[benrutter]

I definitely have an inner monologue im some situations, reading is a good example. I can speed read in which case I don't really have a perception of the sounds, but if I'm closely reasing something then I do have a sense of the sounds if words as I'm reading.

The idea of thinking independtly like that though seems unbearably slow to me (although lots of very clever people report doing it, so obviously it isn't for them!)

[leto_ii]

> The idea of thinking independtly like that though seems unbearably slow to me

So, as a person who definitely has an inner monologue, I absolutely agree. It's not like I'm literally sounding out words in my mind all the time. The vast majority of things I do I do without explicit use of language.

I think my understanding (mostly coming from Chomsky and in disagreement when OP) is that language is a mechanism for thinking that is mostly not accessible through conscious introspection.

[RaftPeople]

> mostly coming from Chomsky and in disagreement when OP

Is Chomsky's idea that language is not necessarily the same as spoken language, it is an alternate brain mechanism that provides structure to thought as opposed to being the wild west of fluid/analog non-discrete/non-symbolic type of information processing?

[leto_ii]

The idea would be that language first evolved as a mechanism for thought and only later became used for communication. Spoken language would still be connected to the underlying mechanism though.

[SamPatt]

My conscious thoughts are verbalized in my head, and it is somewhat slow, but I also have a sense of intuition, which is very fast, though works best in silence. I can pull things from intuition into conscious thought, but explaining why I feel something is the same slower process.

So thinking about something isn't a one speed operation, but being able to communicate those thoughts is.

[importantbrian]

I think almost exclusively through inner monologue, and I find I can't speed read at all. If I'm not vocalizing I'm not thinking, so when I try to not vocalize in order to speed read I don't retain anything. It's like my brain is incapable of processing the words if they aren't being vocalized.

[TeMPOraL]

> The idea of thinking independtly like that though seems unbearably slow to me

While I seem to be a fast reader relative to people I know, I very much feel my reading speed is limited by sounding the words in my mind, so I agree - it's near-unbearably slow.

[bhk]

It seems obvious to me that thinking critically about what you read or hear takes effort and time. I wouldn't call it unbearable, though, because the alternative is polluting your mind with unvetted notions.

[mewpmewp2]

That is thinking slow for you?? How do you reach conclusions or how do you know the reasons why you reached the conclusion?

[TeMPOraL]

Linguistic thinker: I reach conclusions by feel, pretty much jumping to them, and then sniffing out the "warp trail" from that jump and putting that into words. It doesn't feel like inventing post facto rationalizations, but rather retracing the reasoning that happened in the background. And I do need to do that step - the conclusion doesn't seem "stable" unless I trace it back like this.

[grugagag]

>I reach conclusions by feel

That sounds like intuition to me

[Jensson]

Words are also based on the same intuition, you just verbalize it and restrict yourself to what you have words for instead of all concepts and thoughts.

For example I do math entirely without any words in my process, and I easily got a master in math that way, barely had to study. No problem, you just translate it at the end. Limiting myself to words just makes it harder to think freely.

[mewpmewp2]

That just sounds so different to how I solve math problems. I was naturally good at maths, but it was always from monologue kind of bruteforcing different solutions until one of them seemed to work. I guess it might be a reason also why I find LLMs really exciting since I feel like if I can do it, LLM should be able to do it. I don't feel like I am doing anything special.

I always had problem with trusting my intuition or gut so I was worse in a lot of other real life things however. But math seemed abstract and solvable by words and brute force.

I wish things just magically came to me, but I think I always have to go through things with my inner monologue.

Like if I was to do multiplication in my head e.g. with same numbers, for example 62 x 62. I would have to go through it as a monologue.

I first remind myself of the strategy to do it, which is first I will do 60 x 60. Then it is 3600, then I add 2 x 60, 3720, and then there is 2 x 62 left, but I have to keep reminding myself occasionally what the last numbers were, that initial multiplication was 62 x 62, then I got 3720, and now I have to add 124... okay lets go 3820, 24 left, now 3844. Of course it is easier to remember as I am typing this, but in my head I have to keep reminding myself. And now I am not sure if I did a mistake so I go verify that on the calculator.

[Jensson]

> I first remind myself of the strategy to do it, which is first I will do 60 x 60. Then it is 3600, then I add 2 x 60, 3720, and then there is 2 x 62 left, but I have to keep reminding myself occasionally what the last numbers were, that initial multiplication was 62 x 62, then I got 3720, and now I have to add 124... okay lets go 3820, 24 left, now 3844. Of course it is easier to remember as I am typing this, but in my head I have to keep reminding myself. And now I am not sure if I did a mistake so I go verify that on the calculator.

I do multiplication in my head similarly, just strip out the words, the numbers just flickers through and operations happens by themselves and I'm done in a second or two when I'm not rusty. Now that I'm rusty I do it more like (60x60=3600, 2x2=4, 60x2=120, 3600 + 4 + 120 + 120 = 3844), without doing any words, I just did that in my head right now and I am 100% sure not a single word, just the steps, I do sometimes verbalize the numbers so what I wrote in those parentheses is the most verbal my process for mathing that out gets.

Edit: Looking at that, I think it might be easier for someone to correct your thinking if you think in words, but thinking without words is way faster and way more creative since it removes the restriction of only thinking about concepts you have words for.

Edit2: I think your verbalization there is a ritual for the concepts to get to you. For me all I need to do is see 62x62 and imagine I want to solve it and all those thoughts flow to me automatically, basically a shortcut instead of having a large verbal ritual to piece together the concepts. I never did math verbally the way it is taught, so I am not sure how people think that way, to me this was always automatically this way.

[RaftPeople]

> That is thinking slow for you?? How do you reach conclusions or how do you know the reasons why you reached the conclusion?

Are you thinking that using words during thinking helps with reaching conclusions and knowing why you reached the conclusion?

For me it's just there, the thoughts, the facts, the logic, the sequence, the connections, etc. Expressing all of that in words happens afterward (if it happens).

[mewpmewp2]

I don't even know how to think without words. I thought thinking literally means using words in sequence to problem solve. At least I used to think so. If someone says they are going to think about something I have always thought that they were going to focus on their inner monologue of sequence of words.