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Comment by radio879 | Hacker News Reader

There are people who do not have any words in their heads at all when they think, and there doesn't seem to be any reason to disbelieve them. It may have been proven or at least observed in fMRI. Some people think in visuals.

I think some of this was discovered somewhat recently

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I think you're conflating different things. Many people do not have an internal 'narrator'. I am one. I don't have a voice in my head saying words, ever. I do definitely have something like a playback of other people saying things, though. Words are still in there in the form of recall, they are just not part of the executive layer in a way I have access to.

What about when you're reading? You don't have a voice in your head saying the words?

Only if it is a very hard text that I have to move slowly thru. For normal reading, no not at all. If I am trying to read something faster than is comfortable, I will periodically emphasize the thing, the idea, behind a key word, so I am more likely to remember it at the useful time. Not verbal and there are many many times when I can describe the thing but not recall the normal word. Like the flat thing with keys in it instead of keyboard. Or even weird quasi-synonyms that serve to muddy the waters as far as sharing my thoughts with others goes.

No. Do you? Like you hear words in your head?

Obviously there is a language layer in there somewhere, but my 'driver' doesn't access it. I don't think in words, I don't have an internal narrative, and when I'm reading I don't even 'see' individual words, in the same way you aren't thinking about your ankle muscles when you're hitting the brakes while driving.

I definitely can consciously make words, but it's 'me' deliberately deciding to make them and hold them in my head. It wouldn't happen naturally.

Yes, which maybe is a disadvantage because it limits the speed I read to the speed I can articulate the words in my head. But most of the time I'm not consciously aware of it, just like people who go one step further and move their lips are usually not aware (I assume).

And some people can’t see any pictures in their minds! My partner is one of these people. We both really enjoy reading fiction books, often with a fantasy or sci-fi bent and it genuinely amazes me that they can experience these books in a way that feels wholly alien to me.

The fun of reading to me is constructing the world in my minds eye and turning the words on the page into a visual experience only found in my mind using imagination. This is a reason why many people get upset when a movie adaptation is made and the actor chosen for their favorite character feels very off or wrong; their mental picture of that character is totally different and it causes dissonance that our brains don’t like. For my partner this is a non issue because they never make a mental image of the person, so the movie is genuinely the first time they are “seeing” a physical representation of the character.

The human mind is genuinely amazing and fascinating and I believe that this range of human experience will be the final 20% for “AI” that might never be reproducible.

Does anyone else just end up with a random celebrity 'playing' characters in your brain image of scenes? I find that I generally picture a person that I have seen on TV, with details that don't nessesarily match book character details.

For example, I recently read a novel where there is 'tough lady cop' character and in my brain, entirely involuntarily, the role has been assigned to Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Rosa Diaz in exactly the clothing and context she exists in that TV show.

When the character in the book has a certain clothing or whatever it all kinda glosses over until it's back to the character I have seen before.

I don't know if this is more a male thing or am ADHD thing or what but details of characters dress and looks are pretty much lost on me once there are assigned a character from 'central casting'

> This is a reason why many people get upset when a movie adaptation is made

I still haven't watched the Dune movies because of this reason. I liked the book a lot, and had a very personal image of what the world looked like, and was afraid to lose it. Unfortunately, by now, I've seen many video clips on social media, and my internal imagery has already been poisoned. Might as well watch the movies at this point.

This is highly contested, most likely not true, and probably not measurable anyway.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976251335583

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