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Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

> American philosopher Jerry Fodor proposes an alternative idea, called the “Language of Thought” hypothesis. He argues that in addition to our consciously perceived internal monologues, we have a second internal language that is codified into the brain—a kind of “mentalese,” that we don’t consciously perceive.

That's roughly in line with the anecdotal reports from the "tulpa" community seem to report when trying to train a portion of their brain to operate as a quasi-independent entity: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/

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I can attest to this. I don't have an inner monologue (not that I can't, I just don't), I stopped in my teens. Nowadays, if I do talk to myself internally, I can feel the idea forming initially in milliseconds, and then the internal monologue just puts it in words, but it's just for amusement, it's not something necessary for thought. Most of the time (like right now, when writing this comment) I skip the monologue entirely.

It makes sense to me that this is exactly how we talk. We don't think things out at first in our heads, we just form an idea and then say the words to communicate it.

I was talking about this with a friend, entirely incidentally, and it turns out that he does the same thing too. I find it hard to believe we're that rare.

I've noticed this when speaking about complex topics. The unvocalized thought will be a the edge of my brain, and while, with simpler topics (such as this), I pre-vocalize it internally before speaking, with complex topics, I am unable to, and instead, the final vocalization just happens unconsciously without any internal "rehearsal".

Some insights I even have trouble putting into words, and I stumble for a bit trying to explain them to co-workers.

>It makes sense to me that this is exactly how we talk. We don't think things out at first in our heads, we just form an idea and then say the words to communicate it.

This sounds pretty familiar to me - I feel communication is like serializing my thoughts, which happens without internal monologue. It seems to me like everyone would think this way, but I have no idea.

Me too. Thought is more fluid; putting it into words concretizes it, collapses the possibilities of the waveform. Somewhat, formalizes it.

Words are a serialization format for thought. There are different formats; there are also different bindings possible for the same information in the same format. Grammars are used to describe both. Actually, important early work on regular and context free grammars was done by a linguist.

Of course, none of that shows that thought is analogous to graphs of data structures. But I suspect if we ever develop direct brain-to-brain communication (i.e. prelinguistic telepathy), we'll see similar problems to interoperating programs written by different people at different times in different contexts for different purposes.

> Thought is more fluid; putting it into words concretizes it, collapses the possibilities of the waveform. Somewhat, formalizes it.

That is a very good description.

I discussed this topic with a colleague recently, and we both agreed that putting thoughts into words takes conscious effort. Though I suspect that is not so for the majority of people, whose default mode of thinking is distinctly verbal, even when not talking or writing.

Yes but I think you might also find that a lot of times this mental abstraction/short hand is where bias lives. This is why it's so effective to verbalize problems. You frequently see patterns and logical fallacies only once you verbalize a train of thought. Therapy in general is a great example of this, but also the "rubber ducky trick" in software where you explain the problem to an imaginary rubber ducky sitting on your monitor (or call over a colleague and explain it to them etc.) and you magically figure out the problem just by verbalizing. Happens all the time for me at least, speaking of bias :)

I have internal monologue only when I'm trying or planning to talk, to write something or debug something with rubber duck. And even then it's more like dialogue.

I'm incredibly thankful I don't have this most of the time, but just a few days ago I got one of my occasional migraines where I get temporarily a type of aphasia that makes it so I can't remember a word other than to know the sounds coming out of my mouth are not correct, I can't parse written language, and I forget a lot of words.

It's fascinating to me because it lasts only 22 minutes, but man is it incredibly frustrating. Being intermittently aphasic is really fascinating intellectually though because I can feel/watch as the part of the brain you're describing is temporarily shut down or working improperly.

I can often say one or two words and then eight of gibberish, knowing exactly what I intended to say (in meaning, but with no valid internal monologue) but the words just coming out garbled. I can focus really hard and make a specific sound, but I can't do things like "awk" because it's too complex of a physical motion to make with my jaw and tongue. I can basically intentionally make baby sounds, occasionally a word escapes as intended, but mostly it's just bizarre obviously wrong sounds -- slightly different each time I say the word but mostly similar.

Brains and language are really weird.

With regard to your comment about thinking without monologue, I tried doing that for about a year by using some meditation techniques since it seemed like an interesting idea to avoid "mistranslation" of an idea I fully grok already into language. I'm now convinced that what happens when I talk it through to myself is that data compression is occurring that lets me store a lower fidelity, but longer lasting and more communicatable version of the concept. My memory suffered a lot that year, and many of the concepts were fully lost.

Not to be that person, but if you haven't already, you might want to get a professional to look into that, just in case.

Yeah, migraines doing this isn't unusual. Nothing worth worrying about =) Thanks for the concern.

I'm really curious about this. Was stopping your inner monologue as a teen a conscious decision or did it just happen? If it was a conscious decision, how did you do it?

It wasn't a conscious decision, I remember noticing that I had no inner monologue continually, it'd almost never stop. Years later, I realized I just didn't speak out loud in my head except for a few occasions.

I think it may be related to the fact that I don't subvocalize when reading, maybe. Even right now, when thinking about this reply, I can feel what I want to say forming in my mind, but it's not words, it's just a concept and then I put it in words while typing it.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more useful, alas.

This seems fairly obvious, we don't use English to communicate to ourselves to move our fingers over the keyboard for example, or breath, or do any movements. Even visualizing stuff in the 'minds eye' doesn't require language, you just 'do' it. It's not much of a leap to think that the English we hear in our head comes from somewhere too, a more basal/instinctual level. If you look up speed reading too, you'll find that the people try to unlearn the hearing of the voice in their head when they see a word, in order to be able to process more words quicker.

As for the 'tulpa' link, that might be one of the stranger thing I have seen in a while! I think it is natural to hear other peoples voices in your head that you know from real life, when you you hear their reactions to some action you do. But I've never heard of training a whole new voice from scratch! Anythings possible I guess.

Not to mention programming. Tracing/composing an algorithm or larger program is entirely visual and semantic, like flowcharts. There's no need for internal monologue using spoken language.

I am not an author, but I would imagine that creating such internal entities as "tulpas" is something every good author does?

I can understand getting in someones head, and trying to think as they do. But hearing their voice, and seeing them, and talking to them and they reply like a separate person? I'm not so sure about that..

If you find it fascinating/strange you might be interested in this snazzy article (which is the one which linked me to the concept to begin with) that discusses plausible (but speculative) mechanisms for both this and other mental phenomena, including dissociative identity disorder and certain religious experiences: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/neurons-gone-wild/

(I think I came across the link in the comment pages here not too long ago, and it's been posted to the main news stream before, a while ago.)

Jerry Fodor being the guy who argues seriously that every possible concept from CAT to CARBURETOR is innate.

(Yes, I know that's a very superficial[0] interpretation.)

[0] http://www.margolisphilosophy.com/uploads/1/1/0/7/11073530/r...

There's no "tulpa community". It's just one big joke.

https://reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/3111ug/meta_just_so_you...

>I know it's on the official unwritten rules, like how everything in /r/nosleep "is totally real guys 4srs" so that readers can immerse themselves into the story, and that this is all like, a parody sub from that one video.

>But seriously, I think some of these new people think we mean it these days.

>Guys, seriously, tulpas don't exist. Knock it off. Jokes aren't funny when people make them real.

That was posted on April fools according to the comments. It might be worth actually reading your sources?

Don't be silly now. There's totally a community. Granted, it's basically comprised of a bunch of people whose stated mission is conspiring to deliberately drive themselves mildly insane and conjure hallucinations and voices in their head... and you needn't trust their testimony any further than you can throw it... but this IS the Internet and there are surely stranger communities out there. (just don't ask me where to find them, I have no idea.)

Youre right, the basis for the group came from creepypasta and Supernatural.

However the history of the Tulpa is interesting. I implore you to read Alexandria David-Neel about her memoirs of Tibetan Buddhist magic.

What got me started was that others could see your thought form. So, what's being seen? If it was an illusion of brain chemicals, why can someone else's brain observe it?

But yeah, stay away from /r/tulpas and go read David-Neel's books. And try it before you knock it. You might find something, or nothing at all.

Downvoted as Patently False because anyone who spends 30 seconds to look up the FAQ for /r/tulpas and read the rules can find the part where they explicitly disallow the creepypasta and the part where they say "the bulk of the community sees this is an entirely psychological technique".

(However, factual matters aside, you may feel free to Reddit-bash all day long and I won't mind, or promote David-Neel if that's what you're into.)

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