5 ms·

(To me) it's abundantly clear that a certain percentage of the population is no better than feral beasts trained to live in society. For instance, some people r

by rcme 4y ago

(To me) it's abundantly clear that a certain percentage of the population is no better than feral beasts trained to live in society. For instance, some people report having no inner monologue. If such people are not introspectively evaluating their thoughts, then what are they doing? Most likely mindlessly going through the motions of their life as a simple stimulus/response machine.

nebula8804 4y ago
Isn't that chalked up to the normal distribution? Can you really blame people who fall under the left side of the curve? Look at page 9 of this PDF. [1]:https://www.westga.edu/academics/research/vrc/assets/docs/the_normal_distribution_notes.pdf https://www.westga.edu/academics/research/vrc/assets/docs/th...
- rcme 4y ago
  I’m not sure where blame is entering the equation. Is it possible to describe a phenomena without assigning blame?
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
  I have no inner monologue, unless I'm specifically thinking about what to say or write. Language is non-essential for thought. It's a way to map thoughts into a communicable form, but it's not thought. The concepts language describes exist independent of the language. Interestingly for me this translation of thought into language is much slower for writing than it is for speaking (with typing intermediate but closer to writing). I was diagnosed with Dysgraphia[1], as part of that evaluation I was given the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Third Edition (WAIS-III) when I was 16 years old, it gave me a verbal IQ of 147, a performance IQ of 125, and a full-scale IQ of 143. So I think I'd serve as a counterexample (sample size 1, though I know there are others) to the "left side of the curve" correlating with a lack of inner monologue (at least for this particular measurement, there are many others). Perhaps it goes the other way around, and the people who have to slow their thoughts down to translate everything into language are the left side of the curve, but more likely they're uncorrelated aspects of cognition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia
  - rcme 4y ago
    As you said, you do have an inner monologue, so I don’t think my comment applies to you.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
      No, I have no inner monologue in the usual sense of some "voice" in my head that I think in. I just translate thoughts into words when I need words. I certainly don't narrate my own day or anything like I've heard others describe their inner monologue.
tzs 4y ago
> For instance, some people report having no inner monologue And some people have more than one voice in their head. It would be interesting to compare the total number of voices in the collective heads of humanity with the total population to see what the average number of voices is in a head.

by rcme 4y ago

nebula8804 4y ago

Isn't that chalked up to the normal distribution? Can you really blame people who fall under the left side of the curve? Look at page 9 of this PDF. [1]:https://www.westga.edu/academics/research/vrc/assets/docs/the_normal_distribution_notes.pdf https://www.westga.edu/academics/research/vrc/assets/docs/th...

rcme 4y ago
I’m not sure where blame is entering the equation. Is it possible to describe a phenomena without assigning blame?
SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
I have no inner monologue, unless I'm specifically thinking about what to say or write. Language is non-essential for thought. It's a way to map thoughts into a communicable form, but it's not thought. The concepts language describes exist independent of the language. Interestingly for me this translation of thought into language is much slower for writing than it is for speaking (with typing intermediate but closer to writing). I was diagnosed with Dysgraphia[1], as part of that evaluation I was given the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Third Edition (WAIS-III) when I was 16 years old, it gave me a verbal IQ of 147, a performance IQ of 125, and a full-scale IQ of 143. So I think I'd serve as a counterexample (sample size 1, though I know there are others) to the "left side of the curve" correlating with a lack of inner monologue (at least for this particular measurement, there are many others). Perhaps it goes the other way around, and the people who have to slow their thoughts down to translate everything into language are the left side of the curve, but more likely they're uncorrelated aspects of cognition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia
- rcme 4y ago
  As you said, you do have an inner monologue, so I don’t think my comment applies to you.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
    No, I have no inner monologue in the usual sense of some "voice" in my head that I think in. I just translate thoughts into words when I need words. I certainly don't narrate my own day or anything like I've heard others describe their inner monologue.

tzs 4y ago

> For instance, some people report having no inner monologue And some people have more than one voice in their head. It would be interesting to compare the total number of voices in the collective heads of humanity with the total population to see what the average number of voices is in a head.