15 ms·

I feel like my grasp of language allows some very complex thoughts, but I often wonder if it is limiting. I seem nearly unable to think without forming phrases

by hnick 2y ago

I feel like my grasp of language allows some very complex thoughts, but I often wonder if it is limiting. I seem nearly unable to think without forming phrases in my head, and even if I anticipate the conclusion I feel the need to go through the whole sentence. I know there are people with all their senses intact without any internal monologue, but mine is very much in charge. Rigorous exercise or flow state seems able to quiet it for a bit.

pests 2y ago
This reminds me of some experiment (that I will never be able to find again) that was basically having people count in their head while doing something else, say reading. Some people were very good at it, others horrible. One revealed the method they were using - they didn't count audibly, they visualized a ticker tape moving across their vision with numbers increasing. Or say a rotating scale with the numbers rotating. This let them read or internal monologue as the senses are now separate. I tried to practice for a bit, still impossible to do without thinking about it. Kind of like how people default to counting money in their native way.
- hnick 2y ago
  That's interesting. I read your comment in my head while counting and seemed able to keep up, but something more complex might be hard, such as reading out loud. On another tangent, I've been trying Ritalin after speaking to a doctor. The first thing I noticed when I took it was that it became very difficult to hold multiple trains of thought at the same time. My typical routine (coping mechanism) was to work and have YouTube playing and a little attention on each, because this stopped me getting bored. But it wasn't long before I realised I simply could not hear the videos. It was a strange feeling but nice. A little similar to what you describe in how abilities vary.
  - pests 2y ago
    These questions keep me up at night. That we only get to experience though our own senses. I pretty much can only pay attention to one thing at a time. I've tried to watch movies or YouTube while coding or other things on my PC but I end up realizing I wasn't paying attention at all so now I don't even try.
  - ahazred8ta 2y ago
    When most people focus on one thing, the active part of the brain will actually 'recruit' neighboring parts (which normally do other things) to help with the main activity. That recruitment may not happen with certain people when they're not on Ritalin. (I am not a neurobiologist) I'm the other way. I can ignore people talking, but when a coworker has the radio on and the spoken words are faint enough or muddled enough that they're hard to make out, I lose focus on what I'm trying to do because the 'listen to words' part of my brain is trying really hard to figure out what's being said, and pulls in extra brainpower to do it.
    - hnick 2y ago
      It really was eye opening how much difference a small 10mg dose made, and the structures of the modern world made a whole lot more sense with the knowledge that maybe a lot of people are just like this, all the time. I had experienced focus before but it was almost always what people call "hyperfocus" which is a more extreme locking out of the world. I kept notes for my appointment in 3 months since I just noticed so many little things I'd be sure to forget and it'll be fun to review those.
- foodevl 2y ago
  > This reminds me of some experiment (that I will never be able to find again) That was from Richard Feynman.
  - pests 2y ago
    Ah yes! That would totally line up. Guessing from his Surely You're Joking book. Apologies to any if I butchered the story or experiment, been awhile.
    - frabcus 2y ago
      It's definitely in the excellent Feynman BBC series "Fun to imagine"
      - pests 2y ago
        I've never watched but I'll have to check it out! Must be a common story he tells haha.
- texuf 2y ago
  This is from Surely You’re Joking
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  I have been learning English for close to ~18 years by now, if you count primary school. To this day I can't really count in English unless I force myself to.
9dev 2y ago
> I seem nearly unable to think without forming phrases in my head, and even if I anticipate the conclusion I feel the need to go through the whole sentence. I try this ever so often and can’t get a hold of it. It feels like I know what the final sentence will be, like it’s shape, in a way, before my narrator has read it, but he needs to read it for the meaning to materialise, to commit to my reasoning state. Every time I think just how much faster I would be thinking if I could get rid of the monologue somehow. And then I notice that thinking happens very fast, and that the perceived speaking speed of the narrator probably doesn’t correlate with the time it would take me to actually spell things out loud, my brain only pretends it’s way slower than the actual thought process.
- raffraffraff 2y ago
  I also find it astonishing that I can feel like I had an entire sentence in my head without any of the words, and fluidly produce all of the words as I say them, without having to search for them or consciously line them up. They're just there, one after the other, like tokens waiting to be picked up. (LLM anyone?) I don't even think that my conscious brain knows exactly which words are going to pop out, say 5 words on. It seems to magically find each word as I speak, without having to pause or rebuffer. I don't think that language is slowing me down. I actually think that my brain is full of shit and needs to run thoughts through checkers (lint, syntax, logic, fact). I think it makes the language center of our brains all the more magical. As you say, it all happens so fast, and yet it assembles and sanity-checks those raw thoughts as you crystalise them into words. How many times have I started explaining something, only to realise midway through that I'm taking crap, or that I'm extremely fuzzy on some important detail. Or maybe I infer some important new fact or make some new connection for the first time, while talking about it? Dogs have thoughts... but we can speak. And every time there's been an innovation in the storage, retrieval or communication of language (not raw thoughts), we've had a gigantic evolutionary leap forward. Isaac Newton was a genius. But when he took up the challenge of explaining the motion of the planets, I bet that not even he knew what he was going to end up with at the end, and I bet that he realised, discovered or rained out a whole bunch of things in the writing of it. Something else I've wondered. How come my brain holds a million different facts, records of! historical interactions with others, and a pretty decent track of time (like, I know the time, day, month and year and what I did-or-didn't do yesterday), but my dreams are total gibberish? Like I was in a hotel lobby last night with a bunch of people I don't know, realised I'm wasn't wearing any pants, then paniced because my phone was in my pants, how would I call my wife? So I turn to my (deceased) sister and asked which room I'm staying in... If my brain is so good, how come it does crap like that when the conscious bit is switched off? I would never assume that the data inside my brain, or the subconscious babble that counts for thought, adds up to a genius that is hindered by some clunky language. Very much the opposite. Side note: all of this is the basis for my extremely strong view that freedom of speech is an absolute necessity for continued prosperity, science, democracy etc. If people are unable to turn their ideas into concrete language, and to do this together as a group, without fear, then they are unable to reason things out properly and make good decisions. I only feel like adding that because within my lifetime I have seen an erosion of the importance of that freedom, to the point where it's no longer possible to discuss mundane, everyday things, or to point out some obvious truth.
martindbp 2y ago
Is this the norm? I can have an internal dialog but I mainly visualize things, I'd say that 90% of my thinking is visual. I'm not even sure how you'd solve, for instance, an algorithmic problem without visualizing the process. Maybe this is why I feel like a slower thinker than most peers, answers just seem to come them while I have to visualize things first. In college I'd generally take longer than the fast smart people but end up doing slightly better in the end, which always puzzled me. I have terrible memory for facts though.
- Aerroon 2y ago
  I can visualize algorithms but I have to do so deliberately. Unlike the parent poster I don't always think in internal monologues either. Sometimes it's a keyword/concept thing where I'll think of the main items and I get a feeling that I know how to fill in the blanks. I haven't actually visualized or verbalized what would fill those blanks though (and sometimes the feeling is wrong). I think pretty much all of the senses can be used to do some form of thinking. I can imagine songs in my head, touch, feelings etc. Rarely are they useful for problem solving though, but some of these are nice for falling asleep in unknown environments. Oh and then there's the thinking where nothing seems to happen. I stare at a piece of paper and after a while I know what to do next. How did I arrive at that conclusion? I don't know, but it definitely wasn't verbal, visual, aural or anything else. This tends to not solve complex problems like math, but it basically tells me what I should do to try to solve it (usually verbal or visual).
- frabcus 2y ago
  The answer is that it is hugely variable between people! Hurlburt has great research on this using Descriptive Experience Sampling. Some people mainly use images, others mainly speech, others mainly emotion etc. And many more use a varied mix. Also the way each modality of thought is used is hugely variable - exactly what people see and with what quality or how precisely they feel emotional in their body etc. To me it explains a huge amount of how different people are good at different skills. I've a podcast on this topic ("Imagine an apple") if you're interested in more.
  - 2y ago
ben_w 2y ago
I have an "inner voice" which "wants" to turn my word-shaped-thoughts into an inner audio stream, and "gets annoyed" if, upon "my" realisation that I've already got the entire sentence, I can save time by not "reading" it "aloud". (All those scare quotes because this is not at all literal, just how it feels from the inside). Interestingly, when I'm in this state (the thought has to already exist) I can let my fingers type it out for me while I'm paying attention to something else entirely — but I can't simultaneously read while listening to someone talk.
bamboozled 2y ago
You might enjoy this Alan watts talk called: the limits of language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZZPLbi2SD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZZPLbi2SD4
ooterness 2y ago
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: "The idea of linguistic relativity, known also as the Whorf hypothesis, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (/səˌpɪər ˈhwɔːrf/ sə-PEER WHORF), or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus individuals' languages determine or influence their perceptions of the world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

by hnick 2y ago

pests 2y ago

This reminds me of some experiment (that I will never be able to find again) that was basically having people count in their head while doing something else, say reading. Some people were very good at it, others horrible. One revealed the method they were using - they didn't count audibly, they visualized a ticker tape moving across their vision with numbers increasing. Or say a rotating scale with the numbers rotating. This let them read or internal monologue as the senses are now separate. I tried to practice for a bit, still impossible to do without thinking about it. Kind of like how people default to counting money in their native way.

hnick 2y ago
That's interesting. I read your comment in my head while counting and seemed able to keep up, but something more complex might be hard, such as reading out loud. On another tangent, I've been trying Ritalin after speaking to a doctor. The first thing I noticed when I took it was that it became very difficult to hold multiple trains of thought at the same time. My typical routine (coping mechanism) was to work and have YouTube playing and a little attention on each, because this stopped me getting bored. But it wasn't long before I realised I simply could not hear the videos. It was a strange feeling but nice. A little similar to what you describe in how abilities vary.
- pests 2y ago
  These questions keep me up at night. That we only get to experience though our own senses. I pretty much can only pay attention to one thing at a time. I've tried to watch movies or YouTube while coding or other things on my PC but I end up realizing I wasn't paying attention at all so now I don't even try.
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  When most people focus on one thing, the active part of the brain will actually 'recruit' neighboring parts (which normally do other things) to help with the main activity. That recruitment may not happen with certain people when they're not on Ritalin. (I am not a neurobiologist) I'm the other way. I can ignore people talking, but when a coworker has the radio on and the spoken words are faint enough or muddled enough that they're hard to make out, I lose focus on what I'm trying to do because the 'listen to words' part of my brain is trying really hard to figure out what's being said, and pulls in extra brainpower to do it.
  - hnick 2y ago
    It really was eye opening how much difference a small 10mg dose made, and the structures of the modern world made a whole lot more sense with the knowledge that maybe a lot of people are just like this, all the time. I had experienced focus before but it was almost always what people call "hyperfocus" which is a more extreme locking out of the world. I kept notes for my appointment in 3 months since I just noticed so many little things I'd be sure to forget and it'll be fun to review those.
foodevl 2y ago
> This reminds me of some experiment (that I will never be able to find again) That was from Richard Feynman.
- pests 2y ago
  Ah yes! That would totally line up. Guessing from his Surely You're Joking book. Apologies to any if I butchered the story or experiment, been awhile.
  - frabcus 2y ago
    It's definitely in the excellent Feynman BBC series "Fun to imagine"
    - pests 2y ago
      I've never watched but I'll have to check it out! Must be a common story he tells haha.
texuf 2y ago
This is from Surely You’re Joking
StefanBatory 2y ago
I have been learning English for close to ~18 years by now, if you count primary school. To this day I can't really count in English unless I force myself to.

9dev 2y ago

> I seem nearly unable to think without forming phrases in my head, and even if I anticipate the conclusion I feel the need to go through the whole sentence. I try this ever so often and can’t get a hold of it. It feels like I know what the final sentence will be, like it’s shape, in a way, before my narrator has read it, but he needs to read it for the meaning to materialise, to commit to my reasoning state. Every time I think just how much faster I would be thinking if I could get rid of the monologue somehow. And then I notice that thinking happens very fast, and that the perceived speaking speed of the narrator probably doesn’t correlate with the time it would take me to actually spell things out loud, my brain only pretends it’s way slower than the actual thought process.

raffraffraff 2y ago
I also find it astonishing that I can feel like I had an entire sentence in my head without any of the words, and fluidly produce all of the words as I say them, without having to search for them or consciously line them up. They're just there, one after the other, like tokens waiting to be picked up. (LLM anyone?) I don't even think that my conscious brain knows exactly which words are going to pop out, say 5 words on. It seems to magically find each word as I speak, without having to pause or rebuffer. I don't think that language is slowing me down. I actually think that my brain is full of shit and needs to run thoughts through checkers (lint, syntax, logic, fact). I think it makes the language center of our brains all the more magical. As you say, it all happens so fast, and yet it assembles and sanity-checks those raw thoughts as you crystalise them into words. How many times have I started explaining something, only to realise midway through that I'm taking crap, or that I'm extremely fuzzy on some important detail. Or maybe I infer some important new fact or make some new connection for the first time, while talking about it? Dogs have thoughts... but we can speak. And every time there's been an innovation in the storage, retrieval or communication of language (not raw thoughts), we've had a gigantic evolutionary leap forward. Isaac Newton was a genius. But when he took up the challenge of explaining the motion of the planets, I bet that not even he knew what he was going to end up with at the end, and I bet that he realised, discovered or rained out a whole bunch of things in the writing of it. Something else I've wondered. How come my brain holds a million different facts, records of! historical interactions with others, and a pretty decent track of time (like, I know the time, day, month and year and what I did-or-didn't do yesterday), but my dreams are total gibberish? Like I was in a hotel lobby last night with a bunch of people I don't know, realised I'm wasn't wearing any pants, then paniced because my phone was in my pants, how would I call my wife? So I turn to my (deceased) sister and asked which room I'm staying in... If my brain is so good, how come it does crap like that when the conscious bit is switched off? I would never assume that the data inside my brain, or the subconscious babble that counts for thought, adds up to a genius that is hindered by some clunky language. Very much the opposite. Side note: all of this is the basis for my extremely strong view that freedom of speech is an absolute necessity for continued prosperity, science, democracy etc. If people are unable to turn their ideas into concrete language, and to do this together as a group, without fear, then they are unable to reason things out properly and make good decisions. I only feel like adding that because within my lifetime I have seen an erosion of the importance of that freedom, to the point where it's no longer possible to discuss mundane, everyday things, or to point out some obvious truth.

martindbp 2y ago

Is this the norm? I can have an internal dialog but I mainly visualize things, I'd say that 90% of my thinking is visual. I'm not even sure how you'd solve, for instance, an algorithmic problem without visualizing the process. Maybe this is why I feel like a slower thinker than most peers, answers just seem to come them while I have to visualize things first. In college I'd generally take longer than the fast smart people but end up doing slightly better in the end, which always puzzled me. I have terrible memory for facts though.

Aerroon 2y ago
I can visualize algorithms but I have to do so deliberately. Unlike the parent poster I don't always think in internal monologues either. Sometimes it's a keyword/concept thing where I'll think of the main items and I get a feeling that I know how to fill in the blanks. I haven't actually visualized or verbalized what would fill those blanks though (and sometimes the feeling is wrong). I think pretty much all of the senses can be used to do some form of thinking. I can imagine songs in my head, touch, feelings etc. Rarely are they useful for problem solving though, but some of these are nice for falling asleep in unknown environments. Oh and then there's the thinking where nothing seems to happen. I stare at a piece of paper and after a while I know what to do next. How did I arrive at that conclusion? I don't know, but it definitely wasn't verbal, visual, aural or anything else. This tends to not solve complex problems like math, but it basically tells me what I should do to try to solve it (usually verbal or visual).
frabcus 2y ago
The answer is that it is hugely variable between people! Hurlburt has great research on this using Descriptive Experience Sampling. Some people mainly use images, others mainly speech, others mainly emotion etc. And many more use a varied mix. Also the way each modality of thought is used is hugely variable - exactly what people see and with what quality or how precisely they feel emotional in their body etc. To me it explains a huge amount of how different people are good at different skills. I've a podcast on this topic ("Imagine an apple") if you're interested in more.
- 2y ago

ben_w 2y ago

I have an "inner voice" which "wants" to turn my word-shaped-thoughts into an inner audio stream, and "gets annoyed" if, upon "my" realisation that I've already got the entire sentence, I can save time by not "reading" it "aloud". (All those scare quotes because this is not at all literal, just how it feels from the inside). Interestingly, when I'm in this state (the thought has to already exist) I can let my fingers type it out for me while I'm paying attention to something else entirely — but I can't simultaneously read while listening to someone talk.

bamboozled 2y ago

You might enjoy this Alan watts talk called: the limits of language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZZPLbi2SD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZZPLbi2SD4

ooterness 2y ago

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: "The idea of linguistic relativity, known also as the Whorf hypothesis, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (/səˌpɪər ˈhwɔːrf/ sə-PEER WHORF), or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus individuals' languages determine or influence their perceptions of the world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity