[psyc]

The only time I ever think in words is when I’m specifically thinking about how I would say or write something, and when holding Socratic dialogues with myself. Otherwise it’s all pictures, usually 3D, and usually moving.

Oh, unless it’s musical. Then it’s music. But I can visualize that too.

[red75prime]

Interesting. What picture do you have for something like "I promised to meet my nephew I never met before next Tuesday at 3 Av/E 117 St I never visited before."?

When I shut down my internal monologue I have trouble thinking about things beyond routine procedures and memories.

[Jensson]

> I promised to meet my nephew I never met before next Tuesday at 3 Av/E 117 St I never visited before.

You don't work with that as a single packet, it is just many tidbits of information. I learned you have a nephew, that you haven't seen this nephew before, that you never visited that place, that you promised to meet them at a specific location. So you add all of those things to your brain, that is equivalent to the sentence.

Storing that as a single sentence instead of breaking it up and storing the chunks seems inefficient, how is your brain supposed to find information like "when was the first time X visited 3Av/E117 st?" when you haven't filed it properly? And if your brain files the information properly, why do you need that sentence?

The recent cache can find those sentences, but your long term memories wont find it without proper indexing, you will forget a lot of things if you try remembering everything like that.

[psyc]

It seems like when I read something like that, my imagination converts it into a movie scene. So I have a little live-action scene of meeting a person on a street. Its the same as when I read fiction.

The "3 Av/E 117 St" part is a fact I have to memorize with some mnemonic. I think when I was young I would have been able to see it on the street sign, but my eidetic memory gets worse each year, and I'm pretty old.