The various memory competitions are probably the best example of this. It's not there are people who can just pick up a deck of cards and naturally remember the order they were in. Everybody learns, and uses, extensive tricks to do so. The most typical for memory competitions is to associate each card with some vivid image in your mind. And so when you memorize the cards, you're not really memorizing the cards but instead creating a story in your mind of how those images interacted, and then reciting that story back.
Language itself is another example of this. The above paragraph is 94 words, yet you could probably recite it pretty much verbatim in terms of what was said, even if using different words. Think about how absurdly remarkable that is. You just "memorized" 94 words without even trying. So I guess it begs the question of why some guy would spend a bunch of time teaching himself to reverse phonemes. The linked YouTube channel is called Alone Time Club, and features videos of him in the wilderness alone, and now he's cashing in his skill to some quirky 15 seconds and a few dollars. Probably a better expenditure of free time than what most of us do, all things considered!
What if it isnt? What if there is a zoo out there, with loads of different people with different skills just because the brain-maturation took a entirely different turn when they were a baby/child or the genetics did play out strange? Why is such a world of mental diversity so threatening to even just imagine? I find the thought of a alien mind just waiting for a coffe right next-to-me exhilarting and fascinating. Not to look at the sky, just to listen and find out that not everyone is a carbon copy of me (as my lazy flat copy mirror-neurons default implies) is a great adventure.
> Language itself is another example of this. The above paragraph is 94 words, yet you could probably recite it pretty much verbatim in terms of what was said, even if using different words. Think about how absurdly remarkable that is. You just "memorized" 94 words without even trying.
For instance the 'trick' of casually memorizing games you play isn't a feat of some super-human memory. It's, inadvertently, the exact same 'trick' that memory competitors use. When a reasonably strong player looks at a chess board, it begins to tell an often vivid story of what's happened and what will happen. And stories are really easy to remember for everybody. So memorizing your games isn't really like memorizing a series of arcane moves, but instead more like recounting a familiar tale.
We can even cheat, because so long as you remember all the key points of a game, you can generally reconstruct the filler in between - again, just like telling a story. It's why it can be much harder to remember games against weaker players than your peers - their moves, and thus stories, often don't make as much sense, and so it gets pretty fuzzy pretty quickly. This is also why you might often notice things like strong players able to relatively easily replay 80 distinct moves of an arbitrary game, but have difficulty remembering the exact date the game was played.
'Talent'/genetics obviously plays a role, but mostly only in determining what your peak potential is. But the fact that the overwhelming majority of people (including e.g. grandmasters) will never get anywhere remotely near to their genetic potential in anything makes it largely inconsequential in practice. In any case, we certainly aren't carbon copies. These 'tricks' I'm mentioning here only really emerge after many years of concerted and dedicated study of something. The overwhelming majority of people will never do anything like this, so whether ones brain is an 'alien mind' or not becomes largely a matter of semantics.
The human mind is ambiguous, and you have created a comforting narrative to explain it. This is a very human response to the threat of ambiguity.
It is not clear which part 'this' refers to. We as humans know very little about our brains.
The original commenter assumes there is little variation in the human mind based on a narrow observation about memory feats in chess, then generalized that idea to the entirety of humanity.
But for some reason people don’t want think that the largest component is lots of work.
He says it required a lot of training, he needs to focus and that he also needs to warmup (starting with shorter sequences of sounds).
I believe you are right.
Or people who don't have an internal dialogue. This is probably the most weird to me because it is common and I can't comprehend how they manage their thoughts.
Another common one is when trying to explain complex interactions that are quite simple in 'no-words' and I have to start diagramming things, then explain the diagram in language.
Related is when you forget a word. You've got the specific meaning in your mind, and you know there exists a word for it, and it's in your brain somewhere, but you just can't get the appropriate neurons to fire to give it to your conscious mind. (And then it might randomly appear to your during some other random task.)
at other times (when I was a teen) when I’ve specifically tried to think-without-words, I thought I had, and then shortly afterwards either realized or thought I had realized, that I had been thinking with words, and had just been hiding the words from myself?
Also does it extend to visual imagination? I think of myself as having an internal cinema rather than just monologue.
Try these things out.
Count in your head at a steady pace using words and try to hold a conversation at the same time without losing your timing.
Then imagine a moving image of the same numbers steadily ticking over and again try and hold a conversation without losing your timing.
The 2nd scenario should be easier.
You can do similar things with memorising numbers. Next time you have to enter your OTP, sound out the digits to memorise it before entering it.
Then try memorising a picture of the numbers before entering it.
That's actually a really simple parlor trick.
There's a formula involving modular math. Takes an hour or two to learn it.
Lol, I am someone with no such internal dialog. The idea that you self-narrate every thought in your brain seems utterly baffling to me. And... It sounds absolutely maddening, and really inefficient. Like that must be SO annoying?
I think largely in the form of something I call "thought-shapes".
I have a friend who, in his youth, decided one day that he was going to be left handed because a teacher he admired was left handed and he wanted to be like them. He is genuinely left handed now. I'd heard of the opposite - often with severe treatment - with asian parents, but never that.
On that note, I had a left handed teacher who could write sentences in kanji in full mirror mode two handed (both swapping left and right and double-swapping left-right/up-down). His parents had beaten him and taped down his disobedient left hand.
I can read at full speed upside down. It makes absolutely no difference. It's a good party trick, and one had a practical purpose where someone was presenting an offer letter to me which had all the wrong values, which I knew because it was on the desk in front of them and I simply read it, so I pre-empted them and told them to go get a new letter made, much to their confusion.
If you've ever known someone who was an expert non-digital artist, yes, it is true that they do typically practice a ton to hone their skills, but the ability to simply capture an object, person, animal or scene at a glance is uncanny.
I know someone who has that skill, but for politics. They look at the situation and see exactly the players, the motives, etc. As far as I can tell, their entire career is based on this. A weird talent I've never heard anyone else describe.
I'm one of those folks. I write left handed, but other stuff tends to be mostly, but not completely, right handed. This is mainly since there's a small advantage to right handedness (baseball gloves fit, mouses are there, guitars are right handed by default, etc.). There's a lot of randomness: I eat right handed, except when using chopsticks (left-handed), including long cooking chopsticks, but tongs (which have a similar purpose) are with the right hand.
Assumed unrelated, but responding to a different part of your post: I can also read and write in mirror image with little loss of speed. I've never thought of that being particularly special. I just started randomly taking notes in mirror image in high school out of boredom (and right-to-left is slightly more comfortable for lefties).
Could that be somehow related to synesthesia? Not long ago I've read: "Wednesday is indigo blue" by Richard E. Cytowic and David M. Eagleman. Super interesting book and topic even if you're not into cognitive sciences. The book goes in depth how synesthetes radically perceive one or more features (sound, vision, taste) in "strange" ways compared to non-synesthetes. Highly recommended read though.
I blame Amadeus of course. Gniklat sdrawkcab si nuf!