cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/2916897
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The original was posted on /r/science by /u/mvea on 2024-05-15 10:17:06+00:00.
Some inner voice talking to me all time sounds fucking awful haha
Eh, it isn’t all the time for most people, and it isn’t hard to shut down for most people either.
The key is that it isn’t a separate entity, it’s just your own mind using words to ideate. Like, you can see the sky and just enjoy the blue, or you can think about the blue in words, if you have that inner voice. People without that voice still have a way of processing and thinking, it just isn’t in words, it’s more abstract.
The few people I’ve met that don’t think in words do seem to have difficulty in expressing the experience to others though.
As someone with an inner voice, I can’t even imagine how I’d think about abstract concepts without words. Like, how does “I love freedom” or “I wish all people could be free” happen without words? Maybe this is a learning disability of mine, and explains why interpretive dance doesn’t make any sense to me.
Yeah I can’t imagine functioning without an inner voice. Mines constant. I can’t really make any decisions without internal debate and I have to sorta constantly keep track of things I need to this. after work im going to do x this weekend I need to get y and z done. W needs to get done before the end of the month.
I didn’t think this “not using inner voice” thing applied to me, but the way I read the article maybe it does. If the inner voice is truly a voice using grammatical spoken language it sounds crazy limiting.
As someone with an inner voice, I can’t even imagine how I’d think about abstract concepts without words. Like, how does “I love freedom” or “I wish all people could be free” happen without words?
None of this is in words when I’m thinking about it. I’m putting words here to describe the concepts , thoughts and feelings, of each step but none of it is words when I’m thinking it.
Freedom
- limitless choice
- peace and comfort
- patriotism (to the extreme, ironic terms freedom being used as a method of control)
- anti-freedom = slavery or being controlled
- personal experience with making free choices
- historical learning about situations where they didn’t have freedom
- personal luck in being born in a (mostly) free country
- imagining being born and living in a place without freedom
- fictional examples of lack of freedom, like sci-fi dystopia
- empathy about those that don’t have the same things I do
- sense of justice about equality
- memory of muscles used to make my mouth and larynx say the word “freedom” FREEEEEE — DUUMMM
All of the above only takes a second or two of actual elapsed time.
Words that come out:
“I love freedom. I wish all people could be free”.
Interpretive dance is about expressing feelings without words. Mimes convey a ton of meaning without words. Both use motion and body language in ways that not everyone is familiar with, kind of like speaking a language. Other things people do physically, like shaking hands, bowing, and hand gestures have regional meanings like verbal language does.
Non-verbal communication can be hard, but then again speaking different verbal languages is a barrier too.
It’s not “some voice” talking “to you”, it really just feels like your thoughts are words, if they’re “word adjacent thoughts”.
Like, thinking about how to phrase that first part, it felt like I was reciting the words I was thinking of typing, not like someone else was saying them to me.
