This feels to me very similar to my experience - I tend to joke that in order to express a thought to others I have to translate it into words first; and in doing so I also flatten the thought.
And before it, the time of having a raw thought in my brain it just feels like… something, it’s not sound, not light, but “a thing” which I know means the item or concept I am thinking of. And the process of thinking is kind of these “semantic things” bouncing off each other - which usually happens much faster than I can translate it into words.
When solving a problem, I usually tinker with it for a while and then let my “big subconscious coprocessor” deal with it for a while, and more often than not if not a solution but the clear idea of direction and reasoning emerges the next time I look for it.
At the same time I tend to make a fair bit of puns based purely on spelling alone - feels a bit magical to have all the omonyms kind of flash in the head all at once, and then make-pretend pick the wrong one for fun.
That’s pretty similar, from the sound of it. The flattening analogy fits - it’s like trying to describe a multidimensional sculpture using only three letter words.
As to the big processor - I definitely do the same if no answer is immediately forthcoming - send it to the boys upstairs and wait for an answer, which usually comes while I’m in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely.
Puns, to an extent, although more often than not I just go off up and down an etymological tree, as the semantics behind so many words and concepts reveal further layers of interconnection and peculiar shreds of history. Physics is my play park, where I enjoy posing and chewing on gnarly problems, which often result in “inadequate data, please try again later”. Didn’t make me popular as an undergraduate as I asked all sorts of awkward questions about presuppositions and usually ended with a professor waving their arms and telling me to just accept it as so. “Dark matter” was what made me finally spit on the ground and decide to not pursue academia, as it’s just so blatantly wrong, and it hurts to see so many accept it as a hard done and dusted solution to something that is anything but solved - because our presuppositions are almost certainly wrong. Piles upon piles of monkeys supposing that they are the centre of the universe, with the perfect sensorium to know it.
Anyway. Like I say, I find it hard to see eye to eye with a majority of people, and I know I don’t make it any easier for myself.
And before it, the time of having a raw thought in my brain it just feels like… something, it’s not sound, not light, but “a thing” which I know means the item or concept I am thinking of. And the process of thinking is kind of these “semantic things” bouncing off each other - which usually happens much faster than I can translate it into words.
When solving a problem, I usually tinker with it for a while and then let my “big subconscious coprocessor” deal with it for a while, and more often than not if not a solution but the clear idea of direction and reasoning emerges the next time I look for it.
At the same time I tend to make a fair bit of puns based purely on spelling alone - feels a bit magical to have all the omonyms kind of flash in the head all at once, and then make-pretend pick the wrong one for fun.
Is this anywhere similar ?