That's not what that means, but carry on.

This is also related to the excellent thread: “Ask the females in your life to draw a bicycle as detailed as possible”.  

The drawings guys come up with will be based on functionality, with everything more or less where it belongs.    

The female ones will not be even vaguely realistic.    This is not to suggest females are less smart.    Quite the opposite.  I’m talking about ones that are as smart, or smarter, but in (obviously) different ways.    

Their mind-scape is an unrecognizable, alien planet

The “50%” is a vast hyperbolic exaggeration for internet shock value , but even if it’s 10-20% it still makes for an interesting topic.    It’s hard to imagine how different the individual perception is, for each person.

I like my internal voice.  Thinking is fun to me.

Agree, thinking solves problems.
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So do I, but it's not just a single train of thought that is helpful or a pro/con debate...

I'm typing this out, while also listening to it in my head, and thinking about 3 active projects at work, while also thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner. And the kicker is amongst all of that, my brain constantly flicks through random snippets of memories, like it's surfing TV channels.

That's my conscious experience, from the moment I wake up, to the moment I finally fall asleep. Silence doesn't exist for me, I'm always thinking.

Music is my "silence".

Sounds similar to the way I am.  I don’t feel the “I need to turn off” bit though.  Until bedtime.  I used to love playing music in the car when I was younger.  Strange how people change as they age.  We have much yet to learn about our minds.

It's useful, just slightly annoying at times is all.

I’m pretty sure my wife has no internal dialogue, because it’s all external!

Endless nattering about whatever stray thought pops into her head.

“ Are you even paying attention to what I’m saying?”

Uh….

Pretty sure she has an active minds eye though, she’s constantly visualizing things I might have done behind her back….

I don’t think it can be taught.

As to your example I am totally uncreative, no talent at all musical.

But I can play through similar to you anything like a repair or a journey etc. I think 50% is low.

Colleagues turn up without equipment or say things in meetings.  This is what happens, there is a problem one of them offers a solution I’ve already played out many many in my head from truck leaving depots to folk lifts to tools needed. When I tell them that won’t work because x they all look at me like a  mental

It it’s very hard for me to explain to them why it won’t work because I can’t imagine them  not being able to see the same things in their head I assume they understand the process and see it like I do so I skip parts I assume they should fucking realise like the very basics of manpower who is going to do what, I get very confused with them eventually realise they think things just happen by magic.

As for jobs the cretins I work with ask them to put up a shelf they’d turn up with a screwdriver, no drill no spirit level etc. before I set of I go through the entire job in order in my head. Nobody I work with can do that they need to be instructed on every aspect every single task needs step by step lecture

What similarities exactly?  I would like to know more about this.

This is the crux of it though “According to Hulburt, not many people have an inner monologue 100 per cent of the time, but most do sometimes. He estimates that inner monologue is a frequent thing for 30 to 50 per cent of people.”  Many of the articles citing this are saying almost half of the people don’t have it, but that is not true, most do sometimes.

So, basically they have the cognitive awareness and future planning capabilities of an animal.

I have multisensory aphantasia (all senses and emotions), which also means I don't have an audible inner voice. Personally, I would say I have an inner monologue, but that depends on how you define it.

I think either in pure thoughts or in words. Unfortunately I cannot switch between them at will. When I read or write or think about communication, which is usually the largest part, I think in words. Russell Hurlburt calls this worded thinking: The words are not audible and not visualised, but they are there without being able to say how.

I think that, at least for me, this is subvocalization. When I read, I read at my normal speed of speech, it is clearly bound to that.

Wear: Usually just thinking, without words. Philosophize: Worded thinking. Daydream: I don't daydream.

Faces: I have no problems recognizing faces, but it is simply knowing. I always wondered how someone could describe a criminal for a sketch. How is that supposed to work? Apart from conspicuous features that I noticed quite consciously, I could not describe someone in detail. It's similar with songs, films or literature. I forget the content and details quite quickly, unless they stand out or are somehow significant.

I would like to know what it is like to have inner voices or sounds or images, but I would only keep it if I could activate and deactivate it as I wish. Otherwise it sounds exhausting and distracting.

I heard recently that something like 12% of the population has an IQ so low it makes them unfit for military service. It's amazing that very little attention is brought to the fact that there's a huge disparity of intelligence in society. It wasn't as big a deal when people were mostly farmers, cooks, fighters, etc but as technology and technical jobs become more and more prevalent it's very apparent that there's some huge differences in intelligence between people.

The results of your survey suggest either a bias sample, the study was wrong, or, like dumb people, they don’t know they are.

Feels kinda like the 50% number is bullshit.

I got hearing aids late in life and stopped using them
very quickly because all the small sounds I was hearing
again were very distracting. I like what goes on inside
my head and prefer to not have something take my
attention away from it.

{You just described my dog but, he relies on instincts. I've met people that have the mentality of a dog}

Are you AI?

12% is lowballing.

If people would read up on the subject of the thread, they would discover that Aphantasia is thought to be related to memory and recall.  It is not an indication the affected individual is a drooling moron or an animal incapable of rational thought.  Rather, their brain is wired such that sensory recall of objects is difficult.  In other words, they know what an apple is.  Their brain just can’t pull the image or taste or smell out of long term memory.

Similarly, the existence of an inner voice and the degree to which it is present (it usually isn’t all or nothing) is thought to be related to the degree of development of a specific language processing channel during childhood.  People who lack an inner voice can still think about language.  For instance, instead of repeating a grocery list in their heads in their inner voice, they visualize the list as words.

In both cases, the brain compensates, and neither condition is an indicator that the person is incapable of thought.

My wife grew up and France and like many Europeans, she learned several different languages fairly fluently, including english. When we were dating, I asked her what language did she think in? She looked perplexed and said: "I don't know. English, maybe?"

I saw her a few days later and she excitedly said: "I think in French!" She was driving somewhere and realized her mind was thinking through things in French (knowing her, it was probably mentally cussing out, flipping off, and figuring out how to piss off other drivers), but it had never occurred to her that she had that thought process of going through things in her native language and subconsciously translating to the language she needed for communication.

Just remember: half the people you meet are below average.

I do this at work . If I didn’t have that running commentary of risk reward work would turn into.....


Thought 1: God I’d like to punch my moron coworker....SEND IT
Thought2: God Id like to punch my other moron coworker ....SEND IT

Thought 3: : God I’d like to punch that stupid bitch engineer....SEND IT

No wonder cops are so busy

This disorder doesn’t cause poor impulse control.  Someone affected would still be cognizant of the negative repercussions of assaulting someone.  It just manifests differently.  For example, instead of my inner voice saying, “That’s a bad idea C3H5N3O9.  You’ll get fired and go to jail if you lay hands on this guy,” I might visualize myself feeling sad sitting in a jail cell.  Note, I don’t really know how this works, since I’m not affected.  It’s an interesting experiment trying to force yourself to think differently.

Of course they've got a name for it..."aphantasia."

Those of us who know what's what just call them dizzy fucking idiots. My 11yr old son labels them "NPC's," a term derived from the Simulation Theory (we are all living inside one big video game, like the Matrix). NPC stands for "Not Playable Character," who in many video games, are the background characters, aimlessly wandering the maps; no objectives.

I believe the lack of internal dialogue means you were born and raised in a home where the TV was your parent. This was and is extremely common.  As with most in our cuntry, they are led around like Pied fucking Pipers by their TV's. They don't think for themselves. They allow their televisions to tell them what and how to think.

COnvid 19, the resultant experimental gene therapies, and this Ukraine/Russia horseshit are perfect examples of this. Most of the idiots in this cuntry couldn't spell Ukraine until their TV's directed them to suddenly care about it. Suddenly, you see Ukrainian flags, clothing, etc...all for a country who most didn't even know existed just one day prior.

It's not only pathetic, it is quite literally fucking disgusting. At this point, my wife and I tell our kids how much further ahead they will be in life because they have been taught to think. We educate them within the home, and so if someone is gonna brainwash our kids, it's gonna be my wife and I. Part of the brain scrub, consequently, is to question everything, even the shit mom and I tell them. Most importantly, they have been taught to never believe a fucking thing coming out of a television. If the weather chic is telling you the sun is out and the sky is clear and blue, they better not believe her, and go step outside and observe the weather for themselves.

This thread is a Rorschach test, and the results are interesting.

Ironic how many people conflated the subject with intellect.

Spanish is my first language and English is my second. I think about 65%/35% English/Spanish since I switched to English when I was about five or six years old when I started school.

I wonder if this is similar to animals and instincts. No thought. Just pursue food, shelter,  reproduce at certain times etc

Without those one may as well be a wild animal

I am not sure that my inner monolog is always on.


There are parts of my day where I tune it out/turn it off.  

My internal monologue is so good it's a dialog.

No, it’s not.

That makes more sense now !

I still wanna punch those idiots I work with

Here is an great interview about not having an internal monologue: What It Is Like To Not Have An Internal Monologue

That's an interesting question and difficult to answer, because it’s hard to observe your own thinking without changing it. When I write, it’s more of a flow, I just write down thoughts, which are non-verbal or a mixture of non-verbal thoughts with keywords. I have more verbal thoughts when it is about finding the right word or sentence structure. Very difficult to say.

In English, it usually only works when I express simple things. I fall back to German and translation when I want to think or express deeper thoughts or differentiate in more detail.

My mom had to go back and forth with yupik then English.

Yupik was her first language.


A uncle that had a stroke talked pretty good English but after the stroke he spoke only Yupik.