
Not everyone has an internal monologue - altacc
https://ryanandrewlangdon.wordpress.com/2020/01/28/today-i-learned-that-not-everyone-has-an-internal-monologue-and-it-has-ruined-my-day/
======
40acres
Unfathomable to me. My mind is constantly racing, playing out different
conversations, interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my
thoughts on things (one day I'm the president of the US talking about foreign
policy, another day I'm a big tech CEO navigating the diversity questions). I
constantly have something in my ears to tune myself out, podcasts or music.
After being diagnosed w/ ADHD I realize I'm probably on the extreme end of
those with internal dialogue but to see a complete lack of it in others is
very surprising.

~~~
pazimzadeh
I used to be like that, and it was helpful in many ways as I seemed to always
be ready for wherever a conversation might go. But I wasn't living in the
moment. Now I actively stop myself from simulating the various branches of
potential conversations. It feels good to live in the moment (shaking my head
a little when I feel it starting helps). The downside is that I don't have as
many prepared responses and am more easily caught unaware, so now I rely more
on sentences or behaviors that are broadly applicable to buy me time to think
about my actual response.

~~~
LordFast
Why is it a bad thing for your brain to be running DFS all the time? Is it a
wasteful use of time? Does it cause behavioral issues? Is it a personal
choice? Or...?

~~~
hnick
For me personally it seems to make it impossible to get to sleep. Which makes
me tired, and less resistant to rambling trains of thought. Repeat ad
infinitum.

~~~
tempestn
I don't usually have this issue, but when I do I find just focusing on breath,
meditation style, helps. As soon as you notice yourself thinking, acknowledge
the thought gently, and then let it go. At least for me (with a bit of
practice) this can head off any thoughts before they can get started, and
eventually allow things to quiet down.

~~~
tripzilch
Also, acknowledging the fact that, since I'm in bed trying to sleep, I can't
act on these thoughts right now anyway, so I don't really need to have them
right now (and trusting that if it's important, they will probably come up
again at a more useful moment).

------
abathur
This topic (comments here, the OP, and comments in threads elsewhere) exposes
some conflicting definitions of what an "internal monologue" is or means.

\- Some people describe _hearing_ their internal monologue, which I take to
mean something like: they have an internal monologue, and it manifests as a
voice that only they hear. These people are analogous to those who _see_
things they picture _in their mind 's eye_.

\- Some people describe not _hearing_ their internal monologue, which I take
to mean something like: they interpret "internal monologue" as a metaphor for
their train of thought or stream of consciousness; they think of themselves as
having an internal monologue (i.e., they are thinking in language), but don't
experience it as a voice. These people are analogous to all of the aphantasics
surprised that _the mind 's eye_ isn't just a metaphor.

\- Some people describe not _having_ an internal monologue. I suspect these
people are a mix of those who think in language but interpret the term
"internal monologue" as requiring hearing a voice, and people who'd describe
their thought process as nonlingual in some way (visual, abstract, etc.)

Across these characterizations, different people describe their thought
process(es) all over the place WRT to how compulsory/voluntary/consistent they
are. Some of the people who "see" things do this consciously; others can't
help but picture things they read or think or hear. Some people describe a
conscious/conditional train of thought, while others describe one that is
racing/intrusive/incessant.

~~~
jessriedel
For people who experience having an internal monologue: Suppose you see a
bagel on the kitchen table in the morning and decide whether or not you're
hungry enough to eat it. Does that process involve an internally experienced
stream of words (whether "audible in your mind's ear" or not) like "I'm pretty
hungry" or "I bet that bagel would taste good"? Is this what it would be mean
to have an internal monologue? Because I certainly could decide to eat a bagel
without experiences any words. Subjectively, it would involve me imagining the
pleasant feeling of satiation and the annoyance of cleaning up and weighing
them against each other, with no words involved.

~~~
aspaviento
I think it's more related with conflict situations. For example, imagine you
are on a diet. Then after the first impulse of eating a bagel you think "but I
started a diet a week ago" and then you justify yourself "a single bagel won't
matter that much" which creates another thought "you said the same last time.
You are going to regret it at the end of the month" and so on.

In fact, this internal monologue can be used in psychology when you are
dealing with bad experiences by dividing your thoughts into an entity who
suffers the pain and another one who is logical and supportive. For example,
acting towards yourself the same way you would do for a friend.

~~~
jessriedel
The considerations I mentioned were conflicting. (Satiation vs. cleanup.)
Maybe you think it's about the degree of abstraction.

------
donatj
For myself personally, it depends on what I'm thinking about. Thinking about
writing this sentence, I hear each of the words I'm going to type in my head
before I type them.

However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And now
I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do.

I have to imagine that's the case for at least most people. Thinking out
complicated abstract concepts in internally verbalized words just seems like
it would take forever.

~~~
robofanatic
> However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And
> now I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do.

This is funny. I can't imagine anyone doing that. There is no end to that.
Like imagine someone thinking while walking down a lane "I am walking down the
lane, and now I am going to turn left ... " this is endless ...

~~~
TOGoS
This is what I don't understand when people claim things like "language is
required for higher thought" or whatever (no link but I'm sure I've seen that
claim numerous times across various articles). We necessarily do _plenty_ of
thinking without words. Certainly you can be someone who focuses more on the
words or less on the words, and maybe word-based people are naturally better
at talking because their thoughts are mostly in word-form to begin with, but
you can't put _all_ the thoughts in words.

~~~
yesenadam
A google came up with this long article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy on the language of thought hypothesis, which seems fascinating.
Mentions Turing, NNs etc..

"The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH) proposes that thinking occurs in a
mental language. Often called Mentalese, the mental language resembles spoken
language in several key respects: it contains words that can combine into
sentences; the words and sentences are meaningful; and each sentence’s meaning
depends in a systematic way upon the meanings of its component words and the
way those words are combined. ..

LOTH emerged gradually through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Thomas
Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and many others. William of Ockham offered the
first systematic treatment in his _Summa Logicae_ (c. 1323), which
meticulously analyzed the meaning and structure of Mentalese expressions. LOTH
was quite popular during the late medieval era, but it slipped from view in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From that point through the mid-
twentieth century, it played little serious role within theorizing about the
mind.

In the 1970s, LOTH underwent a dramatic revival. The watershed was publication
of Jerry Fodor’s _The Language of Thought_ (1975)."

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-
thought/#MentCom...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-
thought/#MentComp)

~~~
cat199
> LOTH emerged gradually through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Thomas
> Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and many others. William of Ockham

Based on the people mentioned, this theory sounds hugely and heavily
influenced by western-christian theology, philosophy, and anthropology, which,
since we don't 'know' scientifically, is neither good nor bad, but simply one
strain of hypothesis. Other religions have other concepts - eastern
christianity followed different lines (cf. 'logismoi', palamas, etc), and of
course other religions have differing concepts e.g. chakras, etc.

without being an expert at all, it seems to me that at least on a higher than
biological level (e.g. 'proto concious'), internal representation is to some
extent malleable and based on ones own philosophy and conceptualization,
something which some more esoteric or 'symbolic'/'structural' religious groups
focus on - and perhaps (or perhaps not) - one representation may or may not be
adaptive or maladaptive to our biology or not..

------
echelon
I dream up movies and songs and all sorts of rich fantasies in my head, and I
do this constantly. As a consequence of this, I never get bored as I've got an
incredible imagination to lean on.

I think about movies I want to make, startups I want to create, the change I
want to put into the world. New songs on my commute, goals I want to
accomplish, what I could do with time travel. I'm always working on the
structures of my different dream worlds, modifying the rules and the
characters, exploring how they interact. The languages they speak, and the
rules of the magic and science systems that form the bounds of their
existence.

I have never once in my life been bored. Not once. I can sit in an empty room
and just daydream.

If I play music or walk or run, this imaginative power is supercharged and
becomes a transcendent experience. It's why I love running and headphones. I
haven't taken drugs, but I imagine it's something like that. It's a pure,
unfettered deluge of dopamine. I can also walk in circuits and circles around
my house doing this and can waste hours in fantasy. Entire weekends can be
"wasted" this way.

I think this is a source of my ADHD. I've got instant dopamine fixes from my
raw imagination and it's incredibly hard to do anything else as I can always
give myself something better to do by just daydreaming.

As an aside, the dreams that I have when I sleep are almost like movies. They
have intricate (but often nonsensical) plots, and I'm seldom even involved.

The main thing I want to do with my life is to create tools so I can get this
out of my head and out into the world.

I wonder how many other people daydream like this and have a vibrant inner
creativity?

~~~
danogentili
I used to have such an imagination when I was young: before going to sleep, I
would always reimagine the movies I just watched or the books I just read,
factoring myself into the story (often as a coprotagonist, not particularly OP
but helpful in many ways), sometimes going a bit meta trying to explain my
presence to the characters, tweaking their response, trying not to trigger the
obvious self-doubting panic that would ensue if someone told you your reality
isn't actually "real".

I even had a cross-universe canon for my character: I often had wings
(watching Winx club as a kid helped), and sometimes took characters on a
multi-dimensional ride in my magic hyper-technological flying car, big as a
house on the inside, capable of traversing space and time.

I absolutely feel the same way about music, it manages to turn any world, even
a simple concept into a fantastical and magical music video of sorts.

As I went on with my life I somewhat lost this ability, possibly due to the
highly technical nature of my job and hobbies, however I still love reading
and watching good fantasy stories, and sometimes, when I feel like it, I still
fantasize by joining the story and aiding the main characters in saving the
world (and music still can transport me away to another world, like before).

I have often considered the enormous power, and just as enormous limtations of
modern creativity tools.

I honestly can't wait for neural interfaces: when everyone will be able to
extract images and audio directly from their brains. It will truly be a
revolution for the media industry, a change as big as the introduction of
computers.

It will also give way to haunting new aspects of copyright law: what happens
if someone publishes a YouTube neural video that uses copyrighted characters,
do we prohibit people from even thinking about copyrighted IP?

Do we beam films using widevine L0 DRM directly to people's brains,
immediately removing all memories of them after they were seen to avoid
copyright infringement?

Those will truly be interesting times, and I would really love to live to see
them.

~~~
krupan
Have you read "The Continent of Lies" by James Morrow? I can't remember how I
came across it, not quite my normal reading fare, but it delves into some of
what you are talking about.

~~~
danogentili
I have not, but I will most certainly check it out, thanks for the tip!

------
baddox
I saw this viral tweet and I hoped that was more scientific information to
read, because I'm a little confused. I don't see enough information here to
even determine which type of person I am. Of course I've always heard of
"internal monologue" and of course I think about things using language. But I
also don't "hear" anything, and definitely not something that literally sounds
like my voice speaking. But if I were to try to explain my thought process, I
likely would describe it as myself expressing thoughts using language as if I
were speaking.

Obviously this gets deep into the philosophy of qualia, but do we have
evidence that there are two very different modes of thinking? Could this not
just be different analogies people have adopted to _describe_ their thinking?

An Instagram poll isn't a great tool to study this. I would like to see a
psychological or neurological study about this idea. As of now, I'm pretty
skeptical that the dichotomy exists. It sounds like the claim that "some
people describe their brains like a computer, while some people describe their
brains like a library." Computers and libraries are very different physical
objects, yes, but the choice of analogy doesn't really tell me much about how
people are experiencing their own thought processes.

Of course, if it's true that the majority of people do actually experience
auditory hallucinations of their own voice speaking all of their thoughts,
then my criticisms here are invalid, and I'm definitely in the _other_ group
of people.

~~~
username90
> of course I think about things using language.

"of course", no most of my thoughts are not expressible in any language. Why
would they? Thoughts are so much richer than any language can possibly
express. How to solve this physics problem? If I had to do it via a monologue
it would take forever. Same with programming. Instead I just think the
thoughts directly and just solve the problem without verbalizing anything.

Of course this makes it harder to tell others what you are doing, but I don't
see how you could possibly solve any problems at all while being limited to
thoughts you can verbalize.

~~~
baddox
> Thoughts are so much richer than any language can possibly express.

I'm not sure about that. Couldn't it just be that we sometimes don't
understand our own thoughts? If you can't describe one of your thoughts with
language, I would say that you must not understand that thought. And of course
we sometimes have thoughts which we don't understand.

I think that understanding our own thoughts is something that needs to be
worked on, both individually (we certainly should be better at is as adults
than as children) and collectively (science and philosophy should allow us to
keep improving our understanding of our own thoughts).

~~~
username90
> If you can't describe one of your thoughts with language, I would say that
> you must not understand that thought.

I've heard that before and it is definitely bullshit, thinking like that will
just hold you and others back. It is true that if I can't describe it in words
then I can't prove to others that I understand it, but it isn't true that I
can't prove to myself that I understand it using my own minds language.

If you aren't fluent in your own minds language then you'll have a hard time
understanding your own intuition, feelings etc, how can you learn to
understand things like math and programming when you don't even understand
your own intuition? My guess is that people don't understand themselves, they
believe that the words made them understand math when in fact the thoughts
they aren't hearing made them understand math. I see that clearly in my mind,
but to people who rely so heavily on words it might be hard to see.

~~~
baddox
I’m not sure how it would hold you back. On the contrary, it should motivate
you to seek further understanding of your thoughts.

To me, it just doesn’t make sense _definitionally_ to say you understand
anything if you can not describe it in language. It would be like saying you
understand an algorithm but you can’t express it as a computer program.

But this isn’t to say that you cannot act in accordance with your thoughts
even if you don’t understand them! It can be useful to make decisions based on
intuition even if you can’t describe in words what motivated the decision.
Surely we all do that quite often. But it’s _even better_ to be able to
understand those thoughts and account for them using words!

~~~
jdbernard
To me it doesn't make sense to say definitionally that you can't understand
without expressing in an external language.

First, my understanding even of English is nuanced and not entirely shared.
There are lots of times where I capture something in prose but feel and even
explicitly state that the the words don't really completely capture the
meaning and I'm relying on a shared understanding of the connotations of the
words to convey what they do not. This implies that we have a strong grasp of
our intended meaning that supercedes the meaning captured in language.

Also, there have been many times where I'll learn a new word, especially words
borrowed from other languages, and think, "Ah! Now I can more exactly express
what I'm thinking!" My understanding hasn't changed at all, I'm just better
able to express it in language.

Another example: there are a lot of concepts, geo-spatial relationships
between dimensional objects for example, that I never consciously verbalize,
even internally, yet I can clearly hold in my head.

It does seem plausible that this is another difference in mental models
between people.

------
n00b123
Interesting topic (and comments).

1\. I do inner monologue. And I have to say, sometimes I get scared from what
I "hear". I don't mean sometjing like "I hear voices telling me to kill
everyone", but nasty, brutally cynical, sometimes outright violent thoughts.
They feel alien to me, because on general level I consider myself "the good
guy", but one the other hand they don't feel like someone else whispering me
evil things.

2\. Sometimes I feel like my mind has layers, where this monologue is the the
most upper one with some lower, less verbalized layer which is only later
formed into words. Doesn't happen often, but it feels like the lower layer is
actually more capable because it's not constrained by language/words.

~~~
vojta_letal
Sometimes I have a "how awful would it be to do XY" moments. Usually something
brutal. But it always makes me pay even more attention to not doing that very
thing even accidentally because I definitely do not want to break stuff or
hurt someone. Yet it makes me a bit nervous. What if I actually decided to do
that? Fortunately it never happens when I'm under influence. Do I need help?

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
As others have said, these sound like typical intrusive thoughts.

The most common intrusive thoughts are, I believe, the "call of the void" ones
(also known as "high place phenomenon"). You might be driving down the freeway
and think "What if I drove into oncoming traffic?" or standing on a cliff at
the end of a hike and think "What if I just walked off the ledge?" There's
also some common less-morbid ones, like "What if I kissed my boss right now?"
or "I just want to scream in the middle of this board meeting for no reason."
Your immediate reaction should usually be to dismiss the thought as disturbing
and move on with your life. If you find this dismissal to be difficult...
that's when it can be worth checking out with a psychologist.

One hypothesis [0] for this phenomenon is that it is actually a post-fact
reconstruction your brain is doing. Really, it's that your subconscious was
uncomfortable with some imminent danger and forced you to compensate without
thinking, and then you start thinking about what just happened. "Why did I
suddenly step back from the ledge? Huh, must've been thinking about jumping
off."

Another hypothesis I've read (which I can't find a good link to at the moment)
is that it's some self-test mechanism. Your brain kind of sends a false "What
if?" signal, and you _should_ dismiss it because of the discomfort. This
dismissal causes heightened awareness of the danger imminent and causes you to
be more alert and thus be safer.

Again, though, these are pretty normal. That link I shared estimates that 50%
of people have experienced the "call of the void". It's really only an issue
if they're extraordinarily frequent (like... all the time), or if you
genuinely feel tempted to act on them. Intrusive thoughts are not always
indicative of suicidal ideation, but have also been linked to OCD and similar
anxiety disorders (because they're a weird coping mechanism, when you think
about it).

[0] [https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-
th...](https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-the-void)

~~~
laegooose
Thank you, I feel more normal now

~~~
mindcrime
Same here. I never knew that "Intrusive thoughts" were a thing, and that they
were a mostly normal thing. Mine don't seem like such a big deal now.

------
Wowfunhappy
Something I discovered within the past year is that if I know a song fairly
well, I can "play it" silently in my head, and be entertained. The experience
isn't quite as emotionally resonate as listening with headphones, but it's not
so far off either. It's useful when I'm bored.

...can anyone else do this? I actually find it supremely weird.

~~~
enobrev
I do the same, but unintentionally and the songs that seem to pop into my head
are all songs I hate. It's incredibly rare that my favorites end up playing,
but rather repetitive Pop crap. This isn't even a comment about Pop Music, as
even though I don't really listen to Pop, I've heard plenty that I like. But
not the songs that fly around in my head all day; Pure garbage.

Edit: As I was typing this, "La Macarena" popped into my head.

~~~
munificent
I specifically avoid viral earworm songs because I am _very_ prone to getting
them stuck in my head. I can have the same song playing "in the background"
non-stop in my mind for days. I have songs in my dreams and I'll wake up with
them still playing in my head. Sometimes it will just be a single bar of a
song, or just a piece of it looping.

To this day, I have never once listened to "Chocolate Rain" or Rebecca Black's
"Friday" because I fear never being able to turn them off. (I avoided Taylor
Swift for, like a decade, but now just thinking about means I've got "Shake it
Off" playing.)

Writing this out now makes me realize how weird this all sounds...

~~~
henrikschroder
I also get ear worms, although not as bad as you seem to get them.

One trick that works for me is to over-saturate your brain with it. Got an
annoying song on your mind? Find it in spotify, put on headphones, and listen
to it on repeat until you're sick of it.

~~~
munificent
Funny anecdote. Back when I worked at EA, a couple of guys hacked together a
system to share music on the internal LAN. (This was before the days of
Spotify and friends.) Everyone would put their ripped albums on it and anyone
could listen to anyone's stuff. It was pretty rad.

They also added some metrics tracking so you could look people up and see how
many different albums they'd listened to, how many times, etc. There were
leaderboards for who could cover the most stuff.

I thought it would be funny to "win" by listening to "Butterfly" by
Smile.dk[0] more than any other song had been listened to. It listened to it
on a loop _for weeks._ I, for reasons I cannot really explain years later,
actually did listen to it and not just let it play at zero volume. It was a
weird experiment in neurological satiation. At some point, it no longer
annoyed because it just _was_ , like the sound of my own heartbeat.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzcvRDWgRIE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzcvRDWgRIE)

------
mayoff
_What Do You Care What Other People Think?_ , a book of Richard Feynman
stories, has a chapter that ties into this. You can read the chapter here:

[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf)

He discovers that he can read while counting in his head at a steady rate, but
he cannot talk while counting. When he tells his friends, one of them claims
to be the opposite, and indeed proves that he can count while talking but not
while reading. It turns out “he was visualizing a tape with numbers on it
going by.”

That friend was John Tukey. You may have heard of him. He invented the Fast
Fourier Transform.

~~~
oh_sigh
This has gotten me into a lot of trouble in my life. I don't use internal
monologue to read - that means that I can be reading and listening to someone
at the same time, and comprehend both. But, even if I can prove I heard and
understood everything someone said, they inevitably view it as rude if I am
reading something while listening to them.

~~~
irjustin
Is this a left/right brain split specific thing or is there another thing
going on? ever explore it?

I can do neither of these things. One voice dominates, self speaking, reading,
listening to another person talk to me - the rest of them get 'left behind'.

~~~
fouc
The trick is to read without sounding out the words in your head. Then since
you're not thinking in speech when reading, you have room to listen.

~~~
etrk
I’d heard that this is, to some extent, impossible, because everybody
subvocalizes when they read. Wikipedia supports this, but I guess the goal is
to minimize subvocalization rather than to eliminate it completely?

“Micro-muscle tests suggest that full and permanent elimination of
subvocalizing is impossible.”

I know this is true for me. If I press the tongue to the roof of my mouth
while reading, I can’t stop the muscles from moving very slightly as I read.

~~~
jdbernard
Sometimes I wonder how many things we've "proven" because our studies aren't
large enough to observe all the edge cases. I sometimes wish I could contact
the researchers and volunteer myself as a counter-example.

I haven't hooked myself up to electrodes and measured nerve response, but as
far as I can tell I don't subvocalise when I read. I can also turn off my
internal monologue; I don't have to hear the words in my head as I read them
though I typically do.

------
LukeBMM
A similar subjective experience just came up recently[1] on HN as an aside in
an article posted about Derek Parfitt:

> He attributes [his severely deficient autobiographical memory] to his
> inability to form mental images. Although he recognizes familiar things when
> he sees them, he cannot call up images of them afterward in his head: he
> cannot visualize even so simple an image as a flag; he cannot, when he is
> away, recall his wife’s face. (This condition is rare but not unheard of; it
> has been proposed that it is more common in people who think in
> abstractions.)

That article was from 2011, before the term aphantasia was coined in 2015[2]
and (arguably) popularized in 2016[3]. Most folks also assume that everyone
uses their visual cortex to process memories while that idea sounds absolutely
implausible to some relatively small percentage of the population.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240)

[2]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094521...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945215001781)

[3] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-
it-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-
be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/)

~~~
underbluewaters
I had a surprising conversation with a talented artist a while back and while
we were discussing methods it came up that they always had to work from a
model or photograph because they could not recall images, at all, from memory.

------
bradlys
For those who do inner monologue - I worry about telling you about this. It
might make you wish you didn't ever realize it. So.. spoiler in the next
sentence. When you start talking in your head, pay attention to your vocal
cords and the area around them... Notice anything? They're probably moving
like they would if you were actually talking out loud. Have you ever noticed
how you tried to talk really fast in your head but seem to always get limited
and it feels weirdly physical that you can't talk even faster? It's because
you can't actually speak that fast in real life - thus you're limited because
your mechanisms for talking are actually moving at the rate you're speaking -
but if you can't speak fast then you can't think fast either really. It's
usually something you'll casually notice but ignore... and then later you'll
really notice it every time you think. Similar to floaters - always there but
only when you're tired or looking at a blue sky do you really notice and get
upset over it.

Sometimes I find myself speaking at an unreal speed in my head (but everything
is clear and distinct - something that doesn't happen when people talk fast,
things get slurred) but it's because I suppressed the vocal portion of my
physical movements for just a moment. It's weirdly surreal. I think, "Is this
how fast I would talk if I wasn't physically limited?" To think faster, I
usually skip words in my inner monologue because the physical part always gets
in the way. To someone listening in, it'd sound weird. And I always worry that
people can tell what I'm thinking because I know my body is actually moving
when I speak - it's sometimes like people pick up on it. I think I pick up on
it too here and there... hard to say.

~~~
stephen_g
Interesting - while I can make myself do the ‘silent talking’ thing, my normal
internal monologue is usually disconnected from my movements basically
completely.

It’s pretty normal for me to be thinking ahead or of other things to say while
speaking at the same time. I do some music gigs here and there, and if I know
a song well enough, I find my mind drifting and monologuing on random
observations about the venue, or people around me, or even something
completely random, while also singing the normal words to the song and playing
guitar!

I’m not sure who is more “normal”, or if there even is a “normal” here!

~~~
therealdrag0
I would have just considered that habit. If you are familiar enough with
something you don't need to consciously think while you do it, whether it's
singing or just going about your day.

------
jiggawatts
I've noticed that I can do both the monologue thing and also the nonverbal
thinking, and I suspect that most people can do both also.

I do verbal thinking when I'm by myself and thinking through options. What
should I have for dinner? What gift should I buy? That kind of thing.

Non-verbal thought is when I'm totally focused on something like a competitive
game. When I'm 100% in the zen-like focus of moment to moment instinctive
action, there's "no time" for monologuing.

~~~
trash_cat
What you called non-verbal thinking is called "flow" and is more like a state
of mind, rather than a way of thinking. Named by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

~~~
mckeed
No, there is also non-verbal thinking. Just like I can communicate via
gestures and facial expressions, I often think things through without putting
anything into explicit words.

------
scj
What about both..?

For example, I have a concept in my head that's like a hashtag but would
translate to "over-optimized 80s/90s technologies that have aged poorly". It's
a categorization that overlaps with a sense of frustration (typically because
I'm using one) and joy that I'm seeing fewer of them these days...

I have a lot of similar "feelings" that are felt instantly, but would take
dense English to express. It is kind of like observing some behaviour in a
large codebase and trying to remember what's causing it. Connecting all the
dots to find a satisfying explanation isn't always immediate.

This write-up on "clueyness" is a similar example to what I experience from
time-to-time: [https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/05/clueyness-a-weird-kind-of-
sad...](https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/05/clueyness-a-weird-kind-of-sad.html)

~~~
klondike_klive
That's a great article. I'll extend this even further to include feeling sad
for people whose lives I tangentially encounter. I felt unbearably sad the
other day watching a middle-aged woman walk along in the rain holding an
umbrella with an oversized signature of the painter Renoir on it, thinking
this is her favourite umbrella, and the world doesn't care about it. Some
kids, maybe her own, probably gave her shit about it. But she's still holding
it and showing the world that she loves Renoir. Heartbreaking.

------
lqet
I have a serious question to people here describing themselves (as I
understand it) as thinking in words and whole sentences:

 _How can you think about concepts which cannot be put into words or for which
no words exist?_

Do you have to come up with elaborate verbal descriptions of abstract concepts
in your head before you can think about them? If so, don't you think that any
verbal description is essentially incomplete? Are you afraid that thinking in
language categories prevents you from accessing deeper truths?

~~~
rayiner
What is a concept which cannot be put into words?

~~~
lincolnq
For me, scents are rich sensory experiences. Yet I can’t describe cinnamon to
you, other than that it smells like cinnamon. It’s like an opaque pointer, I
can compare equality but not inspect it beyond that.

~~~
misterprime
Verbal thinker here: Can imagine smells (and 3D scenes, and musical sounds).

~~~
zipwitch
Strongly verbal thinker here: weak "mind's eye" (or nose, or ear). I can
remember and later identify images, music, etc with a high degree of accuracy,
but when I call something up for "internal recall" my memory will almost
always lack the fine detail of reality. It's very rare that I can "play back"
or "conjure up" something in my head vividly. I don't absolutely _require_ an
internal monologue to think. With some things, like sports or gaming, there's
a lot of non-verbal processing going on.

I can do reasonably complex verbal, mathematical, or IT work just in my head,
and often have an internal monologue running while doing so. It not that my
working memory[1] is especially good, it's just that if I'm spending more than
a couple hours on it, I've mostly memorized it, so I can think about the
solution, or at least the next step or steps, and then type or write them out.
(Closing my eyes can help eliminate distractions, but isn't required. Good
headphones playing something non-intrusive and blocking out audible
distractions are at least as important, probably more important.)

What I can't do in my head is solve complex problems in real 3D space. If I'm
trying to fit components into a box for a hobby project, or doing some
moderately complicated carpentry for a home-improvement project, I prefer
being hands-on. Need to be hands-on, really. I can't fit the pieces together
in my head, even if I'm looking at a page full of all relevant measurements.
3D modeling software is okay, pencil and paper and drawing tools a very poor
and painful substitute.

Interestingly, when I'm working with a hands-on project is one of the few
times when I can make a very sharp mental picture. I can be looking at a piece
of lumber, or a bare enclosure, and know it exactly what it will look like
when I'm done.

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory)

------
warent
This isn't so hard to understand if you've ever meditated. It becomes clearer
that the internal monologue is a process that just runs on its own almost
endlessly, and the feeling that we control it is mostly just an illusion. You
can test this for yourself by trying to find out what your next thought is
going to be. You never know until you have it, which indicates that the
process is spontaneous and involuntary. I have ADHD and possibly some mild
form of OCD so for me a big portion of the mind chatter is just
counterproductive noise, and the only (healthy) freedom is meditation. I envy
people who have no internal monologue, although they probably get the same
noise just in a more abstract way.

There must be a language/hearing center in the brain that's being activated
for some people and not activated for others. When I'm consciously having an
internal dialogue, sometimes my tongue is lightly flickering around in my
mouth as if I'm actually talking!

~~~
xvector
I never knew that people actually _thought verbally_! I always thought it was
a figure of speech.

I mean, I can "think verbally" if I try really hard... even then, it's more
like me imagining myself saying something rather than actually thinking
verbally.

Wow. I don't know what to think.

~~~
aaroninsf
I am having this reaction also.

I am literally speechless, thinking that it wasn't an idiom; and that the
monologue as recorded in e.g. modern literature, was likely meant to be read
and as is read as a transcription...

I have always at a deeply unexamined level assumed that that was just a
convention of how literature functions through its medium, language; that the
recording of thought through its semantic content was a (to me "obvious")
necessary translation-layer thing.

I don't have a headache, but I might have to go sit somewhere and stare with
my eyes unfocused for a while, to come to terms with this. I've been cross
examining my coworker (who does "hear the voice") about what that even means.

The aphantasia thing was curious. This is somehow much more of a shock.

~~~
xvector
Yes, I always thought that when a novelist describes the “voice in the head”
of a character, or when a coworker does the same, they are trying to convey
thought over a medium incapable of conveying true thought.

I never imagined that _that was the actual thought_!

~~~
vitaflo
Do you not hear music in your head? Like I have a song running through my mind
right now, lyrics and all. No visuals just the music. If you don’t hear a
voice in your head wouldn’t that mean you can’t ever hear music in your head
either?

~~~
bonoboTP
Other person here: I can only hear realistic sounds and visualize realistic
images when I'm in a half-asleep state or in dreams. Otherwise it's very
blunt. For example I cannot realistically hear music in my mind, I can imagine
myself humming it though (and my vocal muscles ever so slightly tense up if I
do), and I can imagine myself speaking in the same way, but it's mostly a very
faint thing, and is mostly about imagined movement of my mouth etc., rather
than sound. E.g. imagine clapping your hands as a motoric action, but imagine
them in your hand, not the visual of it, but imagine what it would feel like
in your arms and hands. It's a bit going in that direction with my imagined
speech.

------
ghoul2
I actually didn't used to have this "internal monologue". Until a couple years
ago - when it just sorta showed up. And at some point I became consciously
aware of it - and its ...power, I guess. Without the inner monologue it had
been impossible for me to have "insincere" conversations. Using that word for
the lack for a better one - I mean where I am talking to someone and
consciously controlling what I say instead of just freely saying whatever -
now the monologue can sort of "front run" the conversation and help me control
what I say. I had never under stood earlier how people managed to pull that
off...and when the monologue showed up it was an "enlightenment under the
bodhi tree" level event.

From the other comments:

1\. I hated audio books before the monologue, and I still do after.

2\. (from @echelon's post) I was quite imaginative before the monologue - but
more in a sort of a fuzzy, visual way. I had entire fantasy realms just
"visible" inside my head. After the monologue showed up, my imagination is
more like @echelon describes - I can talk to/against myself, go off on
variants of movies etc. I am not entirely sure, but I _think_ my visual
imagination has gotten weaker though, and I find it harder to enjoy fantasy
now. Could be just age though.

3\. Can't seem to be able to turn it off, or control it entirely. The
monologue is my worst critic - not a bad way, but it'd be nice for it to not
_be_ there all the time.

~~~
burnte
> 3\. Can't seem to be able to turn it off, or control it entirely. The
> monologue is my worst critic - not a bad way, but it'd be nice for it to not
> _be_ there all the time.

For me, I've always had it, and I can't control it either. however, it does go
quiet in one of two circumstances, when I'm very, VERY relaxed (so, rarely)
and when I'm deep in "the zone" of concentration, which is really nice.

------
ip26
I would say I don't have an internal monologue. But that doesn't mean my mind
isn't wandering all over the place. I don't talk to myself, I don't play out
conversations in my head. Instead it's more like a collection of "thoughts",
or "images", or visualizing myself "doing". I can get extremely caught up in
this. There's also an awful lot of contemplating objects, observing features,
visualizing how they interact.

Very little "words", however, unless I'm actually talking aloud or writing.

Come to think of it, I wonder if this could have anything to do with why I
always found "reading comprehension" tests curiously difficult & strangely
capricious in school.

~~~
didibus
Like you can actually see things in your head? Visually? With color and all?

~~~
lordmauve
If you cannot do that you have Aphantasia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)

------
sandov
I like to think that I have "hardware acceleration" for typing on QWERTY
keyboards because I am so used to it that I do it unconsciously.

But when I smoke weed, I have to actively think about the position of keys in
the keyboard in order to type coherent things. I have to type "by software".

The point is: maybe for some people, their spoken language is "hardware
accelerated" and for others, thinking in words is too computationally
expensive, so they resort to less expensive methods.

Or maybe it's the opposite. Thinking abstractly is the computationally
expensive method but the improvement in decision making isn't worth the
effort.

Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about psychology or neuroscience. I just
like to think about it.

~~~
_underfl0w_
YMMV, but I find cannabis consumption requires that _pretty much every
subsequent action_ be done at a conscious level for the duration of its
effects. Reading, coding, speaking, typing, etc. This can occasionally yield
interesting results by forcing you to think through minute aspects of everyday
things - and sometimes by extension craft questions you might not normally
think to ask - but at least for me it seems to disable the majority of
unconscious "muscle memory" systems. "hardware acceleration" is a perfect
phrase to describe them though!

------
zelly
The "inner dialogue" is called the default mode network in neuroscience. It
doesn't have to be thinking in "words" necessarily; you could also skip the
words and still be thinking in a resting state. It serves the purpose of
ruminating, reflecting on memories, doing introspection. Paradoxically, your
brain actually consumes _more_ calories doing this type of resting thinking
than you do in task-oriented thought, like when you're replacing a broken pipe
or solving a leetcode challenge. Depressed people tend to have too much
default mode network activity.

I think it's maladaptive. You are better off having no default mode network
activity.

Of course it's another thing entirely if you're too stupid to have an inner
dialogue, verbal or not, but I feel like even non-human animals are capable of
an inner dialogue. It doesn't add anything useful.

~~~
burnte
> I think it's maladaptive. You are better off having no default mode network
> activity.

> Of course it's another thing entirely if you're too stupid to have an inner
> dialogue, verbal or not, but I feel like even non-human animals are capable
> of an inner dialogue. It doesn't add anything useful.

With all due respect, I disagree completely . I think it's incredibly helpful
to be able to talk to yourself and examine ideas and concepts verbally without
having to physically verbalize.

~~~
johnchristopher
With all due respect, rumination is a well known symptom of depression and
depressed people's internal dialogue tends to be warped in negative thinking
patterns.

~~~
burnte
Oh, don't worry, I'm aware of that aspect.

------
c_o_u_n_t_s
Similarly, not everyone can visualize things in their mind. Pixar's founder Ed
Catmull did a survey of Pixar employees and, interestingly, there wasn't that
big of a skew of artists who are able to mentally visualize.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47830256](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47830256)

I wonder if there's an intersection of people who do not have an internal
monologue nor a "mind's eye?"

~~~
godshatter
I have both. My mind's eye is blind and my mind's ear is deaf. The inside of
my head is a pretty empty place where I inhabit it, cue the jokes. Thoughts
just pop into my head from some other part of my brain. When I'm thinking
about how to word something, I feel my mouth start to form the words, though
my mouth doesn't move. Maybe I'm sub-vocalizing, I don't know. When I'm
thinking hard about something, I just sort of "go away" for a bit and come
back, hopefully with an answer. I thought this was normal for everyone, until
I read about aphantasia a year or two ago.

I suspect this is why sounds or pictures are so distracting to me. The thing
that everyone does where they play a tv show in the background doesn't work
for me. If I hear it, I have to concentrate on it. It takes a mental effort to
ignore it. So when I'm at home I keep everything off unless I'm ready to watch
or listen to it.

~~~
qznc
The positive aspect is that you should be immune to Kopfkino:
[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kopfkino](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kopfkino)

> Kopfkino happens when you involuntarily use your imagination to think of
> troubling or disgusting things in graphic detail.

> From the german words kopf, head and kino, cinema.

> After i heard 'granny pussy' i had the most disgusting kopfkino.

(Just realized, I need to remember this one as a nice german word with no
english equivalent)

~~~
godshatter
That is nice. I can't conjure an image like that at all. Also, seeing a
graphic image doesn't stick with me very long since I don't keep seeing it
like a lot of people apparently do. People with aphantasia would probably do
better moderating images than those without. Still not great, though, because
while I can't see the image again I would still remember the circumstances
involved.

------
OGWhales
I took mushrooms once and only about a month after the trip did I realize I
hadn’t been using an internal dialogue since the trip. It started up again and
hasn’t really stopped since.

It was unnerving.

~~~
grawprog
Yeah mushrooms will do this. It's not a bad thing to be able to quiet your
mind. It's nice to have an internal monologue but once you've had that silence
it's good to learn how to bring it back when you need it. Mushrooms helped
show me what it was like quiet so I could do it myself without them.

~~~
behnamoh
exactly! I'm so tired of this ongoing voice in my head which is more like a
constant noise that takes control of my emotions and disrupts my productivity.

~~~
triangleman
Have you ever seen the film _Revolver_?

~~~
behnamoh
no but it seems I should.

------
ivanhoe
If someone who doesn't experience inner monologues is willing to answer, I
would really like to know how does it feel for them when reading? Do you
vocalize in your head the text that you read, or it's also just abstract non-
verbal stream of words for you?

It might be a bit far fetched, but from observing & talking to my kid when he
was learning to read, I strongly suspect that there's a connection, that it
has something to do with the skill of reading without saying the words aloud.
Kids can't do it at first, they have to say every word aloud in order to
understand the text, and then with time they train themselves to read in
silence. For me, I still say the text as I read it, but I just say it in my
mind, not aloud - And it feels exactly the same as when I verbalize my
thoughts. AFAIK a lot of people reads like this (all my friends at least).
This seems like some sort of "hack" to help us understand the meaning easier,
we run it through the same processing as a spoken language. Some of us
obviously can learn to avoid this intermediary step of verbalization, and can
focus the consciousness directly on their thoughts.

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
It's hard to explain, it just feels like.. reading. All I can say is that my
mental focus is on the text in front of me, and not on an aural narrator in my
head or a movie-ish visualization. I would say it's non-verbal but not really
abstract.

------
friendlybus
I had an internal monologue in my youth. Constantly searching for the next
witticism in my mind before I said it and putting thought into structuring my
words carefully for school. I later spent some time alone and developed a
simulation of other people I could ask and have conversations with in my head.

Then I went to therapy and they told me to stop doing that, so I did. I also
worked with people who barely speak english too often and my need for high
level english faded. Now I mostly see a battle of ideas and artworks through a
misty haze in my mind.

I tried out turning back on the inner monologue and I know I can. I used to
have vivid dreams about playing starcraft and that's gone too with the skills.
I think you think what is valuable to you.

~~~
ghego1
Why did they tell you to stop doing that? What's wrong with it?

~~~
kordlessagain
If one builds an internal reality of mind that has others "speaking" in it, as
if one has seen them do it, one is allowing one to remove their choice...at
least internally. If one repeated what you saw to others, then that could also
be spreading the behavior to others, thus removing the choice from target.
Shame works this way, for example.

~~~
tagreene92
Could you rephrase this? I'm interested in your point, but the use of 'one' as
an ambiguous pronoun (and contrasted in one phrase with 'you') makes this
super difficult to parse?

~~~
derivagral
I think they're referring to transferring responsibility of thought/action to
an "other" in the mind. I assume they were told to stop that style of habit
because you don't usually see healthy things from that ("Not my fault, the
voices told me to" or similar). Might be a cause of a condition or a symptom
of trauma, etc.

I am not a shrink

------
mabbo
I've been fascinated by this concept ever since I studied American Sign
Language in university. When I spent enough time signing, I stopped thinking
in words.

My thoughts became more abstract, quieter. It was actually kind of nice,
peaceful. I don't know that I was any smarter or able, but it was a notably
different experience in a minor way.

But then I graduated, moved, and stopped spending 1-2 nights per week at the
campus pub signing with other students. And it all slowly went back to a loud
internal monologue instead.

------
GistNoesis
I guess that's probably related to the way people internally vocalize or not
when they read. Teaching people to read probably scars many minds at a young
age.

People who vocalize are working with the slow side of the mind. You are not
vocalizing your thoughts when you need to drive fast.

Imagine for a second having the focus of your thoughts being forced into being
single-threaded vocalized process. Having to serialize your thoughts so you
can hear them. Horrible isn't it ?

It's like having to make SQL queries to get your memories back, instead of
just letting them flow in, interact and transmute together.

~~~
1auralynn
I think some people are just wired to be super verbal/auditory and don't have
as strong pattern or visual/symbolic skills.

For example, a friend of mine who is a fantastic poet - VERY skilled verbally
- told me that she was one of those kids who had to move their lips when
reading, and she never actually learned to read the way I do (where words are
just visual symbols that form patterns and have not that much to do with sound
- I can read very quickly), she just trained herself to stop moving her lips.
Just something I've always found interesting.

~~~
GistNoesis
I looked at your VR expression platform (not yet tested in VR) I see it as a
kind of non-linear language experience, where you pick objects and conjure
them to express yourself, that I would have greatly enjoy when I was a kid
instead of reading/writing. (I'm not yet sure the UI is still mature enough to
not get in the way of the thoughts).

Snapchat with its way of communication with pictures also got this right.

My inner feeling is that we new technology we should be able to alleviate the
need to speak in a serialized/sequenced form between people that was kind of
imposed by nature and exchange mental pictures directly.

Keep up the good work :)

~~~
1auralynn
Hey, thanks! Yeah, my main talent is translating written information into
symbolic/visual content/mental models... One of my goals is to allow people
who have different brain styles access to the same models. Particularly in
biology, where the prerequisite to understanding is to first learn a bunch of
jargon - I think this is totally unecessary and shuts a lot of brilliant
people out.

------
JoeAltmaier
Had a writer say "We think in words. Without language, we could not form
thoughts". Which is instantly nonsense. I can think of a blue elephant, then
the Gettysburg Address. If I'm asked "What did you think of first?" I'd say "a
blue elephant". So where was that blue elephant in the mean time? Still in my
mind, still a thought. Just not at the surface, not words.

I look at code projects by scrolling through all the source files. When I'm
done, I have a shape of the code in my head. Not a thought; not a memorization
of the words that scrolled by. Some kind of abstraction. Now I can work on the
project. That is certainly "thoughts" but not words.

~~~
rc_hadoken
I'm confused -- are you saying the writer is wrong because of your anecdotal
process for coding?

As someone who writes I would have a very hard time imagining writing without
the ability to have a mental monologue. I do know Alan Moore said in an
interview that he would talk to himself in the mirror. Maybe he's an instance
of a writer who doesn't think in words.

I would not think of a blue elephant as the word 'blue elephant' it would be
the mental image of one. However, when it comes to thinking about a multiple
choice question on a practice test or a quote I've recently read I can recall
the words on the page of paper and the words mentally "read out".

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The fifth natural language I learnt any conversation in was BSL (British Sign
Language)[1]. Later, doing further language training, when I was trying to
recall words (particularly in German) I would recall instead a sign. Not an
image in my mind of making the sign, but a feeling that if I let them my
arms/hands/fingers/face would make a sign.

Can you imagine writing through an interpreter without any audio/vocal use at
all, as a BSL user could?

Without using a word, can you think what your favourite vegetable that isn't a
carrot is? Like, can you call it to mind without using the word?

[1] Kinda, fwiw I just know smatterings of lots of languages.

------
vemv
I've come to believe that the internal monologue is just an "echo", or "audio"
so to call it.

i.e. it's not your real thought process, but a mere trace of it.

It's easy to attach oneself to this voice, to believe that that voice is
_you_. But once you see how this voice is analog to e.g. "playing" a song in
your head, you might question the notion.

~~~
robinoh
hear hear!

------
ericmcer
This doesn't make any sense to me, even his example:

'One person even mentioned that when they do voice overs in movies of people’s
thoughts, they “wished that it was real.”'

How can they form the thought 'I wish that was real' if they have no
monologue? And to convey that thought they just open their mouth and spew
forth a sentence with no knowledge of its shape?

~~~
gliese1337
Why would they need to be able to put it into words in an inner monologue in
order to form the thought?

The fact that it is possible to translate sentences into different languages
should make it clear that the information content is not the same as the
manner in which it is linguistically encoded. One simply... forms the thought.
And then encodes it into speech for the purposes of telling other people about
it later, and separately.

------
_bxg1
Something I've done most of my life is to actively pre-imagine the way I would
phrase different concepts to people with different backgrounds, before even
having a context in which to use those wordings. Like as soon as a nonverbal
concept enters my mind I start trying out an explanation, testing it against a
hypothetical person, seeing how the words "sound" together and guessing at
what misunderstandings they might have and adjusting and refining it until I
feel like it would come across clearly, and then I just tuck those words away
in the back of my head in case I end up needing them.

------
Agebor
Hmm actually now i'm not certain which one of these I have.

I'm a software developer and I have kind of like two different "address
spaces".

There is the normal visual + auditory address space. And there is the
"intuition space" which is similar to the first one (e.g. I can imagine a 3D
object and rotate my viewpoint around it, simulate conversations, etc), but
it's with limited detail, more like black and white unless I concentrate more.
I can "hear" there but it's separate from normal hearing.

It's super-useful in programming, as i can imagine code in some kind of 3D
space, where I can move in and out of different functions calling each other
(I still imagine them mostly as text though), so I can remember them pretty
well.

~~~
LordFast
Visualizing code is a pretty useful tool. I can't do it as easily for problems
that I have yet to solve, but I can do it for problems that I understand well.

Interestingly enough, however, it's the playing around with the 3D structure
in my head that makes it fun for me to solve problems. It's a pleasurable
activity to noodle on problems that way.

------
jryb
I was always very confused as a child when characters on TV couldn't tell
whether they were dreaming. I thought it was obvious! Things were
3-dimensional and they could taste and feel and hear and see, which no one
does in dreams.

While reading a great discussion similar to the link[1], a comment made me
realize people actually do have realistic dreams that are comparable to waking
life, which absolutely floored me. I was so astonished that it felt like I had
been hit in the face.

1:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-
from-one-example)

~~~
jerf
It's probably less of a difference than you might think. Dreams are generally
less detailed than you might think from their portrayal on TV. What they are
really good at are convincing the dreamers that they are a great deal more
detailed than they really are, because they're on the "inside" of the
cognition; you might "see" a vaguely round blotch of color like what you may
see when you close your eyes, but you cognitively "know" it's a ball or a face
or the vanguard of the invading alien fleet that have been sent to Earth to
determine whether or not your family shall live or die based on whether or not
they brush their teeth for a prime number of seconds or something. People
can't tell they're dreaming not because the dreams are amazing 8K HD accurate
displays with surround sound, but because the critical faculties needed to
know if you're dreaming are just _off_.

(I've been keeping my eye on those efforts to reverse visualize dreams via
neural scanning. I have a pet theory that they're _already_ nearly at the
maximum resolution they'll ever have, because in reality there isn't that much
_visual_ data in the dream. I suspect the vast bulk takes place higher in the
cognitive stack.)

~~~
feanaro
How do you differentiate between the dreams being detailed and the dreamers
simply being convinced of the dreams being detailed? It's certainly my
impression that my dreams are extremely visually detailed, to the point that
I'm often able to read things in dreams (and remember it later).

~~~
rapnie
This is interesting. I hear from others that their dreams are very mundane,
i.e. very similar to real life. Mine are very crazy, absurd adventures. Very
fun and mind-blowing to remember them when waking up, so I am training my
dream recall. In my dreams familiar people from all stages in my life meet
together. I always thought I dreamt them in great detail, but I have now
learnt that only their 'essence' is there. Just enough for me to know as a
fact it is them.

I am also trying to become a lucid dreamer (with full awareness during the
dream). I succeeded several times, but only very briefly. The excitement
causes me to wake up. But the best way for me to know I'm in a dream is when I
am reading some text. Texts are inconsistent and when I reread a sentence it
might be completely changed.

~~~
feanaro
> But the best way for me to know I'm in a dream is when I am reading some
> text. Texts are inconsistent and when I reread a sentence it might be
> completely changed.

This is exactly what happened to me just last night. I was able to read a page
from a book, which was visually perfect, as if I was reading a real book.
However, once I read it and diverted my gaze, then looked back to it, some of
the words had changed (not all). This made me realize I was in a dream.

------
gshdg
There are also people who code-switch. I sometimes monologue and sometimes
think abstractly.

~~~
jrauser
I'm like this, but when I have too much caffeine I notice that it's harder to
turn the monologue off. It becomes a little shouty in fact. Brains are weird.

~~~
klondike_klive
When I have too much caffeine I've noticed that I have very strong ability to
recall auditory information, specifically tunes. I get a sort of perfect-pitch
effect where I can consistently recall music in the proper key and replay it
in my mind. It also happens late at night.

~~~
ponyous
How do you remember music? Can you try to describe how you recall it?

I have this problem with music/sound specifically. I cannot remember it at
all. For example, I have favourite artist that I heard all of his albums 50+
times. If you play a random track of his to me I won't be able to identify it.
Another example; My favourite all time soundtrack that I heard countless
times, I cannot recall how it goes. If somebody asks me to "sing" the melody I
will fail miserably. Oh and I don't know lyrics of any song. Any. I tried to
learn though...

I still get tired of listening to the same tracks over and over again :( .

------
RIMR
I feel like I might actually fall somewhere in between.

I can definitely think "in my voice", but I almost always do this when I am
reading, writing, or formulating something to say verbally. It is almost
always a conscious effort, but it makes sense to me.

I work in networking, and when I am troubleshooting, I absolutely do not think
in "words". I think with much larger concepts. To compare my brain to a bunch
of Docker containers exchanging compatible datasets for analysis might be
overkill, but it's the best comparison I've got.

And when I am brainstorming new ideas, I feel like my thoughts are far more
visual. The "concept map" comparison feels right at home here. There might be
some inner dialog, but only when I am thinking of how I would explain my ideas
to another person.

I recently started a Twitter account to give a stab at being funny online. I
found that I am WAY better at being funny when responding to tweets or quote-
tweeting people than I ever am just tweeting new thoughts. This is likely
because I come up with better content when given a prompt, and rarely think up
original thoughts in the English language where I could decide to tweet them
for reactions.

------
daenz
Could internal monologue a vestige of bicameralism?

>Bicameralism[Note 1] (the condition of being divided into "two-chambers") is
a hypothesis in psychology that argues that the human mind once operated in a
state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain
which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a
bicameral mind.[0]

0.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_\(psychology\))

~~~
lovegoblin
From your own link:

> The primary scientific criticism has been that the conclusions drawn by
> Jaynesv [i.e., bicameralism] had no basis in neuropsychiatric fact.

~~~
empath75
Weirdly, I think that his theory makes sense without leaning on bicameralism
at all. Internal monologues could be a recent development with very few
obvious physical changes in the brain that caused it, and the cultural
interpretation of it could have changed.

People think of the idea of 'the mind' and 'the self' being obvious and self
evident, but they are anything but, and it took a lot of brilliant
philosophers and poets to come up with words to talk about it and metaphors to
use. It seems completely believable to me that bronze age people did not have
a clear understanding of what thought was and what was doing the thinking.

~~~
coliveira
My opinion is that the "internal talk" is a result of our adaptation to human
culture from the last thousands of years. This happens because several
thousand years ago we had no language, at least not as developed as in the
modern world. I guess the same is true for hearing music inside your mind,
since there was no music (as we understand nowadays) a few thousand years ago.

------
kls
I found the revelation that people don't do this fascinating. I guess I
assumed it was part of the human experience.

I had a conversation with a buddy of mine about what language he thinks in one
time, due to English being a seconds language for him and it is funny because
looking back on that conversation we both assumed that internal monologue was
just a default.

I did notice a pattern in the minority of people that do not internal
monologue, where overwhelmingly populated by females.

~~~
baroomba
I didn't until some time in my childhood when one suddenly developed (I
remember feeling puzzled when it happened, though I don't remember exactly
when it happened). I still don't know if mine's "normal" or even how to find
that out. I wouldn't say it's constantly active, exactly, if that's what
normal is.

------
saltyfamiliar
On the topic of internal speech, I've recently developed a weird quirk, if you
can call it that. Basically I'll hear fragments of speech in an internal voice
distinctly different from my own, about random things that have nothing to do
with anything I was thinking or doing. And sometimes, rarely, the fragments
will contain information that I wasn't consciously aware of.

For a while I actually thought I was hearing other people's thoughts, but
since then I've come to understand our conscious minds as being a collection
of multiple subconscious entities that communicate with each other and from
which our sense of integrated consciousness arises. And somehow, parts of my
brain that don't normally handle verbalization got internal speech privileges.
That's what it feels like at least.

~~~
UseStrict
Interesting, about how old are you? Distinct voices that make orders or
comments is symptomatic of schizophrenia, which typically is onset from late
teens to mid twenties.

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
So far it has been really difficult for me to see the distinction between on
one side the "hearing voices" described in schizophrenia, and on the other
side the internal monologue as e.g. described in some comments here.

------
MadWombat
_shrug_ I do both. Depending on the context, I might think about some subjects
verbally and about some subjects non-verbally. If I am thinking about
something social, having to do with people interactions, I will generally
verbalize things in my head, replay or imagine dialogues, etc. If I am trying
to understand something I just learned, I will often try to explain it to
myself in words. But if I am solving a logic puzzle or trying to work out an
algorithm or look at something beautiful like a painting or statue or a
flower, I don't verbalize my thoughts. I can still feel myself thinking, I get
the results of the thinking process, but I only start verbalizing again when
the non-verbal part is done.

------
worik
Very interesting. I am not sure that I am one or the other.

My thoughts form in a soup of cognition. Then if I pay attention become words,
or smeeld, sounds, tastes....

Related: I play guitar in two rock bands. I have to reach a state in my mind
between attention and inattention to do well. For example if I count beats I
loose my rhythm. But if I stop paying attention I loose... So I need to be in
a intermediate state.

------
mynegation
My mind is also blown by this - although in a different direction. I knew some
people have an internal monologue but thought it is reserved for the deepest
moments. And I definitely did not think that they might be a majority, as
author's own mini-research implies.

I would presume that I would have to think at the speed I talk and that seems
inefficient to me - I am usually not a fast talker.

~~~
aaroninsf
+1

I never thought it was meant literally _at all_. I can "will" a rehearsal of
what something would sound like, but it has nothing to do with my personal
thought process or conscious experience...

------
Insanity
For me, it's definitely the internal monologue. Worse is that I have a form of
OCD (repetitive thoughts) so this monologue gets stuck in a 'loop' and I end
up just repeating the same sentence, or part of sentences to myself. Drives me
nuts.

Makes me wonder if people without this 'internal monologue' experience this
kind of OCD in the same way..

~~~
james-skemp
Until you've 'said' it just right? I definitely have OCD tendencies, and this
sounds like me in my 20s. What helped me was distracting myself with another
line of thought.

~~~
Insanity
Yeah, until I have said it 'right'. I'm in my late twenties now but have had
this pretty much as long as I can remember.

Glad you found a way to deal with it though!

------
gatherhunterer
The topic is fascinating to think about and I was unaware that some people do
not "hear" their thoughts or use an internal voice. But I got stuck on this
amazing perfect storm of millennial blogger cliches. I thought it was a joke.
After this I could not stop reading it as a parody. The word "literally" is
used four times.

> I was taking ibuprofen at this point in the day because my brain was
> literally unable to comprehend this revelation. How have I made it 25 years
> in life...

------
alan_n
I've always been able to do both, really I would call it all three (abstract,
visual, sound). Maybe 4? (I can also imagine taste/smell) Maybe it's because I
was bilingual from an early age, but I always knew I was a bit different as I
tended to think more visually than others. I can talk to myself and it's more
now that I'm older but it's still more visual. And there's also what I would
categorize as a third type of thought (which I used confused with visual
before but have since noticed it's different) that I use when translating. I
don't translate from language A to B directly, but through C, this abstract
representation of a sentence. It is sometimes visual but not always (since not
all concepts are visual, in which case I just feel an "intent" like in the
case of a action or feeling). It is also very rare for me to mix languages in
one sentence. I never understood people who did it. To me it's like a literal
switch I have to flip, and my thoughts flip to that language as well. I can
switch back and forth but it feels computationally expensive. Also now
learning a new language I find myself in modes C and the new language, say X
when trying to switch to it, instead of my dominant language and X.

Anybody experience anything like that?

------
tobr
There’s a similar thing with the “mind’s eye”. Most people can think of
something and “see” it quite vividly in their mind, but some percentage of
people have _aphantasia_ which means they simply don’t have the ability to
visualize things like that.

------
ph0rque
When I became proficient in my third language (over 20 years ago) and had to
listen, speak, read, and write in all three languages on a regular basis, my
mind adapted to thinking in concepts, and lazily evaluating the concepts to
the words in the needed language, as the situation required.

A few years afterward, I was discussing this with a co-worker. He had a really
hard time fathoming this. He asked me an excellent and hilarious question:
"When you call yourself an idiot because of something stupid you did, what
language do you use?" After having a good laugh, I thought about it seriously
and realized that I _don 't_ criticize myself. Instead, I internally model
someone who would be likely to criticize me and hear their voice in the
language they would normally speak. For example, it might be my parents
scolding in my primary language, or a teacher criticizing me in English. We
discussed this and he agreed he does the same thing.

So, I suspect that many of us have only an internal monologue, but a whole
internal society with various conversations going on.

------
Zenbit_UX
I wonder if there's a connection between people with strong internal
monologues and people who dislike audiobooks?

I _hate audiobooks_ as it's essentially a constant interruption of my own
inner monologue and breaks my ability to visualize the world the author is
painting. It also feels lazy to me, like by relenting I'm outsourcing my
internal dialogue to a voice on my phone...

~~~
cguess
Sample size is just me, but I have both a strong monologue, and also love
audio books and podcasts. Though sometimes my own thoughts will distract me
and I'll miss pieces, especially if I'm on a walk or something.

~~~
klondike_klive
I've been toying with the idea of a podcast that doesn't require you to pay
attention to it too much.

------
cassalian
Does anyone else use the pronoun "we" to refer to themselves in their internal
monologues? I'll often find myself switching between "I" and "we", for
example, this morning I had to run the dishwasher and my internal thought was
"We've got to run the dishes today" and then I laughed at myself for using
"we"

~~~
bobbytherobot
Now that you mention it, I use the second person of "you."

~~~
cassalian
Now that you mention it, I use "you" for my future self a lot... "you've got
to do the dishes when you get home"

------
mirimir
Some of this, I suspect, is about differences in how people understand "speak"
and "hear". I mean, I have an internal monologue, and sometimes even dialogs
or arguments. But I would never confuse them with something I actually heard.
Even what I might whisper or subvocalize.

I also occasionally hear voices or whatever, usually just before I fall
asleep, or when I'm very tired, or stoned. But that's a very different
experience. That actually seems like hearing, and not at all like my
monologue.

One of the Landmark distinctions is about internal dialogue. That is,
distinguishing it from who we are. As a subsystem, as it were. Very automatic,
and based on our programming.

So there's the practice of hearing yourself, thanking yourself for sharing,
and then choosing how to be. Just as you might respond to an upset child.

I admit, though, that I'm often harder on myself than I'd ever be with
children. But it's all in good fun.

And I do vaguely recall that some participants denied having internal
dialogues.

------
jdbernard
As others have stated, I have an internal monologue but it's optional, most of
my thoughts occur without a verbalized internal dialogue.

Interestingly, I have an internal soundtrack sometimes too. A lot of time when
composing music, or even playing live, I'm really just transcribing what I
literally hear in my head. A lot of my musical education has been for the
purpose of being able to perform the "internal verbalization" fast enough to
be able to accurately transcribe complex harmonies and melodies before the
aural image fades.

Over the course of my life there are two instruments where at various times
I've gotten to the point where I can directly play what I hear in my head
without translation, transcription, or analysis. I often find myself recording
my playing so I can analyze it later. When I've not been practicing with
enough regularity for that direct "mind-sound to performance" connection to
work I get extremely frustrated with my playing.

------
mhandley
I think there are also two types of people when it comes to navigating. One
type gives and understands directions along the lines of "go along this street
until you pass the Red Lion pub, then turn right. After 50 metres, turn left".
Most people seem to be in this category. Then there are those of us who have
an internal map, and have no problem with "go north for half a mile, then turn
east". I'm the latter - I always have a mental map which is oriented
absolutely. No matter where I am, indoors or out, I can pretty much always
point north. I have no problem navigating along routes I'm never taken before,
because I can visualize where it will come out. But if you give me relative
directions, I'll have to make quite an effort to map them onto my mental map
before I can make use of them. I've only met a few other people who navigate
in absolute terms - most people I've met seem to be relativists.

~~~
mikelevins
My mother is a step-by-step navigator. She wants detailed in-order
instructions.

I'm a spatial navigator. Give me enough information to locate the destination
on my mental map, and a few local details I can use to double-check that I'm
in the right place.

My mother will follow the directions step-by-step. I will travel in the
general direction of the location of the destination and start checking
landmarks and addresses when I'm in the right area of the map.

I cannot navigate at all when engaged in a conversation. I can drive safely,
but if you occupy my attention in conversation, my destination will become
random. My daughter used to exploit that quirk for laughs when she was a
teenager.

Unfortunately, I have sort of the same issue with conversation and logic
problems. I tend to perform pretty badly in tech interviews because I can't
think about programming problems very well while participating in a
conversation.

~~~
LordFast
> Unfortunately, I have sort of the same issue with conversation and logic
> problems. I tend to perform pretty badly in tech interviews because I can't
> think about programming problems very well while participating in a
> conversation.

Same with me. I've been learning to tune people out, and I tell the
interviewer that I'll probably tune you out when I need to focus but you can
interrupt me if you need to.

Getting better at it as I get older.

------
vekker
What does the author mean with "hearing his voice" though? People can have
different interpretations of what it means to "hear".

In what sense can it be compared with hearing actual sounds? Does it have the
same quality. Does he perceive his mental dialogue like an overlay on top of
"external" sound?

I've been wondering the same thing when people say they "see" or "visualize"
something: do they actually, visually see it in front of them, or not?

For me, the internal monologue and visualization are all just "mental" events.
It doesn't share any qualities with the other sensory faculties: they are all
quite distinct for me. Just like seeing and hearing, mental events also have a
"spectrum", ranging from nothing at all (no thought), to "quiet" (abstract
thinking and forming mental facsimiles of sensory perception) to "loud"
(mentally "speaking" full sentences to myself, which I do the least).

Fascinating topic!

~~~
rconti
Yeah, I'm a bit perplexed on this. I sometimes have conversations in my head,
or imagine a conversation with someone else I might run into. But by the same
token, there's no "voice" to the conversation; it doesn't "sound like" anyone;
sometimes i think through something before saying it, other times i just say
things without saying it in my head first.

------
oxplot
Relevant bit from Feynman talking about how he found that a simple act of
counting in one's head can be different and all its implications. I suggest
watching the other videos from the same interview. Lots of fun.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y)

~~~
Insanity
Also described in "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman!", which I absolutely
recommend reading.

------
tartoran
I have a vague internal monologue, sometimes it's almost non-verbal, hard to
explain. That isn't to say that I am not aware of my internal thinking, it is
mostly abstract/conceptual, visual/sensorial. Having said that, I am somewhat
introverted and never felt that expressing my thoughts into words sounded like
it was in my head, especially with written word. The more I think the harder
words come out. I've toyed with creative writing and I do best when I don't
think at all and write whatever comes downstream. I've always been like this
or at least I remember I was like this when I was like 7. Sometimes when I am
stressed out, I use words to ground myself or find a solution but it's all
involuntary. I'd ask myself "what have I learned from this or that" and the
answer is like a video playing in my head, with images and sounds but not
quite words..

------
nabla9
The classic: Thinking the Way Animals Do: Unique insights from a person with a
singular understanding. By Temple Grandin, Ph.D.
[https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html](https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html)

>I have no language-based thoughts at all. My thoughts are in pictures, like
videotapes in my mind. When I recall something from my memory, I see only
pictures. I used to think that everybody thought this way until I started
talking to people on how they thought. I learned that there is a whole
continuum of thinking styles, from totally visual thinkers like me, to the
totally verbal thinkers. Artists, engineers, and good animal trainers are
often highly visual thinkers, and accountants, bankers, and people who trade
in the futures market tend to be highly verbal thinkers with few pictures in
their minds. (...) A horse trainer once said to me, "Animals don't think, they
just make associations." I responded to that by saying, "If making
associations is not thinking, then I would have to conclude that I do not
think."

I have internal monologue but not as much as before, sometimes significantly
less or completely absent. First time my monologue stopped during long
meditation retreats. It seems reasonable because I didn't use verbal thinking
during meditation. You don't use it, you lose it. I'm surprised how little the
inner monologue has to do with abstract thinking. You don't have to have
sentences in your head to do stuff unless it's writing or reading related.
Decisions, no need. Math or programming, no need at all. Logical thinking, no
need or very little.

Totally verbal thinkers are often aggressively against even considering my
experience: "That's impossible", "You can't think without words". Maybe these
kind of people are the opposite end of 'spectrum' from visual thinker autistic
like Temple Grandin.

~~~
drdeca
Does it count as “verbal thinking” if, when doing some math, I’m thinking of a
sequence (or structure of some kind) of characters, but don’t have a distinct
subvocalization for all the characters?

Like, if there are 3 different F symbols that refer to different things, I’ll
be thinking of a way to manipulate these symbols, and I will subvocalize each
f symbol as “eff”, but will have the specific symbol in mind.

Like, if I’m thinking about, say , “F(x)-f(x)” I might rearrange some
expressions in my head, but I don’t necessarily subvocalize “small eff” or
“big eff” so much as “eff”.

I guess this is still verbal, but the verbal thoughts might not capture the
entirety of the thought?

Unless thinking in a sequence of symbols, even without any subvocalization,
would still count as verbal?

~~~
nabla9
At least for me what you describe is visual symbol processing. I see symbols
and rearrange and process them visually in my mind. Same for programming.

------
rayiner
Yeah, this is crazy to me. (I'm hearing these words in my head as I'm typing
them.) Like, what form do your shower thoughts take if you don't have an
internal monologue?

~~~
ken
They're thoughts. That _is_ their form.

To use a software analogy, thoughts are the _model_. English words are one
possible _serialization_.

(Other possible serializations include other phrasings of English words,
Japanese words, mathematical formulas, drawings, musical notation, and so on.)

It's nonsensical to ask me for a more fundamental form of a thought in my
brain. It'd be like having a program where you have a reference to a directed
graph in memory, and asking "So what form does this graph take? Like XML, or
JSON, or what?" It doesn't have any other form. I could serialize it into one
of those forms, if need be, but right now it's just a bunch of connections in
memory.

~~~
kharak
Thanks, first explanation about these voiceless thoughts that I could
understand.

I think I can produce the same voiceless thoughts. But my voiced thoughts are
crisp, clear and easily hold in memory compared to other modes of thinking.

I wonder, maybe that's why I'm excellent at talking about problems,
understanding them at high level, but have so much trouble with acutal
engineering.

------
JohnBerea
People without an internal monologue: Are you able to listen to a spoken
sentence and then replay that sentence in your head? Do you have any audio-
type memories?

If so that's basically what it's like for the rest of us, just with the words
rearranged into whatever sentence we're thinking.

------
mattlondon
I would say I do both...but also what about "visual"? :-)

E.g. when programming I often "see" patterns and shapes of code/data. Its not
like a photographic memory and its hard to explain - I'm not "seeing"
something I am used to seeing with my eyes (like actual code or whatever) but
I have this sort of visual concept in my head of what the data is "shaped
like" and I can "see" it.

Hopefully this wont be taken as a binary either-or thing in trainings in the
future, e.g. with introvert vs extrovert it is often labeling
people/colleagues "you are an extrovert" or "you are an introvert", when in
reality it is often shades of grey and there is a lot of flexibility based on
context. I would imagine this is the same.

~~~
raducu
Of course you are "seeing" patterns of code, structure and so on.

Just like a mechanic is seeing or, a sportsman is seeing his next moves and so
on.

Even blind people "see" the same way, they still have a visual cortex and
understand spatial relationships.

So I'm pretty sure if someone did not have this type of "sight", they would
have very low IQ.

~~~
mattlondon
It is not "seeing" in the same way as visualising things. The way I would
visualise assembling a flat-pack wardrobe or something feels totally different
to this.

It is hard to explain. The best I can think of is sensing (without
visualising) a shape or pattern. You cant actively "see" it in your mind (e.g.
if I imagine an apple I can actively see an apple in my mind) - this is more
fleeting and defies any focused thought.

------
KhoomeiK
This idea is actually where the NPC meme of several months ago originated

~~~
no_identd
And it seems like the whole Aphantasia story all over again, except in
inverse.

------
alistairSH
Count me as another inner monologue person who can't comprehend not having
one.

Walking down the street, you see a car that is a really nice color, what goes
through your head? For me, it's literally "cool car, nice color."

My wife just informed me she has a monologue, but when she meditates, it goes
away. Again, mind blown. When I meditate, it's just a constant chatter... "I'm
relaxed, lets think about a quiet pond, oh look a bird." I verbally build a
little relaxing world for myself. It's part visual, but I'm still thinking in
English.

Like the author, this really breaks my mental model of people.

------
kerkeslager
I'm one of the people who doesn't have an internal monologue.

It wasn't until sometime around the age of 25 that I realized that when people
talk about having an internal monologue, they aren't speaking metaphorically.

------
jonplackett
This is how I felt when I found out I have Aphantasia

I was like WTF? All these people can make pictures in their head? This is not
fair!

~~~
qznc
What do you associate with "Iron Man"?

For mental-picture people images from the movies or the comics pop up. Via the
movies "Captain America" is closely associated for example. The method of loci
[0] exploits this somewhat.

Do you rather associate sounds, music, smells instead? Is it purely abstract?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci)

~~~
jonplackett
I never even considered this might be what it’s like to have pictures in your
head! I guess because I have no idea what that’s like. I have a lot of voice
in my head. (Just my own!) and I talk to myself in my head a lot.

I should say that I do have a strong mental _something_ that is good for
imagining connections between stuff. When I’m coding I can ‘see’ pretty much
instantly how everything should be connected together. What the user agent and
server and database and api etc will all do and what they’ll pass back and
forth and store just comes into my head very effortlessly all connected
together. So I think the visual bit of my brain is being used for that
instead.

------
bionsystem
I've experienced both. From 0 to my teens or early adulthood (hard to tell
exactly), I had no voice in my head really, only intuitions, images, not sure
how it happened exactly, but I didn't need to consciously phrase things.

Fast forward a few years and my head is literally always a chat with myself,
sometimes with others, sometimes about the past or the future. And I can tell
that I very much liked it the other way more.

Edit : I also wonder if this can be trained one way or the other. I know that
when I meditate for a while the chatter slowly declines.

------
mfinegold
Was just discussing this with friends on social media. I noticed a few things:
1\. The question of whether your mind races with thoughts is separate from the
question if whether you hear an internal monologue. Some of us have a lot of
thoughts racing but they aren’t necessarily in the form of a coherent voice we
hear in our heads. 2\. Some of us do run through conversations or monologues
in our heads sometimes, but we mouth the words or even say them out loud. (And
by “some of us”, I mean me. My preschooler has caught me doing this several
times already :) ) 3\. Raising the question of whether we have such a voice or
not can influence whether we have it. As with everything, observing something
changes the nature of what’s being observed.

I, for one, have many racing thoughts - and yes some of them verbal, if I’m
preparing for a conversation with somebody - but others are more abstract or
visual and spatial. For example, I can’t really make a decision with verbal
sorts of thoughts. If I’m listing pros and cons, by the time I get to the end
of one list I’ve forgotten the start of it... I think sometimes I need to
imagine things more spatially to see them in my head at the same time.

Also - Somewhat related, I read awhile back that not everyone can visualize
things in their head. Like, imagining something you’re inventing or haven’t
seen before. This really surprised me! I can’t believe somebody CANT do that,
maybe they just have a harder time doing it?

------
coldpie
I wonder if this is related to (forgive the term) grammar-nazi-ism. I'm pretty
sure I don't have any inner-monologue, at least the concept of it sounds weird
to me. I'm also super picky about grammar: if someone writes "its cold out
today" I have to re-read the sentence to try to understand it. I don't "hear"
"it's cold" in my head, I parse "its (posessive) cold" which doesn't make any
sense, and I have to go back and re-read it to fix the writer's error.

~~~
ramblerman
I'd say your grammar nazism comes from the fact that you are visually
oriented. The mistake just looks wrong.

And as a visually-oriented person you would also be less likely to have an
inner monologue.

~~~
Zenbit_UX
For me it's more about a and an, if someone were to write: "I installed a HDMI
cable" my inner monologue will actually yell as it passes over the "a" to
heavily emphasize the mistake.

Depending on how annoyed it is, it might even respond... "Really? Did you
really install _A_ HDMI cable today? Really? Maybe you installed _AN_ HDMI
cable?"

Acronyms are generally the worst for a/an situations as depending on if you
personally pronounce the acronym as a whole word or spell it out in letters
the rule might change.

------
shotashota
This furthers my hypothesis that it is entirely possible we live in a
completely different "reality". My red is different than your "red", so on and
so forth. Just like its incomprehensible for me to imagine what additional
color is there outside of my human range; your reality could be unimaginable
to me too.

That is, I _do not_ know what its like to be you. I don't think this
necessarily mean that we live in different physical reality, its just that we
come to interact with it through completely different means.

------
aedron
Verbalizing your thought process is invaluable for validating that what you
are doing/thinking actually makes sense. For developers, just think about all
the times you have started explaining some code problem to a colleague, and
instantly come upon the solution, simply by verbalizing ideas. The other
person doesn't even have to say anything. There is even the concept of
'rubberduck debugging', where you explain things to a rubber duck, and it
helps solve the problem.

I have often thought about what the experience would be of living entirely
without verbalized thoughts. Like, obviously ideas and concepts exist
separately from their verbal representations, so skipping words would be a
more pure and effective form of thinking, right? But lately I have come to the
belief that words are a necessary scaffold for organizing more complex ideas.
Without them, I think we would simply be unable to put together complex enough
models to understand things at the level we need to function in our
complicated world. Like making diagrams helps with analysing domains.

It is proven that lack of verbal stimulation leads to slower develoment in
children, possibly for the same reason. I think it is also the mechanism by
which people who spend a lot of time alone (think castaways) eventually go
insane - due to the lack of an external validation mechanism.

This understanding would seem to indicate that people who don't have an
internal monologue would be less capable of expressing/understanding complex
ideas. I would be very interested in knowing if that is the case.

~~~
meeton
So I'm one of these seemingly non-verbal thinkers, including when I code.

I think it makes me more capable of _making use of_ complex concepts. I came
into programming through mathematics, and I treat them both as aesthetic
exercises. When I'm building a system in my head the solution usually appears
visually, and ideas overlay themselves over the problem as aesthetic "feels".
Yes it's a lot like being a visual designer: I can step back, view the
solution, and just 'see' if it looks right.

Why should we structure our solution like this? I can't easily put it into
words but it just... would be more natural like this. And then a few days
later the reason it was correct becomes liminal and I can explain it properly.
It lets me hold more ideas in my head and make use of them all at once. When
picking up a new idea I can grasp the underlying concept, see the symmetry
with ideas I already understand, and slot it into place.

Of course it has major downsides too. It's an effort for me to put my full
ideas into words. Coding, like anything worth doing, is a team sport. If I
can't vocalize my ideas then half the time that makes them worthless,
especially when the decisions are important and therefore contested. I tend to
make mental jumps that lose other people, and lose track of what state other
people have.

Also, and this is in line with what you said Aedron, it does make it harder to
check the details. I'll make silly mistakes because checking them isn't part
of my mental construct. I can chase a half-formed idea for a day before
realizing my mental picture was off, and I didn't catch it because I never put
the problem into words. Pracical-but-ugly hacks don't occur to me because they
aren't aesthetic. I'm worthless at remembering my girlfriend's friends' names.

This year I'm focusing on moving slower, writing more things down, and talking
to people more. So far it's been really helpful. But I don't think I'd have
got to where I am now, or be able to solve the kinds of problems I do, if I
was a mostly verbal thinker.

------
Francute
I will wide this question a little bit based on my own experience...

1\. Some people report that they can have multiple conversations at the same
time in their minds. I find that really hard to do. For example, if I simulate
a conversation between two people in my mind, I can't easily make one
interrupt the other (and make both to talk at the same time). Is this an easy
task for you? (However, I can think on a song and put that as a background
music while I'm talking without losing any thread)

2\. About the comment in this blog of "I saw in TV and would wish that to be a
thing", that kept me thinking; I'm not good at drawing, can you "draw" in your
mind? (In my case, if I start with a face, I make the hair, then their eyes,
then the nose, but I started to forgot how the hair was drawn. Can't keep my
draw in my mind...)

3\. Meanwhile, I do have experience coding, and I can make some pretty
persistent "sequence & activity diagrams" in my mind. I've found myself using
that kind of "diagrams" in my mind to drive the thinking of other people when
I try to explain myself about an idea. Now I'm thinking that is not the best
way to do it... But, Can you do this also pretty easily? It is possible to
sense if the other person is able to do something in his mind that you can not
reproduce?

4\. So, my experience is coding, what about your own experiences? What can you
do in your mind related to that activity? For example, do musicians here, able
to make music in their minds while keeping/updating its sheet music? What
about other roles?

------
hardwater89
I speak 3 languages (Spanish being my mother tongue). I just came to the
realization that when I read in English, the words sound crips, clear, and the
voice that's reading them in my head is not really my own voice. I can't
really describe it but its a very neutral voice with no accent. When I speak
in English I have a thicker Spanish accent. When I read something in Spanish
the voice in my head sounds a lot closer to my own. Now my brain hurts.

~~~
LordFast
Whoa, you just made me realize that my internal voice sounds like a typical
Californian evening news TV broadcaster type person. Cool!

------
wbhart
I have an inner monologue, but I wouldn't say I was like "hearing" anything.
For me it feels a bit more like the muscle movements in my larynx are played
out as though I was going to speak the words. I can imagine a voice speaking
at the same time if I want, but that's not how it is normally.

I tried reading at the same time as thinking of different words. I can
certainly read the words whilst thinking of different ones, but I can't
understand what I read very well. Probably it could be done with practice.

However, if I have planned a sentence that I want to type, I can type it
whilst listening to someone else or thinking about something else. It's
slightly more error prone though.

I can certainly imagine pictures in my mind without any monologue running at
all. But this also isn't my normal mode of thinking. It's not helpful because
I don't normally associate abstract concepts with pictures, but with words and
symbols and abstract memories of things that worked in similar situations
before.

I believe I can recall all my senses or imagine them in my head. I don't seem
to dream in words though, but in pictures, mostly. I'm also a much more
visually stimulated person than an auditorially stimulated one.

~~~
Rury
>For me it feels a bit more like the muscle movements in my larynx are played
out as though I was going to speak the words

Apparently, there's been studies showing that is actually true:
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science-
little-voice-head-hearing-voices-inner-speech)

------
plinkplink
No one thinks in spoken language. The construct of words is not the kernel of
thought. More like the parsing of your subconscious thoughts (neurons firing)
into human-readable language.

Think of raw thought as machine code and internal monologue as a high-level
programming language. Binary vs JavaScript. Some people are able to interact
meaningfully with their subconscious machine code while others must abstract
it into spoken language. There is an infinite spectrum between the two
extremes that we all constantly tread.

Infants who don't know how to talk yet and animals (as well as hominids before
language) do not think in words. Brains are not constructed in such a way as
to use spoken language words as the fundamental component of thought.

I, personally, almost never think or reason about things in human language
unless I am talking, practicing a speech, or writing. Then I must manually
construct each word. I think deeply about things quickly and make useful
logical connections between disparate topics that others tend to miss, but I
tend to be slow at communicating.

~~~
c0restraint
> No one thinks in spoken language.

I generally do. I see the words as I think them. Spelling and sound. It’s
weird I guess, though I never thought of it being weird until now.

------
kaetemi
I think without explicit sentences, usually, in abstract thoughts. It's just
faster, I suppose? The words kind of flow out as an internal monologue-ish
thing in semi-structured overlapping sentences more as a side effect. Doing
full monologue is too slow for actual thinking. (I can visualize it as written
words as well, why not...) The monologue seems more as a way of preparing for
communication, than for inner thoughts.

------
victorNicollet
I can imagine a complete monologue in my head, but it's always intentional,
and I only speak to myself when trying to coach or motivate myself into doing
something (it does not always work).

Most of the things I think, especially at work... I have no idea how to
express them in words. A recursive algorithm to traverse a graph, a strategy
in a video game, a scene in a book I'm writing, insight about something I'm
feeling...

------
mikedilger
I think the author should be more explicit in their definitions.

1\. On one end of the spectrum, people may think and act without tying words
to concepts at all.

2\. Then, they may think by forming words in sentences, but not consider it
"talking to themselves" or consider themselves as "hearing" a voice in their
head.

3\. Next, one may say words and sentences to themselves and seem to hear them,
but their audatory nerves are not involved in any way.

4\. Finally, there may be people who actually "hear" the voice, but somehow
know that it isn't coming in through their ears.

I would be in camp 3 whenever I am "thinking" but in camp 1 whenever I am just
doing something I've done before and don't need to think about it. I talk to
myself out loud, and to my dog, and sing and crack jokes when nobody is
listening.

People in camp 4 who also don't associate the voice as coming from themself
are generally considered mentally ill. Sometimes on the edge of wake and sleep
you might hear a voice, not your own, clearly aurally, but that's not too
unusual of a hallucination to have.

I've heard that in the early 20th century, anyone in camp 3 or 4 was
considered insane, perhaps even camp 2 was unusual, and that normal people
were in camp 1, and anybody who talked to themselves out loud was definitely
insane. And I suspect that television and a lack of long boring quiet work
changed how we think. And I suspect being in camp 3 or 4 is associated with
anxiety and depression, but also with higher intelligence. I have no data to
back up any of these suspicions.

Oh, and Buddhist style meditation drops you back into Camp 1.

------
jefurii
A lot of times I hear music in my head. Usually it's the last thing I listened
to, over and over unless I consciously start another song. Some blessed times
it's a totally new thing and I scramble to write it down. I can stop this by
actually listening to something (with my ears).

I do have times when I dialog inside my head but I don't think it's my normal
mode of operation. Usually internal dialog happens after I've had a discussion
that didn't go the way I would have liked, and I replay it over and over fine-
tuning my arguments. It's too late but often those arguments come out later.

Instead of a dialo when I need to decide or cogitate on something I often turn
on the internal music and the answer comes after awhile. I understand it
something the agents in Minsky's society of mind. The agents are scurrying
around looking for the answer while the supervisory function listens to a
tune. The process doesn't work as well if I try to do it as an internal dialog
- the dialog seems to get in the way.

------
blamestross
So I'm mostly one of these people. I can plan what I am about write/say (but I
don't have to) and I can "hear my own void in my head" but only with intent. I
have to TRY and have a monologue. It gets kinda tiring after a while.

All these questions about "how can you think and reason". In general you just
know things and do them. Even when I am meditating and reflecting I don't
really use language. Language is the annoying translation layer at the end to
communicate with others.

When it comes to reasoning, I have a PhD. I seem to be able to work things
out. I'm not a philosophical zombie. This whole "language is essence of
reason" idea is BS. Writing/speaking out big arguments does help keep them
organized. I did often have difficulty with "knowing" something without being
able to explain or reason why when I was growing up. I've gotten better at
introspection as I got older and it has helped. Often the answer just is: "the
magic heuristic in my head said so"

------
super_mario
I could always do both. I have the internal voice, that talks and thinks and
analyses things all the time. But I can also willingly turn it off, pause it
and think purely visually, which is much faster than narrating (I can do it in
two languages). Thinking visually, like playing silent video or manipulating
objects in your mind is useful, but in the end the inner voice always
continues with some conclusion. The best example I can give is playing chess.
I can play blind chess (no board or physical chess set needed). It is much
faster to think visually. Move pieces in your head, imagine positions well in
advance, take things back and explore different variants, than it is to
narrate: if I play kings pawn forward two squares my opponent will play bishop
to e2. Narrating is limiting in this case, and would slow things to a crawl.
But when a particularly good movie is found through visual only thinking the
voice still kicks in with “Aha that is a good move”. It’s inescapable.

------
UnFleshedOne
Interesting. I've been actively suppressing verbalization whenever it comes up
as far as I can remember -- it is annoying af, as annoying as those silly
tunes that get stuck in your head.

Not sure if that actually affected amount of internal monologue I do have, but
I definitely don't have it on all the time. Mostly when rehearsing an actual
past or expected conversation.

~~~
TacticalTable
Do you have any tricks on suppressing verbalization? I've found that it feels
really wasteful when I realize that half my thoughts are just acting as a
translator for the abstract side, instead of keeping it abstract until I get
to something I need to verbalize.

~~~
asdasdasdasdwd
Maybe try reading using a speed reading app. I use Comfort Reader [0]. When
the words fly by really fast you have to stop sounding the words in your head
or won't be able to read the full sentence. For me thinking is like writing
and reading to myself so it helps.

[0]
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.mschlauch.comfortreader/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.mschlauch.comfortreader/)

------
cryptica
When coding, I have a mix of imagery with monologue. Kind of like watching a
very technical documentary with a narrator explaining what is happening on the
screen.

I also tend to remember a lot of facts after I watch documentaries, sometimes
I can recall facts from a documentary many years later. It's similar to how my
mind works so it's easy for me to digest.

I can visualize a very complex concept but I need my inner voice to dumb it
down so that I can make an actionable decision. Sometimes I talk myself
through the same visual concept in different ways to make sense of it from
many angles.

I can imagine what it's like to visualize concepts with only abstract imagery,
but I feel that in order to actually make decisions, a person needs some kind
of mental mechanism to dumb it down. For me, the internal monologue is the
best way to dumb down complex concepts and actually make decisions.

Decision-making for me is all about dumbing down very complex inputs and
producing a single yes/no output.

------
mancerayder
I have an endless internal dialogue, and I let it externalize to the point of
practicing what I'm going to say out loud. Sometimes it helps me be more
articulate, practice jokes, or even technical explanations. Other times it
helps reason logically. Sometimes it's not helpful at all.

I have no idea how healthy it is but it's only when I'm alone.

~~~
0x5345414e
I talk to myself aloud a lot as well. I almost never have any dialog entirely
in my mind. I am so used to talking to myself aloud that I have to consciously
internalize it if I'm not alone, and I find it very challenging.

------
mike_ivanov
Yup. "Do you think in English or in Russian?" \-- "huh?.. neither". I can
force myself to think "in words". However, most of the time it is something
that could be described as colors being kind of physically stretched into
shapes or even complete pictures. Converting those in words is a laborious
process.

~~~
ozim
Unlike for author I am fascinated by it, because as I remember my whole life I
am thinking in words. Maybe because I was reading since quite young age. I can
imagine pictures as well, like people who have songs in their minds, I can
imagine Rihanna singing "Umbrela" while imagining pictures from music video. I
can imagine a lot of concrete things or songs but I cannot draw those or make
such music. Only thing I can imagine and create is what I write.

But thinking in abstract shapes that is something I imagine I would get after
taking some psyhodelic drugs, where sounds, and words would become shapes.

Is there something you grew up you could point to the way you are thinking
maybe?

~~~
mike_ivanov
My earliest memories stretch before I started talking (which I figured out
quite late). I remember certain feelings, colors, sounds, smells even after
all those years -- even though I had no words for describing them back then. I
believe this is how animals see the world.

------
waltbosz
Reminds me of a book I read to my children about the woman Temple Grandin
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin))
the book described her ability to think in pictures, and how it differed from
the minds of others.

It's called "visual thinking".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking)

I have the inner dialog myself. I've talked with my sister about it, and she
says she is able to have multiple threads going at once. Like she can do
mental math and have a conversation with herself at the same time. I can only
do one at a time. I've tried by counting and saying the alphabet in my head
simultaneously, I can't do it.

------
air7
Not only that but my inner voice can do impressions: I can have "it" do
accents or imitate specific people whose voice I know well.

Also sometimes (albeit rarely) a thought might actually make me smile or even
laugh out loud a little out of surprise with no external input so to speak.

Quite weird, come to think of it... do others do this too?

~~~
klondike_klive
Yes. A lot of my job includes doing voices and impressions, replicating
sounds. I've always been a mimic and had a curiosity about sound. So I guess
when I'm thinking about an accent or particular voice I'll be going over
knotty bits in my mind, trying to nail how to attack a sound with the
musculature of the mouth and throat.

------
someonewithpc
I have both this and aphantasia. Meaning I don't normally hear my thoughts or
see anything in my mind. I am able to kinda hear myself, but i have to almost
hum. I can not see anything at all the vast majority of the time, but
sometimes I feel like I start to see something simple and it quickly goes away

------
fapjacks
I consider myself lucky in that I can do both of these things seemingly at the
same time. The way I describe it is that while my "conscious mind" (i.e. my
inner verbal thought train) is engaged in one thing, very often my
"subconscious mind" will simultaneously and "spontaneously" provide me with
sort of injections of unrelated ideas or solutions to unrelated problems. It's
not unrelated to the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night with the
answer to a programming problem. On the surface it seems (and can be)
distracting, but I liken it to the way Geordi Laforge described the
information he gets from his VISOR, sort of picking and choosing what to focus
on and what to ignore (like recognizing your name at a cocktail party).
Incidentally, I also have ADHD.

------
inamberclad
Feels like I flip flop a bit. As in, I can hear myself thinking while I type
this, but most of the time my thoughts are more abstract (as in, I'm having a
hard time writing out an example of one since they're not verbal). I find that
after reading a lot, my brain is more talkative.

------
pdonis
While the fact that there are two types of people in this respect is
interesting, the article seems to be over the top with the "it's ruining my
life" bit. Yes, people are different, and some of the ways in which they are
different are very fundamental. Deal with it.

~~~
turdnagel
Completely agree. This kinda reads like somebody just smoked their first
joint.

------
__s
My internal monologue doesn't even stop when I'm dreaming. I don't lucid
dream, but the internal monologue critiques how things don't make sense
(pointing out discontinuity errors etc). It took awhile to find out this isn't
ubiquitous

Previous HN threads have talked about how people notice a reduction in their
verbal skills shortly after programming for awhile. There's a lot going on in
programming that's non linear, so it's useful to not serialize your thoughts
then. I've found that listening to music is often a good way to distract the
monologue. When I was younger I only listened to instrumental music because I
found I couldn't think with lyrics in the background

------
globular-toast
I have an internal monologue and recently learnt from a colleague that some
people, like him, don't. But it didn't blow my mind. I don't get what the big
deal is. Do people really think that others experience the universe just like
they do.

------
satori99
I become aware of this after reading Temple Grandin's book _Thinking in
Pictures_ (1995):

 _> When I was a child and a teenager, I thought everybody thought in
pictures. I had no idea that my thought processes were different. In fact, I
did not realize the full extent of the differences until very recently._

 _> At meetings and at work I started asking other people detailed questions
about how they accessed information from their memories. From their answers I
learned that my visualization skills far exceeded those of most other people._

[https://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html](https://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html)

------
thrownaway954
God I wish. Sometimes I just want to shutoff the voice in my head. Alcohol did
wonders for me in this area, unfortunately I can't drink anymore so I have to
try suppress it differently, but I have it admit, nothing worked better than
alcohol :(

------
yarolig
I have my inner voice. When I am thinking, reading, writing or typing I
imagine neutral young male fast-speaking voice. But I can imagine other voices
and tones.

It is hard to stop this inner voice. But I know a trick. I can start to think
in foreign language that I know, than switch to another foreign language in
which I know only 10 words. The voice is stopped for a few minutes.

Now I understand why I dislike my own audible voice. Because it is not MINE!
MY voice is inside my head and it sounds different. I do not speak much but
think a lot.

Moreover. When I going to say something non-trivial, I usually saying it
silently inside my head and only after it I can say it aloud. I looks dumb in
that moment.

------
qwerty456127
People differ drastically in many fundamental ways. This should be taught at
school among other facts of utmost importance. Can you even imagine the inner
experience of a dolphin or a bear, let alone be sure it's the same like that
of yours? The degree of difference between you and another person you meet can
be equally substantial. Many believe a diference is just a matter of
personality - another person may be more or less lazy, more or less smart,
more or less sociable than you etc but this way of thinking is absurdly
primitive, like saying a laptop is no different from a coffee machine, just
more lazy because it won't make you a cup of coffee.

------
CivBase
I wonder if there are any notable differences between the two demographics.

For example, I take a while to fall asleep because I can't not have a
conversation with myself. Do people without an internal dialog tend to fall
asleep faster?

Does the monolog make you more extroverted because you tend to recite
statements in your head and therefor have more confidence? Or does it make you
more introverted because you tend to question yourself more before speaking?

Does the monolog impact the kinds of jobs or interests you're more likely to
persue? Are some subjects easier to understand with or without it? Just how
much are personalities impacted by it?

Great, now I'll be up all night thinking about this.

------
WhyNotHugo
I find this fascinating.

I sometimes hear the voice (for reading and certain types of thinking), but
sometimes I don't / can't.

For example, I always do when reading, planning, or consolidating ideas. I
can't do it when writing code, or thinking design ideas.

------
im_down_w_otp
The concept of this conundrum occurred to me years ago when I developed a
friendship with a woman who had been deaf since birth. I don't remember what
triggered it exactly, but I remember thinking exactly this, "If she's never
heard herself speak, then what does her internal monologue sound like? Oh,
wait... she's never heard _anyone_ speak, so... <brain melts>".

Similar to the author of the piece, I just have to stop thinking about it
every time it pops back into my brain. It's like I get into some recursive
loop and eventually blow the stack, unwind the stack trace, abort, and resume
my regularly scheduled processes.

------
rendall
I used to have an internal monologue when I was a kid, but it felt less
efficient, so I trained myself out of it by around 20. By most objective
measures it did make my thinking more efficient but reduced my wit and
articulation.

I do imagine conversations with people though, usually when I'm trying to work
out how to say something. When I figure it out, I stop the imaginary
conversation. Occasionally these imaginary conversations become so vivid that
I'll actually speak out loud. It's a quirk of mine that my friends and family
giggle about. In my defense, Adam Smith did this too, so I'm in good company.

------
1980phipsi
This reminds me of some other recent articles about topics like aphantasia (no
visual imagination) and severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM).
People who have these conditions do not realize how different other people
think.

~~~
checkyoursudo
I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that
most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to
some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree).

I didn't realize that, for example, "mental image" was not just, like, a
metaphor for thinking. When I close my eyes, it's black. Just, black. Well,
you know, depending on how bright the lights are, etc.

~~~
Zenbit_UX
> I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that
> most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to
> some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree).

Then it might blow your mind further to know that I can visualize things
easier with my eyes open. I overlay them onto my visual field and they're
_far_ more vivid with my eyes open than shut, by an order of magnitude at
least.

~~~
checkyoursudo
That would have blown my mind a few years ago before I knew about aphantasia,
but not any more. I have spent a while digging deeper into it, and it has even
come up in my recent graduate studies in cognitive science (to the great
amusement of my program colleagues).

I am 100% jealous of your ability to do that, however.

I have recently learned that it might be possible to train myself to invoke
mental images. There is a technique where a person with aphantasia sits their
eyes shut and starts by imagining, e.g., a green apple. But you don't imagine
it fully at first. You start with its different qualities, like imagine
roundness for a while. And then greenness. Then shininess. Then some gradient.
Then a stem. Then more detailed shape. Et cetera.

I have had a tiny bit of success with this technique, or at least I have
fooled myself into thinking I have? If I try this, after a while I can start
to picture a green apple, though it is like a faint, faded ancient photograph
with almost no color or detail and certainly no vividness. But there does seem
to be some little bit of something there.

------
mcculley
One thing that I noticed when I was a child was that I didn't internally sound
words out when I read them. I have to consciously switch to "hearing" the
words in my head when I read. My elementary school cohort all told me that
they always heard the words when they read and I have found this to largely be
the case when I talk about it with adults now.

I think this allowed me to read faster at an early age as I was not limited to
the tempo of speech when reading. Certainly this is true for many people.

One drawback I have noticed: I don't get puns when I am reading unless I slow
down and voice out the words.

------
zoba
I rarely have internal monolog, but instead have an internal dialog. Most of
the time I'm explaining ideas to people, sometimes arguing with them.

I've found this is how I think through things. "Talking" things out with the
various models of people I have in my head can be useful...

I've found when there isn't conversation happening, its typically replaced by
music. I can hear and play songs perfectly in my mind. Listening to music with
headphones helps turn off the conversation so I can focus on other tasks more
fully.

I used to be concerned I was crazy for having these dialogs, but, I get along
ok. :)

------
dmolony
"I posted a poll on instagram to get a more accurate assessment of the
situation."

Cute.

------
LinuxBender
I've never heard my voice in my head. When I hear folks talk about it, I
assume something like this scene from a game where the character Jaina is
blaming herself for numerous failures. Though perhaps the 1984 version of Dune
would be closer? [2]

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDj2aaxixxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDj2aaxixxo)
[ WoW Spoiler: Realm of Torment]

[2] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A54yfyi00dI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A54yfyi00dI)
Dune: Fear and Pain

~~~
Covzire
Can you not "sound out" words in your head while reading? Is that the same
thing or something else entirely?

~~~
LinuxBender
I can, but never have by default. I assume folks are talking about a behavior
that is not induced consciously, as if they have their own situational
narrator.

------
kordlessagain
Here's the imagery based version of this:
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-
it-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-
be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/)

From what I can tell, if you don't have imagery, you don't have audio. If you
happen to be someone who can hear audio internally (audio hallucinations) yet
don't form imagery internally (historic iconic memories, faces, shapes,
creative viz, etc.) hit me up on email.

~~~
VLM
Talk to ham radio operators who know morse code, for them its fairly common.
After awhile, especially in a competitive contest, you start to hear stuff in
the static. Sometimes because there's an actual station there trying to reach
you, sometimes not.

Hams and hunters are the only people I can think of in modern life who listen
very closely to silence, or noise anyway.

~~~
kordlessagain
Good points!

The trick will be finding one with Aphantasia, given my "proof" requires
looking for someone who doesn't visualize AT ALL, yet still hears regular
audio hallucinations.

There's a somewhat controversial book called _The Origins of Consciousness and
the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ which seems to indicate audio
hallucinations were quite common in earlier periods.

------
JabavuAdams
Diagnosed ADHD here. I just have this constant low-level music video /
hurricane of ideas / songs / designs / trajectories going in my head. Started
high-school at 11, university at 15. Played tennis competitively to provincial
level.

That's a really crude approximation ... will try to clarify. I do have an
internal monologue, but often I'm not speaking to myself verbally. As I'm
writing this, I'm hearing it in my own voice, in my head. EDIT> "hearing" is
approximate because I don't feel anything in my ears, and it's different from
hearing a recording of my voice. I don't feel my ear-drums moving, e.g. I just
have the very clear sensation that I am speaking these words, and I can even
feel them on my tongue, although my tongue is not moving. <EDIT

When I'm thinking, but not writing, it's more visual / tactile. The
impressions of ghostly visuals, but I'm not actually seeing anything, just
feeling that they're there. Like I can feel and spin a cube in front of me,
but I'm still seeing the monitor, not the cube. I know where all the vertices,
are though.

Often have that anxious feeling in the chest like I want to blurt something
out, but am keeping it in. So ideas fly in, but too fast for words. Words are
much too slow for thinking. But a feeling of um .. ah ... er .. um is about
the only internal vocalization I can get as these ideas crash and pull in
different directions.

I often have to explicitly speak out loud or monologue to give some momentary
permanence to my thoughts. Otherwise they just kind of get whipped away and
tattered in this mental hurricane.

And yet, I can just happily sit and look out a window, but I'm experiencing
some combo of really, really, looking at things and bouncing around in my
head.

Speaking of not really understanding how different other people's experiences
are -- my vision is starting to deteriorate now that I'm in middle age. It's
so crazy to me not to be able to see _everything_. Like, people would tell me
that they can't see my face without their glasses, but I had no real
appreciation of of how different this would be. I'm bummed out that I can't
see individual hairs from across the room, lol.

------
nyxtom
I have found myself in this mode of thinking for quite a while, sometime in
recent memory I started thinking through writing and taking an honest look at
my information diet. As a result, seems that things are much quieter with the
internal dialogue. I can also attest to this change seems to be a consequence
of staying active as well. Not sure why that's the case, but perhaps I'm not
as reliant on thinking in that way as I used to be. I can definitely see how
it would be an advantage give the onslaught of information being processed.

------
undecisive
To answer some of the questions that the author posed, how do people without
an internal monologue formulate ideas, maybe think about it this way: Those
voices in your head, how do _they_ formulate ideas? Before the words form,
there's a construct - slightly out of reach, an uncontrollable yet
influenceable bubbling. That voice in your head is not your brain - it's not
your thoughts, it more like a second mouth and your brain pulling the strings.

I presume.

Of course, I'm not in your head, so I couldn't tell you for sure.

I've never realised that there was this divide between people, but it actually
makes a lot of sense to me. Some people have a barrier, a pre-speech-speech,
other people don't. Some have more neurons or less neurons in this half-way
house. I have a vague recollection of people reporting losing their internal
monologue after a lobotomy, but I may be wrong on that.

If I had to guess, with my programmer-with-very-little-neuro-science
background, it seems like a natural way that our brains form. Sometimes all
the neurons specialise for speech directly connected to your mouth, other
times a cluster of neurons specialise for speech with a disconnect. I suspect
like most things, it isn't fully genetic - though it probably plays a part.

Personally, I find myself monologuing the first few words that I'm typing, and
from then on I'm reading it off the screen. I have an idea of where I want the
sentence to go, then I re-read it and decide better of it.

It does mean that writing emails especially, takes me an absolute age to say
something remarkably simple. Speech is unaffected, though I'm never the
loudest voice in the room and am particularly hesitant to butt in (and feel
really bad when I try)

When I replay arguments with a particularly frustrating person, I often find
myself quietly vocalising as the emotion rises.

And when I have a mental block on a word (which happened a couple of times
writing this - "construct" is still not the right word above, but I can't find
a better one), often the voice in my head will still keep playing with words
to try and prompt the rest of my brain to do its job. I would love to see
whether internal monologues make for better or worse wordsmiths. Or the effect
the divide has on meditation.

Also, possibly related, I find it very very difficult to visualise pictures in
my head. I dream fine (possibly in black and white - which was how I trained
myself out of bedwetting as a kid), but asking me to imagine a picture of a
beach, the picture is horribly hazy.

------
Blake_Emigro
I sent the link to my girlfriend, and she didn't find it very interesting
until I told her that I don't have this internal monologue, and it turns out
she does. Neither of us knew about the other scenario. I visualize and feel
things and only use my internal voice if I'm picturing talking to someone
else. Even when I'm reading, I don't hear an internal voice. We've watched the
Dexter series together and I thought that all of his internal voice was for
added drama!

------
carapace
First, if you liked this, check out "Neurolinguistic Programming", it's like
the "machine code" of subjective experience.

\- - - -

Second, I'm an internal-dialog person (FWIW), when I picked up one of the Star
Trek (original series-based) novels and read it my mind spontaneously (as in
it surprised me) used the actors' voices for the characters dialog. E.g. when
I read Kirk's dialog I heard it in Shatner's voice automatically! Same for the
other characters. It was pretty startling.

------
gwbas1c
LSD turns off some people's inner monologue.

Anyway, I'd like to know more about the visible / observable differences
between people who have inner monologues and those who don't.

~~~
oarabbus_
>LSD turns off some people's inner monologue.

I've never heard this from anyone I know who's tried the substance n=dozens

~~~
mikelevins
I remember it stopping mine fairly frequently, but it was a really long time
ago--and it was LSD--so my memory of it might well be unreliable.

------
zzo38computer
Sometimes I do have internal monologue (although I cannot actually hear it)
and sometimes it isn't. And sometimes I don't know the words for what I think
of. When reading English writing it is a kind of pronouncing, but if it is
Chinese (or other ideographic kind of language) then it isn't. When thinking
of my own stuff is again different from this. (English is the only language I
can write/speak well; the others I am not so good at.)

------
etxm
I was thinking about this the other day. I was wondering how people that were
born deaf think, because I think in my own voice... This is pretty
interesting.

When I’m not reading or writing though I think very spatially. Usually no
words are in my head and I can kind of place thought in my visual space. Let’s
say I need to remember to do something when I’m done working at my computer. I
can look at say the door or a chair and “place” the thing I need to remember
there.

------
stolsvik
A small observation: I’m Norwegian, but can speak English fairly well. When I
lived abroad for a while, after some time I suddenly noticed that my thoughts
had switched language (it switched somewhat back and forth, though). This
still happens when I have longer conversations with foreigners, thus typically
speaking English. However, thinking in English goes slower and is a bit
limiting, as my English is still way worse than my Norwegian.

------
angry_octet
I don't have any internal monologue. I would have to read something
phonetically or deliberately subvocalise to achieve that.

I begin to understand why other people (such as the ms) might not be happy
that I have a podcast on while reading, and able to listen and talk to her at
the same time. She might have an internal monologue but it's something nice
never thought to ask. From her perspective it's a cacophony, for me it is
almost soothing.

------
kaffeemitsahne
Called it!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19620032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19620032)

------
jasonlotito
And then there is Aphantasia[1]. I didn't realize this was a thing. When
people spoke about picturing something in my mind, I always assumed they
weren't being literal. Discovering they were was shocking. It's such a foreign
concept to me, to picture something in my mind literally.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)

------
jl6
I went to an English-speaking school where the majority of the students did
not have English as their first language. I remember asking them what language
they would think in. Everybody understood the question (so maybe they all had
internal monologue?) and the answer would generally be that they thought in
their native language for “everyday” things, but in English for the “academic”
things that they had learned at school.

------
drdeadringer
There is a science fiction novel by Robert J. Sawyer titled "Quantum Night"
which touches on this. Basically, "three states of minds" which amount to
"normal, zombie, psychopath".

The story explores "flipping the switches" on a global scale, among other
things.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Night)

------
RickS
Does this impact literacy? Are there any famous writers that lack the inner
voice?

I feel like yapping to myself all day was critical to developing
writing/verbal skills.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
Anecdotally (on my own example) this might be true, with verbal skills anyway.

------
zadkey
The hardest thing for me to come to own up for myself is not just taking
responsibility for my own inner monologue, but realizing that thoughts
encompass much more than my inner monologue. I have wordless thoughts are
deeper, more subtle and these things are thoughts too. I have to take
responsibility for these as well.

It makes sense once you think about animals, who don't have a formal language
yet clearly are capable of thought.

------
aaroninsf
TIL the phrase "internal monologue" is not figurative for the majority of
people.

I never "hear a voice" in anything comparable to a literal sensory experience.
I can choose to internally "articulate" language that way, with the same sort
of effort of choosing/willing to summon a visual image...

...but that is an effort and an act, not a side effect.

Are people hearing themselves think in something like real time???

------
dominicl
Wow! Is this a hidden science that we missed to research as a society?
Understanding these elementary pieces of thinking seems to me to be a science
probably hugely important for AI research and tons of socially relevant
questions. Anyone know of scientific papers on this? A catalogue of human ways
of thinking, experiments to prove them, analysis of their impact on daily life
or career etc..?

~~~
carapace
> Is this a hidden science that we missed to research as a society?

Yeah, it's called Neurolinguistic Programming, and it's not quite a science
yet. (E.g. the Wikipedia entry just straight-up calls it pseudo-science.)

In brief, it started with linguistic analysis of transcripts of videos of
therapy session with some very talented and successful therapists. (The
analysis was informed by the same Transformational Grammar of Chomsky that
also informs formal language design.) It was noticed that some people tend to
favor "preferred" sensory systems, and a model of subjective experience was
developed that allowed for eliciting and encoding subjective processing
"strategies". (E.g. most good spellers use visual memory to recall a picture
of a word, and then check it kinesthetically for correctness ("it feels
right"), and read it off from their minds' eye. Bad spellers typically do
something else. Teach a bad speller the good "strategy" and they can suddenly
spell well.)

That was nearly half a century ago.

"The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." ~William Gibson

------
ChuckMcM
I surprised me as well. And something I've always done is ask myself "why do I
think that?" or "believe this particular thing is true?" and take apart my own
reasoning to see where it came from and how it came to be.

An interesting follow-on investigation would be to check to see if couples
fare better or worse if the partners match in the presence of an internal
dialog or not.

------
zeofig
I used to do more internal monologuing. But if you sit quietly and observe
your thoughts, you may notice that whenever you "speak" a thought to yourself,
that thought was already in your mind beforehand. The speaking adds nothing to
the thought, except to reinforce it or loop it back. That is not bad, but a
lot of the time it's unnecessary and in fact slows you down.

------
ncmncm
I have no inner monolog, although I once did. I consider it an achievement.

Verbal creativity is the shallowest kind. Freeing yourself from words enables
thought that cannot be represented in the words you have. Most potential ideas
can't be, at their beginning.

To communicate new ideas, you might need to invent new language for the job.
That is where all language comes from: idea first, then the word.

------
anonytrary
I've noticed that I always use internal monologue for all System 2[0] tasks
and that I've never used it for any System 1 task. As for internal imagery, I
seem to be using that for both System 1 and System 2 tasks. I cannot think of
any counterexamples. But if you can think of one, I'll be surprised.

[0] System 1 vs System 2 as described in _Thinking, Fast and Slow_

------
fomojola
Very interesting: this is one possible explanation for all the times I've
heard someone say something that doesn't make sense to me, and I go "Can you
hear yourself right now? How did that sound to you when you thought about
saying it".

And I guess the answer is no: they can't. This might genuinely be the first
time they've heard those words uttered.

~~~
swinglock
Sorry for the unsolicited feedback and I know that it was an example, but to
me saying that in particular is quite rude.

If you did not understand what your peer said you would likely get a better
response if you said you did not understand and try to ask a question to have
it phrased in another way.

~~~
fomojola
No apologies necessary: I generally try to be as generous as possible when
interpreting people's words. In pretty much every case where I've actually
done that the person I was talking to agreed that the words didn't quite match
the intended message.

------
PascLeRasc
For those with an internal monologue, what person do you hear it in? For
example, I always think in 2nd person, as in "we should eat eggs for
breakfast", but almost no one else I've asked about this has had that. I'm
curious if thinking as "I should do X" vs "You should do X" correlates with
other personality traits.

~~~
Horticulture
I think in second person too! I also coach myself and reassure myself pretty
often, e.g "it's not a big deal", "you'll get over it" and so on.

I think the idea that there's such variation between individuals inner
monologues is really fascinating. Particularly because I'm certain I can't
point to a reason why I talk to myself the way I do.

------
bpodgursky
> I would tell them that I could look at myself in the mirror and have a full
> blown telepathic conversation with myself without opening my mouth and they
> responded as if I had schizophrenia. One person even mentioned that when
> they do voice overs in movies of people’s thoughts, they “wished that it was
> real.”

I think this author has an inaccurate understanding of people who do not have
an "auditory" inner monologue.

Think of it this way: a lot of people don't vocalize text as they read it. I
do not. I am still able to read, and I still "understand" what is being read,
but I don't need to turn it into voices and sound it out, to gain that
understanding. Tbh, I find it slows me down.

Inner monologues are the same way. People still have rich inner
"conversations" even if they aren't vocal ones. Which is what I do -- I'm not
really sure the best way to describe it, but I'm able to have a "debate"
between inner arguments without mocking it out as two people talking to each
other (I mean, I can if I want to -- but I find it unnecessary and slow,
personally). I'm sure a lot of people are the same way.

I think the author is getting a bit high on the idea that he has a richer
inner life than the people around him, and needs to think about alternate
interpretations.

~~~
nilkn
My interpretation is that the author isn't referring to people who suppress
vocalization by choice but rather to people who can't enable vocalization in
the first place.

------
Havoc
I guess that's why I don't have an answer for "what language do you think in"?
(I'm multilingual).

------
dijit
Barely related: I told my father that instead of sounding words or hearing a
voice, I "see" words on a page scrolling by very quickly. He didn't believe
me. As I got older it turned into a voice, which I preferred because the voice
is able to be changed to anything I want. My grandfather, Captain Picard,
myself.

------
whalabi
(this was posted ages ago but) have you ever held a concept in your mind
without knowing the word for it? And you can feel the concept just as well as
if you did?

I imagine it's a bit like that. Maybe these people have exactly the same
experience, but it bypasses the auditory feedback (or whatever) parts of the
mind.

Fascinating.

------
JabavuAdams
Love this thread. Aside from being an ADHD love-in it's reminded me of the
usefulness of trying to think in different modes. Now I'm wondering "How do I
really think of this or that programmatic object?" Could thinking about it in
a different mode help me hold the idea better, get more insight? Thanks!

------
etrk
I remember asking my French teacher if she ever “thought” in French, and she
had no idea what I meant. She apparently had no internal monologue.

I assumed there was something with me for “thinking” in words. I tried to
train myself to think more abstractly, and maybe it worked to some extent, but
I’m not sure this was for the better.

------
juliushuijnk
Perhaps the same thing with day dreaming. I get the feeling there are vastly
different experiences.

I once read about someone who said something like 'After taking the medicine
[or something like that], when I stared at a clouds to daydream, nothing
happened'. And I thought; what do you mean, what should have happened..?

------
callesgg
The part of the brain that is your thoughts is the activity of a nuralnetwork.
It can manifest in a wide range of ways.

Using the narrative of the internal dialog is interesting way of
conceptualising thoughts. And I suppose there might be benefits to those who
use the concept of internal dialog to understand themselves.

------
remarkEon
Absolutely shocked about this, that some people don't have one. Re-read the
article a couple times. Went down a wikipedia rabbit hole and found this[0].
Makes me wonder if there are leftover developments in consciousness that are
sticking around.

My inner monologue is basically a consciousness I'm trying to control. It's
not a split personality, per se. It's "me", but an OS running my random
thoughts all the time. When I dream I sometimes dream in a different language
that I (mostly) don't speak (Spanish, or German ... sometimes Japanese which
must mostly be from memories there because I haven't studied it). The dreams
make me think there's a latent function that keeps popping up for a reset.

I genuinely don't understand how someone could function without being able to
"talk to yourself" and essentially narrate your life.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_\(psychology\))

------
FullKirby
I swear, a few years ago, I never verbalized thoughts in my head. It wasn't a
thing to me. Then, I remember very much when I started "speaking" in my head
with words, and since I started having these monologues, I haven't been able
able to stop...

------
miguelmota
Does having an internal monologue make someone more introverted or is there no
correlation at all?

------
franze
It sometimes annoys me that I already gave the workshop a hundred times,
before I even do it.

------
collyw
4chan were discussing this a while back and came up with the NPC (non player
character) meme.

------
peter_retief
I remember when I had the same realization, it wasn't just that some people
couldnt have internal conversations it was that some people were unable to
feel empathy and others felt too much. We are not the same and its quite a
shock to realize

------
fretflip
Most important, do not be too hard on your self, say nice things and encourage
yourself.

------
gwern
Better link: [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190819-what-your-
inner-...](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190819-what-your-inner-voice-
says-about-you)

------
analog31
I have an internal monologue. I also find that I can "sing" music in my mind,
and that while I do this, I can feel a sense of fingering one of the
instruments that I play, and breathing, without actually moving a muscle.

------
Double_a_92
Also it seems that not all people are able to visually picture thoughts or
memories in their head.

This really confuses me... How do you even remember things like that? As
spoken words? But what if you also happen to not have the inner voice??

------
greatquux
I just read this classic so this makes sense to me:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19071718](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19071718)

------
karlicoss
Reminds me of "What Universal Human Experiences Are You Missing Without
Realizing It?"

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-
human-e...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-
experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it)

Also really, read the comments as well, lots of mind blowing stuff!

------
867-5309
interesting stuff. my internal monologue is encoded into a pseudo-language to
the point that were I ever to speak aloud, it would seem mostly
unintelligible. this stems from a secret language a few friends and I had at
school, to communicate silly phrases without other pupils or teachers
eavesdropping, and has undergone evolution in terms of vocabulary and
complexity since then, at least for my internal self. sometimes it freaks me
out, but it does make coping with the inbuilt prejudices easier. I am quite
fearful of something like dementia causing a leak in the hull..

------
huffmsa
It's more of a dialogue / part line but yeah.

Now here's another one to bake your noodle:

Ask your friends who aren't native speakers of their day-to-day language if
their monologue is in their first tongue, or day-to-day tongue

------
baron816
I really want to know if stuff like introversion/extroversion and depression
has any correlation to this. I feel like my inner monologue keeps me company
most of the time and I’d be much lonelier without it.

------
Madmallard
Mine doesn't. I also barely read growing up. I figure they're related as a
past girlfriend was a lit major who read books all her life and couldn't
imagine me not having conversations in my mind.

------
mister_hn
I discovered it when I was a small child. Since then I just have internal
dialogue with myself about every kind of actions to be taken.

Interesting that not everyone can do it, I thought it was just common for
everyone to do it

------
manmal
So, if people "see words" when they think them - what did they see before
their inner eye when they were kids and couldn't read yet (and therefore
couldn't assign meaning to written words).

------
crorella
I can do both interchangeably and always assumed everyone could do the same!

------
MikeWazowski
I figured everybody had internal monologue. Sometimes when I'm at work and in
the zone, in the moment I realize I'm not sure if my voice was in my head or
if I said it out loud on accident.

------
spurgu
Uh. How do you learn a new language if you're unable to maintain an inner
dialogue? Most of my learning happens by myself in my head, constructing
sentences, thinking about grammar concepts.

------
hnmullany
I have a friend who has no mind's eye - it wasn't until he was in his late
teens that he realized that other people can imagine places/images in their
heads. And was flabbergasted.

------
RickJWagner
Probably every young boy has the inner voice.

"It's the final quarter, and the home team is down by a point. He's got the
ball, he shoots and....."

Thinks the kid in the driveway with the basketball.

------
jrumbut
I had heard about the whole "thinking in images" thing, I had no idea it could
be present instead of an internal monologue!

I thought it was an extra ability. Is that true for anyone?

------
keiferski
I'd posit that the strength of the internal monologue is tied to one's
propensity and skill in language. People that think primarily in linguistic
terms probably have an easier time forming their thoughts into the structure
of language, whereas a person who interprets the world in primarily in visual
or spatial terms would see more mental images, maps, or connections.

Unfortunately, we live in a society strongly dominated by language, so the
"cultural toolset" for understanding and controlling thoughts is optimized for
linguistic thinkers. I often wonder what a society structured around visually-
oriented people would look like.

~~~
arcade79
And I'd posit that you're wrong. :-) The reason? I do neither.

I do not have an internal monologue. I can construct one if I want to, but I
do not have an "inner voice". When I type this, I do not prepare the sentences
before I type them. They come to me as I type. I know exactly what I want to
convey, but the sentence doesn't exist inside my head as a recognizable
language or as any structure I can describe. The funny part? I don't think in
neither English nor Norwegian (my native language), and I never have.

When it comes to imagery - I cannot construct a clear image of much at all in
my head. I can, if I try hard, construct vague images of my mother, father,
wife, daughter and very close friends in my head - but they're vague. Very,
very vague. I have no problem recognizing people, though.

I do have fantastic spatial skills. If I walk through an area, I can see
imagine it from different angles and positions - but not as a picture. It's
abstract, without imagery. It's difficult to explain how it's processed in my
head. I can spin things and know exactly how things will "look" from a
different angle .. but I can't "visualize" it. This seems self-contradictory -
but let me try to give a real life example. I visited Manila some 15 years
ago. 10 years ago (5 years after being there) - I was going to show someone
where I'd been on google maps. I had never looked at the area on a map before.
I could just zoom in on the city, start from the airport, recognize the
patterns from above, and zoom in on various things I had visited - switch to
street view and show it from the angles I wanted. In seconds.

I can visit woods I've been to 20 years ago, and recognize where I am, and
know the paths.

Still, no inner monologue. Not much mental imagery. Heck of a lot of
connections though - but very very abstract.

~~~
keiferski
I was saying more that "language" is just one way of processing, along with
"visual" and "spatial" and perhaps innumerable others. It sounds like you have
a spatial method of processing the world.

> I can spin things and know exactly how things will "look" from a different
> angle

This is essentially the spatial equivalent to the inner monologue of the
language-oriented processor.

~~~
arcade79
Interesting. When I've seen other describe this kind of spatial skill, I've
always imagined it being with imagery. Which I don't have. I wouldn't be able
to draw an image of it, except xkcd-like 2-d stuff.

------
heyvictor
my mind is not racing, unless I am trying to solve a problem or if I am having
irrational thoughts (from a bad interaction, a breakup, etc)

My mind feels more reactionary at times, as if some stimuli is provided and
then I think about it. I definitely have the internal monologue but it's not
happening all the time.

I'm also the type of person where you tell me something and I'll have to think
about for a few hours/days before I can get back to you.

------
kazinator
> _Another friend says that she literally sees the words in her head if she is
> trying to think about something._

What did she see before she could read and write, though ...

------
georgewsinger
Historically, have creative geniuses tended to have/not have internal
monologues?

It would be interesting to know whether Claude Shannon, etc had internal
monologues.

------
Zarath
They are different IMO. There are thoughts, which are just abstract forms, and
there is the response to thoughts, which are emotions and monologues.

------
ngcc_hk
That is a big surprise. Thought everyone talk to themselves ... good to have
difference but if you cannot talk to yourselves how can you think ?

------
Causality1
Wait until he finds out about all the people with afantasia who don't have the
ability to visualize or replay audio in their head at all.

------
samirillian
Nietzsche actually mocks people who think in complete sentences. Made me wish
I was like that. What do non-sentential thinkers think about?

------
johnmarcus
Just imagine being born deaf. At best, a sign.language monologue could happen,
but it would be a completely 'visual' experience.

------
lmilcin
I wonder... if people can differ in such a fundamental way what else can
differ and also what are features that are always present.

------
jedberg
I wonder if this correlated to intelligence in any way. More intelligent means
less monologue? Other way around?

------
amai
My internal monologue can switch between all languages I can speak. Is there
anyone else who experiences this?

------
dmtroyer
I do both. I often struggle with the question “what are you thinking about”
and this is partly why.

------
b34r
This is cool. When I learned I had aphantasia a few years ago it was a similar
revelation.

------
flint
I told my interviewer recently that I did not think in words. The interview
was over.

------
krishicks
For those that don’t hear a voice in your head, do you get songs stuck in your
head?

------
stevewilhelm
Do people with a weak internal monologue understand or enjoy jokes, puns, or
poems?

------
bluishgreen
Not every can dream. Some people don’t have any dreams while sleeping. Like
None.

------
colorincorrect
it might be more accurate to say (as a hypothesis), is that whatever this
"inner monologue" thing is, people don't seem to experience it the same, even
if it does exist/not-exist

------
mapleboi
does it make sense if sometimes i'm "talking" inside in my head and other
times i am just doing things "silently", like understanding stuff without any
voice in my head??

------
sillypuddy
Came here for Austin Powers quotes, and frankly I'm disappointed.

------
duke360
Wut? not anybody can? _explosion sound_ (in my head of course...)

------
rvn1045
Daily meditation will quiet the internal monologue to a large extent.

------
rgrieselhuber
"The brush is the sword of the mind." \- Miyamoto Musashi

------
flint
See: "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron

------
ressetera
There are also people who can't dream in color.

~~~
lcnmrn
When picturing things or dreaming I assign colors by the shape of things.

------
wnscooke
What about this revelation ruined that guys day? Why did his previously-
uncontested worldview about internal dialogues require it to be applied to
everyone around them?

------
karcass
Can confirm, have no internal monologue.

------
basilgohar
I hope that others get out of the amazing comments and conversations here that
we all think alike in some ways and differently in others.

More importantly, I hope more people can be convinced to reach the conclusion
that different ways of thinking and/or doing things in no way automatically
mean they are superior/inferior, but rather, that for how amazingly complex we
are as creatures, different ways of doing things may be better for different
people.

tl;dr Different strokes for different folks.

------
reiichiroh
Is this different from aphantasia?

------
viburnum
Is there any way to turn it off?

------
queryly
People with internal monologue basically think in language. They are often
very articulate. Jordan Peterson said he thinks in words, and he talk very
fast.

I think in abstract and concrete imagery, and only found out recently that
other people think in words.

I think thinking abstractly hinders my verbal skill as there is a translation
layer from idea to words.

It's indeed mind blowing when you first realize how other thinks.

------
Traubenfuchs
Those people are called NPC.

------
K0SM0S
So I'm gonna sound jaded but this isn't news to me. It was never in an
"official" capacity (student at best) but this "result" turns out in
interviews, discussions, in social sciences (cognitive psychology first of
all, but certainly anthropology as well, philosophy too, it's a cross-domain
topic). You just have to listen carefully and someday you hit this weird fact.

It's too long to explain here, but there's another realization that somehow
helps describing such discrepancies between human beings. The question is that
of 'normalcy', versus the 'abnormal', the notion of 'deviance', which leads to
'pathological', 'syndroms' and other supposedly 'undesirable' mutations.

Well, the history of evolution itself is that, among a population of "normal"
beings, the next stage for any species always begins with 1 mutation, 1
"freak" who has a new thing, and will eventually spread to the whole species
if that trait is worth it for survival and better adaptation.

There are enough accounts of historical psychology research to affirm that
biologically, cognitively, psychologically speaking, there's virtually no
difference between human beings 4,000 years ago and today; a baby from then
raised now or vice versa would grow up just normal in context — we know this
because every witness from the past said so, there's a recurring chain of
normalcy if you will, and reading Ancient texts yields fairly "normal"
psychological profiles. (Also think that 1,000 years is but 30 generations or
so.)

And yet there are tests measuring dramatically changing cognitive abilities
over just a century — take attention span in the last 40 years, it's appaling.

This means, IMHO, that minute change keeps occurring much more than we might
suspect, continuously, but over long enough periods that human history is
dwarfed by meaningful special (species) evolution. It also means that right
now, a minority among us have evolved to what is the next stage for all of us,
but it will only be obvious in hindsight.

The 18 over 91 quoted by OP has having no spoken dialectic (rather through
other forms of encoding than language/speech) may be a dying breed, an
artefact from the past (the animal in us who hasn't fully integrated speech
maybe); they might as well be the future, how human brains would evolve as
they adapt ("beyond-speech humans" in that case). Maybe the real path is
people who have the ability for both, a switch.

A fair point was made in a previous to-level comment about the "speed limit"
of speech, in terms of bandwidth or information density, and this is echoing
how e.g. the math genius in us tends to think, when notation becomes object
beyond than abstraction in and of itself and there are no words anymore but
concepts, often impossible to visualize anyway (e.g. it's not a "function" or
"f" anymore, in context it's become a "..." — no word but a feeling of what it
_is_ and what it _does_ and how we could manipulate this specific thing).

I guess the take away is there are many discrepancies that we would never
suspect had we never talked to others, and a lot of what we take for "granted"
about human nature is typically a strong hint for something that's very
subjective. At least in perception, if not in value. And that while we are
entitled to our own hierarchy of values in the present, we simply cannot
possibly judge the endgame, we can't tell today who's embodying the shape of
things to come — just that some of us are, some of us must, if we are indeed
evolving.

------
daedalus2027
Bicameral mind

------
budami
funny no one mentioned Broca's area. looks like some brains under-utilize
phonetic perception to boost some other hot business.

------
dboreham
Psychopaths? Non-bicameral mind?

------
johnmarcus
Just

------
allovernow
There's no way this doesn't have some sort of influence on other skills and
abilities. Possibly good or bad. Studies on such effects in monologue lacking
people would be fascinating if they showed differences.

------
rolltiide
Everyone should experience an acid trip to get a feel for how other people are
wired, or the various neural networks possible.

