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I suggest you revisit the subject with your friends, with two key points: 1. Make it clear to them that with "internal monologue" you do not mean an actual aud

I suggest you revisit the subject with your friends, with two key points: 1. Make it clear to them that with "internal monologue" you do not mean an actual audible hallucination 2. Ask them if they EVER have imagined themselves or others saying or asking anything If they do, which they 100% will unless they lie, then you have ruled out "does not have an internal monologue", the claim is now "does not use his internal monologue as much". You can keep probing them what exactly that means, but it gets washy. Someone that truly does not have an internal dialogue could not do the most basic daily tasks. A person could grab a cookie from the table when they feel like it (oh, :cookie-emoji:!), but they cannot put on their shoes, grab their wallet and keys, look in the mirror to adjust their hair, go to the supermarket, to buy cookies. If there were another hidden code that can express all huge mental state pulled by "buy cookies", by now we would at least have an idea that it exists underneath. We must also ask, why would we translate this constantly into language, if the mental state is already there? Translation costs processing power and slows down. So why are these "no internal monologue" people not geniuses? I have no doubt that there is a spectrum, on that I agree with you. But the spectrum is "how present is (or how aware is the person of-) the internal monologue". E.g. some people have ADHD, others never get anxiety at all. "No internal monologue" is not one end of the spectrum for functioning adults. The cat actually proves my point. A cat can sit for a long time before a mouse-hole, or it can hide to jumpscare his brother cat, and so on. So to a very small degree there is something that let's it process ("understand") very basic and near-future event and action-reactions. However, a cat could not possibly go to the supermarket to buy food, obviating anatomical obstacles, because: it has no language and therefore cannot make a complex mental model. Fun fact: whenever animals (apes, birds) have been taught language, they never ask questions (some claim they did, but if you dig in you'll see that the interpretation is extremely dubious).

godelski 1y ago
> 1. Make it clear to them that with "internal monologue" you do not mean an actual audible hallucination What do you mean? I hear my voice in my head. I can differentiate this from a voice outside my head, but yes, I do "hear" it. And yes, this has been discussed in depth. It was like literally the first thing... But no, they do not have conversations in their heads like I do. They do not use words as their medium. I have no doubt that their experience is different from mine. > 2. Ask them if they EVER have imagined themselves or others saying or asking anything This is an orthogonal point. Yes, they have imagined normal interactions. But frequently those imaginary conversations do not use words. > The cat actually proves my point. Idk man, I think you should get a pet. My cat communicates with me all the time. But she has no language. > Fun fact: whenever animals (apes, birds) have been taught language, they never ask questions (some claim they did, but if you dig in you'll see that the interpretation is extremely dubious). To be clear, I'm not saying my cat's intelligence is anywhere near ours. She can do tricks and is "smart for a cat" but I'm not even convinced she's as intelligent as the various wild corvids I feed.
- the_gipsy 1y ago
  It's pretty self explanatory: there's actual voice heard with your ears, there's the internal monologue, and then there's a hallucination. > Yes, they have imagined normal interactions. But frequently those imaginary conversations do not use words. And you did not dig in deeper? How exactly do you imagine a conversation without words?
  - godelski 1y ago
    > there's actual voice heard with your ears, there's the internal monologue, and then there's a hallucination. This needs no explaining. I think I sufficiently made it clear that we agree with these distinctions. >> I hear my voice in my head. I can differentiate this from a voice outside my head, but yes, I do "hear" it. Though to be more precise I would say that a hallucination appears to come from outside the head, even if you are aware that it is coming from inside. Still, clearly distinct from an internal monologue, which is always clearly internal. > And you did not dig in deeper? >>>> I know some of these people. ***We've had deep conversations about what is going on in our thought processes.*** Yes. Multiple hours long conversations. One of these people I know now studies psychology. I research intelligence and minds from an artificial standpoint and they from a biological. Yeah, we have gotten pretty deep and have the skills and language to do so far more than the average person. I think you need to consider that you may just be wrong. You are trying very hard to defend your belief, but why? The strengths of our beliefs should be proportional to the evidence that supports them. I am not trying to say that your logic is bad, let's make that clear. But I think your logic doesn't account for additional data. If you weren't previously aware of this data then how could you expect the logic to reach the correct conclusion? I want to make this clear because I want to distinguish correctness from intelligence (actually relevant to the conversation this stemmed from). You can be wrong without being dumb, but you can also be right and dumb. I think on this particular issue you fall into the former, not the latter. I respect that you are defending your opinion and beliefs, but this is turning as you are rejecting data. Your argument now rests on the data being incorrect, right? Because that's the point. Either the data is wrong or your model is wrong (and let's distinguish that a model is derived through logic to explain data). I want to remind you that this idea is testable too. I told you this because it is a way to convince yourself and update the data up have available to you. You can train yourself to do this in some cases. Not all and obviously it won't be an identical experience to these people, but you can get yourself to use lower amounts of language when thinking through problems. You had also mentioned that people with aphantasia couldn't function, but think about that too. These topics are quite related actually, considering how we've discussed anendophasia you should be able to reason that these people are really likely to have low aphantasia. Notice I said low, as this is a spectrum. You can train the images in your mind to be stronger too. The fact that some images are stronger than others should lead you to believe that this is a spectrum and that it is likely people operate at different base levels. It should also lead you to reason that this is likely trainable in an average person. The same goes for anendophasia. Don't make this binary, consider it a spectrum. That's how the scientific literature describes the topic too. But if you pigeonhole it to being binary and only true in the extreme cases then your model isn't flexible enough as it also isn't considering the variances in people. Go talk with your friends. Get detailed. When you imagine an apple in your head how much do you see? As the person if their process involves words or if it is purely imagery. If words, how many? Is it a red apple? Green? Yellow? Can they smell it? Can they taste it? What's it smell and taste like? I will bet you every single person you talk to will answer these differently. I will even wager that each time you do the exercise you yourself will answer differently, even if the variance is much smaller. But that's data, and your model needs to be able to explain that data too. While I think you have the right thought process I don't think you are accounting for this variance, instead treating it as noise. But noise can be parameterized and modeled too. Noise is just the statistical description of uncertainty.

godelski 1y ago

> 1. Make it clear to them that with "internal monologue" you do not mean an actual audible hallucination What do you mean? I hear my voice in my head. I can differentiate this from a voice outside my head, but yes, I do "hear" it. And yes, this has been discussed in depth. It was like literally the first thing... But no, they do not have conversations in their heads like I do. They do not use words as their medium. I have no doubt that their experience is different from mine. > 2. Ask them if they EVER have imagined themselves or others saying or asking anything This is an orthogonal point. Yes, they have imagined normal interactions. But frequently those imaginary conversations do not use words. > The cat actually proves my point. Idk man, I think you should get a pet. My cat communicates with me all the time. But she has no language. > Fun fact: whenever animals (apes, birds) have been taught language, they never ask questions (some claim they did, but if you dig in you'll see that the interpretation is extremely dubious). To be clear, I'm not saying my cat's intelligence is anywhere near ours. She can do tricks and is "smart for a cat" but I'm not even convinced she's as intelligent as the various wild corvids I feed.

the_gipsy 1y ago
It's pretty self explanatory: there's actual voice heard with your ears, there's the internal monologue, and then there's a hallucination. > Yes, they have imagined normal interactions. But frequently those imaginary conversations do not use words. And you did not dig in deeper? How exactly do you imagine a conversation without words?
- godelski 1y ago
  > there's actual voice heard with your ears, there's the internal monologue, and then there's a hallucination. This needs no explaining. I think I sufficiently made it clear that we agree with these distinctions. >> I hear my voice in my head. I can differentiate this from a voice outside my head, but yes, I do "hear" it. Though to be more precise I would say that a hallucination appears to come from outside the head, even if you are aware that it is coming from inside. Still, clearly distinct from an internal monologue, which is always clearly internal. > And you did not dig in deeper? >>>> I know some of these people. ***We've had deep conversations about what is going on in our thought processes.*** Yes. Multiple hours long conversations. One of these people I know now studies psychology. I research intelligence and minds from an artificial standpoint and they from a biological. Yeah, we have gotten pretty deep and have the skills and language to do so far more than the average person. I think you need to consider that you may just be wrong. You are trying very hard to defend your belief, but why? The strengths of our beliefs should be proportional to the evidence that supports them. I am not trying to say that your logic is bad, let's make that clear. But I think your logic doesn't account for additional data. If you weren't previously aware of this data then how could you expect the logic to reach the correct conclusion? I want to make this clear because I want to distinguish correctness from intelligence (actually relevant to the conversation this stemmed from). You can be wrong without being dumb, but you can also be right and dumb. I think on this particular issue you fall into the former, not the latter. I respect that you are defending your opinion and beliefs, but this is turning as you are rejecting data. Your argument now rests on the data being incorrect, right? Because that's the point. Either the data is wrong or your model is wrong (and let's distinguish that a model is derived through logic to explain data). I want to remind you that this idea is testable too. I told you this because it is a way to convince yourself and update the data up have available to you. You can train yourself to do this in some cases. Not all and obviously it won't be an identical experience to these people, but you can get yourself to use lower amounts of language when thinking through problems. You had also mentioned that people with aphantasia couldn't function, but think about that too. These topics are quite related actually, considering how we've discussed anendophasia you should be able to reason that these people are really likely to have low aphantasia. Notice I said low, as this is a spectrum. You can train the images in your mind to be stronger too. The fact that some images are stronger than others should lead you to believe that this is a spectrum and that it is likely people operate at different base levels. It should also lead you to reason that this is likely trainable in an average person. The same goes for anendophasia. Don't make this binary, consider it a spectrum. That's how the scientific literature describes the topic too. But if you pigeonhole it to being binary and only true in the extreme cases then your model isn't flexible enough as it also isn't considering the variances in people. Go talk with your friends. Get detailed. When you imagine an apple in your head how much do you see? As the person if their process involves words or if it is purely imagery. If words, how many? Is it a red apple? Green? Yellow? Can they smell it? Can they taste it? What's it smell and taste like? I will bet you every single person you talk to will answer these differently. I will even wager that each time you do the exercise you yourself will answer differently, even if the variance is much smaller. But that's data, and your model needs to be able to explain that data too. While I think you have the right thought process I don't think you are accounting for this variance, instead treating it as noise. But noise can be parameterized and modeled too. Noise is just the statistical description of uncertainty.