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Comment by mypastself | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I remember being annoyed by comic books as a kid when I’d see a person thinking in full sentences. I’m still not convinced verbalization is the default mode: how slow would a person’s thought processes have to be if they had to spell everything out in internal monologues?

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Definitely the default for me. I often do think in other ways - I have very vivid auditory imaging, especially with music training, but think visually for a especially anything spatial, navigation, etc., but often even narrate that to some extent (for example thinking through a route before driving and just narrating something in my mind like “yes, yes, yep, yeah, nope, no, ok, uh huh, yep” while I visualise each turn).

>how slow would a person’s thought processes have to be if they had to spell everything out in internal monologues?

The verbalized "thoughts" come after the fact. They thought already exists and then you put it into words to yourself. The verbalization can be confused for thinking.

This is a good point. I bet a lot of people who assume that since they process their thoughts verbally in their head that all of their thoughts are word based, but there had to be some function under that stringing the words together to express the thoughts verbally.

It would be like your Operating System thinking that it performed the computations it needed to show this web browser on your screen without the help of the CPU.

I don’t know about other people, but I don’t “have to”. I can and do think in both verbal and nonverbal modes.

Verbal is usually when mulling over options, like what to get for dinner.

Well, I guess we all verbalize internally in certain situations (I definitely do when I’m writing comments or deliberately organizing my thoughts). In that case, it seems the original Reddit thread is based on a misunderstanding of the definition and scope of “internal monologue”. It’s certainly nothing like aphantasia, which seems like a genuine condition.

Me too, my inner monologue sometimes helps keep me on track. But it's only a mode of thinking.

It's easy to prove, you can think about some graph or some physical object. If you can manipulate it in your mind and can answer questions about it, then you're probably not thinking verbally.

Say, how to go from place A to place B, if you've never travelled that route. But you know how things are laid out. Some people really struggle with this by the way.

Do you read at the same speed of speech?

Same thing.

Surely there’s a lower time limit at which verbalization is even possible. Split-second decisions cannot involve any words, let alone sentences, regardless of the speed at which they’re produced.

I suspect the "words" are post-hoc rationalization for default mode network.

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

Well most thought isn’t done that way even for those of us with robust internal monologues. In fact that’s the working definition of subconscious.

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