Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhaak | Hacker News Reader

Thinking doesn't need words. Thinking for me is a process of ideas and concepts coming from different directions, colliding, merging, splitting, transforming, and then going into other directions to interact with other thoughts.

The translation between these concepts to words or sentences from my mouth or my fingers is effortless by the way. Which I myself find interesting. I think it should take some effort but it doesn't.

If you wonder how one can think without an inner voice then I wonder can you even think without your inner voice? And can your inner voice be faster than your vocal voice and if not, doesn't that slow down your thought process?

View on HN

This is exactly how I would describe it, as someone without much of an inner eye or an inner voice.

I can have an inner voice. I use it to practice how things sound in my head, or if I want to be very specific about wording, or when trying to parse some complex text, or to work out a sum. That’s how I know that most of the time I don’t use an inner voice to think.

Most of the time it’s like I have thoughts without words, and turning it into words must be handled by some unconscious part of my brain, because it’s automatic and silent.

Same here, and the thought itself is basically instant, so why go through the long process of narrating the thought to myself? I just have the next one.

This is getting more confusing. Just because you can think in words doesn’t mean you enumerate everything in words. I think of myself as someone with an inner voice that I use often but not everything that happens in my mind is subvocalized. A lot of it is imagining or recalling images or movements, there’s spatial awareness when thinking about positioning things and manipulating objects, there are non verbal recollections like music or recalling a sound something made and there are thoughts that are more like pure concepts or feelings. Maybe there is some misunderstanding about how the inner voice is used or maybe I’m wrong and there are people who exclusively think in words?

There are people who have all their thoughts in words (most people, in fact). I don't think they actually have their thoughts in words, I think they just narrate them to themselves after they have them.

I used to do this, but I stopped at some point.

> doesn't that slow down your thought process?

probably yes.

also, when being asked questions I rehearse and rephrase the answer in my head often stumbling or pausing uncomfortably long to actually get it out for fear of it sounding weird or wrong or dumb.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com