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[–]Dormin111 42 points43 points  (53 children)

I have a hard time wrapping my head around what it would be like to not have an internal monologue. I know meditators claim to be able to "distance" themselves from thoughts and merely "observe" them rather than "think" them. But that's a specially developed skill that requires extensive training of your mind.

[–][deleted]  (37 children)

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    [–][deleted] 37 points38 points  (27 children)

    The coherent position is that nearly everyone perceives their thoughts as themselves. Their thoughts are themselves, and are therefore taken seriously. Meditators are able instead to observe them as a phenomenon occurring in the mind, without identifying with them. They view thoughts as something that naturally arises and goes away without they exerting any control or will over this process.

    [–][deleted]  (25 children)

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      [–]newworkaccount 5 points6 points  (3 children)

      Most traditions that emphasize meditation also teach that there is no unitive self. I think that is what you are missing about the distinction they would like to make but you deny is made.

      We can all agree that sum total of mental activity = self, for some definition of self. Both you and (say) Buddhists would agree with that to a certain extent.

      But for a Buddhist, the idea that one part of your mind can observe other parts isn't remarkable. To them, your mind is a series of parts that thinks it's a whole; a conglomeration of parts that doesn't actually add up to the kind of identity we ascribe to it.

      So for someone who believes this, your objection doesn't make sense: your objection is that there is no "I" who can stand outside of itself and observe, but they don't believe that there is a coherent "I" in the first place.

      It seems to me especially nitpicky to believe that everything practical about meditation is true (i.e. it is a real activity that is different than other activities, it actually does effect change, etc.) and then quibble that they're describing it incorrectly when you don't seem aware of what the context for the statement is in the first place.

      I think this probably sounds harsh, but I don't mean it to be. You're using and understanding those words in a different context than they were originally said in.

      [–][deleted]  (2 children)

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        [–]newworkaccount 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        Ah, fair enough then! If you explicitly reject the doctrine of 'no-self' then you're certainly being consistent, and I was incorrect to read into it that you hadn't.

        Out of curiosity, what do you make out of comments like, "I just don't feel like myself"?

        There are a lot of common expressions like this that seem to externalize something that we would normally conceive of as part of a self: what would you say is going on when expressions like this are being made?

        For the record I don't have any strong beliefs on identity, including whether doctrines of "no-self" is true or not; the questions involved seemed pretty difficult. So I'm always curious how others resolve the issue for themselves.

        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (20 children)

        as I believe most people have

        I never have. My thoughts always seem to me as being caused by me, as being me. Would be pretty surprised to learn most people experience something different at any point.

        I'm also not sure most people would define the act of observing a thought as itself thinking.

        It’s a subjective change in perception

        That's what it is. I saw it phrased once as identify with the self who observes, not the self who thinks. Or as the cinema metaphor: your thoughts are a movie being projected on a screen, but you are not the movie. You are the screen. The screen isn't active at all in this metaphor.

        [–][deleted]  (19 children)

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          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (18 children)

          No, not at all. Imagining something is not the same as experiencing it, I don't think that of any experience. I can imagine plenty of sensations I have experienced, but it's nowhere near the same as actually experiencing it.

          You're saying you're able, at any given moment, to observe your internal monologue and disown it? And to maintain that as your default relation to your internal monologue indefinitely? Because that's the goal of the practice: it's not identifying with your monologue at all, ever, and this is effortless, it's the default. This doesn't mean the monologue disappears.

          [–][deleted]  (17 children)

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            [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (16 children)

            I challenge anyone to explain a substantial difference between having a thought and imagining you are having a thought

            Thoughts you have feel like a part of you, in the same sense an arm feels like a part of you. A thought you imagine does not feel that way at all.

            It is ridiculous to assert that one can live one’s life deliberately while also having no thoughts of your own, planning nothing, considering nothing, analyzing nothing, so this is not a state it is possible to continuously maintain

            I have certainly found myself doing things on autopilot, without consciously thinking of them. It is possible that one's own thoughts are in fact a post-fact rationalization of an unconscious event, as potentially shown by the Libet experiment, such we don't actually take any actions based on conscious thought. In that way, someone could act while never identifying with their thoughts.

            [–][deleted]  (15 children)

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              [–]no_bear_so_lowr/deponysum 10 points11 points  (0 children)

              It doesn't feel that hard to me, and I think everyone can do it for some things. For example, that song stuck in your head, that's a thought, does it feel like 'you' are mentally singing it?

              Everything in your head is 'you' in some loose sense, but not in the sense of being an expression of a unitary ego.

              [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 7 points8 points  (2 children)

              I feel like dreaming could be a good example of how you could observe thoughts without actively thinking them. You don't have control over your dreams, they just happen. Certain drugs might be able to do that as well.

              As for not having an internal monologue, what about problem solving? That's an area where personally I wouldn't say I have a monologue, as in if I'm thinking of a solution there aren't necessarily any coherent sentences I'm going through in my head to come up with that "well what if we do it this way" answer. Some situations, sure, I could basically just type stream-of-consciousness into a ms word document and it would be the same as me thinking. But a lot of times there's no narration it's just an abstract thinking-about-nothing until I have an idea.

              [–][deleted]  (1 child)

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                [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                This whole conversation strikes me as people being confused by the idea that your mind can be running several trains of thought in parallel, some of which can be referencing, contain, or be meta-commentating on others, both consciously and proactively and not.

                If you mean what I think you mean then I absolutely understand that. One of my "out there" pet theories regarding will and discipline is that willpower does not exist, as it's impossible to not do something you want to do, by definition. You might actively try to trick yourself into thinking you want to do something, but only when all your trains of thought, including the ones you aren't consciously aware of, agree will you actually do it.

                Which is irrelevant except to contrast with the other case which is purely observation. Here the thoughts are not conscious and deliberate, but also not observed. I'd consider "purely observational thoughts" to be one where I am the input, the only stimulus (not a sign). It is my memory and thought, but the thought is originating from me alone and I am made aware of that.

                [–]Dormin111 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                The closest I come to the meditation experience is when I'm very close to falling asleep and sometimes I'll "notice" thoughts running through my head.

                [–]Dekans 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                the meditation experience

                Your phrasing suggests you believe this is one thing. I'm not completely sure why one would have that impression. It's easy to dispel.

                https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102990

                [–]JhanicManifold 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                No, there are definitely two different ways to experience thoughts, you can have your attention be focused on some object and still be aware that thoughts are happening without having your attention turn to the thought itself, just as you can be focused on your computer screen but still be aware of the wall behind it. This distinct really only begins to clarify itself when you become an intermediate meditator.

                [–]greatjasoni 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                Have you tried meditating? It's not that hard but it might take a few weeks of practice to meaningfully experience this. The thoughts just sort of appear in your head, which is what happens all the time. You never actually think them. You have a choice to identify with them or ignore them and just watch them pass by. It feels very different then identifying with the internal monologue. This can be done with meditation at first and then, once you're good at it, in everyday situations. There's a very tangible difference in sensation and identity.

                [–]no_bear_so_lowr/deponysum 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                It doesn't feel that hard to me, and I think everyone can do it for some things. For example, that song stuck in your head, that's a thought, does it feel like 'you' are mentally singing it?

                Everything in your head is 'you' in some loose sense, but not in the sense of being an expression of a unitary ego.

                [–]SchizoidSocialClubIQ, IQ never changes 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                I used to think in colorful shapes, until I had to only use a foreign language at work and my thoughts changed to subvocalization in that language and after that I started thinking in words in my own language.

                [–]AArgot 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                If you're meditating you'll notice that thoughts just pop into your head. You have this awareness opposed to other times because you are running something like a metacognitive check on what's happening inside your brain.

                Most of the time we behave habitually. People in this subreddit can probably have complex conversations about certain topics without having to concentrate too hard. A flow of continuous ideas emerges from the brain like jazz music. People should be able to notice that they have "riffs" of ideas they incorporate into conversations.

                When you meditate, you can recognize when a thought pops into your mind and where it wants to go - or you can get good enough that the desired flow isn't even sensed because you "let the thought go" so quickly. The metacognition prevents the flow of ideas - would take a while to describe how this feels and seems to work. You can also observe associated subjective phenomena that occur with thoughts.

                I could go on analyzing this stuff for hours because there's a lot to break down - it would take a while just to clarify what I wrote already.

                As a tangent, the coolest thing about mindfulness meditation is that you can get rid of a sense of self - as in the "indivisible homunculus controller" or "soul" people think they have. It's not that you don't think consciouness exists. It's that "you" makes no sense. There is just a sense of subjective phenomena themselves. You can still understand what people are doing when they think they have a self, but you can see through the brain's confusion about it. This idea upsets a lot of people though. I don't know what to do but give an honest description.

                And yes, I still say "I" and "you". I can't say "this brain" because it sounds odd, but that's how it feels.

                [–]the_good_time_mouse 5 points6 points  (8 children)

                It's not that hard to experience thought without subvocalization. One easy way is to learn to use an RSVP reader.

                [–]LineartsWashington, DC 2 points3 points  (7 children)

                A what?

                [–]whenhaveiever 4 points5 points  (6 children)

                Rapid Serial Visual Presentation, basically moving the words when you read rather than moving your eyes. It's a tool used to read faster, and there's lots of apps that will help you do it.

                [–]HelperBot_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_serial_visual_presentation

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                [–]LineartsWashington, DC 0 points1 point  (4 children)

                Oh, I've seen these recommended on this sub before. But people have said that it doesn't help comprehension... I think that's just for skimming while retaining subvocalizations, though. If the app helps you get rid of those, it might be really useful.

                [–]the_good_time_mouse 1 point2 points  (3 children)

                IMHO, whoever thinks it doesn't help comprehension are using it in the wrong context. It plain doesn't work for non-linear prose, such as most coursework and other educational and technical materials.

                One trick which helps when using it to read heavy subject matter is to learn to read as fast as you can - ie - eliminate sub-vocalization - and then slow the reader speed down 25-50%. Now you are reading 'slowly', at 400 wpm.

                [–]LineartsWashington, DC 0 points1 point  (2 children)

                I normally read at around 400wpm, which is with subvocalization. But that's still very slow compared to how fast I can skim text or go through it with Spreeder, and compared to the typical reading speeds of people here, which were mostly >1000 in a recent thread where people were surveyed.

                [–]the_good_time_mouse 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                Sure, but with RSVP, 400 wpm feels like reading very slowly and carefully, compared to regular reading, IME.

                [–]whosyourjay 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Link to the recent thread? Sounds interesting.

                [–]Danyalson 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                I have 2 inner monologues. One that I control and one that seems to be totally independent. The latter one that I can’t control has access to my thoughts and memories but says very unique things that I normally wouldn’t think of. I can carry on conversations with it and even play games like chess since I don’t know what move it’s going to make until it does it. I’ve come to see this is quite bizarre. I might start a new thread for this and get feedback.

                [–]zippolag 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                And you have never been diagnosed with any sort of multiple-personality disorder or anything like that? I'm truly curious.

                [–]Danyalson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                I have been diagnosed with a lot of things but the most consistent diagnosis is autism spectrum disorder. I don’t imagine that would cause it.

                [–]Gen_McMusterInstructions unclear, patient on fire 52 points53 points  (20 children)

                Social Psychologist and part time /poltard "Aydin Paladin" did a video summarizing the research surrounding internal monologues and how it was being misrepresented back in September when this meme was first bubbling out of the primordial sludge of 4chan. Basically, the raw data looked like ~15% of research subjects had no internal monologue, when really it was research subjects were found not to be experiencing internal monologue in ~15% of journal entries recorded throughout the day. IE: we all have moments where we're thinking literally nothing

                Note: she misleads her own viewership for the first half of the video on this matter, the comment section is disappointing and deeply ironic because of that

                [–]penpractice 33 points34 points  (13 children)

                Some subjects never experienced inner speech in the experiment, though. "Thus, for example, the first row of Table 2 shows that 5 participants had no inner speech whatsoever, whereas, by contrast, 1 participant experienced inner speech in 75% of his samples." That's from CL Heavey's research that started it all. That means, if correct, 15% of people lack all inner speech. See here

                This is a conclusion reinforced by other studies, like this. Individuals were found to have experienced the following modes of "inner speech" in diverse ways, from "never" to "always": dialogicality (inner speech that occurs as a back-and-forth conversation), evaluative/motivational inner speech, other people in inner speech, and condensation of inner speech (i.e. abbreviation of sentences in which meaning is retained). 4% never have dialogical speech, 8% never have evaluative speech, 10% never have condensed speech, and these figures rise dramatically when you account for "very rarely"

                It's kind of a big deal and there's a thread about it here. I have a hard time believing that anyone can grapple with complex verbal (political, social, philosophical, etc) topics without the use of dialogical or at least condensed speech. The fact that there are some people in the world that don't have either is intriguing as fuck. And it has absolutely pants on head ridiculous implications. Some questions would be

                • If given difficult verbal topics, do those with dialogical speech do better than those without, adjusting for blah blah blah?

                • What are the political views of those without dialogical speech? If those with neither dialogical nor condensed speech are overwhelmingly one political viewpoint, that would lead to the conclusion that the overwhelming propaganda in our society is of one viewpoint

                • Are those without dialogical / condensed speech particular in other areas? Have they mastered the art of mindfulness, or just plain, well... dull?

                • Can we habitualize dialogical speech in people? What would the results be for their quality of life?

                • Is dialogical speech less in those with non-verbal skillsets: music and painting in particular?

                There's a reason that almost so many great philosophical treatises especially from the Ancients (like the majority of Plato's dialogues) take the form of dialogical speech. That's no coincidence. And most if not all of the great philosophers before logical positivism (maybe not Aristotle) take the dialogical form, Kierkegaard is pretty much talking to himself and asking himself questions, etc.

                I should start a blog instead of shitposting on Reddit, I don't think Aydin did a very good job if your description is correct

                [–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (11 children)

                I do experience some inner speech, but really the majority of the time I think using the meanings behind words and not words themselves. I also lack a persistent internal monologue. This has always been a topic of interest to me, because some people seem to only think linguistically and don't seem to be very aware of the possibility of thought without a continuing linguistic monologue.

                (Example, person A thinks "I'm going to go to the kitchen". Person B (me), just has a split second mental impression that they'd like to do the same. Mentally vocalizing it would take longer and actually be inefficient. Person A appears to person B to be stuck in always verbalizing even when they don't have to. Person B doesn't seem to be able to understand that the thinking style of person A is possible).

                I usually only mentally vocalize explicitly if I'm reasoning something through or thinking very hard.

                On a sidenote, I've always found that I seem to meditate with more ease than I often hear others talk about.

                I don't think this correlates at all with intelligence or politics. It seems to be just a different mode of thinking. Not to get "iamverysmart-ish", but I'm completing an undergrad in ecology and about to transition into being a masters student in the field. I've always done quite well in my science classes.

                Another interesting point: I'm not at all very talkative. However I was quite surprised to learn that I seem to be very adept at learning languages, as I as able to learn a language to quite a high level recently in a timeperiod that really surprised most people.

                I say all this because I definitely consider myself to be very off to the side of "less internal monologue, more mental quiet", and I seem to lack the incessant monologue which many people claim to have.

                [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 3 points4 points  (6 children)

                How often do you think out loud what you're doing?

                I'm Person B, I hardly ever narrate stuff in my head. However when I'm alone I do often narrate out loud. Not really what I'm about to do ("I'm going to make some oatmeal"), more like what's on my mind or talking myself through a decision on long term life plans.

                [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

                I don't think I ever narrate what I'm doing. Mentally or out loud. It strikes me as really weird to say to myself "I'm going to make oatmeal". I just know at a deeper level that that's what I'm going to do, and I do it.

                If I'm planning something and using a lot of mental resources, then I'll often start mentally verbalizing the thoughts. But only when I'm really working to piece things together logically or something.

                Also, if I can't find the oatmeal, then I'd probably be prone to thinking verbally where the fuck is it? or something, lol.

                [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                Also, if I can't find the oatmeal, then I'd probably be prone to thinking verbally where the fuck is it? or something, lol.

                That is also something I'd narrate out loud, like "yo where tf the oats at I'm like 99% sure I put them back next to the corn flour yesterday".

                [–]constxd 0 points1 point  (3 children)

                I'm also like person B, and I also narrate out loud under my breath whenever I'm alone. Usually (but not always) it's unrelated to whatever I'm actually doing, like in the shower, or while cooking, I might talk quietly out loud about my thoughts on something related to programming, psychiatry, video games, or whatever else I've been reading and thinking about lately—or just about my life. Quite often I talk about my current problems as if I had already overcome all of them, like if I were just starting an SSRI I might talk about how it changed my life and cured my social anxiety, even though in reality it hadn't done anything yet.

                I've always felt this was very abnormal and occasionally when I become conscious of it I'll resolve to stop doing it. I also wonder if my tendency to imagine myself having solved important issues in my life and deliver these monologues from that perspective is related to my lack of motivation to actually take constructive steps toward solving them for real. Like it's some kind of masturbatory procrastination technique. Also, whenever I do this I speak as if I were explaining everything to another person, or to an audience or something.

                Does any of that match up with your experiences, or am I actually just really fucking weird?

                [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                Not really honestly. Mine is mostly stream of consciousness. More "substantive" self-talk about my goals or something is typically only during long car drives (think rehearsing conversations in the shower), but occasionally for walking myself through a tough decision as well. A good example would be I'm planning some pretty huge life changes over the next 5 or so years related to my career, location, finances, some "adventures" I have planned like thru hiking and cross-country cycling, etc. and saying them aloud helps me organize a dozen different ideas and how I feel about them. Maybe that counts as explaining to an audience, where the audience is me. I liken it to organizing your thoughts for an essay by making an outline before writing the essay, only I'm organizing emotions not facts. I recently starting making recorded "sessions" out if it, just a <5 min video per week, because I think it will be interesting looking back.

                But the vast majority of the time it's more like making dumb observations about stuff. Think a comedy where you can hear the dumb thoughts of a character. I think I started the habit when solo backpacking. Scene: it's the dead of the winter, I'm the only soul around. "Wow this frozen ground is pretty cool. It's like there's ice grass. That's actually a pretty good crunchy sound when I walk on it. I wonder how it forms. WOAH now it's really misty. My headlamp can't cut through this. Pretty spooky. Reminds me of when I lived in RI. Must be near a waterfall." and so on.

                [–]constxd 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                I see. So when you're doing the self-talk for goals and tough decisions, is it something you consciously decide to do?

                That example you give about the frozen ground sounds a lot closer to the "normal" monologue that most people seem to have.

                [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Yes it's a conscious decision. I can't do that sort of thinking/planning in my head monologue-style.

                That's what's crazy about this, maybe people think like my frozen ground example all the time normally, but the reason I find it so amusing when I do it out loud is because that type of thinking sounds absolutely ridiculous to me.

                Edit: possibly relevant to note is I'm not a R/rationalist; I'm here because I like the "balance" rationalist discussion brings to my views. Not in an enlightened centrist way, in a avoiding an echo chamber kinda way.

                [–]wlxd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                I do experience some inner speech, but really the majority of the time I think using the meanings behind words and not words themselves. I also lack a persistent internal monologue. (...)

                (Example, person A thinks "I'm going to go to the kitchen". Person B (me), just has a split second mental impression that they'd like to do the same. Mentally vocalizing it would take longer and actually be inefficient.

                This, and the rest of the post, describes my personal experience really well. I clearly remember I had internal monologue when I was a kid, but I lost it around high school age. It also coincided with me becoming bilingual (English is my second language), so it might have something to do with that. Unlike the parent tough, I would not really say I’m particularly good at learning languages.

                Really, the parent’s description that it feels inefficient to think in full words and sentences really hits the nail on its head. Just like speaking is faster than writing, and thinking is faster than speaking, “abstract” thinking is faster than verbal thinking.

                I never had any troubles with thinking about philosophical ideas, nor with sciences (I have a graduate degree in STEM subject). It simply feels like I’m in what Terry Tao calls “post-rigorous stage”, where I no longer need to focus on technical details of language to think about ideas.

                [–]skiff151 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                I would actually kill to be like this. I suffer from bad anxiety and when I take benzos I get to have silence in my head for a short time and it's better than sex for me.

                [–]AllegedlyImmoral 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                Put a serious and concerted effort into learning to meditate.

                You are not anxious - anxiety is happening to you. Being able to live solidly in that distinction will be immensely beneficial to you.

                [–]Baron_von_Neuron 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Not having the internal monologue won't protect you from anxiety by itself, sadly.

                [–]Kalcipher 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                I have a hard time believing that anyone can grapple with complex verbal (political, social, philosophical, etc) topics without the use of dialogical or at least condensed speech.

                My internal speech is extremely condensed to the point where complex sentences may be reduced to a single syllable or a nonverbal gesture and almost every word is shortened to at most two syllables. With slight concentration I can condense most thoughts to one word, occasionally two words (both usually shortened / cut off) and I can even remember thoughts by that one word later. It actually seems to help with my clarity of thought rather than impeding it, and I occasionally have thoughts that are entirely without internal dialogue, though they are usually not very complex. A typical example of that would be noticing and deciding to fix a grammar mistake, or deciding to go out and get pizza.

                [–]whenihittheground 5 points6 points  (4 children)

                Not a big fan of Aydin?

                [–]Gen_McMusterInstructions unclear, patient on fire 11 points12 points  (1 child)

                No I quite like her. By "misleading the audience" I mean she's presenting the research as misrepresented when introducing it, in the later half of the video she explains why that was wrong, how it's being misrepresented and how the data ought to be interpreted.

                Her comment section reflects on the attention span of (a portion of) her audience, not the quality of the video

                [–]whenihittheground 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                Ah I understand now. I like her too. I think she's pretty funny.

                [–]TimPoolSucks 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                I just thought it would be interesting to point out that Ayden used to be open about her mischling heritage, but now she's put that identity in the closet, chosen a team, and started dogwhistling loudly her power-level and blood-red tribal affiliation. Mixed people who choose their side voluntarily are always the most intense in their jingoism as they always overcompensate their tribal signaling to avoid miscategorization.

                [–]whenihittheground 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Yeah to be a mix sometimes feels like to belong nowhere. So when they do find a home they go all in because they know what it's like to feel like an outcast.

                [–]TimPoolSucks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                I'm just going to post here to endorse her channel.

                [–]SublimeMachine 16 points17 points  (4 children)

                It's tricky to know for certain - since I'm not usually thinking about how I'm thinking. But I'm pretty sure I only have an internal monologue only when I'm thinking about communicating something. When writing something that others would read, for example, I have one, but my typical thoughts don't involve words.

                [–]thedessertplanet 12 points13 points  (1 child)

                Interesting. I often have an internal monologue, but my usual thought process very much revolves about how trying to understand things well enough to be able to explain them.

                Internal monologue shuts up when concentrating hard on physical things. Be that weightlifting or gymnastics or hard computer game.

                [–]secretsarebest 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                but my usual thought process very much revolves about how trying to understand things well enough to be able to explain them

                that's me too. Possibly INTJ trait

                [–]symmetry81 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                I'm the same way. Do you ever have the experience of going to explain some idea you had and one part of the explanation involves a concept that seems like it ought to be a word. But then you realize that the concept doesn't have a corresponding word and you end up having to do a whole digression around it?

                [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Me too. Other people seem "stuck" in their mental monologue. Whereas I rarely verbalize the thoughts, they are just abstract impressions of the meaning behind the words, but most often without words.

                [–]Feather_Snake 17 points18 points  (4 children)

                I don't and have never had an internal monologue. I can imagine sounds or speech in my head when I want to, and recently I've often been imagining explaining something to another person to practice something I'm planning to say.

                I found out about the phenomenon a while back when reading those sort of "I read that in X's' voice" comments and thinking how dumb that idea was. Why are they reading internet comments out loud? I mentioned it to someone else and found I'm in the extreme minority. Suddenly things like the internal monologue in Scrubs and people 'speaking their thoughts' in films like Dune made sense. I don't think I fully understand what having an inner monologue is like but it did help understand why other people don't find these things so annoying.

                Fairly sure this was mentioned in the SSC 'universal human experiences' discussion a while back.

                I've heard it's linked with ADD, which works in my case.

                The meme is really dumb, btw.

                [–]aeschenkarnos 10 points11 points  (0 children)

                You have made one important point extremely clear for me: capacity for reflection is distinct from internal monologue and visualization. You obviously possess strong capacity for reflection, ie examination of your own thoughts, formation of thoughts about your own thoughts, intention to act on your thoughts about thoughts and in the future think in different ways.

                I would expect "NPCs" to lack capacity for reflection: they simply think what they think, and it does not occur to them as a possibility that they might ever think in a way other than how they think.

                [–]Jmdlh123 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                I don't and have never had an internal monologue. I can imagine sounds or speech in my head when I want to, and recently I've often been imagining explaining something to another person to practice something I'm planning to say.

                Isn't this basically inner monologue? At least for me it is.

                [–]Feather_Snake 8 points9 points  (0 children)

                Well, from speaking with people about it I think that inner voice has some distinct characteristics:

                1) it's involuntary (and triggers when they do things like reading)

                2) it occupies some sort of privileged position in thought (I don't feel I understand this but it's been said to me several times)

                3) it's the main mode by which their thoughts are expressed in their awareness, instead of as concepts and associations.

                [–]ep1032 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Thats exactly what it is

                [–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (25 children)

                Food for thought:

                I have a hard time with 'internal vision'. Remember the study a while back that went around that suggested that when most people "see" something in their mind, they are experiencing something very similar to literal sight, whereas for some subset of people they can't really summon 'mental images'? I'm one of those people who can't really summon mental images.

                I imagine that "not having an inner monologue" is to speech what "not having mental images" is to sight. This makes it seem much less spooky

                [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (20 children)

                yeah, other than not being able to actually "hear" a voice in my head, i also don't have an "internal vision".

                [–]WavesAcross 1 point2 points  (19 children)

                Not at all? Can you like sing a song in your head, and hear it?

                [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (18 children)

                nope. i can imagine it, but it's not the same as hearing it. and i'm a musician, ha.

                [–]FenrirW0lf 9 points10 points  (12 children)

                I don't think anyone claims it's the same thing though. I'd describe it more like an impression of hearing rather than a duplication of the entire physical sensation of hearing.

                [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (11 children)

                they don't, yeah. they say it's different, but then, they can say their head voice "sounds" like something. mine sounds like nothing. it feels like a totally different thing to me.

                [–]EternallyMiffed 0 points1 point  (3 children)

                I remember being able to actually experience the same or very nearly the same thing as hearing a song(or SFX) again just by thinking about it when I was little, maybe somewhere up until 2nd or 3rd grade.

                But later I could not do that anymore.

                [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

                that's interesting. i had kind of the same experience. a lot of sensations seemed very vivid and as time went on, they got more muted. dreams were the most pronounced one to change for me. but i had a pretty shitty stressful childhood, so maybe that did something.

                [–]EternallyMiffed 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                For me dreams have always been extremely vivid, almost like virtual reality or being inside a movie. And they always have very complex structures and internal narratives, the times when I'm at least somewhat aware it's a dream they also appear to have "things which are known about the situation at hand", with those "things" being elaborate details about people, places or events in the dream. The dreams always seem to start "in media res".

                [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                mine tend to be extremely surreal and usually deal with some kind of crumbling or breaking down of reality (or my own body). just sort of odd things being mixed with no coherent narrative structure and as soon as i wake up they're like a distant memory. might be for the best really.

                [–]Patrias_Obscuras 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Do you ever get a piece of music stuck in your head?

                [–]Kalcipher 0 points1 point  (3 children)

                As a fellow musician, I do have internal mental music, but it is very limited and not very vivid at all. I wonder if it being more vivid would be helpful for composition. It probably would.

                [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                i read a few of your posts and you seem like a classically trained musician that places more emphasis on theory. do you feel that you rely on it more than your intuition? for me everything's improvisational and going by feel.

                [–]Kalcipher 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                I'm mostly informally trained but recently started formal studies. My background is a mix of contemporary and classical training with focus on performance skills and repetoire, but I've been taking an interest in theory for just over two years now. When writing melodies (including SATB part writing) I rely on a combination of theory and intuition, but mostly intuition. For a lot of other things I rely on theory however, and I can write decent melodies without hearing them and relying primarily on theory. I'm starting to get more into improvisation but I was very bad at it for a long time and practising it didn't seem to help much back then. This changed when I learned some theory, and I think the primary reason is that the theory helps me understand my practice more and get more out of it.

                [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                interesting! yeah, i'm the total opposite of that. theory bores me and i never felt like i got anything out of it. i seem to figure out what i need to improve based on the increasing complexity of my compositions, which demand a higher skill level in order to perform. my creative ambition (really just boredom with the old stuff, haha) drives everything. and i play metal music, so probably quite far from what you're doing.

                [–]aeschenkarnos 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                Aphantasia. Really interesting concept. In light of that, aphasia of the internal monologue makes perfect sense. I'm not sure how we would test for it, though.

                [–]mcsalmonlegs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Or it makes it all the more spooky for those of us who do both constantly.

                [–]Kalcipher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Sometimes my thoughts take the form of mental images rather than condensed internal monologue, but often it will be a combination of very condensed monologue and very simplified imagery with occasional mental nonverbal gestures like a nod to designate a particular concept.

                [–]shambibbleBosch 11 points12 points  (2 children)

                Words are vessels for conveying my thoughts to others. Internally, I've never had a "monologue." I can force one, if I'm thinking about communication specifically, but for the most part my thoughts are a mix of abstract conceptual linkages, visual imagery, and emotional states.

                [–]ChromeGhost 7 points8 points  (1 child)

                I actually think having too much of an internal monologue would be a hinderance. Since language has more limitations than thinking in connections and abstract thought.

                [–]aeschenkarnos 9 points10 points  (0 children)

                It can be more than a mere hindrance. Intrusive thoughts are a manifestation of OCD, and the sufferers of this are largely unaware of this fact - because it is a voice in their head, they assume that the thoughts are their own, and have a terrible time with that. "Why am I fantasising about killing all those people? I must be a horrible serial killer!" Even though they never act on intrusive thoughts, they nonetheless suffer guilt, and may self-harm and even suicide.

                The most effective treatment for this (IME) is to dissociate the voice in one's head, from one's own core identity. You are the listener to the voice, not the voice itself. The voice is just random stuff that comes up and goes away. Let it go away, observe without judgment. Over time, the intrusive thoughts lessen significantly. Argument, suppression etc only makes it worse. I credit the meditation teacher Eckhard Tolle with expressing this most succinctly. "What you resist, persists."

                [–]AshLaelGeorgist Market Monetarist Distributist 21 points22 points  (54 children)

                I’m not exactly sure what you mean by internal monologue. Do you mentally narrate your own life or something?

                [–]Fluffy_ribbitMAL Score: 7.8 23 points24 points  (2 children)

                There's a voice in the head that is easy for the mind to identify with and is talking more or less all the time. Sometimes it's strategic, so that as the body typing, the mind could actually model itself as the inner voice giving dictation to another mind that types out what the inner voice says.

                [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                this reminds me of julian jayne's bicameralism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

                [–]georgioz[S] 17 points18 points  (49 children)

                It is not that the voice narrates everything that is happening but it points out interesting stuff or makes connections or can even make hillarious jokes that you have easy time to laugh at (mostly internally but sometimes you audibly chuckle). The other important part is that it is monologue. I have a strong feeling that the voice is me. It is not some other voice that I have a dialogue with. I am having monologue with me. Maybe some other explanation would be like playing a chess against yourself. When rotating the board you may find out moves that you did not think about before. Except that you may think these moves at the same time without having a need to rotate the board.

                There is one additional thing as pointed in the internal monologue wiki article: when having an internal monologue about positive things such as "what a beautiful day I have" or "that cloud looks like a duck" then I tend to use I pronoun or at least the monologue is pronoun neutral. But when I am in a negative thinking mode thinking thoughts such as "dont be lazy and do dishes" or "get up or you will be late for work" then there is definitely more of a dissociation as reflected with you pronoun used more in such monologues. But it is still distinctively monologue and the you is not meant literally as if you have a conversation with a different person.

                [–]grumpenprole 10 points11 points  (32 children)

                I don't have anything remotely like that, ama

                [–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (13 children)

                same here. i have thoughts, but there's no voice. thought feels like a different type of phenomenon.

                [–]constxd 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                Same. It always seemed extremely stupid to me how therapists and psychotherapy books talk about the "inner critic", or intrusive thoughts and negative self-talk, like "I am ugly", "Nobody likes me", "I can't do this", etc.

                I've literally never experienced a voice in my head saying those things, or had those thoughts in the form of a sentence like that. It always made me think the psychotherapy technique was contrived and useless, but maybe this is actually how it works for some people?

                [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                i've definitely thought those thoughts, like when i was bullied in school, i thought "i can kill myself and this will all go away", but yeah, the voice thing confuses me. the way they worded it, i assumed it was metaphorical. now it seems it's literal.

                my friends and even my wife claim they hear a literal voice in their head, kind of like a schizophrenic would. if you look up on youtube, there are videos called "a schizophrenics inner world" or "what it's like for people with schizophrenia" or something like that. so they do hear actual voices, but i thought that hearing anything meant you were already mentally ill.

                turns out it's like a spectrum almost? as in, you have a disorder if you hear too many voices, and they're negative and telling you to do things that you don't want to, etc.

                i wonder what the genetic basis is for this difference.

                [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (16 children)

                When you read something, does your mind vocalize what you are reading? This vocalization of what is reading is very close to my inner monologue experience. I also inner vocalize what I am about to type.

                ​

                [–]grumpenprole 5 points6 points  (15 children)

                If I'm not focused, yes, I sometimes "read aloud" in my head. If I'm actually focused and engaged, I just read.

                Vocalizing in your head is so slow. My reading speed would be a fraction of what it is if that was how I read.

                If I'm unfocused enough to be vocalizing, I'm moments from giving up anyway. I'm obviously not in a state to actually read whatever it is.

                I might vocalize fragments of things before or as I type them, especially if I'm really trying to mull over the right words, like in an official email (or an essay when I was in school).

                Also when I was in school I would often plan out what I wanted to say before speaking. But this must be something wholly different from the supposed "normal" internal monologue experience, because it made me slower to contribute than my peers.

                [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                this is 100% my experience as well.

                [–]AshLaelGeorgist Market Monetarist Distributist 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                Yeah, my job involves a lot of reading legislation and if I get to a bit that’s difficult to understand I’ll go over it a few times and sort of mentally vocalise it in my head. It’s definitely a slower and more methodical way of reading.

                But generally I just look at the words and absorb the meaning without really thinking about it.

                [–]grumpenprole 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                Mentally vocalizing doesn't actually help me understand, on the contrary it impedes my understanding. Just like how when you read something aloud for someone else, you comprehend it less due to focusing on saying rather than understanding. Is that something others experience as well?

                If I'm mentally vocalizing I'm more focused on my imaginary audience. I'll finish a paragraph and realize I haven't been listening, only performing.

                [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

                Vocalizing in your head is so slow. My reading speed would be a fraction of what it is if that was how I read.

                This is interesting. When studying in college I would read without vocalizing in order to make my study faster, and just pay attention to every word and expect my subconscious to pick up the meanings. I found that to be highly effective in studying fast, but it was something I taught myself rather than normal. It seems like you do this by default.

                I might vocalize fragments of things before or as I type them

                This is so interesting - how do you know what you are going to communicate if you don't symbolize it in your head? You let your subconscious type? You plan the feeling? How do you know what you will type? You see the words? I guess what I am asking is what sense do you lead with to express in an informal email?

                [–]grumpenprole 3 points4 points  (2 children)

                I read constantly as a kid and am definitely a fast reader (though not freakishly so).

                As for writing... I mean, I know what I want to communicate and I have decades of experience communicating. You just say the thing you want to say.

                When you're having a conversation with your friends, you don't need a pause between each exchange to draft your response, right? Because you know what you want to say and you know how to speak. It just falls together, because you are an experienced social user of language.

                [–][deleted]  (1 child)

                [deleted]

                  [–]wlxd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  Yup, pretty much this. When I speak, I don’t even know what words will spill from my tongue before I actually say them. I have a good idea what I want to say, but the process of translating my thoughts to vocalizations happens on the fly, without any conscious preparation of the sentence. On the other hand, I’m a pretty bad speaker, so there is that.

                  [–]georgioz[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                  Hmm, I read about subvocalization and it seems that it is better for memory - at least some kinds of memory. It definitely works for me. If there are some things I need to really memorize - like a poem - audible vocalization is the best way. So I am just thinking if speedreading does not have some disadvantage in the memorization area. As a personal anecdote a lot of people notice that I have a good ability to keep broader level knowledge which makes me naturally good in areas such as history where connecting multiple narratives that I have read on over the decades can be useful.

                  Also I am subvocalizing the text but I did the http://www.readingsoft.com/ test with a relatively leissury speed speed that turned out to be 350 words per minute and 100% comprehension on the test - with english not being my mother tongue as a caveat.

                  There apparently is some controversy about the idea that it is possible to get rid of the subvocalization without compromising on comprehension.

                  [–]grumpenprole 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                  My field is history. Agreed that vocalization helps with memorization of poetry and plays and whatnot, that's just not really a part of my life. As for like high school bio type memorization, I would use mnemonics but I wouldn't think of them vocally, just orthographically.

                  As for studying history at a university level, memorization has never entered into it.

                  [–]penpractice 0 points1 point  (4 children)

                  Are you and /u/thrice_cursed Asian by any chance? Sorry if that's an offensive question for anyone ITT, but I have a politically incorrect hypothesis I'm trying to get out of my head.

                  [–]KeepRooting4Yourself 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  Can I hear your hypothesis?

                  [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  no offense taken, i often wonder about such "politically sensitive" questions myself. i'm not asian, but i am from eastern europe, so maybe there's something there? i wouldn't rule out any asian contribution at some point in my lineage, but no one would look at me and say "that's an asian guy".

                  [–]grumpenprole 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  I'm middle eastern.

                  [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  I have this where I rarely vocalize thoughts in my head and usually lack mental monologue, but I'm white.

                  [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                  Some people seem unable to not do that, I'm like you and I've always found it strange.

                  [–]gryffinp 14 points15 points  (0 children)

                  This whole business feels a lot like people quibbiling over whether they have the same type of qualia.

                  [–][deleted]  (4 children)

                  [deleted]

                    [–]georgioz[S] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

                    Ok another try. Imagine a child playing at tea party verbalizing the conversation between dolls commenting on their dress or on how princess Aurora is careless to let the tea cup fall on the ground and so forth. The child goes about this game with the voices reflecting the reality she does not control (e.g. cup falling on the ground) while at the same time creating more opportunities to move the game forward with much more control (Oh, princess Elsa don't be so rude to Aurora. It was only an accident). The child can have fun with the game inventing genuinly funny jokes as part of the conversation or even come up with interesting questions to ask her parents later. But at all times even the child understands that it is a game of her own making.

                    Now imagine having something like that only playing in your own mind. You are in control of the monologue in all the ways which is what makes it monologue in the first place. You can redirect the monologue at most times - unless under influence of some drugs I guess. In a sense this monologue looks much more lile self as opposed to some random feelings you have. In fact this monologue can help you manage those feelings introspecting them and investigating them.

                    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

                    [deleted]

                      [–]aeschenkarnos 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                      I don't know about him, but for me, it is essential to the formation of coherent thoughts that I organize them into sentences. My experience of this is that the thoughts are primarily text, not directly vocalized. I then "read" the thoughts and make edits, as I did with this comment, prior to posting it. Immediately post-posting, I read it again and it is possible that I made further edits before you read it.

                      [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                      Now imagine having something like that only playing in your own mind. You are in control of the monologue in all the ways which is what makes it monologue in the first place. You can redirect the monologue at most times - unless under influence of some drugs I guess. In a sense this monologue looks much more lile self as opposed to some random feelings you have. In fact this monologue can help you manage those feelings introspecting them and investigating them.

                      I lack that. I know some people have it.. it seems to me like their minds are incessant and distracted. My mind is usually a lot more quiet, and when I'm thinking I often think using the meaning behind the words instead of using "words", which is a lot slower than the nonverbal thought is.

                      [–][deleted]  (2 children)

                      [deleted]

                        [–]georgioz[S] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                        I don't have those verbal thoughts all the time, that's why I wrote that it is not that the voice narrates everything. Just selected stuff.

                        [–]SilasX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                        Sorry, stupid misreading on my part. Deleting.

                        [–]Freilingme smart dis many 1 point2 points  (6 children)

                        when having an internal monologue about positive things such as "what a beautiful day I have" or "that cloud looks like a duck" then I tend to use I pronoun or at least the monologue is pronoun neutral. But when I am in a negative thinking mode thinking thoughts such as "dont be lazy and do dishes" or "get up or you will be late for work" then there is definitely more of a dissociation as reflected with you pronoun used more in such monologues.

                        I've noticed the same thing... To put it in obviously obsolete terms, I think it's because the core of our consciousness is closer to an id (or child), and the superego (or parent) is more of a constructed, nurtured voice.

                        [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (5 children)

                        Perhaps that is not your inner monologue, but a representation of your mother. When I did whippets in college, I did that thing where your chest gets held after over oxygenating, you pass out, and when I came back the process felt like my brain 'reset'. I saw layers of symbolism overlapping the environment as I came back. The person holding me was the symbol of my childhood friend before overlapping with the person it really is. We may have these models of different entities that we just re-use as base structures for everything around us for efficiency.

                        [–]aeschenkarnos 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                        Absolutely, a psychedelic experience is excellent (and possibly essential) for observing the conceptual categorization process. Personally I see it in terms of "same and different", ie the brain sorting "same" things together and distinguishing "different" things from each other, in a fractal heirarchy. Candidates for the top of the heirarchy include "self and other" and "something and nothing", or possibly "self, something non-self, nothing".

                        [–]Freilingme smart dis many 1 point2 points  (3 children)

                        Yeah, I've actually been leaning toward a model of the universe similar to that. The logic and science are correct, but they're only the fractal edges of the real concepts rather than their causes.

                        [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                        Wait are you saying that the Universe itself operates this way. Or just the human modeling of it.

                        [–]Freilingme smart dis many 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                        Here's how I came to the idea, which will illustrate what I mean by it in the first place. Let's assume there are two possibilities (obviously an artificial limitation that will probably undermine my thinking anyway):

                        1. That the universe existed before consciousness, and arose as the consequence of the interaction of energy according to natural laws, leading to the (possibly unlikely) creation of consciousness; or

                        2. That consciousness exists before (or at least above) the phenomenological universe, that all the apparent natural laws that seem to consistently explain it are rather a consequence of that consciousness's experiences than a cause.

                        I'm aware that "natural law" as a term has fallen out of favor, but honestly I'm not very articulate about this sort of thing.

                        Long story short, I'm approaching how to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. In scenario one, there's a chance of consciousness arising from nearly random energy bouncing around, and not just the kind of consciousness we can observe in other beings - the troublesome kind that makes us wonder about solipsism. In the second scenario, the hard part is over with since it preexists everything else. Since consciousness experiences the universe inside its own head (or "head"), it's relatively simple for the universe to be concocted by the mind rather than vice versa.

                        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                        Yeah, I've actually been leaning toward a model of the universe similar to that. The logic and science are correct, but they're only the fractal edges of the real concepts rather than their causes.

                        This would be why we have so much biases and a hard time understanding the out group - because we don't have the base symbolism structures of community or people to understand the new info, and it takes work to create those. Much easier to re-use base structures with nuance on top.

                        [–]johnlawrenceaspden 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                        Yes, yes I do. As I read your comment I heard my inner voice say this, and now I am typing it.

                        [–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (9 children)

                        i have a friend with a daughter who claims to have no internal monologue and it seems like she can't "think". she has difficulty retaining information by reading and can only do so by subvocalization. not intellectually disabled or anything, does decently well in school, just needs to talk to herself all the time. there are a lot of behavioral difficulties however. it's like she acts on impulse most of the time.

                        [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 11 points12 points  (5 children)

                        she has difficulty retaining information by reading and can only do so by subvocalization.

                        Is this all types of information?

                        I'm a math and science person. Current-engineer and possible future doctor. Engineering had very little memorization involved. Biology? Tons of memorization but no issue memorizing it because I can kinda spatially map it in my head. When memorizing all the different parts of the brain for example I can think of a brain and the locations and map them to functions. Chemistry, similarly no problem. Psychology? Good to go. There's lots of concepts to grasp.

                        History though? I haven't taken a history class since like freshman year of college and that was a mistake. I can memorize exactly zero historical information by reading it the way I can with literally everything else. I had to say it out loud to myself, typically with my eyes closed but I'm not sure if that's related. The closest tool that worked was spatially arranging everything according to a timeline in my head, both historical timeline and the location of the information in my textbook, but even then that was ridiculously hard because I had an ABCs problem where in order to recall something that happened in 1863 for a test covering 1850-1900 I would have to start at 1850 and go through an outline in my mind until I reached the right year.

                        Not really sure what the implications of that are, or if I've changed since then, but there's my relevant story.

                        [–]sonyaellenmann 4 points5 points  (2 children)

                        It's wild to imagine what it might feel like to be in your head. My capabilities are flipped from yours. No spatial reasoning, anything geometry-like I have to do on paper, and when I navigate it's by sequences of directions rather than knowing the shape of where I'm going. But I can memorize history trivia and similar information super easily when I put my mind to it, plus recall it instantly. Granted, I won't automatically memorize the specifics, e.g. when reading nonfiction for fun but not studying it. So maybe my memory isn't as good as yours generally? And I don't retain the exact details longterm unless I work with them regularly.

                        [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                        when I navigate it's by sequences of directions rather than knowing the shape of where I'm going

                        I'm pretty much the opposite here too, wonder if it's related. Like despite spending years in manhattan with the nearly numbered grid streets I still couldn't give you actual directions to any of the places I regularly went or their addressed or cross streets. It's all mapped in relations and I just have a general sense of where I am and where I'm going and how to get there.

                        I also really don't like google maps/mapquest style instructions, like "turn right onto X, merge onto Y", etc unless it's a super long drive requiring a bunch of different highways or something. I usually just spent a little while memorizing the map of the area I'm in so if I take a wrong turn I don't freak out because I have a general idea of where I am.

                        [–]sonyaellenmann 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                        It's pretty cool that we have such different cognitive experiences, and yet still so much in common as humans :)

                        My spatial awareness is bad enough that when I'm driving, I can't tell what direction an ambulance is coming from until it gets quite close. This doesn't pose any concrete problems, but it's pretty unsettling whenever I have to deal with it. (Granted, maybe this is an unrelated hearing or auditory processing deficit.)

                        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                        yep, all types of information. she solves math equations the same way, by reading out loud.

                        [–]Freilingme smart dis many 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                        I was the same way with History. It gets much easier, the more you learn. Retention depends heavily on connecting one piece of information with another, to a much greater extent than other studies. That's why it's tempting to make mistakes like assigning narratives to series of events, or attributing causal relationships to grand ideas and personalities. And to be fair, it's the easiest entree to learning history, IMO. But it's fundamentally misleading for serious study... or so I've heard from people who know what they're talking about.

                        [–]Swingingbells 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                        Sounds like she has ADHD.

                        This video addresses all of the deficits you mentioned. Video description is full of more info that isn't covered in the video itself.

                        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                        sent over to my friend, thanks!

                        [–]right-folded 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                        Aww, I talk to myself when I'm about to do some stupid thing and I notice it. The air conveys information more convincingly than corpus callosum =/

                        [–]benmmurphy 10 points11 points  (0 children)

                        I thought the 'science' behind the NPC meme was a study where people were placed in a bunch of different situations then questioned after if they had an internal monologue in those situations. Then because X% of people didn't have an internal monologue in any of the situations the NPC memers used that to make the case that X% don't have an internal monologue at all.

                        But I think it is interesting that some people in this thread say they don't have much of an internal monologue. I think I overuse my internal monologue. I think I talk more to other people being simulated in my internal monologue than I talk to people in real life.

                        [–][deleted]  (5 children)

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                            [–]uniform_convergence 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                            Really interesting to read this from you guys, I am completely opposite from you in many ways but I also wound up with the idea it's best not to talk to yourself too much. At some point when I was younger I caught on that my thoughts were not necessarily created equal, and that it was actually pretty easy to recognize an anxiety-inducing line of thought before it became fully developed. And in fact, I found that a lot of my "thoughts" were just anxiety inducing speculations that didn't have any value to anyway. So I tried not to think them, and became much less anxious about virtually all social scenarios. Maybe this is a mental pattern many people learn, like a stage of social development that people reach at varying points.

                            I noticed the other day that I start internally talking to myself after smoking a bowl. It lasts maybe 15-30 minutes. Generally I'm telling myself I should be going out and doing something productive, not smoking weed and playing video games. I end up playing the video games.

                            funny, I have noticed this too. If I get really high (too high?), my head will feel like an echo chamber, where there is a completely "sober" version of me commenting on what's going on as it happens, assuring me that I'm very high but I'll be just fine, etc...

                            [–]percyhiggenbottom 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                            my subconscious is vastly superior in intelligence

                            This is apparently pretty accurate. Sci fi author Peter Watts (A hard sci fi writer who puts real world papers as references for his sci fi concepts in his books) has a whole thing going with this theme, for example the military in his blindsight series uses troops with a "zombie switch" that turns off their frontal lobes because they get in the way of operational effectiveness

                            [–]-main 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                            Since then I 'trained' myself to suppress internal monologue and 'thinking' during conversations. It drastically reduced my social anxiety and improved other people's impression of myself, I even started showing genuine charisma at times.

                            Interesting; I did the exact opposite in primary school. Trying to translate visual, spatial, and conceptual thought-impressions into words was so slow and unwieldy that I was struggling to communicate fluently and spontaneously. I forced myself to develop an audible internal monologue, and it helped a lot.

                            Even though it slows down thought dramatically, I now can connect thoughts->mouth and let it run, finding words for concepts fluidly and improvising my spoken dialogue. Sometimes it's a bit too unfiltered, but that's an improvement on not being able to speak without planning a spoken sentence in advance. I don't need to prepare sentences in my mind anymore, or pause in the middle of conversation to try and nail things down into language.

                            Now, most of my thoughts are verbal. Still, I lapse into other modes of thinking, especially spatial, when appropriate. And I find that usually it goes faster if I'm not slowing myself down to the speed of spoken language.

                            [–]MSCantrell 13 points14 points  (6 children)

                            I have very little internal monologue and also moderate aphantasia. I speculate that they're related.

                            My spatial imagination seems to make up for the gap in a lot of ways. I can never picture where I left something, but I've got a great sense that it was kind of high and to my right. Where did I read something? I know exactly where it was on the page, but never what color it was.

                            And like /u/SublimeMachine, I'm often thinking in words... if I'm planning on saying or writing those words. Other than that, not much. My thoughts are more about... mmm... kind of pieces fitting together? Or almost literal tangents, directions and, connections?

                            [–][deleted]  (3 children)

                            [deleted]

                              [–]aeschenkarnos 2 points3 points  (2 children)

                              Face-blindness may occur independently of other kinds of inability to visualize or remember. Apparently faces are "stored and processed" in different brain regions, to other images. Prosopagnosia is the term for further research.

                              [–]HelperBot_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                              Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia

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                              [–]Sentient-AIconsistently wrong 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                              How to you remember keycodes? For me that feels more like a shape-y motion process than actually recalling the numbers themselves. I realize by not thinking as visually a lot of my thinking is spacial/movement based.

                              [–]MSCantrell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                              Yep, absolutely. Positional, not numerical.

                              [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

                              As far as I know this idea mostly relies on a misrepresentation of this study. 30 participants were asked to report on their "inner experiences" for a few days and it was found that of all reported experiences only 26% included inner speech. Note that this does not mean 74% of participants did not experience inner speech at all - which is how pol and others later interpreted these results.

                              Actual number of participants not reporting any inner monologue during participation in this experiment was 5, so ~16%.

                              [–]ighstrey 4 points5 points  (1 child)

                              As a thought experiment, try abruptly halting your internal monologue mid-sentence. Somehow you know what it was going to say, right?

                              [–]-main 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                              Pretty much. How could someone think in grammatically correct sentences, without already knowing how the sentence is going to end in order to be able to structure it correctly? Then why not skip the slow sounding-out of the words?

                              [–]HeOfLittleMind 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                              My inner monologue is always actually an imagined dialogue. I'm never talking to myself, I'm talking to someone else. If I'm trying to think through something I imagine myself explaining it to someone. While writing this post I'm imagining myself talking to some nonspecific reader face-to-face, running through the scenarios, imagining how you, reader, would react, and adjusting accordingly.

                              There's that episode of BoJack Horseman that shows his internal monologue (clip) that a lot of people relate to, but it's never really captured what mental illness is like from my perspective. I don't tell myself I'm a piece of shit, I imagine horror scenarios in which other people are reacting to me like they think I'm a piece of shit. If I even have an opinion of myself, it's not directly expressed, it's implicit in my assumptions of how others will perceive me.

                              Edit: To clarify, that doesn't mean I'm incapable of holding an unpopular position based on principle, this is just how it works when I'm on autopilot.

                              [–]Joonmoy 4 points5 points  (1 child)

                              Most of the time, I don't have any kind of inner voice. I don't usually think in words; thinking is more like combining abstract symbols/feelings/concepts in a way that's more immediate and less linear than language. (Thinking in language seems really inefficient to me, although on the other hand, I often have clear thoughts in my head that I find hard to translate into words).

                              I'd put it this way: You know how you sometimes have a clear concept in mind, but you can't remember the word for it (sometimes it may be on the tip of your tongue, and sometimes it may be more "I know there's a word for this")? It feels like I usually think in that pre-verbal mode and only translate the concepts into words when it's necessary.

                              (Not sure if the description above works for everybody.)

                              [–]serfal123 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                              I don't really have an internal monologue unless i try to formulate something carefully in writing.

                              I have no problem having an internal monologue but for the vast majority of my thinking i don't.

                              [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                              I don't notice an inner monologue most of the time. If I was working through something abstract I would form actual sentences in my head but I wanted to make a cup of coffee I would think about coffee and operate the kettle without being aware of the words "coffee" or "kettle" forming.

                              It's interesting that you mention speed reading. I've noticed that I never pick up on puns when reading novels which I assume is because I'm not sounding out the sentence.

                              [–]spirit_of_negation 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                              I think almost entirely non linguistically. Inner monologue happens but it is rare, most of my thoughts are definitely nonverbal. When I am writing or speaking it usually feels like translation, I actively form my thoughts into words. Given the way other people speak and write I suspected this is not true for them for a long time before I read that a lot of people have a lot more verbal thoughts than I have. The thought of everything being just a string of symbols or sounds in peoples head seems way more soulless than directly thinking in terms of conceipts btw. Normies are the real npcs.

                              Linguistic peculiarities with me: I learned speaking very late, with an age of 3.5. This is despite me not being mentally deficient in obvious or measurable ways, on the contrary actually. I also took a little longer to learn to read and write than my classmates, but now my reading speed is very high.

                              [–]4bppconfirmed p-zombie (p<0.05) 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                              I used to have an almost uninterrupted internal monologue until about age 22, but then it just sort of... disappeared. I think the change coincides with my primary language (in terms of what I speak day to day, and what I have incidental verbalised thoughts in when I have them) switching to English, and the language I thought in most of the time before that falling into sufficient disuse that I am actually struggling to produce complete sentences in it from a cold start.

                              The thing is, I vaguely remember making a conscious decision, at some point late in the one-digit age bracket, to develop an inner monologue for reasons that may amount to "this is cool because all the cool brooding fiction protagonists do it". The hypothesis does not seem far-fetched to me that the sort of people who talk about NPCs are generally unapologetic edgelords, and to them being a non-edgelord alone may be enough to qualify someone for "NPC" status. If being an edgelord is also what motivates you to engage in internal monologue, then it stands to reason that NPCs as defined by edgelords would not have one.

                              [–]hippydipster 9 points10 points  (1 child)

                              Ain't got time for internal monologing! i'm doin' shit!

                              There's no monologue when you're in flow.

                              [–]georgioz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                              This is definitelly the case. The internal monologue is very suppressed when in the flow. Either working on interesting mental task, reading a book that I got lost in or playing demanding competitive videogame (e.g. CS:GO).

                              [–]Fluffy_ribbitMAL Score: 7.8 3 points4 points  (13 children)

                              It's actually pretty easy to quiet the inner monologue and worth doing. Not sure how many people are that way naturally, though I did meet a person in r/meditation who claimed to have no inner monologue naturally.

                              [–][deleted]  (7 children)

                              [deleted]

                                [–]Fluffy_ribbitMAL Score: 7.8 0 points1 point  (6 children)

                                Are you referring to visualizations or something else?

                                [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

                                Nonverbal thoughts/awareness.

                                [–]Fluffy_ribbitMAL Score: 7.8 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                                Awareness? You're talking about sense data? Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that just because I could turn off my internal monologue that that meant I had attained atiyoga or even unity of mind. (Although it seems related.)

                                [–]Joonmoy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                                I don't usually have an internal monologue; my thoughts are mostly abstract symbols/feelings.

                                I'd put it this way: You know how you sometimes have a clear concept in mind, but you can't remember the word for it (sometimes it may be on the tip of your tongue, and sometimes it may be more "I know there's a word for this")? It feels like I usually think in that pre-verbal mode and only translate the concepts into words when it's necessary.

                                [–]lehyde 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                                Could you expand on that? What's the easiest way to achieve this and why is it worth doing?

                                [–]Fluffy_ribbitMAL Score: 7.8 20 points21 points  (0 children)

                                Um, so, if you've ever meditated, you know that the mind doesn't stop it's monologue just because you intend for it to be quiet. This is a nice insight into no self by itself if you pay attention and take it seriously.

                                One of the interesting things to do is to watch what the mind thinks about. Often, if there's not a good reason to be engaged with something, it'll get engaged with some nonsense and repeat itself in a loop, over and over.

                                So, one thing you can do is look for where the voice is coming from. And you'll find that it's somewhere in your body, and, especially if the voice isn't strategic, it's associated with some feeling of tension. Since the location of the voice feels like it's coming from inside the head or the throat, this tension is, at least in my experience, just as often associated with swollen lymph nodes as with muscular tightness or the "knots" of the fascia.

                                The are lots of ways of clearing these tensions. If you go read The Mind Illuminated, they describe breath sensations in chapter 5, equivalent to chi in Taoist practice or Prana in Hindu practice. Moving those around in meditation is one way. You can use bodily heat or Ojas, as in Tummo. You can use certain visualizations or tiny movements. You can use stretches, as in Yoga's asanas. Some practices even just reccomend getting a massage. My strategy is to use breath sensations, along with the sensation of "opening" (think about the sensation of gently opening your eyes a little wider) and applying it to the associated tensions.

                                It's normal for the voice to move around, or to feel like it's coming from more than one place at once. So, you need to be able to keep more than one place "open" at once.

                                So, after going through this process, what do you learn?

                                • That the voice isn't you.

                                • That the voice isn't strategic, unless you make some sort of intention for it to be. And often not even then.

                                • That the voice isn't even one voice, but many voices, in many places.

                                • That the mind is the body. The idea of this weird Cartesian dualism between the two becomes a lot harder to take seriously.

                                In addition, after you do this, you now have this totally new state to go study. Can you get emotional without the inner voice? Which emotions? Are some harder than harder than others? Can you do the same thing with visualizations? How do you feel in this state? Are there things you notice only while thinking, or things you only notice while you are?

                                For my part, it becomes more easy to feel the emotions associated with Brahma Viharas and harder to feel a lot of the negative emotions, especially the more complicated ones like jealousy and guilt.

                                I've heard of some people who get really good at this and can even write papers and such without the inner voice and the weird dualism intrinsic in "dictating to yourself," but I haven't got that far. It does make my life generally more pleasantly as the space becomes wider and wider between my verbalized thoughts throughout the day.

                                Hope that was helpful.

                                [–]penpractice 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                                In no world is it easy to quiet the mind in meditation, you're setting people up for failure by saying that... Everything I've read says it takes years of practice, including everything by "experts" in meditation...

                                [–]percyhiggenbottom 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                                easy

                                Sure, I can turn it off. But it creeps back in, after a few seconds I'm unironically thinking "well that was easy, huh, so this is what it feels like to have no internal monologue. Gee, how interesting"

                                Broca likes to chatter

                                [–]dnkndntsThestral patronus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                                Arnold speaks to us all.

                                [–]smidivak 2 points3 points  (4 children)

                                can you link the npc meme post you mentioned?

                                [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                                I don't have a link but it was originally an (old?) XKCD comic of 3-4 people on a subway, each with a thought bubble that's essentially "Wow look at these other people going robotically throughout their day unlike me". Seems like it's being used as political propaganda against the idea of "meme ideologies", where people adopt the ideas of those around them, like being anti-Trump, instead of forming their own opinions.

                                aka "I'm redpilled and everyone else is a bluepilled normie".

                                [–]georgioz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                                Sure, this is NPC post. An this is the speedreading post that made me research it a bit. These two just naturally connected for me.

                                [–]qemqemqem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                                I was surprised to learn that some people don't have internal monologues, but I've noticed that there are some people who don't. Maybe ~15% of people or something? And there are people with no internal dialogue who are very smart! I have noticed that people who report no internal monologue have a greater tendency to think through their problems out loud.

                                [–][deleted]  (1 child)

                                [removed]

                                  [–]georgioz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                                  To be honest I actually am scared of this. I love my internal monologue. It entertains my mind when doing dull things like driving or walking my dog. Also on some occasions with some people I also can stop inhibiting the monologue and pour it out as some sort of controlled stream of consciousness as part of the dialogue with that other person. Having this monologue makes it much easier to put it into words and just throw it out in the dialogue.

                                  I find out that people close to me are impressed by this and they find it very interesting to engage me in the discussion then. I also find myself with some of my best thoughts when I am in this mood.

                                  [–]enhancedy0gi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                                  One answer to this can be underlying physiology, hormones and neurochemistry. Whatever biological cocktail your genetics (being the bartender) made for you is going to reflect how active your internal monologue is. External factors are obviously going to play a factor too; drugs, emotions, endocrinological health and so on. Excited, energetic, stressed or anxious people may have a more active internal monologue, whereas people who are lying in the opposite end of the spectrum; relaxed, tired, depressed or apathetic, may have a much quieter mind. Again, this is likely ultimatively dictated by your individual neurochemistry. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you can check out Robert Sapolskys lectures though I'm not entirely sure if he touches on this specifically. You can also read up on the default mode network system as it may play a larger role in this phenomenon.

                                  If you're interested in adjusting your inner monologue you can look into vipassana meditation which is essentially exercising this particular aspect of consciousness. I used to have a VERY active inner monologue to the point of it being detrimental to my quality of life, and now, after 7 years of meditating and generous experimentation with psychedelics, it is almost non-existent.

                                  [–]gbear605 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                                  I’ve noticed that I only have an internal monologue when I’m really lacking sleep

                                  [–]Fluffy_ribbitMAL Score: 7.8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                                  Huh. Gary Weber claims to be enlightened. He identified dropping his internal monologue as a major step in this process and says he never experiences it unless he was especially sleepy and / or hungry.

                                  [–]Wedding_Crasher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                                  Me: [mumbling]

                                  Husband: "What?"

                                  Me: "Nothing.
                                  Husband: "Were you talking to me?

                                  Me: "No, sorry. I was talking to myself."

                                  Husband: [sigh] "Again."

                                  [–]Beej67[IQ is way less interesting than D&D statistics] -1 points0 points  (8 children)

                                  Does anyone else go through periods of time where their internal monologue is phrased in the form of a Joe Rogan interview?

                                  Or is that just me?

                                  edit:

                                  I thought the NPC memers weren't so much talking about lack of an internal monologue, but describing a caste of people who choose to run indoctrinated conversational scripts instead of applying critical thought. Which, it seems to me, probably make up most of the country on both sides of the culture war.

                                  There was a good Medium piece on this recently by an author I follow.

                                  https://medium.com/@DrSammyD/in-defense-of-the-npc-dc3a66a2baff

                                  ​

                                  ​