voice speaking. But if I were to try to explain my thought process, I likely would describe it as myself expressing thoughts using language as if I were speaking. Obviously this gets deep into the philosophy of qualia, but do we have evidence that there are two very different modes of thinking? Could this not just be different analogies people have adopted to describe their thinking? An Instagram poll isn't a great tool to study this. I would like to see a psychological or neurological study about this idea. As of now, I'm pretty skeptical that the dichotomy exists. It sounds like the claim that "some people describe their brains like a computer, while some people describe their brains like a library." Computers and libraries are very different physical objects, yes, but the choice of analogy doesn't really tell me much about how people are experiencing their own thought processes. Of course, if it's true that the majority of people do actually experience auditory hallucinations of their own voice speaking all of their thoughts, then my criticisms here are invalid, and I'm definitely in the other group of people.
  • kls 7y ago
    I would not say that it is auditory hallucinations as in you don't actually hear the voice in your ears. But you thoughts are in a voice in your head that is distinctly your voice or your identity. At least that is my experience and it sounds like what the author is describing to me.
  • vonseel 7y ago
    Hmmm It is indeed an intriguing topic to consider. I hear something like my own voice both when I am thinking throughout the day and when I am writing, such as right now I hear my “imaginary voice” speaking what I’m typing out. The idea of ones own voice is hard to describe. I perceive it as similar to what my voice sounds like, but from heard from within, almost like you’ve rolled off a bunch of the high-end. Imaginary voice is much more consistent in volume and tone for me too than speaking, much less emotional, almost no variety in pitch. I wouldn’t say I think in full-sentence monologues all day, but I guess I think in fragments of sentences? It’s one of those things that is hard to look back and remember doing and explain how you did it, kind of like breathing. It’s just automatic. I wonder if some of the “no monologue” people aren’t much different from the rest of us, but they just didn’t articulate their process the same way. I can kind of identify with the concept map thing, so I could probably answer differently depending on mood or how I felt when I read the survey.
• LukeBMM 7y ago
  A similar subjective experience just came up recently[1] on HN as an aside in an article posted about Derek Parfitt: > He attributes [his severely deficient autobiographical memory] to his inability to form mental images. Although he recognizes familiar things when he sees them, he cannot call up images of them afterward in his head: he cannot visualize even so simple an image as a flag; he cannot, when he is away, recall his wife’s face. (This condition is rare but not unheard of; it has been proposed that it is more common in people who think in abstractions.) That article was from 2011, before the term aphantasia was coined in 2015[2] and (arguably) popularized in 2016[3]. Most folks also assume that everyone uses their visual cortex to process memories while that idea sounds absolutely implausible to some relatively small percentage of the population. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240 [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945215001781 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094521... [3] https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-...
  • godshatter 7y ago
    I don't know enough about SDAM to know if it's the same thing as visual aphantasia, but they are presumably related. I am unable to visualize anyone's face (or, really, anything at all that isn't a black void), yet I can easily recognize the person (especially if I know them well) and I can describe them. What I can describe about them are whatever notes I've made about them to myself along the way (round face, black hair, mustache, broad chin, etc).
  • underbluewaters 7y ago
    I had a surprising conversation with a talented artist a while back and while we were discussing methods it came up that they always had to work from a model or photograph because they could not recall images, at all, from memory.
  • FooHentai 7y ago
    I think it's more common for people with this to cope by thinking in terms of abstractions, rather than the other way around. The flag's a great example. Can't call up an image of a flag, but I can hold a kind of inferred 'essense' of a flag based on the abstract idea. Rectangle, some dividing lines depending on the country, kinda a wavy shader effect on the edges, probably a pole off to one side holding it up. But that's as rich as the image gets. If internal monologue is supposed to be an actual voice that you perceive vividly then yeah, that's not present either.
• keiferski 7y ago
  I'd posit that the strength of the internal monologue is tied to one's propensity and skill in language. People that think primarily in linguistic terms probably have an easier time forming their thoughts into the structure of language, whereas a person who interprets the world in primarily in visual or spatial terms would see more mental images, maps, or connections. Unfortunately, we live in a society strongly dominated by language, so the "cultural toolset" for understanding and controlling thoughts is optimized for linguistic thinkers. I often wonder what a society structured around visually-oriented people would look like.
  • arcade79 7y ago
    And I'd posit that you're wrong. :-) The reason? I do neither. I do not have an internal monologue. I can construct one if I want to, but I do not have an "inner voice". When I type this, I do not prepare the sentences before I type them. They come to me as I type. I know exactly what I want to convey, but the sentence doesn't exist inside my head as a recognizable language or as any structure I can describe. The funny part? I don't think in neither English nor Norwegian (my native language), and I never have. When it comes to imagery - I cannot construct a clear image of much at all in my head. I can, if I try hard, construct vague images of my mother, father, wife, daughter and very close friends in my head - but they're vague. Very, very vague. I have no problem recognizing people, though. I do have fantastic spatial skills. If I walk through an area, I can see imagine it from different angles and positions - but not as a picture. It's abstract, without imagery. It's difficult to explain how it's processed in my head. I can spin things and know exactly how things will "look" from a different angle .. but I can't "visualize" it. This seems self-contradictory - but let me try to give a real life example. I visited Manila some 15 years ago. 10 years ago (5 years after being there) - I was going to show someone where I'd been on google maps. I had never looked at the area on a map before. I could just zoom in on the city, start from the airport, recognize the patterns from above, and zoom in on various things I had visited - switch to street view and show it from the angles I wanted. In seconds. I can visit woods I've been to 20 years ago, and recognize where I am, and know the paths. Still, no inner monologue. Not much mental imagery. Heck of a lot of connections though - but very very abstract.
• deleted 7y ago
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• ressetera 7y ago
  There are also people who can't dream in color.
  • lcnmrn 7y ago
    When picturing things or dreaming I assign colors by the shape of things.
• sandov 7y ago
  I like to think that I have "hardware acceleration" for typing on QWERTY keyboards because I am so used to it that I do it unconsciously. But when I smoke weed, I have to actively think about the position of keys in the keyboard in order to type coherent things. I have to type "by software". The point is: maybe for some people, their spoken language is "hardware accelerated" and for others, thinking in words is too computationally expensive, so they resort to less expensive methods. Or maybe it's the opposite. Thinking abstractly is the computationally expensive method but the improvement in decision making isn't worth the effort. Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about psychology or neuroscience. I just like to think about it.
  • _underfl0w_ 7y ago
    YMMV, but I find cannabis consumption requires that _pretty much every subsequent action_ be done at a conscious level for the duration of its effects. Reading, coding, speaking, typing, etc. This can occasionally yield interesting results by forcing you to think through minute aspects of everyday things - and sometimes by extension craft questions you might not normally think to ask - but at least for me it seems to disable the majority of unconscious "muscle memory" systems. "hardware acceleration" is a perfect phrase to describe them though!
  • nibbula 7y ago
    It is the observation of linguists that some language processing is hardware accelerated. But hardware acceleration comes in a great many varieties, anywhere from having a slightly smaller partially specialized neuron group in the frontal lobe, to having genetically preconfigured sections in lower brain, to not needing the signals to travel to the brain at all, as demonstrated by headless chickens, and government officials.
• vekker 7y ago
  What does the author mean with "hearing his voice" though? People can have different interpretations of what it means to "hear". In what sense can it be compared with hearing actual sounds? Does it have the same quality. Does he perceive his mental dialogue like an overlay on top of "external" sound? I've been wondering the same thing when people say they "see" or "visualize" something: do they actually, visually see it in front of them, or not? For me, the internal monologue and visualization are all just "mental" events. It doesn't share any qualities with the other sensory faculties: they are all quite distinct for me. Just like seeing and hearing, mental events also have a "spectrum", ranging from nothing at all (no thought), to "quiet" (abstract thinking and forming mental facsimiles of sensory perception) to "loud" (mentally "speaking" full sentences to myself, which I do the least). Fascinating topic!
  • rconti 7y ago
    Yeah, I'm a bit perplexed on this. I sometimes have conversations in my head, or imagine a conversation with someone else I might run into. But by the same token, there's no "voice" to the conversation; it doesn't "sound like" anyone; sometimes i think through something before saying it, other times i just say things without saying it in my head first.
• air7 7y ago
  Not only that but my inner voice can do impressions: I can have "it" do accents or imitate specific people whose voice I know well. Also sometimes (albeit rarely) a thought might actually make me smile or even laugh out loud a little out of surprise with no external input so to speak. Quite weird, come to think of it... do others do this too?
  • klondike_klive 7y ago
    Yes. A lot of my job includes doing voices and impressions, replicating sounds. I've always been a mimic and had a curiosity about sound. So I guess when I'm thinking about an accent or particular voice I'll be going over knotty bits in my mind, trying to nail how to attack a sound with the musculature of the mouth and throat.
• echelon 7y ago
  I dream up movies and songs and all sorts of rich fantasies in my head, and I do this constantly. As a consequence of this, I never get bored as I've got an incredible imagination to lean on. I think about movies I want to make, startups I want to create, the change I want to put into the world. New songs on my commute, goals I want to accomplish, what I could do with time travel. I'm always working on the structures of my different dream worlds, modifying the rules and the characters, exploring how they interact. The languages they speak, and the rules of the magic and science systems that form the bounds of their existence. I have never once in my life been bored. Not once. I can sit in an empty room and just daydream. If I play music or walk or run, this imaginative power is supercharged and becomes a transcendent experience. It's why I love running and headphones. I haven't taken drugs, but I imagine it's something like that. It's a pure, unfettered deluge of dopamine. I can also walk in circuits and circles around my house doing this and can waste hours in fantasy. Entire weekends can be "wasted" this way. I think this is a source of my ADHD. I've got instant dopamine fixes from my raw imagination and it's incredibly hard to do anything else as I can always give myself something better to do by just daydreaming. As an aside, the dreams that I have when I sleep are almost like movies. They have intricate (but often nonsensical) plots, and I'm seldom even involved. The main thing I want to do with my life is to create tools so I can get this out of my head and out into the world. I wonder how many other people daydream like this and have a vibrant inner creativity?
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • victorNicollet 7y ago
    I do exactly the same. Started when I was 6, walking around in circles, just imagining things. Music makes it even easier. It also helps deal with frustrations and anxiety by imagining catarthic scenes. I still spend an hour each day doing that during my commute. I've found that improv theatre and writing books really helps with the "getting it out of my head" part.
  • danogentili 7y ago
    I used to have such an imagination when I was young: before going to sleep, I would always reimagine the movies I just watched or the books I just read, factoring myself into the story (often as a coprotagonist, not particularly OP but helpful in many ways), sometimes going a bit meta trying to explain my presence to the characters, tweaking their response, trying not to trigger the obvious self-doubting panic that would ensue if someone told you your reality isn't actually "real". I even had a cross-universe canon for my character: I often had wings (watching Winx club as a kid helped), and sometimes took characters on a multi-dimensional ride in my magic hyper-technological flying car, big as a house on the inside, capable of traversing space and time. I absolutely feel the same way about music, it manages to turn any world, even a simple concept into a fantastical and magical music video of sorts. As I went on with my life I somewhat lost this ability, possibly due to the highly technical nature of my job and hobbies, however I still love reading and watching good fantasy stories, and sometimes, when I feel like it, I still fantasize by joining the story and aiding the main characters in saving the world (and music still can transport me away to another world, like before). I have often considered the enormous power, and just as enormous limtations of modern creativity tools. I honestly can't wait for neural interfaces: when everyone will be able to extract images and audio directly from their brains. It will truly be a revolution for the media industry, a change as big as the introduction of computers. It will also give way to haunting new aspects of copyright law: what happens if someone publishes a YouTube neural video that uses copyrighted characters, do we prohibit people from even thinking about copyrighted IP? Do we beam films using widevine L0 DRM directly to people's brains, immediately removing all memories of them after they were seen to avoid copyright infringement? Those will truly be interesting times, and I would really love to live to see them.
• worik 7y ago
  Very interesting. I am not sure that I am one or the other. My thoughts form in a soup of cognition. Then if I pay attention become words, or smeeld, sounds, tastes.... Related: I play guitar in two rock bands. I have to reach a state in my mind between attention and inattention to do well. For example if I count beats I loose my rhythm. But if I stop paying attention I loose... So I need to be in a intermediate state.
• karlicoss 7y ago
  Reminds me of "What Universal Human Experiences Are You Missing Without Realizing It?" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-e... Also really, read the comments as well, lots of mind blowing stuff!
• mhandley 7y ago
  I think there are also two types of people when it comes to navigating. One type gives and understands directions along the lines of "go along this street until you pass the Red Lion pub, then turn right. After 50 metres, turn left". Most people seem to be in this category. Then there are those of us who have an internal map, and have no problem with "go north for half a mile, then turn east". I'm the latter - I always have a mental map which is oriented absolutely. No matter where I am, indoors or out, I can pretty much always point north. I have no problem navigating along routes I'm never taken before, because I can visualize where it will come out. But if you give me relative directions, I'll have to make quite an effort to map them onto my mental map before I can make use of them. I've only met a few other people who navigate in absolute terms - most people I've met seem to be relativists.
  • foogazi 7y ago
    > No matter where I am, indoors or out, I can pretty much always point north. That’s a very specific claim and it’s something that I’ve felt to the point that I’ll test myself when indoors Another part of the driving is that I’ll often ‘skip’ over the boring middle parts, reach my destination and not remember the series of decisions I made to get there. I often listen to books or podcasts when driving and when driving over the same area I’ll remember what part of the book I listened to at that particular spot
  • mikelevins 7y ago
    My mother is a step-by-step navigator. She wants detailed in-order instructions. I'm a spatial navigator. Give me enough information to locate the destination on my mental map, and a few local details I can use to double-check that I'm in the right place. My mother will follow the directions step-by-step. I will travel in the general direction of the location of the destination and start checking landmarks and addresses when I'm in the right area of the map. I cannot navigate at all when engaged in a conversation. I can drive safely, but if you occupy my attention in conversation, my destination will become random. My daughter used to exploit that quirk for laughs when she was a teenager. Unfortunately, I have sort of the same issue with conversation and logic problems. I tend to perform pretty badly in tech interviews because I can't think about programming problems very well while participating in a conversation.
• Causality1 7y ago
  Wait until he finds out about all the people with afantasia who don't have the ability to visualize or replay audio in their head at all.
• scj 7y ago
  What about both..? For example, I have a concept in my head that's like a hashtag but would translate to "over-optimized 80s/90s technologies that have aged poorly". It's a categorization that overlaps with a sense of frustration (typically because I'm using one) and joy that I'm seeing fewer of them these days... I have a lot of similar "feelings" that are felt instantly, but would take dense English to express. It is kind of like observing some behaviour in a large codebase and trying to remember what's causing it. Connecting all the dots to find a satisfying explanation isn't always immediate. This write-up on "clueyness" is a similar example to what I experience from time-to-time: https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/05/clueyness-a-weird-kind-of-sad.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/05/clueyness-a-weird-kind-of-sad...
  • klondike_klive 7y ago
    That's a great article. I'll extend this even further to include feeling sad for people whose lives I tangentially encounter. I felt unbearably sad the other day watching a middle-aged woman walk along in the rain holding an umbrella with an oversized signature of the painter Renoir on it, thinking this is her favourite umbrella, and the world doesn't care about it. Some kids, maybe her own, probably gave her shit about it. But she's still holding it and showing the world that she loves Renoir. Heartbreaking.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• jryb 7y ago
  I was always very confused as a child when characters on TV couldn't tell whether they were dreaming. I thought it was obvious! Things were 3-dimensional and they could taste and feel and hear and see, which no one does in dreams. While reading a great discussion similar to the link[1], a comment made me realize people actually do have realistic dreams that are comparable to waking life, which absolutely floored me. I was so astonished that it felt like I had been hit in the face. 1: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...
  • jerf 7y ago
    It's probably less of a difference than you might think. Dreams are generally less detailed than you might think from their portrayal on TV. What they are really good at are convincing the dreamers that they are a great deal more detailed than they really are, because they're on the "inside" of the cognition; you might "see" a vaguely round blotch of color like what you may see when you close your eyes, but you cognitively "know" it's a ball or a face or the vanguard of the invading alien fleet that have been sent to Earth to determine whether or not your family shall live or die based on whether or not they brush their teeth for a prime number of seconds or something. People can't tell they're dreaming not because the dreams are amazing 8K HD accurate displays with surround sound, but because the critical faculties needed to know if you're dreaming are just off. (I've been keeping my eye on those efforts to reverse visualize dreams via neural scanning. I have a pet theory that they're already nearly at the maximum resolution they'll ever have, because in reality there isn't that much visual data in the dream. I suspect the vast bulk takes place higher in the cognitive stack.)
    • _underfl0w_ 7y ago
      It seems like part of what makes it _feel_ real is your brain's own ability to rationalize and explain what it's "seeing" under the assumption that it is real. For example, some say you should try to look at a complex object like a watch or a phone since your brain will often get the details glaringly incorrect. However, I find my brain can often "explain away" exactly _why_ I don't have my phone with me at the moment, or why the watch that I'm suddenly wearing isn't accurate. Sometimes the dream then shifts to be about solving that problem - e.g. trying to retrace my steps to find my phone. Your example of a dream problem scenario was amazing, by the way.
• GistNoesis 7y ago
  I guess that's probably related to the way people internally vocalize or not when they read. Teaching people to read probably scars many minds at a young age. People who vocalize are working with the slow side of the mind. You are not vocalizing your thoughts when you need to drive fast. Imagine for a second having the focus of your thoughts being forced into being single-threaded vocalized process. Having to serialize your thoughts so you can hear them. Horrible isn't it ? It's like having to make SQL queries to get your memories back, instead of just letting them flow in, interact and transmute together.
  • 1auralynn 7y ago
    I think some people are just wired to be super verbal/auditory and don't have as strong pattern or visual/symbolic skills. For example, a friend of mine who is a fantastic poet - VERY skilled verbally - told me that she was one of those kids who had to move their lips when reading, and she never actually learned to read the way I do (where words are just visual symbols that form patterns and have not that much to do with sound - I can read very quickly), she just trained herself to stop moving her lips. Just something I've always found interesting.
    • GistNoesis 7y ago
      I looked at your VR expression platform (not yet tested in VR) I see it as a kind of non-linear language experience, where you pick objects and conjure them to express yourself, that I would have greatly enjoy when I was a kid instead of reading/writing. (I'm not yet sure the UI is still mature enough to not get in the way of the thoughts). Snapchat with its way of communication with pictures also got this right. My inner feeling is that we new technology we should be able to alleviate the need to speak in a serialized/sequenced form between people that was kind of imposed by nature and exchange mental pictures directly. Keep up the good work :)
      • 1auralynn 7y ago
        Hey, thanks! Yeah, my main talent is translating written information into symbolic/visual content/mental models... One of my goals is to allow people who have different brain styles access to the same models. Particularly in biology, where the prerequisite to understanding is to first learn a bunch of jargon - I think this is totally unecessary and shuts a lot of brilliant people out.
• Agebor 7y ago
  Hmm actually now i'm not certain which one of these I have. I'm a software developer and I have kind of like two different "address spaces". There is the normal visual + auditory address space. And there is the "intuition space" which is similar to the first one (e.g. I can imagine a 3D object and rotate my viewpoint around it, simulate conversations, etc), but it's with limited detail, more like black and white unless I concentrate more. I can "hear" there but it's separate from normal hearing. It's super-useful in programming, as i can imagine code in some kind of 3D space, where I can move in and out of different functions calling each other (I still imagine them mostly as text though), so I can remember them pretty well.
  • LordFast 7y ago
    Visualizing code is a pretty useful tool. I can't do it as easily for problems that I have yet to solve, but I can do it for problems that I understand well. Interestingly enough, however, it's the playing around with the 3D structure in my head that makes it fun for me to solve problems. It's a pleasurable activity to noodle on problems that way.
• Zenbit_UX 7y ago
  I wonder if there's a connection between people with strong internal monologues and people who dislike audiobooks? I _hate audiobooks_ as it's essentially a constant interruption of my own inner monologue and breaks my ability to visualize the world the author is painting. It also feels lazy to me, like by relenting I'm outsourcing my internal dialogue to a voice on my phone...
  • cguess 7y ago
    Sample size is just me, but I have both a strong monologue, and also love audio books and podcasts. Though sometimes my own thoughts will distract me and I'll miss pieces, especially if I'm on a walk or something.
    • klondike_klive 7y ago
      I've been toying with the idea of a podcast that doesn't require you to pay attention to it too much.
• victorNicollet 7y ago
  I can imagine a complete monologue in my head, but it's always intentional, and I only speak to myself when trying to coach or motivate myself into doing something (it does not always work). Most of the things I think, especially at work... I have no idea how to express them in words. A recursive algorithm to traverse a graph, a strategy in a video game, a scene in a book I'm writing, insight about something I'm feeling...
• kerkeslager 7y ago
  I'm one of the people who doesn't have an internal monologue. It wasn't until sometime around the age of 25 that I realized that when people talk about having an internal monologue, they aren't speaking metaphorically.
• ghoul2 7y ago
  I actually didn't used to have this "internal monologue". Until a couple years ago - when it just sorta showed up. And at some point I became consciously aware of it - and its ...power, I guess. Without the inner monologue it had been impossible for me to have "insincere" conversations. Using that word for the lack for a better one - I mean where I am talking to someone and consciously controlling what I say instead of just freely saying whatever - now the monologue can sort of "front run" the conversation and help me control what I say. I had never under stood earlier how people managed to pull that off...and when the monologue showed up it was an "enlightenment under the bodhi tree" level event. From the other comments: 1. I hated audio books before the monologue, and I still do after. 2. (from @echelon's post) I was quite imaginative before the monologue - but more in a sort of a fuzzy, visual way. I had entire fantasy realms just "visible" inside my head. After the monologue showed up, my imagination is more like @echelon describes - I can talk to/against myself, go off on variants of movies etc. I am not entirely sure, but I _think_ my visual imagination has gotten weaker though, and I find it harder to enjoy fantasy now. Could be just age though. 3. Can't seem to be able to turn it off, or control it entirely. The monologue is my worst critic - not a bad way, but it'd be nice for it to not _be_ there all the time.
  • burnte 7y ago
    > 3. Can't seem to be able to turn it off, or control it entirely. The monologue is my worst critic - not a bad way, but it'd be nice for it to not _be_ there all the time. For me, I've always had it, and I can't control it either. however, it does go quiet in one of two circumstances, when I'm very, VERY relaxed (so, rarely) and when I'm deep in "the zone" of concentration, which is really nice.
• 40acres 7y ago
  Unfathomable to me. My mind is constantly racing, playing out different conversations, interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my thoughts on things (one day I'm the president of the US talking about foreign policy, another day I'm a big tech CEO navigating the diversity questions). I constantly have something in my ears to tune myself out, podcasts or music. After being diagnosed w/ ADHD I realize I'm probably on the extreme end of those with internal dialogue but to see a complete lack of it in others is very surprising.
  • zackbloom 7y ago
    The book "The Untethered Soul" is very good if you're ever interested in breaking free of that.
  • natechols 7y ago
    It took me until my mid-20s before I realized that not everyone thought this way.
    • findthewords 7y ago
      I have this "condition". I didn't know it was unusual. I was on propecia (hairloss) medication for awhile, and it took the internal monologue away. I'm now off of it because life was dull and lonely without an active imagination. How curious that testosterone derivative hormones could alter brain activity.
      • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        I don't talk to myself in my head, except rarely (usually if I'm scolding myself, or trying to do an accent), but I think you'd be entirely wrong to describe me as not having an active imagination.
    • psalminen 7y ago
      It took me until my mid-20s to be able to drink enough to make this go away (at least for a short time).
• donatj 7y ago
  For myself personally, it depends on what I'm thinking about. Thinking about writing this sentence, I hear each of the words I'm going to type in my head before I type them. However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And now I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do. I have to imagine that's the case for at least most people. Thinking out complicated abstract concepts in internally verbalized words just seems like it would take forever.
  • robofanatic 7y ago
    > However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And now I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do. This is funny. I can't imagine anyone doing that. There is no end to that. Like imagine someone thinking while walking down a lane "I am walking down the lane, and now I am going to turn left ... " this is endless ...
    • TOGoS 7y ago
      This is what I don't understand when people claim things like "language is required for higher thought" or whatever (no link but I'm sure I've seen that claim numerous times across various articles). We necessarily do plenty of thinking without words. Certainly you can be someone who focuses more on the words or less on the words, and maybe word-based people are naturally better at talking because their thoughts are mostly in word-form to begin with, but you can't put all the thoughts in words.
      • yesenadam 7y ago
        A google came up with this long article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the language of thought hypothesis, which seems fascinating. Mentions Turing, NNs etc.. "The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH) proposes that thinking occurs in a mental language. Often called Mentalese, the mental language resembles spoken language in several key respects: it contains words that can combine into sentences; the words and sentences are meaningful; and each sentence’s meaning depends in a systematic way upon the meanings of its component words and the way those words are combined. .. LOTH emerged gradually through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and many others. William of Ockham offered the first systematic treatment in his Summa Logicae (c. 1323), which meticulously analyzed the meaning and structure of Mentalese expressions. LOTH was quite popular during the late medieval era, but it slipped from view in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From that point through the mid-twentieth century, it played little serious role within theorizing about the mind. In the 1970s, LOTH underwent a dramatic revival. The watershed was publication of Jerry Fodor’s The Language of Thought (1975)." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#MentComp https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#MentCom...
• _bxg1 7y ago
  Something I've done most of my life is to actively pre-imagine the way I would phrase different concepts to people with different backgrounds, before even having a context in which to use those wordings. Like as soon as a nonverbal concept enters my mind I start trying out an explanation, testing it against a hypothetical person, seeing how the words "sound" together and guessing at what misunderstandings they might have and adjusting and refining it until I feel like it would come across clearly, and then I just tuck those words away in the back of my head in case I end up needing them.
• manmal 7y ago
  So, if people "see words" when they think them - what did they see before their inner eye when they were kids and couldn't read yet (and therefore couldn't assign meaning to written words).
• jonplackett 7y ago
  This is how I felt when I found out I have Aphantasia I was like WTF? All these people can make pictures in their head? This is not fair!
  • coliveira 7y ago
    So you have no dreams? Seeing pictures in your mind is like a dream, but while awake.
    • jonplackett 7y ago
      I hardly ever remember my dreams and when I do it’s more of a feeling and a memory or emotion of some stuff that happened.
  • qznc 7y ago
    What do you associate with "Iron Man"? For mental-picture people images from the movies or the comics pop up. Via the movies "Captain America" is closely associated for example. The method of loci [0] exploits this somewhat. Do you rather associate sounds, music, smells instead? Is it purely abstract? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
    • jonplackett 7y ago
      I never even considered this might be what it’s like to have pictures in your head! I guess because I have no idea what that’s like. I have a lot of voice in my head. (Just my own!) and I talk to myself in my head a lot. I should say that I do have a strong mental _something_ that is good for imagining connections between stuff. When I’m coding I can ‘see’ pretty much instantly how everything should be connected together. What the user agent and server and database and api etc will all do and what they’ll pass back and forth and store just comes into my head very effortlessly all connected together. So I think the visual bit of my brain is being used for that instead.
  • gherkinnn 7y ago
    How does, erm, arousal work with no inner image?
• gwbas1c 7y ago
  LSD turns off some people's inner monologue. Anyway, I'd like to know more about the visible / observable differences between people who have inner monologues and those who don't.
  • 40acres 7y ago
    Very interested in trying LSD or other psychedelics for this reason. I'd love to be able to experience what it's like to shut off my default mode network.
  • oarabbus_ 7y ago
    >LSD turns off some people's inner monologue. I've never heard this from anyone I know who's tried the substance n=dozens
    • mikelevins 7y ago
      I remember it stopping mine fairly frequently, but it was a really long time ago--and it was LSD--so my memory of it might well be unreliable.
• JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Had a writer say "We think in words. Without language, we could not form thoughts". Which is instantly nonsense. I can think of a blue elephant, then the Gettysburg Address. If I'm asked "What did you think of first?" I'd say "a blue elephant". So where was that blue elephant in the mean time? Still in my mind, still a thought. Just not at the surface, not words. I look at code projects by scrolling through all the source files. When I'm done, I have a shape of the code in my head. Not a thought; not a memorization of the words that scrolled by. Some kind of abstraction. Now I can work on the project. That is certainly "thoughts" but not words.
  • rc_hadoken 7y ago
    I'm confused -- are you saying the writer is wrong because of your anecdotal process for coding? As someone who writes I would have a very hard time imagining writing without the ability to have a mental monologue. I do know Alan Moore said in an interview that he would talk to himself in the mirror. Maybe he's an instance of a writer who doesn't think in words. I would not think of a blue elephant as the word 'blue elephant' it would be the mental image of one. However, when it comes to thinking about a multiple choice question on a practice test or a quote I've recently read I can recall the words on the page of paper and the words mentally "read out".
    • mike_ivanov 7y ago
      Not the OP, but I too think that that writer is wrong because he/she assumes too much.
    • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      The fifth natural language I learnt any conversation in was BSL (British Sign Language)[1]. Later, doing further language training, when I was trying to recall words (particularly in German) I would recall instead a sign. Not an image in my mind of making the sign, but a feeling that if I let them my arms/hands/fingers/face would make a sign. Can you imagine writing through an interpreter without any audio/vocal use at all, as a BSL user could? Without using a word, can you think what your favourite vegetable that isn't a carrot is? Like, can you call it to mind without using the word? [1] Kinda, fwiw I just know smatterings of lots of languages.
• kordlessagain 7y ago
  Here's the imagery based version of this: https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-... From what I can tell, if you don't have imagery, you don't have audio. If you happen to be someone who can hear audio internally (audio hallucinations) yet don't form imagery internally (historic iconic memories, faces, shapes, creative viz, etc.) hit me up on email.
  • VLM 7y ago
    Talk to ham radio operators who know morse code, for them its fairly common. After awhile, especially in a competitive contest, you start to hear stuff in the static. Sometimes because there's an actual station there trying to reach you, sometimes not. Hams and hunters are the only people I can think of in modern life who listen very closely to silence, or noise anyway.
    • kordlessagain 7y ago
      Good points! The trick will be finding one with Aphantasia, given my "proof" requires looking for someone who doesn't visualize AT ALL, yet still hears regular audio hallucinations. There's a somewhat controversial book called The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind which seems to indicate audio hallucinations were quite common in earlier periods.
    • kawfey 7y ago
      You're right. After coming home from any big 48-hr long CW contest I swear the quiet whirring of my refrigerator's compressor is trying to speak to me in morse.
    • adinb 7y ago
      Radar & Sonor Operators, Radio Operators, Anyone in combat, Anyone on watch/sentry, Datalink Operators (watching messages go by was a little like Cipher watching The Matrix), to name a few...
  • svachalek 7y ago
• pdonis 7y ago
  While the fact that there are two types of people in this respect is interesting, the article seems to be over the top with the "it's ruining my life" bit. Yes, people are different, and some of the ways in which they are different are very fundamental. Deal with it.
  • turdnagel 7y ago
    Completely agree. This kinda reads like somebody just smoked their first joint.
• zelly 7y ago
  The "inner dialogue" is called the default mode network in neuroscience. It doesn't have to be thinking in "words" necessarily; you could also skip the words and still be thinking in a resting state. It serves the purpose of ruminating, reflecting on memories, doing introspection. Paradoxically, your brain actually consumes more calories doing this type of resting thinking than you do in task-oriented thought, like when you're replacing a broken pipe or solving a leetcode challenge. Depressed people tend to have too much default mode network activity. I think it's maladaptive. You are better off having no default mode network activity. Of course it's another thing entirely if you're too stupid to have an inner dialogue, verbal or not, but I feel like even non-human animals are capable of an inner dialogue. It doesn't add anything useful.
  • allovernow 7y ago
    >I think it's maladaptive. You are better off having no default mode network activity. I vehemently disagree. Introspection from normal mode activity is a critical source for self improvement and creativity. Yes, it can be hyperactive, but some degree of introspection is one of the primary qualities that differentiate us from animals and make us decidedly human.
    • zelly 7y ago
      I'm not saying introspection is bad. Introspection should be siloed off into its own activity. Constantly doing it involuntarily makes you a slave to your own mind. I'm pretty sure non-human animals can daydream too. It isn't what makes us special as humans. We are special because we have thumbs and can do math. Granted, you will probably lose out on creativity (in the messy, artistic sense) by shutting off the default mode network. But again, you can silo creativity into its own brainstorming session.
  • burnte 7y ago
    > I think it's maladaptive. You are better off having no default mode network activity. > Of course it's another thing entirely if you're too stupid to have an inner dialogue, verbal or not, but I feel like even non-human animals are capable of an inner dialogue. It doesn't add anything useful. With all due respect, I disagree completely . I think it's incredibly helpful to be able to talk to yourself and examine ideas and concepts verbally without having to physically verbalize.
• zoba 7y ago
  I rarely have internal monolog, but instead have an internal dialog. Most of the time I'm explaining ideas to people, sometimes arguing with them. I've found this is how I think through things. "Talking" things out with the various models of people I have in my head can be useful... I've found when there isn't conversation happening, its typically replaced by music. I can hear and play songs perfectly in my mind. Listening to music with headphones helps turn off the conversation so I can focus on other tasks more fully. I used to be concerned I was crazy for having these dialogs, but, I get along ok. :)
• vemv 7y ago
  I've come to believe that the internal monologue is just an "echo", or "audio" so to call it. i.e. it's not your real thought process, but a mere trace of it. It's easy to attach oneself to this voice, to believe that that voice is you. But once you see how this voice is analog to e.g. "playing" a song in your head, you might question the notion.
  • robinoh 7y ago
    hear hear!
• friendlybus 7y ago
  I had an internal monologue in my youth. Constantly searching for the next witticism in my mind before I said it and putting thought into structuring my words carefully for school. I later spent some time alone and developed a simulation of other people I could ask and have conversations with in my head. Then I went to therapy and they told me to stop doing that, so I did. I also worked with people who barely speak english too often and my need for high level english faded. Now I mostly see a battle of ideas and artworks through a misty haze in my mind. I tried out turning back on the inner monologue and I know I can. I used to have vivid dreams about playing starcraft and that's gone too with the skills. I think you think what is valuable to you.
  • sedeki 7y ago
    I used to refer to this as ”thinking of myself in third person”.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • ghego1 7y ago
    Why did they tell you to stop doing that? What's wrong with it?
    • kordlessagain 7y ago
      If one builds an internal reality of mind that has others "speaking" in it, as if one has seen them do it, one is allowing one to remove their choice...at least internally. If one repeated what you saw to others, then that could also be spreading the behavior to others, thus removing the choice from target. Shame works this way, for example.
      • tagreene92 7y ago
        Could you rephrase this? I'm interested in your point, but the use of 'one' as an ambiguous pronoun (and contrasted in one phrase with 'you') makes this super difficult to parse?
• n00b123 7y ago
  Interesting topic (and comments). 1. I do inner monologue. And I have to say, sometimes I get scared from what I "hear". I don't mean sometjing like "I hear voices telling me to kill everyone", but nasty, brutally cynical, sometimes outright violent thoughts. They feel alien to me, because on general level I consider myself "the good guy", but one the other hand they don't feel like someone else whispering me evil things. 2. Sometimes I feel like my mind has layers, where this monologue is the the most upper one with some lower, less verbalized layer which is only later formed into words. Doesn't happen often, but it feels like the lower layer is actually more capable because it's not constrained by language/words.
  • johnchristopher 7y ago
    > 2. Sometimes I feel like my mind has layers, where this monologue is the the most upper one with some lower, less verbalized layer which is only later formed into words. Doesn't happen often, but it feels like the lower layer is actually more capable because it's not constrained by language/words. I have something like that which is more akin to wandering formless thoughts to me. I don't think they are more capable though, I think it's an illusion given off by the deeper or soother sensation it instills into the mind.
  • vojta_letal 7y ago
    Sometimes I have a "how awful would it be to do XY" moments. Usually something brutal. But it always makes me pay even more attention to not doing that very thing even accidentally because I definitely do not want to break stuff or hurt someone. Yet it makes me a bit nervous. What if I actually decided to do that? Fortunately it never happens when I'm under influence. Do I need help?
    • perl4ever 7y ago
      I think I remember reading somewhere that thinking about jumping when you are near a staircase, balcony, cliff, or something like that is pretty common, even if you don't have the least desire to commit suicide otherwise.
    • tomtomistaken 7y ago
• VonBraunsGhost 7y ago
  They're called NPCs, right?
• Insanity 7y ago
  For me, it's definitely the internal monologue. Worse is that I have a form of OCD (repetitive thoughts) so this monologue gets stuck in a 'loop' and I end up just repeating the same sentence, or part of sentences to myself. Drives me nuts. Makes me wonder if people without this 'internal monologue' experience this kind of OCD in the same way..
  • james-skemp 7y ago
    Until you've 'said' it just right? I definitely have OCD tendencies, and this sounds like me in my 20s. What helped me was distracting myself with another line of thought.
    • Insanity 7y ago
      Yeah, until I have said it 'right'. I'm in my late twenties now but have had this pretty much as long as I can remember. Glad you found a way to deal with it though!
  • _underfl0w_ 7y ago
    Similar experience here. I find that as my internal dialogue begins to loop, my frustration grows with being unable to break the cycle. I have an awful temper (see: anxiety disorder) that seems to stem from this. Often if I've just lost my temper, postmortem introspection/analysis indicates that I was thinking the same <5 thoughts in a row in quick, vicious succession until something "short circuited" and I quit thinking altogether - just angrily reacted.
  • blamestross 7y ago
    I'm OCD but I definitely don't internal monologue. I do get stuck in what I call a "simulation loop" as I play out possible scenarios in my head and I can totally talk in those, but I have to intentionally "pretend to talk to myself" to talk to myself. In general the only time I hear "a voice in my head" is when I imagine/simulate saying something to somebody else.
  • bigiain 7y ago
    I wonder if that's the same thing going on inside a brain as getting a song stuck in your head? That happens to me fairly frequently - the voices in my head will be repeating the same line or verse of a song over and over...
• jedberg 7y ago
  I wonder if this correlated to intelligence in any way. More intelligent means less monologue? Other way around?
• mayoff 7y ago
  What Do You Care What Other People Think?, a book of Richard Feynman stories, has a chapter that ties into this. You can read the chapter here: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf He discovers that he can read while counting in his head at a steady rate, but he cannot talk while counting. When he tells his friends, one of them claims to be the opposite, and indeed proves that he can count while talking but not while reading. It turns out “he was visualizing a tape with numbers on it going by.” That friend was John Tukey. You may have heard of him. He invented the Fast Fourier Transform.
  • mc3 7y ago
    Fast Fourier Transform? Maybe he counts by increasing the frequency of his voice then.
  • ktm5j 7y ago
    I just picked up a used copy of this book, great read!
  • oh_sigh 7y ago
    This has gotten me into a lot of trouble in my life. I don't use internal monologue to read - that means that I can be reading and listening to someone at the same time, and comprehend both. But, even if I can prove I heard and understood everything someone said, they inevitably view it as rude if I am reading something while listening to them.
    • jhayward 7y ago
      I used to get in so much trouble for this in primary/secondary school. Listening to someone talk was boring beyond belief. So I read sci-fi in class. I could always respond correctly when called upon, and could recite virtually word-for-word the entire class lecture if need be, so I eventually got a pass to just do my thing. At this great distance in time I can see how this was impolite to say the least. But, really, it was bordering on abuse to make me sit there and listen with nothing else to keep my mind occupied.
• deleted 7y ago
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• mynegation 7y ago
  My mind is also blown by this - although in a different direction. I knew some people have an internal monologue but thought it is reserved for the deepest moments. And I definitely did not think that they might be a majority, as author's own mini-research implies. I would presume that I would have to think at the speed I talk and that seems inefficient to me - I am usually not a fast talker.
  • chinigo 7y ago
    I have the incessant internal monologue the author describes, but it runs much more quickly than I could verbalize it.
  • aaroninsf 7y ago
    +1 I never thought it was meant literally _at all_. I can "will" a rehearsal of what something would sound like, but it has nothing to do with my personal thought process or conscious experience...
• nabla9 7y ago
  The classic: Thinking the Way Animals Do: Unique insights from a person with a singular understanding. By Temple Grandin, Ph.D. https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html >I have no language-based thoughts at all. My thoughts are in pictures, like videotapes in my mind. When I recall something from my memory, I see only pictures. I used to think that everybody thought this way until I started talking to people on how they thought. I learned that there is a whole continuum of thinking styles, from totally visual thinkers like me, to the totally verbal thinkers. Artists, engineers, and good animal trainers are often highly visual thinkers, and accountants, bankers, and people who trade in the futures market tend to be highly verbal thinkers with few pictures in their minds. (...) A horse trainer once said to me, "Animals don't think, they just make associations." I responded to that by saying, "If making associations is not thinking, then I would have to conclude that I do not think." I have internal monologue but not as much as before, sometimes significantly less or completely absent. First time my monologue stopped during long meditation retreats. It seems reasonable because I didn't use verbal thinking during meditation. You don't use it, you lose it. I'm surprised how little the inner monologue has to do with abstract thinking. You don't have to have sentences in your head to do stuff unless it's writing or reading related. Decisions, no need. Math or programming, no need at all. Logical thinking, no need or very little. Totally verbal thinkers are often aggressively against even considering my experience: "That's impossible", "You can't think without words". Maybe these kind of people are the opposite end of 'spectrum' from visual thinker autistic like Temple Grandin.
  • loopz 7y ago
    Very few people are aware how other people are different. It seems we're mostly hardwired to assume others think exactly like us. Superficially, we socially agree of similar forms, but once you take notice, each person offers their own universe! If taken aback others can be different, maturity still not there. Still waiting to bloom.
  • drdeca 7y ago
    Does it count as “verbal thinking” if, when doing some math, I’m thinking of a sequence (or structure of some kind) of characters, but don’t have a distinct subvocalization for all the characters? Like, if there are 3 different F symbols that refer to different things, I’ll be thinking of a way to manipulate these symbols, and I will subvocalize each f symbol as “eff”, but will have the specific symbol in mind. Like, if I’m thinking about, say , “F(x)-f(x)” I might rearrange some expressions in my head, but I don’t necessarily subvocalize “small eff” or “big eff” so much as “eff”. I guess this is still verbal, but the verbal thoughts might not capture the entirety of the thought? Unless thinking in a sequence of symbols, even without any subvocalization, would still count as verbal?
• tobr 7y ago
  There’s a similar thing with the “mind’s eye”. Most people can think of something and “see” it quite vividly in their mind, but some percentage of people have aphantasia which means they simply don’t have the ability to visualize things like that.
• mike_ivanov 7y ago
  Yup. "Do you think in English or in Russian?" -- "huh?.. neither". I can force myself to think "in words". However, most of the time it is something that could be described as colors being kind of physically stretched into shapes or even complete pictures. Converting those in words is a laborious process.
  • ozim 7y ago
    Unlike for author I am fascinated by it, because as I remember my whole life I am thinking in words. Maybe because I was reading since quite young age. I can imagine pictures as well, like people who have songs in their minds, I can imagine Rihanna singing "Umbrela" while imagining pictures from music video. I can imagine a lot of concrete things or songs but I cannot draw those or make such music. Only thing I can imagine and create is what I write. But thinking in abstract shapes that is something I imagine I would get after taking some psyhodelic drugs, where sounds, and words would become shapes. Is there something you grew up you could point to the way you are thinking maybe?
    • mike_ivanov 7y ago
      My earliest memories stretch before I started talking (which I figured out quite late). I remember certain feelings, colors, sounds, smells even after all those years -- even though I had no words for describing them back then. I believe this is how animals see the world.
• kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
  Called it! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19620032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19620032
• fapjacks 7y ago
  I consider myself lucky in that I can do both of these things seemingly at the same time. The way I describe it is that while my "conscious mind" (i.e. my inner verbal thought train) is engaged in one thing, very often my "subconscious mind" will simultaneously and "spontaneously" provide me with sort of injections of unrelated ideas or solutions to unrelated problems. It's not unrelated to the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night with the answer to a programming problem. On the surface it seems (and can be) distracting, but I liken it to the way Geordi Laforge described the information he gets from his VISOR, sort of picking and choosing what to focus on and what to ignore (like recognizing your name at a cocktail party). Incidentally, I also have ADHD.
• wbhart 7y ago
  I have an inner monologue, but I wouldn't say I was like "hearing" anything. For me it feels a bit more like the muscle movements in my larynx are played out as though I was going to speak the words. I can imagine a voice speaking at the same time if I want, but that's not how it is normally. I tried reading at the same time as thinking of different words. I can certainly read the words whilst thinking of different ones, but I can't understand what I read very well. Probably it could be done with practice. However, if I have planned a sentence that I want to type, I can type it whilst listening to someone else or thinking about something else. It's slightly more error prone though. I can certainly imagine pictures in my mind without any monologue running at all. But this also isn't my normal mode of thinking. It's not helpful because I don't normally associate abstract concepts with pictures, but with words and symbols and abstract memories of things that worked in similar situations before. I believe I can recall all my senses or imagine them in my head. I don't seem to dream in words though, but in pictures, mostly. I'm also a much more visually stimulated person than an auditorially stimulated one.
  • Rury 7y ago
    >For me it feels a bit more like the muscle movements in my larynx are played out as though I was going to speak the words Apparently, there's been studies showing that is actually true: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science-little-voice-head-hearing-voices-inner-speech https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science...
• bradlys 7y ago
  For those who do inner monologue - I worry about telling you about this. It might make you wish you didn't ever realize it. So.. spoiler in the next sentence. When you start talking in your head, pay attention to your vocal cords and the area around them... Notice anything? They're probably moving like they would if you were actually talking out loud. Have you ever noticed how you tried to talk really fast in your head but seem to always get limited and it feels weirdly physical that you can't talk even faster? It's because you can't actually speak that fast in real life - thus you're limited because your mechanisms for talking are actually moving at the rate you're speaking - but if you can't speak fast then you can't think fast either really. It's usually something you'll casually notice but ignore... and then later you'll really notice it every time you think. Similar to floaters - always there but only when you're tired or looking at a blue sky do you really notice and get upset over it. Sometimes I find myself speaking at an unreal speed in my head (but everything is clear and distinct - something that doesn't happen when people talk fast, things get slurred) but it's because I suppressed the vocal portion of my physical movements for just a moment. It's weirdly surreal. I think, "Is this how fast I would talk if I wasn't physically limited?" To think faster, I usually skip words in my inner monologue because the physical part always gets in the way. To someone listening in, it'd sound weird. And I always worry that people can tell what I'm thinking because I know my body is actually moving when I speak - it's sometimes like people pick up on it. I think I pick up on it too here and there... hard to say.
  • meowface 7y ago
    I think your thoughts are right. I think once we have good neural interfaces, interpersonal communication will become much, much faster for some people. Both linguistic and non-linguistic (symbolic, abstract, etc.). I think there will be certain superusers who start using them from a very young age and will be able to communicate and transform information with incredible density and clarity. I'm not totally sure how useful that'd actually be for conversing or teaching, but for writing, programming, and creating art, I bet it'll be very significant.
  • stephen_g 7y ago
    Interesting - while I can make myself do the ‘silent talking’ thing, my normal internal monologue is usually disconnected from my movements basically completely. It’s pretty normal for me to be thinking ahead or of other things to say while speaking at the same time. I do some music gigs here and there, and if I know a song well enough, I find my mind drifting and monologuing on random observations about the venue, or people around me, or even something completely random, while also singing the normal words to the song and playing guitar! I’m not sure who is more “normal”, or if there even is a “normal” here!
• baron816 7y ago
  I really want to know if stuff like introversion/extroversion and depression has any correlation to this. I feel like my inner monologue keeps me company most of the time and I’d be much lonelier without it.
• hardwater89 7y ago
  I speak 3 languages (Spanish being my mother tongue). I just came to the realization that when I read in English, the words sound crips, clear, and the voice that's reading them in my head is not really my own voice. I can't really describe it but its a very neutral voice with no accent. When I speak in English I have a thicker Spanish accent. When I read something in Spanish the voice in my head sounds a lot closer to my own. Now my brain hurts.
  • LordFast 7y ago
    Whoa, you just made me realize that my internal voice sounds like a typical Californian evening news TV broadcaster type person. Cool!
• warent 7y ago
  This isn't so hard to understand if you've ever meditated. It becomes clearer that the internal monologue is a process that just runs on its own almost endlessly, and the feeling that we control it is mostly just an illusion. You can test this for yourself by trying to find out what your next thought is going to be. You never know until you have it, which indicates that the process is spontaneous and involuntary. I have ADHD and possibly some mild form of OCD so for me a big portion of the mind chatter is just counterproductive noise, and the only (healthy) freedom is meditation. I envy people who have no internal monologue, although they probably get the same noise just in a more abstract way. There must be a language/hearing center in the brain that's being activated for some people and not activated for others. When I'm consciously having an internal dialogue, sometimes my tongue is lightly flickering around in my mouth as if I'm actually talking!
  • xvector 7y ago
    I never knew that people actually thought verbally! I always thought it was a figure of speech. I mean, I can "think verbally" if I try really hard... even then, it's more like me imagining myself saying something rather than actually thinking verbally. Wow. I don't know what to think.
    • findthewords 7y ago
      For me, thinking verbally means either monologue by someone else than me, or dialogue with not-me. Rarely dialogue where neither party is me. You've never argued with ancient Greeks? I find the act of dialogue with my idea-form of Plato hilarious.
    • UseStrict 7y ago
      Similarly until last year I never knew that people actually could visualize things when they closed their eyes. I thought it was more of a metaphor. But alas when I close my eyes it's darkness. Thankfully I have my internal monologue to describe things to me in that darkness.
      • sstangl 7y ago
• allovernow 7y ago
  There's no way this doesn't have some sort of influence on other skills and abilities. Possibly good or bad. Studies on such effects in monologue lacking people would be fascinating if they showed differences.
• MadWombat 7y ago
  shrug I do both. Depending on the context, I might think about some subjects verbally and about some subjects non-verbally. If I am thinking about something social, having to do with people interactions, I will generally verbalize things in my head, replay or imagine dialogues, etc. If I am trying to understand something I just learned, I will often try to explain it to myself in words. But if I am solving a logic puzzle or trying to work out an algorithm or look at something beautiful like a painting or statue or a flower, I don't verbalize my thoughts. I can still feel myself thinking, I get the results of the thinking process, but I only start verbalizing again when the non-verbal part is done.
• OGWhales 7y ago
  I took mushrooms once and only about a month after the trip did I realize I hadn’t been using an internal dialogue since the trip. It started up again and hasn’t really stopped since. It was unnerving.
  • babgev 7y ago
    Can you tell more about that month please. I just cant imagine how that could be possible
    • phkahler 7y ago
      There was a blog linked here some time ago where the author turned off his internal dialog and was able to observe his more automatic behavior. I recall trying it on my way to work and was fascinated. It was not like meditation, but I was still suspicious of the safety. This piece just reminds me that I need to try it again, but I dont recall how.
      • stellar678 7y ago
        Can you try to dig that up and share it with us? It sounds a lot like some versions of meditation, but I'd be really interested to read it.
        • jdironman 7y ago
          I dont know how to save my place to come back to a comment on mobile, but I too am curious about this.
          • jshevek 7y ago
            The "x minutes ago" text is a direct link to the comment. Long press it, then new tab, or bookmark, whatever you like.
        • danielbigham 7y ago
          Reminds me of this: http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/what-my-stroke-taught-me http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/what-my-stroke-taugh...
• deleted 7y ago
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• 22byebye 7y ago
  "Dialog" is a narrow minded way to describe the metabolic processes that take raw input and make something out of it.
• mancerayder 7y ago
  I have an endless internal dialogue, and I let it externalize to the point of practicing what I'm going to say out loud. Sometimes it helps me be more articulate, practice jokes, or even technical explanations. Other times it helps reason logically. Sometimes it's not helpful at all. I have no idea how healthy it is but it's only when I'm alone.
  • 0x5345414e 7y ago
    I talk to myself aloud a lot as well. I almost never have any dialog entirely in my mind. I am so used to talking to myself aloud that I have to consciously internalize it if I'm not alone, and I find it very challenging.
• reiichiroh 7y ago
  Is this different from aphantasia?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Havoc 7y ago
  I guess that's why I don't have an answer for "what language do you think in"? (I'm multilingual).
• deleted 7y ago
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• callesgg 7y ago
  The part of the brain that is your thoughts is the activity of a nuralnetwork. It can manifest in a wide range of ways. Using the narrative of the internal dialog is interesting way of conceptualising thoughts. And I suppose there might be benefits to those who use the concept of internal dialog to understand themselves.
• kazinator 7y ago
  > Another friend says that she literally sees the words in her head if she is trying to think about something. What did she see before she could read and write, though ...
• lqet 7y ago
  I have a serious question to people here describing themselves (as I understand it) as thinking in words and whole sentences: How can you think about concepts which cannot be put into words or for which no words exist? Do you have to come up with elaborate verbal descriptions of abstract concepts in your head before you can think about them? If so, don't you think that any verbal description is essentially incomplete? Are you afraid that thinking in language categories prevents you from accessing deeper truths?
  • thinkingemote 7y ago
    I would imagine the answer would be; the same way you would talk about the concepts out loud to someone else.
    • lqet 7y ago
      > the same way you would talk about the concepts out loud to someone else. But isn't this extremely exhausting and time-consuming? And if it indeed works this way, then where do you think the idea you are trying to formulate in your inner monologue comes from?
      • sushisource 7y ago
        I suspect the author is exaggerating a bit when he says it's the only way he thinks. I also have the "narrative voice" but I absolutely can think about things without the voice, it just doesn't feel as much like "thinking", if that makes sense. There are some things that are explicitly visualized, like an object I'm thinking about, where I wouldn't say in my head "I am imagining the sun. It is bright. Etc. etc.". I'd just picture the sun, and my "narrative" would probably be about why I was thinking about the sun, not describing it. Same applies for more abstract concepts, just without the visualization.
        • mannykannot 7y ago
          This is how it seems for me, too. When I pay attention to what I am doing, it seems as if I am thinking in complete sentences, but if I then try to write down the idea that I have just been thinking about, I find that it takes a lot of editing to turn it into coherent language. Furthermore, I cannot really say anything about what it is like to think when I am not paying attention to doing so, so maybe it is just how I explain my experience of thinking to myself. Perhaps experiments using techniques such as PET scans might reveal if there is something more characteristically linguistic going on in those of us who feel we have an internal monologue.
• abathur 7y ago
  This topic (comments here, the OP, and comments in threads elsewhere) exposes some conflicting definitions of what an "internal monologue" is or means. - Some people describe hearing their internal monologue, which I take to mean something like: they have an internal monologue, and it manifests as a voice that only they hear. These people are analogous to those who see things they picture in their mind's eye. - Some people describe not hearing their internal monologue, which I take to mean something like: they interpret "internal monologue" as a metaphor for their train of thought or stream of consciousness; they think of themselves as having an internal monologue (i.e., they are thinking in language), but don't experience it as a voice. These people are analogous to all of the aphantasics surprised that the mind's eye isn't just a metaphor. - Some people describe not having an internal monologue. I suspect these people are a mix of those who think in language but interpret the term "internal monologue" as requiring hearing a voice, and people who'd describe their thought process as nonlingual in some way (visual, abstract, etc.) Across these characterizations, different people describe their thought process(es) all over the place WRT to how compulsory/voluntary/consistent they are. Some of the people who "see" things do this consciously; others can't help but picture things they read or think or hear. Some people describe a conscious/conditional train of thought, while others describe one that is racing/intrusive/incessant.
  • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    There have been a few threads on these subjects recently on HN, aphantasia was a pretty hot topic.
  • mannykannot 7y ago
    FWIW it does not seem like any of the above for me. It is more like I am rehearsing what I would say if I chose to do so. That does not come across as a voice to me.
    • abathur 7y ago
      Say to who, when, why? I wouldn't include thinking through upcoming conversations, texts, tweets, emails, posts, presentations, or phone calls. Let's say you need to run three errands and eat dinner on the way home. How do you decide what to do when, and make sure you have what you need?
• tartoran 7y ago
  I have a vague internal monologue, sometimes it's almost non-verbal, hard to explain. That isn't to say that I am not aware of my internal thinking, it is mostly abstract/conceptual, visual/sensorial. Having said that, I am somewhat introverted and never felt that expressing my thoughts into words sounded like it was in my head, especially with written word. The more I think the harder words come out. I've toyed with creative writing and I do best when I don't think at all and write whatever comes downstream. I've always been like this or at least I remember I was like this when I was like 7. Sometimes when I am stressed out, I use words to ground myself or find a solution but it's all involuntary. I'd ask myself "what have I learned from this or that" and the answer is like a video playing in my head, with images and sounds but not quite words..
• ericmcer 7y ago
  This doesn't make any sense to me, even his example: 'One person even mentioned that when they do voice overs in movies of people’s thoughts, they “wished that it was real.”' How can they form the thought 'I wish that was real' if they have no monologue? And to convey that thought they just open their mouth and spew forth a sentence with no knowledge of its shape?
  • RIMR 7y ago
    I think one can convey the feeling of "wishing something were real" into spoken words without actually thinking those exact words to themselves. It's like when you are hungry, and decide to eat. You didn't have to tell yourself to do it to know that you should. Speech is largely subconscious. Even people with a strong inner dialog are capable of expressing themselves in words without explicitly thinking out every word they say prior to open their mouths.
  • theboywho 7y ago
    This was disturbing to me as well, but one way to think about it is how babies end up learning to talk: they don't speak any language initially, but they are still capable of thinking, since you need that in order to learn to talk, so they must be using something else other than language to "think", and since monologue is mostly language, this "something else" is unlikely to be a monologue.
  • pb7 7y ago
    You’re taking it a step too far. People with no inner monologue are not incapable of thinking and feeling. What they expressed to the author just wasn’t expressed internally the way you and I would (by thinking and talking about in our heads).
  • xvector 7y ago
    > How can they form the thought 'I wish that was real' if they have no monologue? And to convey that thought they just open their mouth and spew forth a sentence with no knowledge of its shape? For me, the thought exists in concepts/feelings/imagery until I perform a "reduction in dimensionality" by bringing it down to actual verbal speech.
• RIMR 7y ago
  I feel like I might actually fall somewhere in between. I can definitely think "in my voice", but I almost always do this when I am reading, writing, or formulating something to say verbally. It is almost always a conscious effort, but it makes sense to me. I work in networking, and when I am troubleshooting, I absolutely do not think in "words". I think with much larger concepts. To compare my brain to a bunch of Docker containers exchanging compatible datasets for analysis might be overkill, but it's the best comparison I've got. And when I am brainstorming new ideas, I feel like my thoughts are far more visual. The "concept map" comparison feels right at home here. There might be some inner dialog, but only when I am thinking of how I would explain my ideas to another person. I recently started a Twitter account to give a stab at being funny online. I found that I am WAY better at being funny when responding to tweets or quote-tweeting people than I ever am just tweeting new thoughts. This is likely because I come up with better content when given a prompt, and rarely think up original thoughts in the English language where I could decide to tweet them for reactions.
• aaroninsf 7y ago
  TIL the phrase "internal monologue" is not figurative for the majority of people. I never "hear a voice" in anything comparable to a literal sensory experience. I can choose to internally "articulate" language that way, with the same sort of effort of choosing/willing to summon a visual image... ...but that is an effort and an act, not a side effect. Are people hearing themselves think in something like real time???
• K0SM0S 7y ago
  So I'm gonna sound jaded but this isn't news to me. It was never in an "official" capacity (student at best) but this "result" turns out in interviews, discussions, in social sciences (cognitive psychology first of all, but certainly anthropology as well, philosophy too, it's a cross-domain topic). You just have to listen carefully and someday you hit this weird fact. It's too long to explain here, but there's another realization that somehow helps describing such discrepancies between human beings. The question is that of 'normalcy', versus the 'abnormal', the notion of 'deviance', which leads to 'pathological', 'syndroms' and other supposedly 'undesirable' mutations. Well, the history of evolution itself is that, among a population of "normal" beings, the next stage for any species always begins with 1 mutation, 1 "freak" who has a new thing, and will eventually spread to the whole species if that trait is worth it for survival and better adaptation. There are enough accounts of historical psychology research to affirm that biologically, cognitively, psychologically speaking, there's virtually no difference between human beings 4,000 years ago and today; a baby from then raised now or vice versa would grow up just normal in context — we know this because every witness from the past said so, there's a recurring chain of normalcy if you will, and reading Ancient texts yields fairly "normal" psychological profiles. (Also think that 1,000 years is but 30 generations or so.) And yet there are tests measuring dramatically changing cognitive abilities over just a century — take attention span in the last 40 years, it's appaling. This means, IMHO, that minute change keeps occurring much more than we might suspect, continuously, but over long enough periods that human history is dwarfed by meaningful special (species) evolution. It also means that right now, a minority among us have evolved to what is the next stage for all of us, but it will only be obvious in hindsight. The 18 over 91 quoted by OP has having no spoken dialectic (rather through other forms of encoding than language/speech) may be a dying breed, an artefact from the past (the animal in us who hasn't fully integrated speech maybe); they might as well be the future, how human brains would evolve as they adapt ("beyond-speech humans" in that case). Maybe the real path is people who have the ability for both, a switch. A fair point was made in a previous to-level comment about the "speed limit" of speech, in terms of bandwidth or information density, and this is echoing how e.g. the math genius in us tends to think, when notation becomes object beyond than abstraction in and of itself and there are no words anymore but concepts, often impossible to visualize anyway (e.g. it's not a "function" or "f" anymore, in context it's become a "..." — no word but a feeling of what it is and what it does and how we could manipulate this specific thing). I guess the take away is there are many discrepancies that we would never suspect had we never talked to others, and a lot of what we take for "granted" about human nature is typically a strong hint for something that's very subjective. At least in perception, if not in value. And that while we are entitled to our own hierarchy of values in the present, we simply cannot possibly judge the endgame, we can't tell today who's embodying the shape of things to come — just that some of us are, some of us must, if we are indeed evolving.
• daedalus2027 7y ago
  Bicameral mind
• Madmallard 7y ago
  Mine doesn't. I also barely read growing up. I figure they're related as a past girlfriend was a lit major who read books all her life and couldn't imagine me not having conversations in my mind.
• super_mario 7y ago
  I could always do both. I have the internal voice, that talks and thinks and analyses things all the time. But I can also willingly turn it off, pause it and think purely visually, which is much faster than narrating (I can do it in two languages). Thinking visually, like playing silent video or manipulating objects in your mind is useful, but in the end the inner voice always continues with some conclusion. The best example I can give is playing chess. I can play blind chess (no board or physical chess set needed). It is much faster to think visually. Move pieces in your head, imagine positions well in advance, take things back and explore different variants, than it is to narrate: if I play kings pawn forward two squares my opponent will play bishop to e2. Narrating is limiting in this case, and would slow things to a crawl. But when a particularly good movie is found through visual only thinking the voice still kicks in with “Aha that is a good move”. It’s inescapable.
• ChuckMcM 7y ago
  I surprised me as well. And something I've always done is ask myself "why do I think that?" or "believe this particular thing is true?" and take apart my own reasoning to see where it came from and how it came to be. An interesting follow-on investigation would be to check to see if couples fare better or worse if the partners match in the presence of an internal dialog or not.
• alistairSH 7y ago
  Count me as another inner monologue person who can't comprehend not having one. Walking down the street, you see a car that is a really nice color, what goes through your head? For me, it's literally "cool car, nice color." My wife just informed me she has a monologue, but when she meditates, it goes away. Again, mind blown. When I meditate, it's just a constant chatter... "I'm relaxed, lets think about a quiet pond, oh look a bird." I verbally build a little relaxing world for myself. It's part visual, but I'm still thinking in English. Like the author, this really breaks my mental model of people.
• rolltiide 7y ago
  Everyone should experience an acid trip to get a feel for how other people are wired, or the various neural networks possible.
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  Probably every young boy has the inner voice. "It's the final quarter, and the home team is down by a point. He's got the ball, he shoots and....." Thinks the kid in the driveway with the basketball.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• budami 7y ago
  funny no one mentioned Broca's area. looks like some brains under-utilize phonetic perception to boost some other hot business.
• ph0rque 7y ago
  When I became proficient in my third language (over 20 years ago) and had to listen, speak, read, and write in all three languages on a regular basis, my mind adapted to thinking in concepts, and lazily evaluating the concepts to the words in the needed language, as the situation required. A few years afterward, I was discussing this with a co-worker. He had a really hard time fathoming this. He asked me an excellent and hilarious question: "When you call yourself an idiot because of something stupid you did, what language do you use?" After having a good laugh, I thought about it seriously and realized that I don't criticize myself. Instead, I internally model someone who would be likely to criticize me and hear their voice in the language they would normally speak. For example, it might be my parents scolding in my primary language, or a teacher criticizing me in English. We discussed this and he agreed he does the same thing. So, I suspect that many of us have only an internal monologue, but a whole internal society with various conversations going on.
• b34r 7y ago
  This is cool. When I learned I had aphantasia a few years ago it was a similar revelation.
• etrk 7y ago
  I remember asking my French teacher if she ever “thought” in French, and she had no idea what I meant. She apparently had no internal monologue. I assumed there was something with me for “thinking” in words. I tried to train myself to think more abstractly, and maybe it worked to some extent, but I’m not sure this was for the better.
• ngcc_hk 7y ago
  That is a big surprise. Thought everyone talk to themselves ... good to have difference but if you cannot talk to yourselves how can you think ?
• georgewsinger 7y ago
  Historically, have creative geniuses tended to have/not have internal monologues? It would be interesting to know whether Claude Shannon, etc had internal monologues.
• dboreham 7y ago
  Psychopaths? Non-bicameral mind?
• queryly 7y ago
  People with internal monologue basically think in language. They are often very articulate. Jordan Peterson said he thinks in words, and he talk very fast. I think in abstract and concrete imagery, and only found out recently that other people think in words. I think thinking abstractly hinders my verbal skill as there is a translation layer from idea to words. It's indeed mind blowing when you first realize how other thinks.
• saltyfamiliar 7y ago
  On the topic of internal speech, I've recently developed a weird quirk, if you can call it that. Basically I'll hear fragments of speech in an internal voice distinctly different from my own, about random things that have nothing to do with anything I was thinking or doing. And sometimes, rarely, the fragments will contain information that I wasn't consciously aware of. For a while I actually thought I was hearing other people's thoughts, but since then I've come to understand our conscious minds as being a collection of multiple subconscious entities that communicate with each other and from which our sense of integrated consciousness arises. And somehow, parts of my brain that don't normally handle verbalization got internal speech privileges. That's what it feels like at least.
  • UseStrict 7y ago
    Interesting, about how old are you? Distinct voices that make orders or comments is symptomatic of schizophrenia, which typically is onset from late teens to mid twenties.
    • kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
      So far it has been really difficult for me to see the distinction between on one side the "hearing voices" described in schizophrenia, and on the other side the internal monologue as e.g. described in some comments here.
• miguelmota 7y ago
  Does having an internal monologue make someone more introverted or is there no correlation at all?
• rayiner 7y ago
  Yeah, this is crazy to me. (I'm hearing these words in my head as I'm typing them.) Like, what form do your shower thoughts take if you don't have an internal monologue?
  • ken 7y ago
    They're thoughts. That is their form. To use a software analogy, thoughts are the model. English words are one possible serialization. (Other possible serializations include other phrasings of English words, Japanese words, mathematical formulas, drawings, musical notation, and so on.) It's nonsensical to ask me for a more fundamental form of a thought in my brain. It'd be like having a program where you have a reference to a directed graph in memory, and asking "So what form does this graph take? Like XML, or JSON, or what?" It doesn't have any other form. I could serialize it into one of those forms, if need be, but right now it's just a bunch of connections in memory.
    • kharak 7y ago
      Thanks, first explanation about these voiceless thoughts that I could understand. I think I can produce the same voiceless thoughts. But my voiced thoughts are crisp, clear and easily hold in memory compared to other modes of thinking. I wonder, maybe that's why I'm excellent at talking about problems, understanding them at high level, but have so much trouble with acutal engineering.
  • zionic 7y ago
    This topic is what spawned the "NPC" meme on 4chan, for anyone interested.
  • JabavuAdams 7y ago
    Visual / tactile. Put head under shower, open eyes, facing down. Notice how streams of water look like the capital ships from Robotech firing full frontal barrage. Relieve some Robotech nostalgia. See patterns in the shower tiles. Words are too slow for thinking. But, words give solidity and can help develop a train of thought. When I have verbal shower thoughts, they come out verbally and I sing or monologue.
• gwern 7y ago
  Better link: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190819-what-your-inner-voice-says-about-you https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190819-what-your-inner-...
• juliushuijnk 7y ago
  Perhaps the same thing with day dreaming. I get the feeling there are vastly different experiences. I once read about someone who said something like 'After taking the medicine [or something like that], when I stared at a clouds to daydream, nothing happened'. And I thought; what do you mean, what should have happened..?
• KhoomeiK 7y ago
  This idea is actually where the NPC meme of several months ago originated
  • kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure the NPC meme was there before and independently of the aphantasia hype, and it got tacked on a little while later.
  • no_identd 7y ago
    And it seems like the whole Aphantasia story all over again, except in inverse.
• JabavuAdams 7y ago
  Diagnosed ADHD here. I just have this constant low-level music video / hurricane of ideas / songs / designs / trajectories going in my head. Started high-school at 11, university at 15. Played tennis competitively to provincial level. That's a really crude approximation ... will try to clarify. I do have an internal monologue, but often I'm not speaking to myself verbally. As I'm writing this, I'm hearing it in my own voice, in my head. EDIT> "hearing" is approximate because I don't feel anything in my ears, and it's different from hearing a recording of my voice. I don't feel my ear-drums moving, e.g. I just have the very clear sensation that I am speaking these words, and I can even feel them on my tongue, although my tongue is not moving. <EDIT When I'm thinking, but not writing, it's more visual / tactile. The impressions of ghostly visuals, but I'm not actually seeing anything, just feeling that they're there. Like I can feel and spin a cube in front of me, but I'm still seeing the monitor, not the cube. I know where all the vertices, are though. Often have that anxious feeling in the chest like I want to blurt something out, but am keeping it in. So ideas fly in, but too fast for words. Words are much too slow for thinking. But a feeling of um .. ah ... er .. um is about the only internal vocalization I can get as these ideas crash and pull in different directions. I often have to explicitly speak out loud or monologue to give some momentary permanence to my thoughts. Otherwise they just kind of get whipped away and tattered in this mental hurricane. And yet, I can just happily sit and look out a window, but I'm experiencing some combo of really, really, looking at things and bouncing around in my head. Speaking of not really understanding how different other people's experiences are -- my vision is starting to deteriorate now that I'm in middle age. It's so crazy to me not to be able to see everything. Like, people would tell me that they can't see my face without their glasses, but I had no real appreciation of of how different this would be. I'm bummed out that I can't see individual hairs from across the room, lol.
• inamberclad 7y ago
  Feels like I flip flop a bit. As in, I can hear myself thinking while I type this, but most of the time my thoughts are more abstract (as in, I'm having a hard time writing out an example of one since they're not verbal). I find that after reading a lot, my brain is more talkative.
• WhyNotHugo 7y ago
  I find this fascinating. I sometimes hear the voice (for reading and certain types of thinking), but sometimes I don't / can't. For example, I always do when reading, planning, or consolidating ideas. I can't do it when writing code, or thinking design ideas.
• dominicl 7y ago
  Wow! Is this a hidden science that we missed to research as a society? Understanding these elementary pieces of thinking seems to me to be a science probably hugely important for AI research and tons of socially relevant questions. Anyone know of scientific papers on this? A catalogue of human ways of thinking, experiments to prove them, analysis of their impact on daily life or career etc..?
  • carapace 7y ago
    > Is this a hidden science that we missed to research as a society? Yeah, it's called Neurolinguistic Programming, and it's not quite a science yet. (E.g. the Wikipedia entry just straight-up calls it pseudo-science.) In brief, it started with linguistic analysis of transcripts of videos of therapy session with some very talented and successful therapists. (The analysis was informed by the same Transformational Grammar of Chomsky that also informs formal language design.) It was noticed that some people tend to favor "preferred" sensory systems, and a model of subjective experience was developed that allowed for eliciting and encoding subjective processing "strategies". (E.g. most good spellers use visual memory to recall a picture of a word, and then check it kinesthetically for correctness ("it feels right"), and read it off from their minds' eye. Bad spellers typically do something else. Teach a bad speller the good "strategy" and they can suddenly spell well.) That was nearly half a century ago. "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." ~William Gibson
• ivanhoe 7y ago
  If someone who doesn't experience inner monologues is willing to answer, I would really like to know how does it feel for them when reading? Do you vocalize in your head the text that you read, or it's also just abstract non-verbal stream of words for you? It might be a bit far fetched, but from observing & talking to my kid when he was learning to read, I strongly suspect that there's a connection, that it has something to do with the skill of reading without saying the words aloud. Kids can't do it at first, they have to say every word aloud in order to understand the text, and then with time they train themselves to read in silence. For me, I still say the text as I read it, but I just say it in my mind, not aloud - And it feels exactly the same as when I verbalize my thoughts. AFAIK a lot of people reads like this (all my friends at least). This seems like some sort of "hack" to help us understand the meaning easier, we run it through the same processing as a spoken language. Some of us obviously can learn to avoid this intermediary step of verbalization, and can focus the consciousness directly on their thoughts.
  • kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
    It's hard to explain, it just feels like.. reading. All I can say is that my mental focus is on the text in front of me, and not on an aural narrator in my head or a movie-ish visualization. I would say it's non-verbal but not really abstract.
• qntmpkts 7y ago
  As one of those without this monologue, I've always found it maddening when dealing with those who strictly do. It's also fairly straightforward to me what sort of mental landscape someone has after some cursory conversation with them.
• dmolony 7y ago
  "I posted a poll on instagram to get a more accurate assessment of the situation." Cute.
• blamestross 7y ago
  So I'm mostly one of these people. I can plan what I am about write/say (but I don't have to) and I can "hear my own void in my head" but only with intent. I have to TRY and have a monologue. It gets kinda tiring after a while. All these questions about "how can you think and reason". In general you just know things and do them. Even when I am meditating and reflecting I don't really use language. Language is the annoying translation layer at the end to communicate with others. When it comes to reasoning, I have a PhD. I seem to be able to work things out. I'm not a philosophical zombie. This whole "language is essence of reason" idea is BS. Writing/speaking out big arguments does help keep them organized. I did often have difficulty with "knowing" something without being able to explain or reason why when I was growing up. I've gotten better at introspection as I got older and it has helped. Often the answer just is: "the magic heuristic in my head said so"
• shotashota 7y ago
  This furthers my hypothesis that it is entirely possible we live in a completely different "reality". My red is different than your "red", so on and so forth. Just like its incomprehensible for me to imagine what additional color is there outside of my human range; your reality could be unimaginable to me too. That is, I do not know what its like to be you. I don't think this necessarily mean that we live in different physical reality, its just that we come to interact with it through completely different means.
• mcculley 7y ago
  One thing that I noticed when I was a child was that I didn't internally sound words out when I read them. I have to consciously switch to "hearing" the words in my head when I read. My elementary school cohort all told me that they always heard the words when they read and I have found this to largely be the case when I talk about it with adults now. I think this allowed me to read faster at an early age as I was not limited to the tempo of speech when reading. Certainly this is true for many people. One drawback I have noticed: I don't get puns when I am reading unless I slow down and voice out the words.
• carapace 7y ago
  First, if you liked this, check out "Neurolinguistic Programming", it's like the "machine code" of subjective experience. - - - - Second, I'm an internal-dialog person (FWIW), when I picked up one of the Star Trek (original series-based) novels and read it my mind spontaneously (as in it surprised me) used the actors' voices for the characters dialog. E.g. when I read Kirk's dialog I heard it in Shatner's voice automatically! Same for the other characters. It was pretty startling.
• alan_n 7y ago
  I've always been able to do both, really I would call it all three (abstract, visual, sound). Maybe 4? (I can also imagine taste/smell) Maybe it's because I was bilingual from an early age, but I always knew I was a bit different as I tended to think more visually than others. I can talk to myself and it's more now that I'm older but it's still more visual. And there's also what I would categorize as a third type of thought (which I used confused with visual before but have since noticed it's different) that I use when translating. I don't translate from language A to B directly, but through C, this abstract representation of a sentence. It is sometimes visual but not always (since not all concepts are visual, in which case I just feel an "intent" like in the case of a action or feeling). It is also very rare for me to mix languages in one sentence. I never understood people who did it. To me it's like a literal switch I have to flip, and my thoughts flip to that language as well. I can switch back and forth but it feels computationally expensive. Also now learning a new language I find myself in modes C and the new language, say X when trying to switch to it, instead of my dominant language and X. Anybody experience anything like that?
• jrumbut 7y ago
  I had heard about the whole "thinking in images" thing, I had no idea it could be present instead of an internal monologue! I thought it was an extra ability. Is that true for anyone?
• viburnum 7y ago
  Is there any way to turn it off?
• JabavuAdams 7y ago
  Love this thread. Aside from being an ADHD love-in it's reminded me of the usefulness of trying to think in different modes. Now I'm wondering "How do I really think of this or that programmatic object?" Could thinking about it in a different mode help me hold the idea better, get more insight? Thanks!
• stevewilhelm 7y ago
  Do people with a weak internal monologue understand or enjoy jokes, puns, or poems?
• gatherhunterer 7y ago
  The topic is fascinating to think about and I was unaware that some people do not "hear" their thoughts or use an internal voice. But I got stuck on this amazing perfect storm of millennial blogger cliches. I thought it was a joke. After this I could not stop reading it as a parody. The word "literally" is used four times. > I was taking ibuprofen at this point in the day because my brain was literally unable to comprehend this revelation. How have I made it 25 years in life...
• waltbosz 7y ago
  Reminds me of a book I read to my children about the woman Temple Grandin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin) the book described her ability to think in pictures, and how it differed from the minds of others. It's called "visual thinking". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking I have the inner dialog myself. I've talked with my sister about it, and she says she is able to have multiple threads going at once. Like she can do mental math and have a conversation with herself at the same time. I can only do one at a time. I've tried by counting and saying the alphabet in my head simultaneously, I can't do it.
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  People differ drastically in many fundamental ways. This should be taught at school among other facts of utmost importance. Can you even imagine the inner experience of a dolphin or a bear, let alone be sure it's the same like that of yours? The degree of difference between you and another person you meet can be equally substantial. Many believe a diference is just a matter of personality - another person may be more or less lazy, more or less smart, more or less sociable than you etc but this way of thinking is absurdly primitive, like saying a laptop is no different from a coffee machine, just more lazy because it won't make you a cup of coffee.
• satori99 7y ago
  I become aware of this after reading Temple Grandin's book Thinking in Pictures (1995): > When I was a child and a teenager, I thought everybody thought in pictures. I had no idea that my thought processes were different. In fact, I did not realize the full extent of the differences until very recently. > At meetings and at work I started asking other people detailed questions about how they accessed information from their memories. From their answers I learned that my visualization skills far exceeded those of most other people. https://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html https://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html
• jiggawatts 7y ago
  I've noticed that I can do both the monologue thing and also the nonverbal thinking, and I suspect that most people can do both also. I do verbal thinking when I'm by myself and thinking through options. What should I have for dinner? What gift should I buy? That kind of thing. Non-verbal thought is when I'm totally focused on something like a competitive game. When I'm 100% in the zen-like focus of moment to moment instinctive action, there's "no time" for monologuing.
  • bagacrap 7y ago
    I encourage you to read about the default mode network. I wager what you experience as an internal monologue correlates to high activity in the DMN.
    • ianai 7y ago
      Got a book or reference in mind? I’d love more on the DMN.
      • bagacrap 7y ago
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4334486/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4334486/
  • trash_cat 7y ago
    What you called non-verbal thinking is called "flow" and is more like a state of mind, rather than a way of thinking. Named by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.
    • mckeed 7y ago
      No, there is also non-verbal thinking. Just like I can communicate via gestures and facial expressions, I often think things through without putting anything into explicit words.
  • technotony 7y ago
    Yeah, I think people can move between both states. Meditation in particular, if practiced deeply/for long enough, can lead to the non-narrative state. Ever since I did a ten day vipassana meditation course 18 months ago I've been able to spend long periods without verbal thoughts though I still feel sensation throughout my body.
• analog31 7y ago
  I have an internal monologue. I also find that I can "sing" music in my mind, and that while I do this, I can feel a sense of fingering one of the instruments that I play, and breathing, without actually moving a muscle.
• krtong 7y ago
  im sorry but this makes no sense. because i can go through things visually in my head without articulating them, i don't have an internal monologue?
• rvn1045 7y ago
  Daily meditation will quiet the internal monologue to a large extent.
• zeofig 7y ago
  I used to do more internal monologuing. But if you sit quietly and observe your thoughts, you may notice that whenever you "speak" a thought to yourself, that thought was already in your mind beforehand. The speaking adds nothing to the thought, except to reinforce it or loop it back. That is not bad, but a lot of the time it's unnecessary and in fact slows you down.
• rgrieselhuber 7y ago
  "The brush is the sword of the mind." - Miyamoto Musashi
• mirimir 7y ago
  Some of this, I suspect, is about differences in how people understand "speak" and "hear". I mean, I have an internal monologue, and sometimes even dialogs or arguments. But I would never confuse them with something I actually heard. Even what I might whisper or subvocalize. I also occasionally hear voices or whatever, usually just before I fall asleep, or when I'm very tired, or stoned. But that's a very different experience. That actually seems like hearing, and not at all like my monologue. One of the Landmark distinctions is about internal dialogue. That is, distinguishing it from who we are. As a subsystem, as it were. Very automatic, and based on our programming. So there's the practice of hearing yourself, thanking yourself for sharing, and then choosing how to be. Just as you might respond to an upset child. I admit, though, that I'm often harder on myself than I'd ever be with children. But it's all in good fun. And I do vaguely recall that some participants denied having internal dialogues.
• im_down_w_otp 7y ago
  The concept of this conundrum occurred to me years ago when I developed a friendship with a woman who had been deaf since birth. I don't remember what triggered it exactly, but I remember thinking exactly this, "If she's never heard herself speak, then what does her internal monologue sound like? Oh, wait... she's never heard anyone speak, so... <brain melts>". Similar to the author of the piece, I just have to stop thinking about it every time it pops back into my brain. It's like I get into some recursive loop and eventually blow the stack, unwind the stack trace, abort, and resume my regularly scheduled processes.
• FullKirby 7y ago
  I swear, a few years ago, I never verbalized thoughts in my head. It wasn't a thing to me. Then, I remember very much when I started "speaking" in my head with words, and since I started having these monologues, I haven't been able able to stop...
• PascLeRasc 7y ago
  For those with an internal monologue, what person do you hear it in? For example, I always think in 2nd person, as in "we should eat eggs for breakfast", but almost no one else I've asked about this has had that. I'm curious if thinking as "I should do X" vs "You should do X" correlates with other personality traits.
  • Horticulture 7y ago
    I think in second person too! I also coach myself and reassure myself pretty often, e.g "it's not a big deal", "you'll get over it" and so on. I think the idea that there's such variation between individuals inner monologues is really fascinating. Particularly because I'm certain I can't point to a reason why I talk to myself the way I do.
  • CivBase 7y ago
    First person for me. I had never even considered a different perspective. Trying to make myself think in the second person just feels alien, but I have no idea if I'm the abnormal one.
• greatquux 7y ago
  I just read this classic so this makes sense to me: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19071718 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19071718
• CivBase 7y ago
  I wonder if there are any notable differences between the two demographics. For example, I take a while to fall asleep because I can't not have a conversation with myself. Do people without an internal dialog tend to fall asleep faster? Does the monolog make you more extroverted because you tend to recite statements in your head and therefor have more confidence? Or does it make you more introverted because you tend to question yourself more before speaking? Does the monolog impact the kinds of jobs or interests you're more likely to persue? Are some subjects easier to understand with or without it? Just how much are personalities impacted by it? Great, now I'll be up all night thinking about this.
• bluishgreen 7y ago
  Not every can dream. Some people don’t have any dreams while sleeping. Like None.
• basilgohar 7y ago
  I hope that others get out of the amazing comments and conversations here that we all think alike in some ways and differently in others. More importantly, I hope more people can be convinced to reach the conclusion that different ways of thinking and/or doing things in no way automatically mean they are superior/inferior, but rather, that for how amazingly complex we are as creatures, different ways of doing things may be better for different people. tl;dr Different strokes for different folks.
• jdbernard 7y ago
  As others have stated, I have an internal monologue but it's optional, most of my thoughts occur without a verbalized internal dialogue. Interestingly, I have an internal soundtrack sometimes too. A lot of time when composing music, or even playing live, I'm really just transcribing what I literally hear in my head. A lot of my musical education has been for the purpose of being able to perform the "internal verbalization" fast enough to be able to accurately transcribe complex harmonies and melodies before the aural image fades. Over the course of my life there are two instruments where at various times I've gotten to the point where I can directly play what I hear in my head without translation, transcription, or analysis. I often find myself recording my playing so I can analyze it later. When I've not been practicing with enough regularity for that direct "mind-sound to performance" connection to work I get extremely frustrated with my playing.
• karcass 7y ago
  Can confirm, have no internal monologue.
• fomojola 7y ago
  Very interesting: this is one possible explanation for all the times I've heard someone say something that doesn't make sense to me, and I go "Can you hear yourself right now? How did that sound to you when you thought about saying it". And I guess the answer is no: they can't. This might genuinely be the first time they've heard those words uttered.
  • swinglock 7y ago
    Sorry for the unsolicited feedback and I know that it was an example, but to me saying that in particular is quite rude. If you did not understand what your peer said you would likely get a better response if you said you did not understand and try to ask a question to have it phrased in another way.
    • fomojola 7y ago
      No apologies necessary: I generally try to be as generous as possible when interpreting people's words. In pretty much every case where I've actually done that the person I was talking to agreed that the words didn't quite match the intended message.
• johnmarcus 7y ago
  Just
• johnmarcus 7y ago
  Just imagine being born deaf. At best, a sign.language monologue could happen, but it would be a completely 'visual' experience.
• ip26 7y ago
  I would say I don't have an internal monologue. But that doesn't mean my mind isn't wandering all over the place. I don't talk to myself, I don't play out conversations in my head. Instead it's more like a collection of "thoughts", or "images", or visualizing myself "doing". I can get extremely caught up in this. There's also an awful lot of contemplating objects, observing features, visualizing how they interact. Very little "words", however, unless I'm actually talking aloud or writing. Come to think of it, I wonder if this could have anything to do with why I always found "reading comprehension" tests curiously difficult & strangely capricious in school.
  • Zamicol 7y ago
    I don't dream in words. If tell someone about a conversation I had in my dreams, I have to "translate" my dream into English.
    • leadingthenet 7y ago
      That’s actually fascinating to me.
  • didibus 7y ago
    Like you can actually see things in your head? Visually? With color and all?
    • Kaiyou 7y ago
      Wait, you can't? I can also watch a movie again in my mind.
    • kaetemi 7y ago
      Yup, it's like a secondary space. Doesn't visually overlap with real vision, but it's still surrounding in the same manner as real vision.
    • lordmauve 7y ago
      If you cannot do that you have Aphantasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
• mikedilger 7y ago
  I think the author should be more explicit in their definitions. 1. On one end of the spectrum, people may think and act without tying words to concepts at all. 2. Then, they may think by forming words in sentences, but not consider it "talking to themselves" or consider themselves as "hearing" a voice in their head. 3. Next, one may say words and sentences to themselves and seem to hear them, but their audatory nerves are not involved in any way. 4. Finally, there may be people who actually "hear" the voice, but somehow know that it isn't coming in through their ears. I would be in camp 3 whenever I am "thinking" but in camp 1 whenever I am just doing something I've done before and don't need to think about it. I talk to myself out loud, and to my dog, and sing and crack jokes when nobody is listening. People in camp 4 who also don't associate the voice as coming from themself are generally considered mentally ill. Sometimes on the edge of wake and sleep you might hear a voice, not your own, clearly aurally, but that's not too unusual of a hallucination to have. I've heard that in the early 20th century, anyone in camp 3 or 4 was considered insane, perhaps even camp 2 was unusual, and that normal people were in camp 1, and anybody who talked to themselves out loud was definitely insane. And I suspect that television and a lack of long boring quiet work changed how we think. And I suspect being in camp 3 or 4 is associated with anxiety and depression, but also with higher intelligence. I have no data to back up any of these suspicions. Oh, and Buddhist style meditation drops you back into Camp 1.
• jl6 7y ago
  I went to an English-speaking school where the majority of the students did not have English as their first language. I remember asking them what language they would think in. Everybody understood the question (so maybe they all had internal monologue?) and the answer would generally be that they thought in their native language for “everyday” things, but in English for the “academic” things that they had learned at school.
• angry_octet 7y ago
  I don't have any internal monologue. I would have to read something phonetically or deliberately subvocalise to achieve that. I begin to understand why other people (such as the ms) might not be happy that I have a podcast on while reading, and able to listen and talk to her at the same time. She might have an internal monologue but it's something nice never thought to ask. From her perspective it's a cacophony, for me it is almost soothing.
• Zarath 7y ago
  They are different IMO. There are thoughts, which are just abstract forms, and there is the response to thoughts, which are emotions and monologues.
• __s 7y ago
  My internal monologue doesn't even stop when I'm dreaming. I don't lucid dream, but the internal monologue critiques how things don't make sense (pointing out discontinuity errors etc). It took awhile to find out this isn't ubiquitous Previous HN threads have talked about how people notice a reduction in their verbal skills shortly after programming for awhile. There's a lot going on in programming that's non linear, so it's useful to not serialize your thoughts then. I've found that listening to music is often a good way to distract the monologue. When I was younger I only listened to instrumental music because I found I couldn't think with lyrics in the background
• peter_retief 7y ago
  I remember when I had the same realization, it wasn't just that some people couldnt have internal conversations it was that some people were unable to feel empathy and others felt too much. We are not the same and its quite a shock to realize
• JohnBerea 7y ago
  People without an internal monologue: Are you able to listen to a spoken sentence and then replay that sentence in your head? Do you have any audio-type memories? If so that's basically what it's like for the rest of us, just with the words rearranged into whatever sentence we're thinking.
• collyw 7y ago
  4chan were discussing this a while back and came up with the NPC (non player character) meme.
• Double_a_92 7y ago
  Also it seems that not all people are able to visually picture thoughts or memories in their head. This really confuses me... How do you even remember things like that? As spoken words? But what if you also happen to not have the inner voice??
• colorincorrect 7y ago
  it might be more accurate to say (as a hypothesis), is that whatever this "inner monologue" thing is, people don't seem to experience it the same, even if it does exist/not-exist
• jadia 7y ago
  This is the reason I can't type/write anything else when someone is talking to me. I need utter silence, so that I can hear myself and type it on the keyboard. If someone talks then I can't hear my thoughts clearly to type them on keyboard.
• etxm 7y ago
  I was thinking about this the other day. I was wondering how people that were born deaf think, because I think in my own voice... This is pretty interesting. When I’m not reading or writing though I think very spatially. Usually no words are in my head and I can kind of place thought in my visual space. Let’s say I need to remember to do something when I’m done working at my computer. I can look at say the door or a chair and “place” the thing I need to remember there.
• remarkEon 7y ago
  Absolutely shocked about this, that some people don't have one. Re-read the article a couple times. Went down a wikipedia rabbit hole and found this[0]. Makes me wonder if there are leftover developments in consciousness that are sticking around. My inner monologue is basically a consciousness I'm trying to control. It's not a split personality, per se. It's "me", but an OS running my random thoughts all the time. When I dream I sometimes dream in a different language that I (mostly) don't speak (Spanish, or German ... sometimes Japanese which must mostly be from memories there because I haven't studied it). The dreams make me think there's a latent function that keeps popping up for a reset. I genuinely don't understand how someone could function without being able to "talk to yourself" and essentially narrate your life. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)
• globular-toast 7y ago
  I have an internal monologue and recently learnt from a colleague that some people, like him, don't. But it didn't blow my mind. I don't get what the big deal is. Do people really think that others experience the universe just like they do.
• anonytrary 7y ago
  I've noticed that I always use internal monologue for all System 2[0] tasks and that I've never used it for any System 1 task. As for internal imagery, I seem to be using that for both System 1 and System 2 tasks. I cannot think of any counterexamples. But if you can think of one, I'll be surprised. [0] System 1 vs System 2 as described in Thinking, Fast and Slow
• mister_hn 7y ago
  I discovered it when I was a small child. Since then I just have internal dialogue with myself about every kind of actions to be taken. Interesting that not everyone can do it, I thought it was just common for everyone to do it
• drdeadringer 7y ago
  There is a science fiction novel by Robert J. Sawyer titled "Quantum Night" which touches on this. Basically, "three states of minds" which amount to "normal, zombie, psychopath". The story explores "flipping the switches" on a global scale, among other things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Night
• dijit 7y ago
  Barely related: I told my father that instead of sounding words or hearing a voice, I "see" words on a page scrolling by very quickly. He didn't believe me. As I got older it turned into a voice, which I preferred because the voice is able to be changed to anything I want. My grandfather, Captain Picard, myself.
• undecisive 7y ago
  To answer some of the questions that the author posed, how do people without an internal monologue formulate ideas, maybe think about it this way: Those voices in your head, how do they formulate ideas? Before the words form, there's a construct - slightly out of reach, an uncontrollable yet influenceable bubbling. That voice in your head is not your brain - it's not your thoughts, it more like a second mouth and your brain pulling the strings. I presume. Of course, I'm not in your head, so I couldn't tell you for sure. I've never realised that there was this divide between people, but it actually makes a lot of sense to me. Some people have a barrier, a pre-speech-speech, other people don't. Some have more neurons or less neurons in this half-way house. I have a vague recollection of people reporting losing their internal monologue after a lobotomy, but I may be wrong on that. If I had to guess, with my programmer-with-very-little-neuro-science background, it seems like a natural way that our brains form. Sometimes all the neurons specialise for speech directly connected to your mouth, other times a cluster of neurons specialise for speech with a disconnect. I suspect like most things, it isn't fully genetic - though it probably plays a part. Personally, I find myself monologuing the first few words that I'm typing, and from then on I'm reading it off the screen. I have an idea of where I want the sentence to go, then I re-read it and decide better of it. It does mean that writing emails especially, takes me an absolute age to say something remarkably simple. Speech is unaffected, though I'm never the loudest voice in the room and am particularly hesitant to butt in (and feel really bad when I try) When I replay arguments with a particularly frustrating person, I often find myself quietly vocalising as the emotion rises. And when I have a mental block on a word (which happened a couple of times writing this - "construct" is still not the right word above, but I can't find a better one), often the voice in my head will still keep playing with words to try and prompt the rest of my brain to do its job. I would love to see whether internal monologues make for better or worse wordsmiths. Or the effect the divide has on meditation. Also, possibly related, I find it very very difficult to visualise pictures in my head. I dream fine (possibly in black and white - which was how I trained myself out of bedwetting as a kid), but asking me to imagine a picture of a beach, the picture is horribly hazy.
• 867-5309 7y ago
  interesting stuff. my internal monologue is encoded into a pseudo-language to the point that were I ever to speak aloud, it would seem mostly unintelligible. this stems from a secret language a few friends and I had at school, to communicate silly phrases without other pupils or teachers eavesdropping, and has undergone evolution in terms of vocabulary and complexity since then, at least for my internal self. sometimes it freaks me out, but it does make coping with the inbuilt prejudices easier. I am quite fearful of something like dementia causing a leak in the hull..
• mapleboi 7y ago
  does it make sense if sometimes i'm "talking" inside in my head and other times i am just doing things "silently", like understanding stuff without any voice in my head??
• extro 7y ago
  I discuss topics in my head with my friends, whom i know well, so i can predict their opinion about different topics. I can differenciate between the topics what i discussed irl and what in "virtual", so i never mention this to the real person, because they obviously wouldn't be able to remember to our discussion. My theory: Lets assume, the irl counterpart also have internal monologue (AFAIK majority have). What if he/she also can hear the same dialogue, so it is kind of telepathy, but we never realized because we never mention this discussions? I definetely have to test it with suggestion to the "virtual" person to drop everything and calling me right now. If that works that would be nice. Other theory: According to my research the majority have internal monologue. What if the ones, who dont have internal monologue have different DNA, for example neanderthaler or something different?
• kaetemi 7y ago
  I think without explicit sentences, usually, in abstract thoughts. It's just faster, I suppose? The words kind of flow out as an internal monologue-ish thing in semi-structured overlapping sentences more as a side effect. Doing full monologue is too slow for actual thinking. (I can visualize it as written words as well, why not...) The monologue seems more as a way of preparing for communication, than for inner thoughts.
• Traubenfuchs 7y ago
  Those people are called NPC.
• bionsystem 7y ago
  I've experienced both. From 0 to my teens or early adulthood (hard to tell exactly), I had no voice in my head really, only intuitions, images, not sure how it happened exactly, but I didn't need to consciously phrase things. Fast forward a few years and my head is literally always a chat with myself, sometimes with others, sometimes about the past or the future. And I can tell that I very much liked it the other way more. Edit : I also wonder if this can be trained one way or the other. I know that when I meditate for a while the chatter slowly declines.
• lmilcin 7y ago
  I wonder... if people can differ in such a fundamental way what else can differ and also what are features that are always present.
• huffmsa 7y ago
  It's more of a dialogue / part line but yeah. Now here's another one to bake your noodle: Ask your friends who aren't native speakers of their day-to-day language if their monologue is in their first tongue, or day-to-day tongue
• someonewithpc 7y ago
  I have both this and aphantasia. Meaning I don't normally hear my thoughts or see anything in my mind. I am able to kinda hear myself, but i have to almost hum. I can not see anything at all the vast majority of the time, but sometimes I feel like I start to see something simple and it quickly goes away
• duke360 7y ago
  Wut? not anybody can? explosion sound (in my head of course...)
• sillypuddy 7y ago
  Came here for Austin Powers quotes, and frankly I'm disappointed.
• thrownaway954 7y ago
  God I wish. Sometimes I just want to shutoff the voice in my head. Alcohol did wonders for me in this area, unfortunately I can't drink anymore so I have to try suppress it differently, but I have it admit, nothing worked better than alcohol :(
• amai 7y ago
  My internal monologue can switch between all languages I can speak. Is there anyone else who experiences this?
• Francute 7y ago
  I will wide this question a little bit based on my own experience... 1. Some people report that they can have multiple conversations at the same time in their minds. I find that really hard to do. For example, if I simulate a conversation between two people in my mind, I can't easily make one interrupt the other (and make both to talk at the same time). Is this an easy task for you? (However, I can think on a song and put that as a background music while I'm talking without losing any thread) 2. About the comment in this blog of "I saw in TV and would wish that to be a thing", that kept me thinking; I'm not good at drawing, can you "draw" in your mind? (In my case, if I start with a face, I make the hair, then their eyes, then the nose, but I started to forgot how the hair was drawn. Can't keep my draw in my mind...) 3. Meanwhile, I do have experience coding, and I can make some pretty persistent "sequence & activity diagrams" in my mind. I've found myself using that kind of "diagrams" in my mind to drive the thinking of other people when I try to explain myself about an idea. Now I'm thinking that is not the best way to do it... But, Can you do this also pretty easily? It is possible to sense if the other person is able to do something in his mind that you can not reproduce? 4. So, my experience is coding, what about your own experiences? What can you do in your mind related to that activity? For example, do musicians here, able to make music in their minds while keeping/updating its sheet music? What about other roles?
• aedron 7y ago
  Verbalizing your thought process is invaluable for validating that what you are doing/thinking actually makes sense. For developers, just think about all the times you have started explaining some code problem to a colleague, and instantly come upon the solution, simply by verbalizing ideas. The other person doesn't even have to say anything. There is even the concept of 'rubberduck debugging', where you explain things to a rubber duck, and it helps solve the problem. I have often thought about what the experience would be of living entirely without verbalized thoughts. Like, obviously ideas and concepts exist separately from their verbal representations, so skipping words would be a more pure and effective form of thinking, right? But lately I have come to the belief that words are a necessary scaffold for organizing more complex ideas. Without them, I think we would simply be unable to put together complex enough models to understand things at the level we need to function in our complicated world. Like making diagrams helps with analysing domains. It is proven that lack of verbal stimulation leads to slower develoment in children, possibly for the same reason. I think it is also the mechanism by which people who spend a lot of time alone (think castaways) eventually go insane - due to the lack of an external validation mechanism. This understanding would seem to indicate that people who don't have an internal monologue would be less capable of expressing/understanding complex ideas. I would be very interested in knowing if that is the case.
  • meeton 7y ago
    So I'm one of these seemingly non-verbal thinkers, including when I code. I think it makes me more capable of _making use of_ complex concepts. I came into programming through mathematics, and I treat them both as aesthetic exercises. When I'm building a system in my head the solution usually appears visually, and ideas overlay themselves over the problem as aesthetic "feels". Yes it's a lot like being a visual designer: I can step back, view the solution, and just 'see' if it looks right. Why should we structure our solution like this? I can't easily put it into words but it just... would be more natural like this. And then a few days later the reason it was correct becomes liminal and I can explain it properly. It lets me hold more ideas in my head and make use of them all at once. When picking up a new idea I can grasp the underlying concept, see the symmetry with ideas I already understand, and slot it into place. Of course it has major downsides too. It's an effort for me to put my full ideas into words. Coding, like anything worth doing, is a team sport. If I can't vocalize my ideas then half the time that makes them worthless, especially when the decisions are important and therefore contested. I tend to make mental jumps that lose other people, and lose track of what state other people have. Also, and this is in line with what you said Aedron, it does make it harder to check the details. I'll make silly mistakes because checking them isn't part of my mental construct. I can chase a half-formed idea for a day before realizing my mental picture was off, and I didn't catch it because I never put the problem into words. Pracical-but-ugly hacks don't occur to me because they aren't aesthetic. I'm worthless at remembering my girlfriend's friends' names. This year I'm focusing on moving slower, writing more things down, and talking to people more. So far it's been really helpful. But I don't think I'd have got to where I am now, or be able to solve the kinds of problems I do, if I was a mostly verbal thinker.
• stolsvik 7y ago
  A small observation: I’m Norwegian, but can speak English fairly well. When I lived abroad for a while, after some time I suddenly noticed that my thoughts had switched language (it switched somewhat back and forth, though). This still happens when I have longer conversations with foreigners, thus typically speaking English. However, thinking in English goes slower and is a bit limiting, as my English is still way worse than my Norwegian.
• flint 7y ago
  I told my interviewer recently that I did not think in words. The interview was over.
• flint 7y ago
  See: "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron
• spurgu 7y ago
  Uh. How do you learn a new language if you're unable to maintain an inner dialogue? Most of my learning happens by myself in my head, constructing sentences, thinking about grammar concepts.
• samirillian 7y ago
  Nietzsche actually mocks people who think in complete sentences. Made me wish I was like that. What do non-sentential thinkers think about?
• mattlondon 7y ago
  I would say I do both...but also what about "visual"? :-) E.g. when programming I often "see" patterns and shapes of code/data. Its not like a photographic memory and its hard to explain - I'm not "seeing" something I am used to seeing with my eyes (like actual code or whatever) but I have this sort of visual concept in my head of what the data is "shaped like" and I can "see" it. Hopefully this wont be taken as a binary either-or thing in trainings in the future, e.g. with introvert vs extrovert it is often labeling people/colleagues "you are an extrovert" or "you are an introvert", when in reality it is often shades of grey and there is a lot of flexibility based on context. I would imagine this is the same.
  • raducu 7y ago
    Of course you are "seeing" patterns of code, structure and so on. Just like a mechanic is seeing or, a sportsman is seeing his next moves and so on. Even blind people "see" the same way, they still have a visual cortex and understand spatial relationships. So I'm pretty sure if someone did not have this type of "sight", they would have very low IQ.
    • mattlondon 7y ago
      It is not "seeing" in the same way as visualising things. The way I would visualise assembling a flat-pack wardrobe or something feels totally different to this. It is hard to explain. The best I can think of is sensing (without visualising) a shape or pattern. You cant actively "see" it in your mind (e.g. if I imagine an apple I can actively see an apple in my mind) - this is more fleeting and defies any focused thought.
• nyxtom 7y ago
  I have found myself in this mode of thinking for quite a while, sometime in recent memory I started thinking through writing and taking an honest look at my information diet. As a result, seems that things are much quieter with the internal dialogue. I can also attest to this change seems to be a consequence of staying active as well. Not sure why that's the case, but perhaps I'm not as reliant on thinking in that way as I used to be. I can definitely see how it would be an advantage give the onslaught of information being processed.
• krishicks 7y ago
  For those that don’t hear a voice in your head, do you get songs stuck in your head?
• mfinegold 7y ago
  Was just discussing this with friends on social media. I noticed a few things: 1. The question of whether your mind races with thoughts is separate from the question if whether you hear an internal monologue. Some of us have a lot of thoughts racing but they aren’t necessarily in the form of a coherent voice we hear in our heads. 2. Some of us do run through conversations or monologues in our heads sometimes, but we mouth the words or even say them out loud. (And by “some of us”, I mean me. My preschooler has caught me doing this several times already :) ) 3. Raising the question of whether we have such a voice or not can influence whether we have it. As with everything, observing something changes the nature of what’s being observed. I, for one, have many racing thoughts - and yes some of them verbal, if I’m preparing for a conversation with somebody - but others are more abstract or visual and spatial. For example, I can’t really make a decision with verbal sorts of thoughts. If I’m listing pros and cons, by the time I get to the end of one list I’ve forgotten the start of it... I think sometimes I need to imagine things more spatially to see them in my head at the same time. Also - Somewhat related, I read awhile back that not everyone can visualize things in their head. Like, imagining something you’re inventing or haven’t seen before. This really surprised me! I can’t believe somebody CANT do that, maybe they just have a harder time doing it?
• heyvictor 7y ago
  my mind is not racing, unless I am trying to solve a problem or if I am having irrational thoughts (from a bad interaction, a breakup, etc) My mind feels more reactionary at times, as if some stimuli is provided and then I think about it. I definitely have the internal monologue but it's not happening all the time. I'm also the type of person where you tell me something and I'll have to think about for a few hours/days before I can get back to you.
• franze 7y ago
  It sometimes annoys me that I already gave the workshop a hundred times, before I even do it.
• cassalian 7y ago
  Does anyone else use the pronoun "we" to refer to themselves in their internal monologues? I'll often find myself switching between "I" and "we", for example, this morning I had to run the dishwasher and my internal thought was "We've got to run the dishes today" and then I laughed at myself for using "we"
  • bobbytherobot 7y ago
    Now that you mention it, I use the second person of "you."
    • cassalian 7y ago
      Now that you mention it, I use "you" for my future self a lot... "you've got to do the dishes when you get home"
• wnscooke 7y ago
  What about this revelation ruined that guys day? Why did his previously-uncontested worldview about internal dialogues require it to be applied to everyone around them?
• fretflip 7y ago
  Most important, do not be too hard on your self, say nice things and encourage yourself.
• jefurii 7y ago
  A lot of times I hear music in my head. Usually it's the last thing I listened to, over and over unless I consciously start another song. Some blessed times it's a totally new thing and I scramble to write it down. I can stop this by actually listening to something (with my ears). I do have times when I dialog inside my head but I don't think it's my normal mode of operation. Usually internal dialog happens after I've had a discussion that didn't go the way I would have liked, and I replay it over and over fine-tuning my arguments. It's too late but often those arguments come out later. Instead of a dialo when I need to decide or cogitate on something I often turn on the internal music and the answer comes after awhile. I understand it something the agents in Minsky's society of mind. The agents are scurrying around looking for the answer while the supervisory function listens to a tune. The process doesn't work as well if I try to do it as an internal dialog - the dialog seems to get in the way.
• dmtroyer 7y ago
  I do both. I often struggle with the question “what are you thinking about” and this is partly why.
• Blake_Emigro 7y ago
  I sent the link to my girlfriend, and she didn't find it very interesting until I told her that I don't have this internal monologue, and it turns out she does. Neither of us knew about the other scenario. I visualize and feel things and only use my internal voice if I'm picturing talking to someone else. Even when I'm reading, I don't hear an internal voice. We've watched the Dexter series together and I thought that all of his internal voice was for added drama!
• cryptica 7y ago
  When coding, I have a mix of imagery with monologue. Kind of like watching a very technical documentary with a narrator explaining what is happening on the screen. I also tend to remember a lot of facts after I watch documentaries, sometimes I can recall facts from a documentary many years later. It's similar to how my mind works so it's easy for me to digest. I can visualize a very complex concept but I need my inner voice to dumb it down so that I can make an actionable decision. Sometimes I talk myself through the same visual concept in different ways to make sense of it from many angles. I can imagine what it's like to visualize concepts with only abstract imagery, but I feel that in order to actually make decisions, a person needs some kind of mental mechanism to dumb it down. For me, the internal monologue is the best way to dumb down complex concepts and actually make decisions. Decision-making for me is all about dumbing down very complex inputs and producing a single yes/no output.
• ncmncm 7y ago
  I have no inner monolog, although I once did. I consider it an achievement. Verbal creativity is the shallowest kind. Freeing yourself from words enables thought that cannot be represented in the words you have. Most potential ideas can't be, at their beginning. To communicate new ideas, you might need to invent new language for the job. That is where all language comes from: idea first, then the word.
• zzo38computer 7y ago
  Sometimes I do have internal monologue (although I cannot actually hear it) and sometimes it isn't. And sometimes I don't know the words for what I think of. When reading English writing it is a kind of pronouncing, but if it is Chinese (or other ideographic kind of language) then it isn't. When thinking of my own stuff is again different from this. (English is the only language I can write/speak well; the others I am not so good at.)
• yarolig 7y ago
  I have my inner voice. When I am thinking, reading, writing or typing I imagine neutral young male fast-speaking voice. But I can imagine other voices and tones. It is hard to stop this inner voice. But I know a trick. I can start to think in foreign language that I know, than switch to another foreign language in which I know only 10 words. The voice is stopped for a few minutes. Now I understand why I dislike my own audible voice. Because it is not MINE! MY voice is inside my head and it sounds different. I do not speak much but think a lot. Moreover. When I going to say something non-trivial, I usually saying it silently inside my head and only after it I can say it aloud. I looks dumb in that moment.
• rendall 7y ago
  I used to have an internal monologue when I was a kid, but it felt less efficient, so I trained myself out of it by around 20. By most objective measures it did make my thinking more efficient but reduced my wit and articulation. I do imagine conversations with people though, usually when I'm trying to work out how to say something. When I figure it out, I stop the imaginary conversation. Occasionally these imaginary conversations become so vivid that I'll actually speak out loud. It's a quirk of mine that my friends and family giggle about. In my defense, Adam Smith did this too, so I'm in good company.
• whalabi 7y ago
  (this was posted ages ago but) have you ever held a concept in your mind without knowing the word for it? And you can feel the concept just as well as if you did? I imagine it's a bit like that. Maybe these people have exactly the same experience, but it bypasses the auditory feedback (or whatever) parts of the mind. Fascinating.
• plinkplink 7y ago
  No one thinks in spoken language. The construct of words is not the kernel of thought. More like the parsing of your subconscious thoughts (neurons firing) into human-readable language. Think of raw thought as machine code and internal monologue as a high-level programming language. Binary vs JavaScript. Some people are able to interact meaningfully with their subconscious machine code while others must abstract it into spoken language. There is an infinite spectrum between the two extremes that we all constantly tread. Infants who don't know how to talk yet and animals (as well as hominids before language) do not think in words. Brains are not constructed in such a way as to use spoken language words as the fundamental component of thought. I, personally, almost never think or reason about things in human language unless I am talking, practicing a speech, or writing. Then I must manually construct each word. I think deeply about things quickly and make useful logical connections between disparate topics that others tend to miss, but I tend to be slow at communicating.
  • c0restraint 7y ago
    > No one thinks in spoken language. I generally do. I see the words as I think them. Spelling and sound. It’s weird I guess, though I never thought of it being weird until now.