[q7xvh97o2pDhNrh]

> people with internal monologues might only make up 30%-50% of people

It's incredible to imagine there are people out there just thinking in language as they go about their lives.

I wonder how it must work. Are they literally lining up one word after another in their minds? I guess it has to work that way to feel like some sort of "consistent internal monologue"?

At scale, though, imagining a roomful of people thinking in single-threaded monologues does explain a lot about why some teams take forever to get anything done.

[LegionMammal978]

IME, "thinking in language" doesn't mean "thinking exclusively in language". Like, I do think in a linguistic monologue when trying to string together some ideas, or reading some text, or planning what I'm about to say. But there's a simultaneous undercurrent of feelings, reactions, and recollections that aren't in words.

(E.g., if I'm driving behind a car acting strangely on the road, I might be very carefully observing and anticipating the driver's actions, while only muttering a vague "Whaaat...?" Or, for an experiment you can try at home, try thinking of something dumb repeatedly without pause, while at the same time reflecting on how dumb it sounds.)

I suspect that many people are the same, it's just that the monologue is the most immediately noticeable component of one's thoughts.

[neom]

I have sound, pictures and videos, vividly. thinking etc is just having a conversation with the voice in my head.. me! Sometimes it's watching a little movie, sometimes an image pops up. If someone is talking to me and I'm thinking about what they are saying, it's typically my brain's serving me up little "videos" of things I've seen in the past. To actively listen to someone, I have to also actively prevent all that from happening, to make silence in my head, that took years to learn to do. The idea that other people don't think like that, well, I can't comprehend it because it's not how I do it.

[shishy]

Just because someone has an internal monologue doesnt mean they think slow. Its just a voice in your head you can talk to. Its not how you think.

[gnulinux]

It can also be how you think. I think like that (speaking to myself) and I'm not a slow thinker, at least I don't think so... The thing is, when speaking doesn't involve muscle movements, and just a stream of word/concept objects it can be much faster, and also doesn't have to be single-threaded (so to say). But from my subjective experience it feels like I'm talking to myself, one word after the other.

[neom]

I think this is probably how I work too, and people tell me I think very quickly, so I suppose that means I can just talk to myself faster than whatever they are doing, hah. If you don't mind me asking, how are you with math? My mind completely lacks a framework for numbers, so I'm unable to do math (I feel like that might sound insane).

[jochem9]

Not who you replied to, but I can relate.

I'm not great at math, but I've trained myself to do basic calculations in my head. I need to concentrate hard and it goes very slow (I'm also a fast thinker for other stuff). I do this because it's a very useful skill in day-to-day life, so worth training.

I once read that many people basically spin up a virtual machine in their mind to do math. That is how it feels to me too. All simulation, no hardware acceleration, so very slow.

[neom]

I'm really curious what people who are good at math are actually doing. I presume my thinking methodologies are just so far removed from how they think that I'm unable to imagine it, I can hardly even visualize a number never mind manipulate them, it's strange. I couldn't tell time till I was in my early teens, and even then it was a lot of work, and even today I wouldn't exactly call it "automatic".

[tomrod]

I was like you for awhile. Was good with with arithmetic but not much more than that. After learning a handful of new languages via total immersion, I found I could learn math much more deeply!

[WalterSear]

I find listening to podcasts at 1.25-1.5x much easier. I noticed that this speed is much more in line with my internal dialogue.

I also noticed that I need to speed up female speakers more than males. I'm not sure if this is because their cadence tends to be slower, or if it's something about me.

[pfannkuchen]

How do you write without an internal monologue? Is each sentence a surprise as you write it? It wasn’t in your head before you write it down? If it was, isn’t that an internal monologue?

[oersted]

Well I have an internal monologue and I think in language a lot, but I wouldn't say the sentence is on my mind before I write it. It's more like I redirect the stream of language to the page, so instead of saying the words to myself I write the words.

I find writing very useful for thinking. It focuses the monologue and you don't need to strain your short-term memory as much when reasoning about elements in the stream, it's like doing maths on paper instead of in your head.

I'm sure you experience the same thing when talking, you don't say each word to yourself before you say it out-loud (perhaps you do?). Also, where are the words before you say them to yourself, they are kind of a surprise no? Just as you describe writing.

[yencabulator]

Without internal monologue, you can still think about sentences, but no one is talking to you inside your head.

[magicalhippo]

While I sometimes do talk to myself without uttering the words, most of the time it's a tad more abstract than that. It's like when you're discussing something complex or involved, you don't think too much about the exact words, the sentences just form as you go.

It's not "on" all the time for me, but the majority of the day I'd say.

[xdennis]

I'm surprised you find us weird. I always thought of muteminds as psychos. For example, if you spend a day alone, do you just wallow in silent nothingness? Or do you talk to yourself aloud because you can't do so silently?

[swat535]

I also learned that some people are missing the "mind's eye" and don't have the ability to play music in their head.. I always thought everyone could do those things but then found out that's not case!

[dleslie]

My internal monologue is much, much faster than verbal or written communication. It's never been a source to give me pause when replying or engaging with others; in effect, I run parallel discussions through my mind while others are speaking, allowing me to anticipate and respond to potential changes in the conversation before they occur.

[gnulinux]

Yes I literally line up one word after the other. As I think, I converse to myself. "Should I do it this way? No, well that's overkill and too difficult. Can I get away with just that? Yeah that's likely fine" I think there are definitely extra-verbal aspects to my thinking e.g. sometimes when I tell myself "how about this" "this" refers to a thought or graph or concept or whatever. Other than that, my thinking is like speaking.

[pesus]

I can think far quicker than I can speak. Like how most people can read much more quickly in their head than out loud.

[WalterSear]

The words line up themselves, and I can usually 'feel' the idea before I hear the word in my mind, or the words might be just a part of the idea I'm addressing. Sometimes there are multiple lines of thoughts happening at once.

I also think and dream in code, fwiw.

[saghm]

> It's incredible to imagine there are people out there just thinking in language as they go about their lives.

> I wonder how it must work. Are they literally lining up one word after another in their minds? I guess it has to work that way to feel like some sort of "consistent internal monologue"?

> At scale, though, imagining a roomful of people thinking in single-threaded monologues does explain a lot about why some teams take forever to get anything done.

As someone with a particularly strong inner dialogue (who often struggles to think about things in a fully non-verbal way), I definitely struggle at times with feeling like my brain is not concurrent enough for being good at multitasking, so I don't think you're completely off. To put it in programming terms, I feel less that my brain is "single threaded" as it's read/write locked in the sense that if I'm speaking or typing, I'm much less able to process properly listen to anything being said to me. For example, if I'm typing up an email (or a decently sized comment here) and someone tries to talk to me, I'll often not be able to formulate a response without completely losing my train of thought about what I was writing, which leads me to ask if it's okay for me to finish what I'm writing before responding.

As for "lining up one word after another in their minds", I don't think it's quite as tedious as it sounds like you might be thinking. When speaking out loud, it doesn't take any conscious thought for me to "line up words" as they come out of my mouth; if anything, I talk much more quickly than average. It hadn't occurred to me beforehand, but I wonder if this trait is correlated with having an internal monologue.

[rustcleaner]

It's more like a self conversation, one in which I must internally LARP as the other party. It's like I am using some theory of mind stuff to simulate earnest and good faith debate.

[rayiner]

Yes, it’s a sequential voice in your head. I’ll literally sit down to do something and tell myself in my head “okay, I need to focus on figuring out this intro sentence first” or whatever I’m trying to do. if I’m coding and for example, I’m running a switch statement I’ll have to verbally describe to myself each of the cases.

[BrandoElFollito]

When I think about tangible problems (coding, physics, ...) as a hobby, I usually start with a verbal expression "funny that this and that" or "if I code this that way" and then switch to non verbal - imagining interactions through pictures or something like that.

I think that the main reason is that thinking in words slows me down.

[tomrod]

For me, it's more like a check and balance that isn't always engaged. When I catch a baseball, it is totally decoupled and the catch is automatic. But if I am composing a class, debugging, and similar, it is heavily engaged in thinking through edge cases, etc on the fly.

[metalspoon]

In my case, some vague idea worth a few words comes up to my mind, I turn it into a monologue, and continue. This is what I feel is happening in my head.

But the process is also too automatic. Maybe what's actually happening is completely different from what I described.