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Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

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

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

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I never knew that people actually thought verbally! I always thought it was a figure of speech.

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

Wow. I don't know what to think.

For me, thinking verbally means either monologue by someone else than me, or dialogue with not-me. Rarely dialogue where neither party is me. You've never argued with ancient Greeks? I find the act of dialogue with my idea-form of Plato hilarious.

Similarly until last year I never knew that people actually could visualize things when they closed their eyes. I thought it was more of a metaphor. But alas when I close my eyes it's darkness. Thankfully I have my internal monologue to describe things to me in that darkness.

I can't visualize every kind of object. The easiest things to visualize are simple geometric shapes with a strong color. By default, if I try to "visualize something" it will be a red triangle.

I cannot visualize faces whatsoever, even if the person is right in front of me and I close my eyes suddenly.

Glad it's not just me that cannot visualize faces whatsoever! But with the exception of faces, I can visualize complex 3d shapes if I'm lucid dreaming. When I'm fully awake, my visualization abilities decrease quite a bit, so when I get a chance (which isn't so often with kids) I'll often lie in bed for an hour or so just thinking visually. My wife thinks I'm being lazy, but it's often the most productive part of my day.

Have you tested yourself for face-blindness or prosopagnosia?

When I close my eyes the images I can produce are no more vivid than the images I can produce with my eyes open. E.g., I can picture the car driving down the street behind me, or I can imagine a sphere in front of me. But in either can it's semi-transparent. It's like a hologram places in 3d-space relative to my-self, and it doesn't matter if my eyes are open or not. This is what I consider imagination. I thought this is how it worked for everyone.

How does this relate to what you're saying? Are you considering this visualizing things or not?

I am having this reaction also.

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

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

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

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

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

I never imagined that that was the actual thought!

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

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

Yes, for example there's the movie trope of becoming able to hear "the thoughts of others", and then the person goes in a bar and hears these sentences, like "hm I wonder if she ..." and so on.

I pointed out how unrealistic this is and you obviously couldn't hear such things, as thoughts aren't literally sentences like this. And my friend was just brushing my comment off as if I was not making any sense, since thoughts are obviously sentences like this (for him)...

6 years ago I tried relaxing and listen to smooth jazz or something. Being in the moment and just observing my surrounding with hyperfocus was very pleasant. Time felt infinite. Time was now. I have these lapses every now and then, but I wouldn't have it as my new normal.

Without your thoughts you only your body, an animal. Language is what expands human sphere of influence beyond what we see, taste and feel. The "Noosphere", if you will [1]. I don't find internal monologue counterproductive, it's how I explore the possible and impossible without moving.

P.S An honest thanks, I wouldn't have discovered my own thoughts on this subject without an invitation to dialogue in the form of your comment. Language takes two :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

It's extremely likely that many non-human animals have similar thoughts. Put another way, it's extremely unlikely that humans have adopted almost all our traits from other animals, except for the inner monologue.

Once while walking home I had an almost revelatory experience. I looked at a car in an intersection and I felt speechless and toughtless, just looking at the car. Of course I don't know how animals "feel" internally, but I felt like this must be how dogs or deer see the world. It was very brief and is hard to explain. (No I didn't take any drugs.)

> Without your thoughts you only your body, an animal. Language is what expands human sphere of influence beyond what we see, taste and feel.

This is nonsense. Geoffrey Hinton pretty much demolished this. Language goes in, and language comes out, but your thoughts aren't little word-symbols in your head. They're patterns of activation. Language is a by-product, not the essential thing. As I pause while writing this, I'm visualizing a machine part, rotating it in my head, animating screws going into it and out of it, and oh, it just turned into a banana and walked away.

> the process is spontaneous and involuntary

Do you consider that the parts of yourself that are not conscious are in fact not part of yourself?

Otherwise it cannot be involuntary. Some part of you has decided to have those thoughts.

Ex nihilo nihil fit.

I'm not sure what point you're making, but it sounds like this is less about how you define the self and more about how you define involuntary. The heartbeat is an involuntary action and is simultaneously part of yourself. That's all I mean.

I agree that a heartbeat is an involuntary reflex but I don't see how you can compare that to the mind chatter which is AFAIK related to cognition much like the rest of your thoughts and mental processes.

Not only that, your inner monologue is completely unique to you. Probably from a part that you do not identify with which is why I was asking.

Ah, okay I see what you're saying!

If you consider a young, attractive person who identifies with their beauty, eventually when they age and likely lose that beauty they once perceived, they end up feeling like they have lost themselves--or at least some huge aspect of themselves--and suffer greatly because of it.

Alternatively, if they recognize their looks are just a transient thing that is not their identity, then losing that perceived beauty is much more benign and life is more peaceful. It's because there was always much more to them than their perceived beauty.

It's the same thing with emotions and cognition. Identifying with mind chatter--or thoughts in general, in their supremely transient nature--is to impose a limitation on ourselves and invite suffering.

Not to pretend that I'm this untouchable entity that is above all of this, but I've found this to be a very healthy practice that makes space for a peaceful, harmonious way of living.

I know what you are talking about. Did zazen daily for years when I was younger.

Personally I found that detachment and identification are two different things. I do identify with mind chatter or emotions as part of me but I try to not get carried away by those things. As they say, this too shall pass.

I guess the idea is that the part that makes decisions is not under your control and you are just an "observer" who justifies what this "person" is doing. It is a scary thing if true, but can help in understanding why things are the way they are.

Yes it's an interesting point and AFAIK research is showing this to be quite true.

Okay, let's say you decide to stop justifying it. Does that result in any material difference in the real universe? If yes, congrats, you just made a fully voluntary impact on the world.

If you mean you're an observer and your judgement is fully isolated from any future behavior of the unconscious, then I'd be interested in hearing an elaborated version.

I also have ADHD and OCD but I'm a mostly non verbal thinker. It took me some time to modify the expositions techniques to treat OCD to my kind of thought experience. But for the most part it worked and I am usually unaffected by this intrusive thoughts.

I suspect that everyone has an inner dialog, but the defining difference could be on which side of your subconscious it's on.

It might not be that some people don't have an inner dialog, it could be that those people aren't capable of directly observing it.

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