Today I learned that not everyone has an internal monologue

I work on a salesfloor... the npcs are the easy sells. Very suggestible.

There is nothing going on up there but some sort of primal ego-driven decision making algorithm.

Salespeople drive me crazy and vice versa. They always start with this long spiel designed to appeal to ego and emotion before finally getting to the only part I care about, the product's features and price.

I'll try to stop them to keep them from wasting their time and mine by telling them I only care about what the product does and how much it costs. But they always say they're required to give the entire presentation.

I don't blame the salespeople, but I do blame the marketers who write these scripts designed to appeal to impulse buyers who purchase based on emotion. I'm sure there must be other people like me who make purchases based on pure pragmatism, but marketers act as if we don't exist.

I bet they get more chargebacks from the impulsive types they cater to as well once buyer's remorse sets in, which is rarely the case when I decide to buy something.

Lol exactly

I wonder how many of these people with no inner monologue grew up spending most of their time on electronic devices.

Maybe during their formative years, they didn't spend enough time engaging in imaginative play. Maybe they always had some gadget to distract and entertain them, so they rarely spent any time in contemplation.

Yeah when I heard this it absolutely blew my mind. These people are like NPC robots

I think intelligence is being able to hold two or more viewpoints in your brain at the same time and debate them. This way you can compare for and against any idea. Less intelligent people seem to only be able to hold one viewpoint at a time and rarely question it. Then, apparently there are
people that don’t even think at all really. They are just on autopilot

The most intelligent people are usually pretty open minded and their views and perspectives are more malleable based on what they learn. You have to be able to do that to continually learn. And you have learning skills to become or stay intelligent. Think about it. And to those that don’t think. Accept what I say as true

Dude, me too. If mine is not asking questions and thinking it’s got music going throughout the day.. Never really thought about it too much until that article. Good thing I like heavy metal or I’d go nuts.

Internal dialogue = people talking to the B.E.A.S.T RNM machine

No internal dialogue = natural people in rest

Internal dialogue people (hooked bots, unwitting) often have tinnitus. They can sometimes break the feedback loop with audio CDs

^^

Inner dialogue is triggered by v2k

You enter a feedback loop and inner dialogue is born

Remember when you didn't had it?

My elder brother said he did not have that. I don't know if it was because he was scared to admit he had a voice in his head or he actually didn't have it?

I could not understand how on earth can you think if you don't have that voice there?

It has nothing to do with schizophrenia. It's the simple act of having your own voice, in your head, asking "hmmm, should I have a cheese and pickle or cheese and onion sandwich"?

Last Edited by keybored on 02/04/2020 05:37 AM

You can't know that because you are not that animal or that baby.

Exactly. Singing a song in their head is a great example.

My internal "voice" is really a cloud of views with a weight label (as in: serious, not so serious, unrealistic, too conventional,...) and predicted consequences. They're rarely "vocalized" or "debated" in my head. They are more like telepathic and instantly presented, formless and soft idea clouds. When I consciously "reach" for one or stir them around, they often shift into something else, coalesce with each other, or break up. That's why rigorous mathematical logic is hard for me, and why I chose physics as a profession, instead.

It is often good to silence those voices, though. Meditation, mindfulness, whatever works for you. Just BE in the PRESENT (feel, be, flow) and the voices go silent.

Lucky devil!

Make this shit go away before I angry masturbate you all back out the same motherfucking way you got in.

I was not aware people talk to themselves in their head, I have never heard of this.

For a long time I have suspected some people do not experience individual consciousness. Like they are either programed or plugged directly into a huge mind.

It is not do much they don't think in words they seem not to think period.

Progressives seem this way but so do status striving yupies, so do cheerleader or jock types etc.

Just something not "there".

How do you think or make decisions?

Are you anxiety prone?

How do you read or write if you do not think in words?

Genuinely curious.

Yeah no shit

This

In that regard I don't think in words. I picture the food or my body craves something. I don't think with words about everything in a day.

But never internal monologue would be weird.

I subvovalize when I read. It is a slower method but comprehension is better. When I do not subvovalize I miss a lot of nuance or details.

When I want a cup of coffee I do not have a internal conversation with myself about it,I just know I want a cup and get it. I hear words in my head as I read them but that is not a internal conversation. That is freaky to me that there are people talking to themselves in their head. No anxieties.

I do both.

Most of my thinking with words is of mundane stuff and sometimes with more abstract concepts I struggle to explain them. I get what he means by translate.

I get it when people explain non verbal thinking just not never having it at all.

I also do not think verbal thinking is that connected to individual consciousness butt here definitely seem to be organic portal or give mind types who act and talk as if programmed externally.

I think in concepts and then wrap language around it...I can see ideas form from a distance in my mind and they develop and become more clear as they get closer...then I describe it in words and a conversation begins...I'm partially colorblind...


How did people think before language? In concepts...

Last Edited by BRIEF on 02/04/2020 07:54 AM

What's blowing my mind is that I always thought the non-stop internal monologue was universal, and that it's of great benefit to learn to silence it at times and just be present and aware. I wrote a script used in a YouTube video to teach people a technique to silence the mind so they can experience this. Now I wonder what would people without this internal voice need to give them an edge up in their mind, because clearly, if they have silence already, it is not helping increase their awareness.

This also reminds me of a time when I was young and went over to a friend's house. When I entered the room, she was sitting on her bed, staring at the wall.

I asked her what she was thinking about. She said nothing. I said, "No, I mean literally. What was going through your mind right before I came in the room and spoke to you?"

She said, "Wall."

I couldn't believe it, and have never forgotten it, but I never thought that it was normal, or that many people would be the same way. Though it does explain a lot.

I have either a non-stop internal monologue that could be thinking about trivial stuff, or it can be extremely complex stuff. I'm always analyzing, assessing, imagining different processes and projected outcomes. At my first job I worked in a distribution center where trucks were unloaded and boxes were moved all around and put on pallets, then conveyor belts etc.

After doing this all day and thinking how it was so simple a monkey could be trained to do it, I started analyzing the flow of boxes and saw how the entire layout was not optimized for efficiency. I visualized the best possible layout and told the manager. After lunch he gathered everyone together and told them we were going to rearrange the whole warehouse setup and proceeded to instruct everyone on what to do - implementing what I had told him.

I was glad he saw my logic and said, "You could've mentioned that this was my idea."

He said, "You're not qualified for it to be your idea. I have a Bachelor's degree in business administration, so this was my idea."

I thought that was kind of dickish, and I wondered why a person with an education hadn't come up with my layout long before I ever showed up. 30+ years later, I still don't know how to assess what it is I do in my mind and use it to my advantage when it comes to getting ahead in life.

One more thing this brings to mind. An experience I've always had is after explaining things to people in detail so they can actually duplicate the concept I need or want them to understand, I find that they usually retain a simplified, un-nuanced, and sometimes wrong interpretation. When they refer to it later, or repeat it to someone else, it's nothing like what I said. That led to me learning that people sometimes can't even process beyond simple ideas and communication, but they don't ask for clarification. They just say something to indicate they understood.

Only once did a person tell me to slow down and give her time to process.

I was told once (again, as a teenager) that not all people process things with words and analytical thought. Some think with pictures and some with just feelings. That puzzled me forever. This was from a guy trying to help me improve my relationship with his step-daughter - telling me that she didn't think the way I did and I needed to try to communicate with her in a non-logical way. As a 16 year old, I thought this was incredibly stupid and made no sense.

You've re-opened a huge can of mysteries for me to "think" about, OP. Thanks for the great post!

So basically your thought process is similar to an animal, or maybe an infant or caveman?

Am I properly understanding?

Well, the thing is if you do it out loud instead of in your head it's considered "cray". Yet, in movies we see they do it all the time. Because they have to let you know what the character is thinking. You see that a lot in soap opera dramas. The person turns away from the action and then vocalizes the voice in their head.

A lot of stuff though is or become "understood". It's only novel ideas or things that one must mull over in the mind. I don't "hear" a voice. I use words but as others have said, I just use my silent reader voice, which isn't my actual speaking voice.
I wonder about people like Gilbert Gottfried that has a distinct show bizy voice he uses. I would be surprised if that was also his internal dialogue voice. It probably is one more bland in intonation. But, perhaps not. Or say Carol Channing. I seriously doubt she was all whispery squawky in her internal thinking voice.

I just did an expeiment, I was using my internal voice and then started vocalizing my thoughts out loud and it did appear to me to be a seamless transition.

This is why I hate watching TV commercials. I want to know what the product is, which you often can't even tell sometimes until the last few seconds. Then I want to know what it costs. Commercials could be quick, informative, and efficient.

Seeing a child run toward its grandma, or dandelions being blown on, or people dancing in the street, etc., doesn't tell me a thing and in fact, loses my interest in whatever is being sold because I already don't like how they've chosen to inform me about their product.

Of course you have to shut if off sometimes. If you continue to talk in your head you are not really listening to someone else. You are just already formulating what you are going to say next. I get the sense a lot of people do this. They aren't really listening to anyone, they are wandering or got "hooked" on some concept spoken in passing and then went off on tangent meanwhile the speaker has moved on and eventually one just "tunes" back in, I suppose but they haven't been listening. And of course were already deep in internal dialogue when the person was first introduced so therefore "missed" hearing the name. Most people are horrible with names for this reason, they were "pre-occupied" with their thoughts.

lol

However you'd like to classify it is ok by me...just know that I have scored consistently into the 99th percentile...It's my opinion that thinking in language only is very limiting, though I'm capable as I have outlined previously...

4 out of 5 people don't think? I bet those same people make up a similar number of the sociopaths at least. Surrounded by literal idiots who don't think and don't have empathy.

This is Hell and people are the demons.