[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'm unconvinced that "talking through your emotions" makes sense or is wise.

Both "talking" and "emotions" developed in central nervous systems at times far removed from each other, and there's little reason to believe that those software systems are connected... or even compatible.

[mensetmanusman]

Talking is important especially for those that aren’t able to have internal dialog. That type of talking is thinking out loud for them.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

People without internal dialogues (I'm one myself), don't require "thinking out loud" at all.

Internal dialogues aren't even thinking... it's when this particular faculty of your mind, the "rehearsal simulator" is overactive. Functioning correctly, you can bounce questions off of a fictionalized version of someone and get back replies that can be a useful prediction of what they might say when confronted in reality.

Those whose rehearsal simulators malfunction end up simulating themselves, who then goes on to start jabbering constantly, like some documentary narrator on crack, until they can no longer think at all.

We (those of us who can actually think) have a pretty good idea how this faculty even works. The principle seems rather similar to the LLMs we've all been talking about... it just predicts the most likely word that comes next, with some pseudo-random seed to start it all off. People with the "internal dialogue" only seem able to "think" of things, once everyone has talked about it enough that it amounts to training their LLM with it. When people without internal dialogues try to explain a new idea to them, they tend to respond in ways that indicate their thinking is much like how the LLMs function. Irrational, confused, denialism.

I don't particularly trust self-reporting, but maybe MRIs can empirically measure whether someone has an internal dialogue or not? I would be curious to see the IQ differences between the two groups. It's probably a massive gap. The rehearsal simulator starves the rest of your brain of resources while active. If you ever learned to turn yours off, you'd probably never want it turned back on again.

For instance, someone who does the internal dialogue thing may not even be able to correctly report their emotions. They may not recognize them at all. Instead, that little LLM in their skull is just "hallucinating" for them, coming up with plausible sentences for how someone might feel, based on training data they've accumulated over the years, but having absolutely nothing to do with their emotional state. Anyone who accepts their self-reported emotional state as correct can be very confused by it... visibly, they're in one emotional state, but verbally they're reporting something completely different. There's no reason to suspect dishonest reporting, but also no real way to reconcile the contradictions.

[I_Am_Nous]

I made an account just to dialog about this :)

I have been working the past 3 years to turn off my internal dialog because I was only using it to stroke my own ego in a way - imaginary conversations with my boss where I can always respond/counter/defend whatever he MIGHT have to say to me about something. These conversations never occurred in real life, so I realized how senseless it was to devote my attention and energy to something so detached from reality.

I am no worse off for not "thinking things through" in my mind, because I tend to get sudden imprints of what I need to do or say next which are not a serial monologue of thoughts that guide me to understanding. On the other hand, I have been working on categorizing and actually processing my emotions as they are occurring, rather than ignoring them entirely, and many times I do need to have an external, verbal monologue for my subconscious to piece together all of the things it knows implicitly in bulk, but not explicitly as a single coherent concept.

One thing that does come and go is some sort of background music in my head, which also doesn't limit my ability to think. Finally, cannabis CAN give me that "serial monologue in my head" kind of thinking, which I have come to consider a mild "brain vacation" - especially if I am overwhelmed with stress or anxiety.

[internalmono]

Another thing is tune whistling/singing, when you think about it it is even more basic then language, just "predicting" the next note in a sequence of notes one already has stored in memory, so pointless, yet objectively satisfying for some reason. I often sing/whistle in the background, I've found it only reduces my ability to think when it gets in the way of what I perceive to be low value work, I think this is due to it being a very low energy, low value activity, whereas similarly low value work may be higher energy, and so it becomes unbearable to stay focused on the work without reverting to a lower energy activity, rather then the internal music overcoming the work. As I acquire further high value work, and surround myself with people who would rather not hear whistling/singing, this habit has decreased considerably. It may be the case that such internal monologues or LLM like activities are not as low energy straight thinking, but maybe they serve some kind of "idling" purpose, reinforcing pattern/logic/computation/memory pathways in the brain, for cheap.

Out of curiosity, have you ever been kept up awake at night by your thoughts, either before an important event or after some problem? If yes, and you have no internal monologue, how does this manifest? Do you simply not feel tired? Or do you feel tired but unable to sleep? Or otherwise?

[vGPU]

>those who can actually think

This should be interesting.