3 ms·

I usually know what I'm about to actually say very shortly before I say it. This has occasionally led to emergency course corrections. But I do sense the "shape

I usually know what I'm about to actually say very shortly before I say it. This has occasionally led to emergency course corrections. But I do sense the "shape" of a sentence well before I say it. I think there's something like a stage design in the brain: - symbolic or model deliberation - verbal expression - vocalization And each of those stages can be consciously introspected on, but people will naturally develop more or less ability to introspect on it. I think when people say they "don't mentally verbalize", what is actually happening is they just haven't happened to develop conscious introspection of the verbal expression stage. But I'd expect that this can be trained. (Conversely, sometimes people introspect so much on verbal expression that it becomes an inherent part of the way they think. Brains are weird and wonderful!)

vasco 4y ago
I don't think you are right. I experience the same feeling of focusing on an idea but not having a fixed idea what exactly I'll say, but I can also prepare full sentences if I want to. It's just most of the time I make an effort to put my brain in speech-autopilot mode. I think in fact it's harder to let yourself be lead by it without consciously introspecting, at least I find I'm able to discuss way quicker as I can start talking about a very complex idea without having had to "sort it out" explicitly. I'll just know I know what to say in those cases. Part of this auto-pilot is learning to recognize if you have the answer or not. I will not launch into a sentence without a strong feeling I understand the topic and know what to say. I just don't need to prepare the exact words in order to do it. I still consciously "check" that I know, but that just requires a boolean answer instead of a word by word crafted sentence.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  I don't think it's like ... if an idea gets moved to the verbalization stage, that you're compelled to say it. It's more that some people seem to have little control over what happens at that stage, ie. they can operate on a concept but they can't predict the way it'll be spoken. Like [Conceptual stage] --??-- consciousness V [Verbalization stage] --??-- consciousness V [Vocalization] So if you don't have conscious access to verbalization, you only realize how a thought "will sound" after you say it. Conversely, if you don't have conscious access to conceptualization, you end up thinking that "thinking" always involves "thinking out loud", because "thinking out loud" (verbalizing) is the only way you have to query your conceptual layer. You literally only become aware of your own thinking after the thought is already pretty far along. At the extreme, you can have conscious access to neither stage and require vocalization to reflect on your own thinking.
  - vasco 4y ago
    I understood your original argument, maybe I just did a bad job describing what I disagree with. In this post it's this: > Conversely, if you don't have conscious access to conceptualization, you end up thinking that "thinking" always involves "thinking out loud", because "thinking out loud" (verbalizing) is the only way you have to query your conceptual layer. You literally only become aware of your own thinking after the thought is already pretty far along What I'm saying is that even if you do have conscious access to verbalisation stage, the more you force yourself to let it be handled subconsciously, the better at communicating quickly and effectively. This is what I meant by autopilot. Spending active conversation time on conscious verbalization seems to me as inefficient as verbalising words and "speaking them out" as you read a book, usually known as subvocalization.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      Oh yeah I agree with that. I think the conscious access is primarily important for self-training. So I would expect somebody with conscious access to 1. be better at vocalizing, 2. almost never actually need to use their access to correct a decision. I tend to think of consciousness as the "debug mode" of the brain.
mentos 4y ago
Yea makes me wonder what data could be used to train this theoretical symbolic model that precedes the language model? I’m thinking training on movies/tv has the physical element that pure text is missing.

vasco 4y ago

I don't think you are right. I experience the same feeling of focusing on an idea but not having a fixed idea what exactly I'll say, but I can also prepare full sentences if I want to. It's just most of the time I make an effort to put my brain in speech-autopilot mode. I think in fact it's harder to let yourself be lead by it without consciously introspecting, at least I find I'm able to discuss way quicker as I can start talking about a very complex idea without having had to "sort it out" explicitly. I'll just know I know what to say in those cases. Part of this auto-pilot is learning to recognize if you have the answer or not. I will not launch into a sentence without a strong feeling I understand the topic and know what to say. I just don't need to prepare the exact words in order to do it. I still consciously "check" that I know, but that just requires a boolean answer instead of a word by word crafted sentence.

FeepingCreature 4y ago
I don't think it's like ... if an idea gets moved to the verbalization stage, that you're compelled to say it. It's more that some people seem to have little control over what happens at that stage, ie. they can operate on a concept but they can't predict the way it'll be spoken. Like [Conceptual stage] --??-- consciousness V [Verbalization stage] --??-- consciousness V [Vocalization] So if you don't have conscious access to verbalization, you only realize how a thought "will sound" after you say it. Conversely, if you don't have conscious access to conceptualization, you end up thinking that "thinking" always involves "thinking out loud", because "thinking out loud" (verbalizing) is the only way you have to query your conceptual layer. You literally only become aware of your own thinking after the thought is already pretty far along. At the extreme, you can have conscious access to neither stage and require vocalization to reflect on your own thinking.
- vasco 4y ago
  I understood your original argument, maybe I just did a bad job describing what I disagree with. In this post it's this: > Conversely, if you don't have conscious access to conceptualization, you end up thinking that "thinking" always involves "thinking out loud", because "thinking out loud" (verbalizing) is the only way you have to query your conceptual layer. You literally only become aware of your own thinking after the thought is already pretty far along What I'm saying is that even if you do have conscious access to verbalisation stage, the more you force yourself to let it be handled subconsciously, the better at communicating quickly and effectively. This is what I meant by autopilot. Spending active conversation time on conscious verbalization seems to me as inefficient as verbalising words and "speaking them out" as you read a book, usually known as subvocalization.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    Oh yeah I agree with that. I think the conscious access is primarily important for self-training. So I would expect somebody with conscious access to 1. be better at vocalizing, 2. almost never actually need to use their access to correct a decision. I tend to think of consciousness as the "debug mode" of the brain.

mentos 4y ago

Yea makes me wonder what data could be used to train this theoretical symbolic model that precedes the language model? I’m thinking training on movies/tv has the physical element that pure text is missing.