Do You Have an Internal Monologue?

[The Fool]

We need a bunch of psychologists to go around with an 8 year old in the "ask stupid yet profound questions incessantly" phase and have them take a survey of adults to get answers to these fundamental things we never even think to ask.

That's just shower thoughts

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

We need a bunch of psychologists to go around with an 8 year old in the "ask stupid yet profound questions incessantly" phase and have them take a survey of adults to get answers to these fundamental things we never even think to ask.

Maybe. I think the answer to the question that I posed is that it's a pointless question to begin with.

We can define red as the band of the visible spectrum between infrared and orange, we can represent it mathematically, but that's where the road ends. We've arrived at an objective definition of red with no ability to escape our subjective sense impressions of the world around us and test to see if there's a discrepancy.

Even if we bring colorblindness into the picture, it won't help much. I have red/green colorblindness so I misinterpret colors at times but

• The majority of people see them properly
• It's the result of a physical deficiency
• I'm only able to say that a certain shade of red looks orange to me, etc

And the last point brings us full circle back to the problem of "what is red?".

Anyways, this is a lot of 'tism for a fairly banal subject, but I've always been fond of this sort of nonsense.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Maybe. I think the answer to the question that I posed is that it's a pointless question to begin with.

We can define red as the band of the visible spectrum between infrared and orange, we can represent it mathematically, but that's where the road ends. We've arrived at an objective definition of red with no ability to escape our subjective sense impressions of the world around us and test to see if there's a discrepancy.

Even if we bring colorblindness into the picture, it won't help much. I have red/green colorblindness so I misinterpret colors at times but

• The majority of people see them properly
• It's the result of a physical deficiency
• I'm only able to say that a certain shade of red looks orange to me, etc

And the last point brings us full circle back to the problem of "what is red?".

Anyways, this is a lot of 'tism for a fairly banal subject, but I've always been fond of this sort of nonsense.

Experiencing a voice in your thoughts is different in essence from experiencing no voice, and something that can be described to others. It sucks to rely on self reporting but there must be other differences like that that are actually answerable and not just "is your red my red?"

 

[Lemmingwise]

An interesting study would be to see if people with and without internal verbal dialogue differ in how they view the world.

For some reason I'm curious particularly if it differs in how they view laws.

First, why do I call it internal verbal dialogue? Isn't it implied that dialogue is verbal?

Well my first assumption is that the difference between those who have internal dialogue and those who don't isn't very big at all. Otherwise, why would it have taken thousands of years to discover this? How do we know those without a voice in their head don't think about things that are fundamentally similar, but expressed differently?

It reminds me of karl pilkington, but also carl jung, who have expressed both in a different way that sometimes your brain comes up with things and presents them to you. A lot of the comedy between pilkington and gervais is because ricky takes the literal approach to things, one might say the verbal approach. Things which might be processed in the visual or other parts of the brain.

Conversely many of the historically famous mathematicians are on record for actively using the visualizing parts of the brain to understand things. It makes sense, we have more brain processing power for visual things, because it's the primary sense for survival in humans. Recognising edible fruit and being able to see snakes in the grass or teethed predators were essentially primal parts for our survival early on. The use of language and communication is helpful, but a much younger part of our brain.

Personally I experience something of both. I can have full fledged dialogue inside myself, but I can also think about things wordlessly. They are different processes and they tend to offer different solutions. Dialogue type thinking tends to be literal, social, rules-oriented. Non-verbal thinking tends to be thinking out of the box, innovative and solution-oriented.

I know it led to the political NPC meme, which was previously just a videogame meme. But perhaps it was wrong and wrong exactly in reverse. Perhaps those without internal dialogue aren't the ones who lack agency, but the ones who think beyond the constraints of the rules of other men.

Or perhaps the resulting difference is very minor. Do we see a difference in income? Do we see a difference in political attitudes? Do we see a difference in opinions about laws and whether they have to be followed by the spirit or by the letter of the law?

In the end I suspect the difference is minor and more a difference in style than one of substance. Again, because I think it would have been discovered/ considered earlier if it was a meaningful difference. I could be wrong and studying it would be interesting.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I don’t “narrate,” but yes, I do hear my thoughts as words in my head. Not in my voice, but more like an idealized, accentless, manlier version of my voice.

I also talk to myself a lot when alone. Doesn’t matter if I’ve been talking to people all day or not at all, will talk to myself either way.

 

[#zzz]

So do people with an internal monologue imagine the speaking of all their thoughts? I mean sometimes I do it as a sort of exclaimation like "what the fuck" since no ones around why speak that? Everything else is instant. It flashes before I can even think unless its a specific list I need to remember. Most of the time I just think of a song like bringing up a playlist to eat up "dead air". Hell I'll just visualize a movie scene or something or visualize a memory if I'm really bored. If I'm reading though I definately "hear" the words in my head. Probably faster than speaking speed though.

Like do people go "Me open door now to go to work" in their heads or what?

 

[Gog & Magog]

Why yes, I have an internal monologue that never stops. Feels like I'm losing my mind but its fine. Wish I could just put an end to these ceaseless thoughts.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Didn't feynman and another genius try to figure out how accurate our brain was at keeping track of time while doing different tasks? And they figured that one could do it as accurate as when doing nothing as while writing, while the other could do it as accurate as when talking as doing nothing. But if they did the other task they completely lost track of time. Different people use different brain processes to do a similar thing.

Much like internal monologue (which seems to just be verbalisation of thoughts).

Ever had a word on the tip of your tongue? You had the concept in your mind, but not the verbal match for the concept.

 

[???]

I'm definitely more visually oriented but I can hear my voice in my head when the mood strikes me or I concentrate.

How do you experience books? I see them, like a movie in my mind.

 

[Syikeblade]

Yeah, but the weird part is that it's all in text.

When you say text is like you see the words forming in your mind?

 

[Cedric_Eff]

Sometimes my inner monologue gets too much and I can physically hear them. But sometimes I get the feeling that my inner monologue is becoming more worse and I’m hearing it more often.

 

[Syikeblade]

I wonder if being able to just play out scenarios like a movie/video game/simulator in one's head (memories, "what ifs" or anything) including the audio is something most people can't even do. I don't know why that was a topic Mom brought up to 12/13-year-old me, and I don't know if that was of anything significant or what, but it wasn't something I had ever thought about before then. Sometimes I wonder if that's just how you know someone's a daydreamer because they just randomly come up with worlds in their imagination and it's just as real as the physical plane. And yet apparently being a daydreamer is actually really dangerous or a sign of some mental fuckery going on.

I dunno, but maybe that might be why some people go insane in isolation. Having no one to talk to, even a tiny person in your head, sounds like legit hell for a lot of folks.

Like Anaphatasia?

 

[B. F. Bugleberry]

It's a fucking collage of bullshit, like I'll say half a sentence in Wayne Coyne's voice from the intro to "fight test", and the rest of the composed thought is in a blurry fast moving images. Such images or sequences are often reused, or used as an internal shorthand for an abstract feeling. I often get annoyed when I recognise I'm reusing certain sequences too often and I notice I'm going in a rut, e.g. "Oh god, not this bullshit again".

There is no official "voice" in my head, just many different voices picked up from places, and I sometimes have to think for a moment to remember where a voice I've been using a good deal is from.

There also is this weird bleed in motions and abstract thoughts, such as in I will sometimes catch myself using "the imaginary shorthand of raising my eyebrows" rather than actually doing the motion. I can sort of feel me doing it in my imagination, but not actually engaging in it in a physical sense. This gets doubly crossed when mental actions used as shorthand, are unconsciously bled through to physical actions. For example, in my imagination I use the "blinkblink blink" gif a good deal as shorthand. But I've been catching myself doing that exact physical sequence when I normally would just imagine it. Sitting around thinking about something, dead silent, and occasionally making really weird faces makes me look quite crazy sometimes.

This may all be influenced by many concussions and previous hallucinogenic usage.

 

[#zzz]

How do you experience books? I see them, like a movie in my mind.

Well yeah I thought that was the point of books. Unless it's like how we are speaking now. Then it's monologue.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Like Anaphatasia?

Well I don't have that, and I'm trying to figure out which part of the message you were responding with that, but that sounds like hell to me.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

So do people with an internal monologue imagine the speaking of all their thoughts? I mean sometimes I do it as a sort of exclaimation like "what the fuck" since no ones around why speak that? Everything else is instant. It flashes before I can even think unless its a specific list I need to remember. Most of the time I just think of a song like bringing up a playlist to eat up "dead air". Hell I'll just visualize a movie scene or something or visualize a memory if I'm really bored. If I'm reading though I definately "hear" the words in my head. Probably faster than speaking speed though.

Like do people go "Me open door now to go to work" in their heads or what?

Only when I'm actually thinking about it. Stuff that is automatic, just working off procedural or muscle memory; like opening a door, has no narration.

 

[Syikeblade]

Well I don't have that, and I'm trying to figure out which part of the message you were responding with that, but that sounds like hell to me.

The first part.

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

Webby and I do have it.

 

[Emperor Julian]

Constantly, the weird part is I can deliberatly/accidently construct a simple opposing personality for counter perspectives or when I need a conversation to articulate my thoughts more effectively. Very useful for online debate because you can usually anticipate the simpler objections to a degree.

Very awkward because I had to learn not to articulate the conversations quite early on.

 

[He Who Points And Laughs]

Not being an NPC, of course I have inner monologue.