Smart people often think of dumb people going about life in a drunken stupor.  The reality is more the opposite, dumb people walk around seeing everything clearly in their dumb minds.  

IE, Dunning-Kruger

This and the thread topic has me thinking of that saying... I'm paraphrasing... that the problem with society is that the intelligent, thoughtfull people are full of introspection and doubt, while the idiots are full of arrogant confidence..

I really can't imagine lacking either of those. That'd be hell.  I think I talk to myself in my head too much if anything. And I can't imagine lacking the ability to visualize, that's a massive handicap.  There's no way you could be an architect, for example, or solve any kind of spatial puzzle.

WTF is an internal monologue & minds eye?  
I had to look it up

From my experience over the past week alone, 28 - 32% can't drive either. 38% are unable to put together a complete sentence.


Ok kidding aside, I don't find it that odd.  Given how many people self medicate, that may be the tool they use to work through an "internal monologue"

Attached File


Visualizing an apple, which do you see?  

I'm kind of between 2 and 3.

I’m not sure where to start. I would like to see the research that supports what you say. None of what you have written looks scientific to me. I work in the field of linguistics and cognition (thinking). Cognition is knowing or knowledge and includes thought. Thinking is done without an inner voice, however, once you have the thought, you can use your inner voice to verbalize what you are thinking. Language overlays our thoughts. Language does not appear first and then thoughts occur.

I have experience working with both children and adults who have no language. They have cognition and know a lot about the world and how to live in it. They have no inner voice at all but they know how to think and can demonstrate their knowledge.

Thus far, this thread goes not seem to apply to members of this site.

I am surprised

I can picture that

I have never heard of this kind of thing, but it explains so much. Not just about the idiots I deal with at work, but the people I went to school with. I wonder how much of it has to do with modern media and public education?

Interesting that you mention that. When I was a kid with ADHD, I had a lot of difficulty focusing in school, my head was always a jumble.

As I grew up, I found myself maintaining two, or three lines of thought. One on what I was currently doing, one that was preparing for the immediate future, and a third off in my head focused on whatever I actually wanted to be doing, mostly working on storylines for my own novels. There's been maybe a half dozen other folks I've run into that are wired the same way, most of them are authors.

I kinda wonder if the inability to have that discussion with yourself is some form of autism... The way we're wired seems to be a combination of genetics and learned behavior from our formative years.

"Inner monologue" is a pretty fancy way to explain the little voice in the back of your head that tells you things like "Hey, you probably shouldn't say that out loud, 'cuz you're gonna hurt some feelings"

50% would certainly explain why I think "what a vapid cunt" about so many people.

I have both and have still made some heroically foolish decisions.  Of course they were not life changing in the worst way if it goes wrong but foolish none the less.

But they can vote.

I wager the 50% that do not are at the left end of the Bell Curve, along with some psychopaths who are otherwise intelligent but have no inhibitions controlling their actions, though I suspect they have a mind's eye to visualize their fantasies if no ability to keep them repressed.

It's ok -  they won't ever know you were so shocked

TBH - this sounds like schizoaffective disorder, have you been evaluated?

I have both. I can vividly see an construct objects in my mind. I think this is also why I was drawn to RPG games as a kid because I could visualize the story and the action in my mind.

My wife told me she has no internal monolog. I found it really weird when I found this out. I thought everyone had the ability for both.

Cite?

I can't imagine NOT having a voice in my head or being unable to see/hear things that aren't there.

I narrate my entire life, often with multiple distinct voices/personalities carrying on a debate.

I can look at an equation and visualize it in my head as a shape most of the time.  When I do programming work a lot of times I'll close my eyes and imagine the code and data structure before typing.  When working on anything physical I can imagine everything in 3d before doing anything.  When I go to the woods to cruise timber I don't really need a map, compass, or a GPS.  I've never gotten lost in my entire life.

I used to be a musician and I have quite a lot of music memorized.  For example I can play back all of the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler in my mind and it sounds almost real, along with a bunch of other important works I've taken a liking to.

I think a lot of this can be taught.  As a child I was encouraged to use my imagination, and I grew up playing around in a wood shop or in the woods.  I was also forced to read/write and learn to play instruments at a young age.

In contrast most kids these days are raised by a TV and aren't allowed to go outside.  I think a lot of this has to be developed at a young age.  Or perhaps a bunch of people really are NPCs?

My internal monologue is so vibrant that I catch myself talking to myself… out loud. A lot.

I don't know about reading about an apple and visualizing it - I can vaguely, kinda like a cartoon.  I do visualize scenarios while driving or people walking towards me where something is wrong or could go wrong and what i need to do to put myself in a better, safer position - it's still a cartoon, with minimal details, but in 3D with motion.

People without these abilities are the same ones that cannot stand to drive anywhere without music from their stereos blasting.  I love the silence as it gives me time to think.

Now that's an interesting twist.

Music.

I can barely picture my wife and kids, other than fuzzy "freeze frame" images.  However, I can compose a damn orchestra in my head.

How does someone not have an inner monologue? I’m sitting here…”we’re” sitting here trying to understand that.

Why do you need time to think? Thinking never stops, sometimes the music is a distraction to shut your mind up, and kinda take a break. Especially when stressed. I like some static noise, my wife likes silence…i dont think she debates stuff in her head like i do. She is very different. I would say she makes more mature, black and white decisions, i live in the gray.

But she does like silence. I’m going to ask her if she talks to herself or debates things in her mind. I had no idea this was a subject until this thread.

And, there is probably a healthy balance to this. Too much, or too active “minds eye/inner monologue” probably can set you up for anxiety later, like with intrusive thoughts.

Kind of interesting: I had a few students back when I was a CFI, who just couldn’t get it.   Low “situational awareness” bad judgement, and unpredictable performance .   It was frustrating because they had good motivation and work ethic, but I couldn’t get them to be consistent.   They wasted a lot of money and time on something they simply had no aptitude for.

They seemed to be as intelligent as other students, but put them in a fast moving, dynamic 3d environment, and they’d fall apart.    I was always fascinated by it.  

Everything in flying is about “the picture” and “staying ahead of the airplane”  You learn on the ground by “chairflying”.   Ie. It’s all visualization.      I just assumed everyone had some ability to visualize and plan ahead.     If they can’t, they might as well be blind.

How would you even be able to tell if someone lacks the ability completely?

Maybe a spatial reasoning test but for airplanes?

More proof we live in a simulation.

50% of the "people" are NPCs. They walk and talk and interact with you, but there is no actual human controlling them. All programming.

There are aviation aptitude tests that sorta test for that I guess, but it would need to be a little more complicated.   Best way, might be to put someone in a simulator.  

OP, I did a little reading, and couldn’t find anything to back up your claims.  

Can you post the article which gave you these revelations and inspired this thread?

Well, OP might have made up his statistics.    Standing by for clarification.

I have been convinced for a few years now that the term “NPC” is 100% true.

Then again, many people are just flat out stupid fuckers.

A quick search of public domain articles, and I can’t find anything close to 50%. This article says 4%.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/elegant-arguments/202211/is-aphantasia-memory-disorder

I can see the apple in a complete 3D movie and manipulate it in any fashion, visualize cutting it up, eating it or even shooting it.

Funny thing, I can even smell or taste it, but if you gave that apple a name like Steve or Marie I wouldn’t retain that at all.

@BillofRights, your Google skills suck.

https://irisreading.com/is-it-normal-to-not-have-an-internal-monologue/



https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/inner-monologue-experience-science-1.5486969

Aphantasia is a separate condition than someone who doesn't have an internal monologue. @C3H5N3O9, reading is fundamental. In the OP I stated "close to 50% of the human population doesn't have an internal monologue and even some of those, furthermore, suffer from Aphantasia."

That means that you have close to half the population going about without an internal monologue, and some of those folks from that group, also suffer from Aphantasia on top of not having an internal monologue.

Noted.  Looking around, I’m seeing a pretty wide variation in reported estimates of no internal monologue.  25-75% report a consistent internal monologue depending on the study, and even the ones that don’t report constant internal monologue report internal monologue to varying lessor degrees.  My guess is reality in the general population is closer to our unscientific poll.

ETA:  Looking at those articles you linked above, there’s the important word “consistent” prior to the word monologue in them.  Meaning that there are degrees for the internal monologue.  It’s not 50% have one, and 50% don’t, which is a gross simplification to begin with, since the articles emphasize these are estimates that can vary wildly.

Simple, they are NPCs.

They can only think in terms of urges and impulses.   That's false

They can't self-debate.   Also false

How do they do something as simple as think of what to write, or what to wear? They think about it.

How to they philosophize and theorize?  They think about it

How do they remember faces, songs, film, literature? Associative memory, just like people with an internal monologue and a mind's eye

You're conflating a lack of a internal awareness of the the thought process, with a lack of the process of thought happening.

As my father puts it, "It's kinda like a black box. I think on what I want to do and I get answers out of it."

The Best Lack All Conviction While the Worst Are Full of Passionate Intensity

I prefer the more pithy, "certainty is a luxury of the stupid."

"she says she can't imagine having to exist the way we do. She insists she would just be overwhelmed if she "pictured" memories or ideas."

More or less what my father has said.

I have both but have no sense of direction
whatsoever.  I can get lost in a heartbeat.

I wonder if there is any correlation. I knew a
guy who said he could always find his way
home no matter the circumstances.

I listen to music to beat the internal voice down.

This whole thread reminds me of the King of the Hill episode where Peggy takes an online IQ test and goes around telling everyone she’s a genius.

Or this:

More or less. I think it's being made out as bigger deal than it really is.

When Francis Galton first described it in 1880, the majority of the 'men of science' he polled had no notion of mental imagery.

To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean. They had no more notion of its true nature than a colour-blind man who has not discerned his defect has of the nature of colour. They had a mental deficiency of which they were unaware, and naturally enough supposed that those who were normally endowed, were romancing. To illustrate their mental attitude it will be sufficient to quote a few lines from the letter of one of my correspondents, who writes:--

"These questions presuppose assent to some sort of a proposition regarding the 'mind's eye' and the 'images' which it sees….. This points to some initial fallacy…… It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a 'mental image' which I can 'see' with my 'mind's eye'….. I do not see it… any more than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due pressure he is ready to repeat. The memory possesses it, &c."

On the other hand, when I spoke to persons whom I met in general society, I found an entirely different disposition to prevail. Many men and a yet larger number of women, and many boys and girls, declared that they habitually saw mental imagery, and that it was perfectly distinct to them and full of colour. [p. 303] The more I pressed and cross-questioned them, professing myself to be incredulous, the more obvious was the truth of their first assertions. They described their imagery in minute detail, and they spoke in a tone of surprise at my apparent hesitation in accepting what they said. I felt that I myself should have spoken exactly as they did if I had been describing a scene that lay before my eyes, in broad daylight, to a blind man who persisted in doubting the reality of vision.

I heard this 50% number last week. The world makes much more sense now. At least half the population is bumbling through life without a thought going through their mind.