6 ms·

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people. I don't mean

by unconed 14y ago

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people. I don't mean "my ideas are better" or "I have superior reasoning skills". I mean "the tools that I use to reason about the world are not the same that most people appear to use". It's the only logical explanation for the fact that several popular ways in which humans communicate ideas (e.g. lectures/podcasts or poetry/lyrics) seem meaningless and like an inefficient use of time to me. I'm a visual thinker, visual communicator, and I convert all the important ideas in my life into mental pictures and animations. Mnemonics seem like the most idiotic thing ever to me, like remembering a person's phone number instead of what they're like. Here's another one: I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane. To me, thought is a completely parallel process of association, words are simply not necessary, they only serve to unnecessarily clamp you down into linear trains of thought early on. For years, I assumed that "learning to think in another language" was simply a metaphor for a certain level of proficiency in constructing sentences on the fly. Apparently it's not. There is a lot more variation in how our brains work than people are generally aware of. It's certainly not acknowledged in culture or education. I think this is where a lot of the sentiment of 'not being normal' comes from, and telling people to stop worrying about it is not productive. It's something they will continue to be faced with their entire lives, even as all the 'neurotypical' folks insist nothing's different about you and you just need to get out more.

crntaylor 14y ago
I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane. I think that's pretty normal. A quick poll of the other three people in the room reveals that none of us experience an 'inner voice'. It's more like a stream of associations, some of which might involve vocalised words, others might involve images, sounds, or recalled emotions. Sometimes the associations are sequential, sometimes they are parallel. Steven Pinker refers to this as 'mentalese'. Edit: also, this: http://xkcd.com/610/ http://xkcd.com/610/
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept. I, too, do not hear a voice echoing in my head as if God was speaking inside my skull. I have a train of thought that I could directly translate to spoken words, but is not actually in words. It is more abstract; I shuffle around ideas. Sometimes I will speak aloud to myself when I'm trying to disassociate to find a new viewpoint, but that's about as far as the inner voice goes. Of course, this could potentially be less typical than I usually assume. I've noticed writing notes to work through my thoughts is ridiculously limiting, because my train of thought goes 2-10x faster than I can write or draw. I've always wondered about that, because it seems to be a popular method for brainstorming.
  - pm215 14y ago
    I tend more towards inner monologue, but it's not 'the voice of God', it's like I constantly talk to myself, only not out loud. On the other hand I can't visualise images internally at all. I think it's fascinating how we all have basically the same brain hardware but can end up with remarkably different inner experiences.
  - Raphael 14y ago
    It sucks that writing is slower than thinking, but it has to be done because thoughts are fleeting. You need enough notes to remember later or trigger recreate roughly the same idea.
  - LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
    No, it's not just a metaphor. A majority of people literally read their thoughts to themselves using the part of their brain that processes heard speech. The pool of people you're drawing from are all nerds who are here reading this stuff. Of course they have quiet thoughts. It's been my experience that there are two kinds of people in this regard: There are those who process their thoughts with the speech portion of their brain and those who do not. Those who do are usually second-handers; people who depend on other people to form their opinions for them; who depend on the input of their peers to form their own thoughts. They need to hear their thoughts in a voice as if hearing them from a peer in order for them to be rational thoughts. People who think independently and objectively tend to think using mental associations and imagery.
RyanZAG 14y ago
You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences? We all have the same hardware - amazingly complex/simple neural links. We all have different inputs, which means we all think differently. This isn't the important part - the important part is that you can communicate with other people and learn from them - from their different ways of thinking. So I agree, I never said you were normal. I never said I was normal either, or that anybody else was normal. The idea of normal is something you're forcing on the world. Others are trying to force their own idea of normal on the world too, and yet others are trying to change themselves to match someone's idea. Throw that idea away and live your own life. Also, there is a lot of acknowledgment and research in education into the different ways different people learn and how to identify and teach different people. Unfortunately, it's a wicked problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- nitrogen 14y ago
  You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences? It seems quite believable that there is a multidimensional Gaussian distribution of thinking styles, and people at the edge of one or more dimensions can legitimately say that they don't think like most others.
- unconed 14y ago
  I do live my own life, quite happily, and don't wallow in self-pity. I merely shared an insight that has helped me make more sense of my life after 30 years of living it. I never said I was unique, merely that I deviated from the norm. "I am a lot taller than most people" does not mean "I am a unique giant, woe is me, doomed to tower over the rest of humanity". It does mean that those people get to complain a bit more about cramped airplane seats. My advice would be to leave the single-comment psychoanalysis at home, and the platitudes like "live your own life" to the trashy advice columns... Instead, go watch the documentary on Temple Grandin, an autist who is definitely further from the average than I am, and whose awareness of her own nature—as well as her ability to explain it to others—definitely improved her own life.
sliverstorm 14y ago
I think it is important to distinguish here; you do not necessarily think differently from other people. You LEARN differently, which is VERY COMMON. Supporting anecdotal evidence: I usually learn best with written words and supporting visualizations. My mother and youngest brother on the other hand are highly visual, and have an awful time with written words. They need imagery. This is all contrasted to the auditory method common in our schools, and this is just within my family.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  Learning and thinking are different processes, and it's conceivable that one person can have different learning and thinking styles. The way you've capitalized LEARN and italicized think leads me to suspect that you're restating a simplification that I've heard from some friends, and I thus assume is taught in introductory college psychology classes as one of those "lies we tell children."
- realitygrill 14y ago
  It's interesting, but psychologists have found no evidence of learning styles. title: "Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence" abstract: http://psi.sagepub.com/content/9/3/105.abstract http://psi.sagepub.com/content/9/3/105.abstract fulltext: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.p...
6ren 14y ago
> If I heard a voice It's more like talking to yourself. (There's a school of thought that language is thought; related is Sapir–Whorf). The limitation of words is a strength; it enables you to pin down ideas precisely, like butterflies for careful examination. But do it too soon, and they slip through the net. Capturing thought in words implies that thought differs from words; but words are an important tool of thought. Linguistic thought seems a builtin for humans and our intelligence would be less if we did not have words - and not just for communication/collaboration and external storage. BTW: There was a study of mathematicians done about a century ago IIRC, and it was found that about 70% of them thought visually about mathematics; about 15% verbally/linguistically; and only 5% thought in actual mathematical notation.
- yuushi 14y ago
  This is actually discussed in some length in Jacques Hadamards "The Mathematicians Mind" - although I'm certainly no psychologist or neurologist, and some of the ideas are probably incredibly out of date, it was interesting reading nonetheless.
rachelbythebay 14y ago
I latched onto the part of your post about thinking in another language. Way back in school, I had these 90 minute long immersive Spanish classes. You had to speak Spanish the whole time, even for the most ordinary things. It was intended to get you really using the language, and it apparently worked. Here's why. I eventually realized that for a few minutes after leaving that class, as I walked to my bus, my inner monologue was running in Spanish, too. I might be thinking about the same things, but the words used for them would be different. This would slowly click back over as I started hearing and talking to my fellow students, and I'd be back to normal a few minutes after that. The thing is, this adaptive behavior isn't limited to extremes like EN vs. ES. There are different subsets of the language which swap in and out of my speech depending on who's around. I speak one way here on HN, for instance, knowing a bit about my potential audience. I wouldn't sound quite like this with random family members, after all. What I'm guessing based on what you've said here is that this adaptation might not be a universal thing. Maybe some people just have their preferred language and use it no matter what their audience might be. Perhaps other people pick up on this and think they're "weird" since they're not using the common "code" of the rest of the group. Curious.
tokipin 14y ago
I'm like this too. It's awe-some power, but the downside is that serializing my ideas into language is, in the words of Bjork, "like trying to put an ocean through a straw." It's extreme enough in my case that I often sound completely retarded when speaking. Don't get me started about my many adventures in interview land. -.- Feynman on the distinct modes of thinking that people possess: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y
tokipin 14y ago
A factoid about brains: we can attach a given type of input (say, visual input) to any one of a variety of brain regions X Y Z, and each such region is capable of learning that type of input. But these regions are unlikely to all be similar. So even though, for example, we all seem to understand English, it's quite likely that different peoples' understanding of the various aspects of the language can arise through architecturally distinct brain regions. As you say, there is a veneer of similarity that hides how differently different people actually experience the world.
rdtsc 14y ago
> I convert all the important ideas in my life into mental pictures and animations. Ha! I thought I was pretty strange for doing that too. Unsurprisingly I always like to squiggle on pen and paper to visually organize things. I'd draw boxes and arrows. Or I like computer languages with pattern matching (like Erlang and Haskell). It might be related. Also I speak 3 (human ;-) )languages and understand 4. 2 of those I learned in parallel while growing up. That has helped me form abstraction that are common between the two and not necessarily tied to either one. While we are at it. I never knew what to answer when people say "so what language to do you dream in". I always think "huh, people I guess dream in languages?". Because in my dreams and experiences happen but they are mostly visual (with exceptions).
jrockway 14y ago
Podcasts are popular not because they're better, but because they take less time to produce. Say you want to get an idea out. Turn on your microphone and rant for 30 minutes. Done. Now imagine you want to write an essay on the same topic. It's going to take a lot longer than 30 minutes. (People listen to podcasts for the same reason they buy People magazine. It's easy and "social".)
- drewrv 14y ago
  I listen to podcasts so I can do other things while absorbing information or entertainment, such as driving, doing the dishes, or grocery shopping. In other words, it is efficient!
  - marssaxman 14y ago
    Ha. Is that what they're for? I rarely listen to podcasts or video recordings of lectures precisely because I can't do anything else while I'm listening - not if I want to actually hear what's being said. Alas, I can read much faster than anyone can speak, so listening to someone talk feels like an exercise in tedium compared to just reading a transcript. The RSA Animate talks work, though - the video adds enough to keep me from getting bored and wandering off.
    - michaelgrafl 14y ago
      I can do things at the same time that don't require my attention, like driving on a known route, using an exercise bike, cooking, etc. I can and will listen to music when I'm doing graphic design. I prefer silence when I'm doing logical thinking that requires me to use my inner voice, like programming or writing prose. Although I recently found out that it helps when I'm listening to music while writing song lyrics, because it enables me to write from the gut instead of overthinking stuff.
    - natural219 14y ago
      I view it in terms of System 1 / System 2 learning. Podcasts are great for system 2-style learning, where you absorb vocabulary and ideas into your subconscious. Then, when you're ready to sit down and actually learn the stuff, you have a nice scaffold of familiar words and phrases with which you can put together in the correct order.
zallarak 14y ago
I also hear from others that I think "totally differently" - but when they tell me that, I also realize everyone thinks totally differently! The mind is immensely complex, and I think it's a positive thing if we still attempt to communicate and do things with people very different from us.
wmil 14y ago
This is a very interesting topic, I recommend you read: "Generalizing from one example" - http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ and watch Temple Gradin's TED talk "The World Needs All Kinds of Minds"- http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/24/the_world_needs/ http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/24/the_world_needs/
flyinRyan 14y ago
I find this post extremely interesting. Are you saying spoken language plays no role in your thoughts at all, ever? From various sources I've read over the years has always suggested to me that what one can think is constrained by what one can say (e.g. Pirahã). If you truly don't do any language conversion at all when not actually speaking to other humans that would mean my pseudo theory is completely invalid. Personally, all my thought process is certainly not "inner monologue" based (and note this isn't something I "hear"). In fact, from what I can tell the "inner monologue" is the slowest form but it's also the most concrete. The faster forms of thinking slip away quickly, like a dream [1]. [1] This was described in an article some time back. A deaf sign language teacher met a man who was in his 20's and had no language at all. She gradually taught him sign language but after he become proficient and she tried to question him on his thoughts before he had language he resisted describing it. Then later he actually couldn't remember anymore. He claimed it all went away (over 20 years of living!) like a dream.
- jongraehl 14y ago
  [Sapir-Whorf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) is what you're thinking of. The case is usually dramatically overstated. Clearly he's written a coherent comment. Language plays a role whether he knows it or not :)
jongraehl 14y ago
??? If I may risk the typical mind fallacy, most people don't think in words most of the time. Just like typing or writing can serve as structure or canvas, imagining words is for special circumstances. For planning to say or write (and sometimes suppressing). For remembering something you heard or read. For imagining interactions or temporarily believing in hypotheses. For prayer, if you're into that. (I have known people who talk out loud often enough about whatever preoccupies them that I must assume that they're in-their-head doing the same thing much of the time, so these people do exist - I just question if they're most people). I do find myself remembering things I've read, said, or heard, when they seem relevant. I have vast amounts of "knowledge" that's waiting to be connected to real life experience. That said, I wouldn't put too much stock into anyone's description of what their whole brain is doing. Why would we know? I find it's sometimes best to just pause, stop trying to steer, and wait for my brain to come up with something, no pressure. Just whatever comes up in response to a question or puzzle in the next X seconds (pick a small amount of time and commit to not act at all until it passes seems best).

by unconed 14y ago

crntaylor 14y ago

I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane. I think that's pretty normal. A quick poll of the other three people in the room reveals that none of us experience an 'inner voice'. It's more like a stream of associations, some of which might involve vocalised words, others might involve images, sounds, or recalled emotions. Sometimes the associations are sequential, sometimes they are parallel. Steven Pinker refers to this as 'mentalese'. Edit: also, this: http://xkcd.com/610/ http://xkcd.com/610/

sliverstorm 14y ago
I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept. I, too, do not hear a voice echoing in my head as if God was speaking inside my skull. I have a train of thought that I could directly translate to spoken words, but is not actually in words. It is more abstract; I shuffle around ideas. Sometimes I will speak aloud to myself when I'm trying to disassociate to find a new viewpoint, but that's about as far as the inner voice goes. Of course, this could potentially be less typical than I usually assume. I've noticed writing notes to work through my thoughts is ridiculously limiting, because my train of thought goes 2-10x faster than I can write or draw. I've always wondered about that, because it seems to be a popular method for brainstorming.
- pm215 14y ago
  I tend more towards inner monologue, but it's not 'the voice of God', it's like I constantly talk to myself, only not out loud. On the other hand I can't visualise images internally at all. I think it's fascinating how we all have basically the same brain hardware but can end up with remarkably different inner experiences.
- Raphael 14y ago
  It sucks that writing is slower than thinking, but it has to be done because thoughts are fleeting. You need enough notes to remember later or trigger recreate roughly the same idea.
- LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
  No, it's not just a metaphor. A majority of people literally read their thoughts to themselves using the part of their brain that processes heard speech. The pool of people you're drawing from are all nerds who are here reading this stuff. Of course they have quiet thoughts. It's been my experience that there are two kinds of people in this regard: There are those who process their thoughts with the speech portion of their brain and those who do not. Those who do are usually second-handers; people who depend on other people to form their opinions for them; who depend on the input of their peers to form their own thoughts. They need to hear their thoughts in a voice as if hearing them from a peer in order for them to be rational thoughts. People who think independently and objectively tend to think using mental associations and imagery.

RyanZAG 14y ago

You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences? We all have the same hardware - amazingly complex/simple neural links. We all have different inputs, which means we all think differently. This isn't the important part - the important part is that you can communicate with other people and learn from them - from their different ways of thinking. So I agree, I never said you were normal. I never said I was normal either, or that anybody else was normal. The idea of normal is something you're forcing on the world. Others are trying to force their own idea of normal on the world too, and yet others are trying to change themselves to match someone's idea. Throw that idea away and live your own life. Also, there is a lot of acknowledgment and research in education into the different ways different people learn and how to identify and teach different people. Unfortunately, it's a wicked problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nitrogen 14y ago
You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences? It seems quite believable that there is a multidimensional Gaussian distribution of thinking styles, and people at the edge of one or more dimensions can legitimately say that they don't think like most others.
unconed 14y ago
I do live my own life, quite happily, and don't wallow in self-pity. I merely shared an insight that has helped me make more sense of my life after 30 years of living it. I never said I was unique, merely that I deviated from the norm. "I am a lot taller than most people" does not mean "I am a unique giant, woe is me, doomed to tower over the rest of humanity". It does mean that those people get to complain a bit more about cramped airplane seats. My advice would be to leave the single-comment psychoanalysis at home, and the platitudes like "live your own life" to the trashy advice columns... Instead, go watch the documentary on Temple Grandin, an autist who is definitely further from the average than I am, and whose awareness of her own nature—as well as her ability to explain it to others—definitely improved her own life.

sliverstorm 14y ago

I think it is important to distinguish here; you do not necessarily think differently from other people. You LEARN differently, which is VERY COMMON. Supporting anecdotal evidence: I usually learn best with written words and supporting visualizations. My mother and youngest brother on the other hand are highly visual, and have an awful time with written words. They need imagery. This is all contrasted to the auditory method common in our schools, and this is just within my family.

nitrogen 14y ago
Learning and thinking are different processes, and it's conceivable that one person can have different learning and thinking styles. The way you've capitalized LEARN and italicized think leads me to suspect that you're restating a simplification that I've heard from some friends, and I thus assume is taught in introductory college psychology classes as one of those "lies we tell children."
realitygrill 14y ago
It's interesting, but psychologists have found no evidence of learning styles. title: "Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence" abstract: http://psi.sagepub.com/content/9/3/105.abstract http://psi.sagepub.com/content/9/3/105.abstract fulltext: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.p...

6ren 14y ago

> If I heard a voice It's more like talking to yourself. (There's a school of thought that language is thought; related is Sapir–Whorf). The limitation of words is a strength; it enables you to pin down ideas precisely, like butterflies for careful examination. But do it too soon, and they slip through the net. Capturing thought in words implies that thought differs from words; but words are an important tool of thought. Linguistic thought seems a builtin for humans and our intelligence would be less if we did not have words - and not just for communication/collaboration and external storage. BTW: There was a study of mathematicians done about a century ago IIRC, and it was found that about 70% of them thought visually about mathematics; about 15% verbally/linguistically; and only 5% thought in actual mathematical notation.

yuushi 14y ago
This is actually discussed in some length in Jacques Hadamards "The Mathematicians Mind" - although I'm certainly no psychologist or neurologist, and some of the ideas are probably incredibly out of date, it was interesting reading nonetheless.

rachelbythebay 14y ago

I latched onto the part of your post about thinking in another language. Way back in school, I had these 90 minute long immersive Spanish classes. You had to speak Spanish the whole time, even for the most ordinary things. It was intended to get you really using the language, and it apparently worked. Here's why. I eventually realized that for a few minutes after leaving that class, as I walked to my bus, my inner monologue was running in Spanish, too. I might be thinking about the same things, but the words used for them would be different. This would slowly click back over as I started hearing and talking to my fellow students, and I'd be back to normal a few minutes after that. The thing is, this adaptive behavior isn't limited to extremes like EN vs. ES. There are different subsets of the language which swap in and out of my speech depending on who's around. I speak one way here on HN, for instance, knowing a bit about my potential audience. I wouldn't sound quite like this with random family members, after all. What I'm guessing based on what you've said here is that this adaptation might not be a universal thing. Maybe some people just have their preferred language and use it no matter what their audience might be. Perhaps other people pick up on this and think they're "weird" since they're not using the common "code" of the rest of the group. Curious.

tokipin 14y ago

I'm like this too. It's awe-some power, but the downside is that serializing my ideas into language is, in the words of Bjork, "like trying to put an ocean through a straw." It's extreme enough in my case that I often sound completely retarded when speaking. Don't get me started about my many adventures in interview land. -.- Feynman on the distinct modes of thinking that people possess: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y

tokipin 14y ago

A factoid about brains: we can attach a given type of input (say, visual input) to any one of a variety of brain regions X Y Z, and each such region is capable of learning that type of input. But these regions are unlikely to all be similar. So even though, for example, we all seem to understand English, it's quite likely that different peoples' understanding of the various aspects of the language can arise through architecturally distinct brain regions. As you say, there is a veneer of similarity that hides how differently different people actually experience the world.

rdtsc 14y ago

> I convert all the important ideas in my life into mental pictures and animations. Ha! I thought I was pretty strange for doing that too. Unsurprisingly I always like to squiggle on pen and paper to visually organize things. I'd draw boxes and arrows. Or I like computer languages with pattern matching (like Erlang and Haskell). It might be related. Also I speak 3 (human ;-) )languages and understand 4. 2 of those I learned in parallel while growing up. That has helped me form abstraction that are common between the two and not necessarily tied to either one. While we are at it. I never knew what to answer when people say "so what language to do you dream in". I always think "huh, people I guess dream in languages?". Because in my dreams and experiences happen but they are mostly visual (with exceptions).

jrockway 14y ago

Podcasts are popular not because they're better, but because they take less time to produce. Say you want to get an idea out. Turn on your microphone and rant for 30 minutes. Done. Now imagine you want to write an essay on the same topic. It's going to take a lot longer than 30 minutes. (People listen to podcasts for the same reason they buy People magazine. It's easy and "social".)

drewrv 14y ago
I listen to podcasts so I can do other things while absorbing information or entertainment, such as driving, doing the dishes, or grocery shopping. In other words, it is efficient!
- marssaxman 14y ago
  Ha. Is that what they're for? I rarely listen to podcasts or video recordings of lectures precisely because I can't do anything else while I'm listening - not if I want to actually hear what's being said. Alas, I can read much faster than anyone can speak, so listening to someone talk feels like an exercise in tedium compared to just reading a transcript. The RSA Animate talks work, though - the video adds enough to keep me from getting bored and wandering off.
  - michaelgrafl 14y ago
    I can do things at the same time that don't require my attention, like driving on a known route, using an exercise bike, cooking, etc. I can and will listen to music when I'm doing graphic design. I prefer silence when I'm doing logical thinking that requires me to use my inner voice, like programming or writing prose. Although I recently found out that it helps when I'm listening to music while writing song lyrics, because it enables me to write from the gut instead of overthinking stuff.
  - natural219 14y ago
    I view it in terms of System 1 / System 2 learning. Podcasts are great for system 2-style learning, where you absorb vocabulary and ideas into your subconscious. Then, when you're ready to sit down and actually learn the stuff, you have a nice scaffold of familiar words and phrases with which you can put together in the correct order.

zallarak 14y ago

I also hear from others that I think "totally differently" - but when they tell me that, I also realize everyone thinks totally differently! The mind is immensely complex, and I think it's a positive thing if we still attempt to communicate and do things with people very different from us.

wmil 14y ago

This is a very interesting topic, I recommend you read: "Generalizing from one example" - http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ and watch Temple Gradin's TED talk "The World Needs All Kinds of Minds"- http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/24/the_world_needs/ http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/24/the_world_needs/

flyinRyan 14y ago

I find this post extremely interesting. Are you saying spoken language plays no role in your thoughts at all, ever? From various sources I've read over the years has always suggested to me that what one can think is constrained by what one can say (e.g. Pirahã). If you truly don't do any language conversion at all when not actually speaking to other humans that would mean my pseudo theory is completely invalid. Personally, all my thought process is certainly not "inner monologue" based (and note this isn't something I "hear"). In fact, from what I can tell the "inner monologue" is the slowest form but it's also the most concrete. The faster forms of thinking slip away quickly, like a dream [1]. [1] This was described in an article some time back. A deaf sign language teacher met a man who was in his 20's and had no language at all. She gradually taught him sign language but after he become proficient and she tried to question him on his thoughts before he had language he resisted describing it. Then later he actually couldn't remember anymore. He claimed it all went away (over 20 years of living!) like a dream.

jongraehl 14y ago
[Sapir-Whorf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) is what you're thinking of. The case is usually dramatically overstated. Clearly he's written a coherent comment. Language plays a role whether he knows it or not :)

jongraehl 14y ago

??? If I may risk the typical mind fallacy, most people don't think in words most of the time. Just like typing or writing can serve as structure or canvas, imagining words is for special circumstances. For planning to say or write (and sometimes suppressing). For remembering something you heard or read. For imagining interactions or temporarily believing in hypotheses. For prayer, if you're into that. (I have known people who talk out loud often enough about whatever preoccupies them that I must assume that they're in-their-head doing the same thing much of the time, so these people do exist - I just question if they're most people). I do find myself remembering things I've read, said, or heard, when they seem relevant. I have vast amounts of "knowledge" that's waiting to be connected to real life experience. That said, I wouldn't put too much stock into anyone's description of what their whole brain is doing. Why would we know? I find it's sometimes best to just pause, stop trying to steer, and wait for my brain to come up with something, no pressure. Just whatever comes up in response to a question or puzzle in the next X seconds (pick a small amount of time and commit to not act at all until it passes seems best).