You say “apple” to me and I’m #1, glossy skin, insides, all that
And how in the hell does one navigate life, or enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?! Reading a book is like watching a movie. I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
Yet #5’s are not handicapped in the slightest. They’re so “normal” that mankind is just now figuring out we’re far apart on this thing. Fucking weird.
EDIT: Showed this to my wife and she was somewhat mystified as to what I was asking. Pretty sure she’s a 5. I get frustrated as hell when I ask her to describe a thing and she’s clueless. “Did the radiator hose pop off, or is it torn and cracked?” “I don’t know!”
EDIT2: The first Star Wars book after the movie came out was Splinter in the Mind’s Eye. I feel like I got that title. What’s it mean to you?
What the fuck do you mean some people don’t have an inner monologue. How do they… Think thoughts? I literally cannot comprehend how they work through thoughts.
I’m a word-er, but I think hank green explained it pretty well in a video. Language is just an I/O bus, thoughts occur as a set of abstractions with associations.
Yeah I’m calling bullshit on this one haha, op is implying some people cannot process word if not spoken or written. That would be so unbelievably disabling you probably couldn’t function in society.
It’s not that they don’t process words, it’s that those without internal monologues may think in concepts, images, or visualized actions rather than using the words those concepts are attached to. As an example, some deaf people if they have an internalized monologue have reported their monologue being visualized sign language, instead of audible speech spoken in their head. There’s quite a lot of variability in how someone processes their internal thoughts.
Some without internal monologues have mentioned that they can vocalize text in their head, but only if done consciously, and they usually find that it would make reading agonizingly slow to do so for them.
Simon Roper does a couple really excellent videos on this subject, if you’d like to hear a very eloquent first hand experience of someone else’s non-monologue internal thoughts.
Also @[email protected]
I’m convinced lots of people actually don’t think
The proper way humans are supposed to think is with Critical Thinking Skills. It used to be taught in schools, often in English classes. Remember being taught how to write an essay from the General concept to down to the specific point? That was teaching Critical Thinking Skills, learning how to craft a coherent argument.
Today, many states actively discourage the teaching of Critical Thinking Skills. Republicans in particular hate it. About a decade ago, the Texas Republican Party even included opposition to Critical Thinking Skills in their state platform, claiming that it taught children to defy authority figures. No it doesn’t, it just teaches them when those authority figures are trying to exploit them. They actually tried to position Critical Thinking Skills as detrimental to childhood education.
If you don’t develop Critical Thinking Skills, you will substitute orderly thinking with a sort of ad hoc, improvisatory, chaotic thinking, which is easy for someone with a nefarious agenda to tap into and manipulate. Those with good Critical Thinking Skills learn to recognize and resist things like propaganda.
Literally everyone does this tho. It only feels like everyone else because you can’t be aware of when you’re not thinking.
No, having kids now I am sometimes super tired only being able to function for the daily activities without much planning and thinking about others. This made me realize this state (or even worse) is probably normal for a lot of people.
Easily we just do. It’s like breathing. We just do it.
Can you explain how you breath? Or beat your heart? Or create blood?
That’s how we do.
Is there anyone who can’t (partially) control their breath?
Probably different for everyone, but I have neither and sometimes feel almost compelled to speak my thoughts out loud. If I don’t speak them they’re just kind of abstract feelings or impressions.
My mom had a stroke that was caught early, and she was this way in the first couple years afterwards. I had to ask her to stop talking to me so I could read a menu, and she was self-aware about it. She was like “I’m sorry. Just tell me. I just have to speak my thoughts into existence these days.”
It’s interesting to hear about someone having a similar experience due to a brain injury. I have always wondered if my inability to internalize thoughts was some kind of developmental thing; if I don’t speak them or write them down then they’re really scattered and sorta incoherent.
Vibes or visuals
Vibe thinking?
How the fuck would you function without an inner monologue AND aphantasia…
I don’t know, that’s hard to imagine
Guards, send this peasant to the dungeons.
Yes, guard here, just give me a brief description of the culprit.
The culprit looks like this.
Doesn’t look like anything to me
That’s me. Best way I can describe it is like a word cloud but no text or dialog. A bunch of concepts with varying importance and strength of connections.
It’s like breathing, it’s just automatic. If someone points it out and I over think it then suddenly I go brain stupid for a second double guessing everything.
Me too. I think in the connections between ideas. Almost like thinking in metaphor. Also OP said they were surprised aphantasia is not a disability, but thinking without senses is way faster, you don’t need to think in a straight line, but can just think a clump of thoughts at once.
Non-linear thought is super helpful! But yeah, I have to actively translate to words.
My best guess: sometimes, one idea flows to the next in my head without the words. Usually I “feel” sentences falling into place at least a few words ahead of what I’m saying, at least kind of. But sometimes I just sort of talk, without the inner mo ologue, and it’s mildly confusing. Like, who the hell is building the sentences if it’s not me? And why does what’s coming out of my mouth totally agree with what I would be saying if I could build the words right now?
Basically, sometimes the place that ACTUALLY assembles the words bypasses the self-awareness layer, and the words just come out.
I imagine this is somewhat analogous to the people with no inner monologue; there are still thoughts, they just don’t take the form of words. Pictures, concepts, or even other things that make less intuitive sense to those of us with inner monologues.