I do the same thing a lot.  Usually for work related conversations where I need to have what I am going to say, and what reactions my words bring, practiced out in advance.  Always thought of this (internally) as war gaming.

In that same vein of thought, when you read a novel, does your mind automatically create an image, akin to watching a movie in your mind?

I always thought it was a manifestation of this:

Well, yeah.

Internal monologue sounds like a feminine difficulty

The fact that you even believe that frightens me. It suggests living a life where others spoon feed your thoughts and understanding to you, and accepting that as normal.

What a delightfully insightful (no pun) topic.  I love (and sometimes pause) learning things like this.

Of course. In fact, I can reply those scenes visually from a novel I read decades ago. Take for instance The Hunt For Red October. In the book, there was a part where the USAF war gamed the Soviet Navy ith A-10s doing bombing/strafing runs with their guns and rockeye cluster bombs.

Everyone must, isn't memory or reading a book to yourself on the same path?

Apparently to some, it isn't.

it explains the people who vote democrat almost perfectly....

Beleive the science

Not to get side tracked but my neighbor growing up couldn't read but owned his own logging business, sand and gravel pit, and ran a bar. Had his wife read everything for him.

A side effect of the freezing process is it removes your interior monologue.

Internal monologue is turned up to 11 for me. Sometimes when I'm alone I'll catch myself saying what I'm thinking out loud.


However I can't visualize as well as I could when I was a kid. When I was young I can remember being able to close my eyes and picture anything I wanted. Now I struggle to. I can visualize but it's fainter and the image is fleeting.

Maybe not a coincidence that I don't like reading fiction and I'm dog shit at art?

I guess you don’t mind if you don’t know any better.

Culture is, at most, a restraint, and only when externally imposed. A people’s natural culture is an expression of who they really are. Culture is downstream of nature, not the other way around.

And what did he do when he didn't have his wife? How did he negotiate contracts, leases, etc?

Being illiterate is also horrifying.

Internal monologue-> voices in your head

Isn’t that what crazies have?

Sorry, that’s the first thing the voices said after reading the OP.

You wouldn't know the difference, OP. I work with a girl who has aphantasia. Easily one of the most intelligent people I know.

It's like she works with no clutter in her mind. When I give her evidence to review, she picks up on everything. She has a criminology degree, and I keep trying to push her into some field where she can do real investigation.

She cannot picture her own son's face, but she can describe him to you. It's really odd.

ETA: 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.

Pretty interesting.  Never really had the words for it, but I've had trouble with both after going too long without O2 a while back.

How could anyone be capable of abstract thought?

I wouldn't mind my internal monologue nearly as much if it was just stay on point. Unfortunately, that isn't the case and is why I end up down rabbit holes all the time, delaying my completion of whatever it was I actually set out to do in the first place. It's also why I struggle to read, because I read a couple of lines about something, then the monologue takes over, and the next thing you know I'm on the web searching for answers to a question that had zero to do with what I started reading 5 minutes earlier and took 10 other diversions to get there

And my minds eye trypically just takes me to places and things that I wish I could forget

The popularity of Tik-Tok reinforces that statistic.

I've been thinking about this subject alot lately. I'm in construction and am currently building several new homes. I am astounded that many of my clients have no idea what their house is going to look like, or how walls layout, until it's up in the air. Even with 2d elevations, or floorplans they literally have no clue, until they can see it or walk through it. Can't even tell you how many times I've moved walls or windows because they "don't like it there" or "I had no idea this hallway /room was so small". (Change orders rock!)

All of my clients seem to be intelligent and are successful in their fields. They just lack the imagination to be able to take a 2d plan to a 3d mind view. I couldn't do my job without that ability.

Many of us have watched aspects of the culture change before are very eyes, driven by public policy.

I distinctly remember a thread several years ago where a huge dogpile formed about a country where people tended not to out their kids in car seats seatbelts, and how this supposedly indicated a low value on human life.

And don't even get me started in drunk driving, smoking, property zoning, etc.

Who hasn’t imagined things like this…

In general, in conversation with folks I've met in my life that absolutely had no interest, or flat out didn't like to read, talked how it was just words, plain information. They had never been able to see the movie in their mind.

Off the top of my head, yes and no.  I haven’t looked into either in a while.
What we call and measure as IQ is basically long term memory capacity, how much working memory can be used, how fast the processing speed is, and how strong pattern recognition is.  In general, most people have similar rankings in each.
But it can vary.  To over simplify, Let’s say you have one guy who is 2.5 sd above the mean in each and his overall IQ is 2.5 sd above the mean.  Another guy is only 1 sd above the mean in the first two, but 4sd above the mean in the other two.  Overall, their IQ is 2.5 sd above the mean, they are not going to seem all that bright in some aspects, but are a wizard in how fast they notice some things and make predictions.  The other guy is 4sd above the mean in the first two, but only 1 in the last two.  They are going to have an amazing font of knowledge, but not be all that great using it and applying it fast on their toes.  So, the general IQ can be the same, but the presence or absence of “mind deaf” and “mind blind” be of different impact.

You can have no inner monologue and no mind’s eye, and still be a sd above the mean or so bright and functional.
Even higher if they have a fantastic memory, and are something like a history professor or an English teacher.  Their minds just have a work around to get to the same point.  

But, let’s say you are like 3sd above the mean, in some high pressure very selective for cognitive ability/processing speed/pattern recognition/working memory/predictive capacity like an ER doc or trauma surgeon at a big center with lots of medical and trauma ambulance runs bringing dying people, a test pilot, etc.

These guys are constantly, rapidly observing, orienting, predicting, deciding, acting, adjusting.

Some of them are literally rapidly processing little verbal/visual flow diagram movies / probabilities in their mind that look like a flow diagram of the movie Primer or something.  They couldn’t function at that level without it.  There is also increasing prevalence of mental illness up at these levels compared to the general population.  Seeing patterns the vast majority of people don’t- even when they are real, takes a toll.  

When that trauma surgeon shows up as the ambulances drop off four gun shot wounds, and he rapidly/near instantaneously runs through that dozens of options of possibilities and takes one to the operating room, and the ER doc doing the same for the other three they are treating, evaluating, reassessing, etc. Keep something in mind.  Memories are not an actual film/tape/recording of stuff.  It’s a biochemicalelectrical process.  And the process to those little Insta chain scenarios used to create and assess/compare/predict the various scenarios is the same as that used to creat memories.  All that time spent “living in the future” can, for some, impact what line they have between what really happened and what is not real.  

It’s also why some highly cognitively able types follow the “absent minded professor” or “head in the clouds” type stereotypes.  When you interrupt the guy that drills holes in bricks to mount stuff for a living or the guy that keeps track of what employees have had diversity training for the year, you’re not really interrupting much.  When you ask them if they have seen Tom or where the restroom is, they can rapidly adjust to the question, relay the information, and get right back into the stepwise thought process they were in.  Their basically just putting on foot in front of the other.

When you interrupt the pediatric intensive care physician they are concurrently wondering if a lower volume of ventilation with higher frequency of breaths with Heliox will help the dying kids oxygenation or PH vs bicarbonate and more fluids vs just get their pressure up and best combo of meds vs do they need to go on ECMO, with a sub scenario running regarding the perfect balance and options of fluid vs insulin on the kid in a diabetic coma and the optimal temperature of cooling of the post arrest kid, while entering a set of orders on the septic kid with meningitis, -

Or the project engineer trying to figure out why their is more waste heat than their should be, if the water flow is enough alone to manage, if that flow will put out too much heat into the river, if the flow can be cycled fast enough, if not what to do, is it an instrument issue, functional issue, what if they-

And you interrupt them and they seem off, a little out of it, and don’t seem to jump right back in, it’s because they were not in a step wise though process putting one foot in front of the other.  They were on a unicycle juggling with one hand getting ready to swallow the flaming sword in their other hand while looking ahead to see if they should ride down the stairs, assessing traffic to see if they should cross the street instead, - and you don’t really have a set point to jump right back into that.

I discuss things with myself non-stop, at least now I do it silently.  I used to talk to myself all the time.

I can believe that for Corky type retards but not 50% of the populace.

We don't really understand thinking but I believe something like this is a reasonable explanation: Senses input data, mind defines and sorts that data into simple thoughts, mind connects multiple simple thoughts and creates more complex thoughts such as ideas.

Can someone make it past the simple thought phase of thinking without an internal monologue? If not that would mean half the people walking around out there never had a single idea?

People are just wired differently.

I can read very, very fast.
That hour or so at night means I’m reading 60 to 100 books a year.
I can’t imagine what’s it like for people that can only read like 500 words per minute or something.

On the other hand, my ability to learn/play/sing music sucks.  And others can essentially effortlessly do stuff I can’t.

Or, I’ve had enough training and range time and ammo counts I should be some GM, but I’m barely a mediocre shooter.

Is there anything about anphasia coming on later in life?

I seriously struggle to picture things these days.  I borderline go into vapor lock.

What sort of boring dreams do these NPCs have?

I don’t believe that 50% figure for a minute. I can’t imagine a human functioning in this world without both the ability to conceive a vision of a thought and debate the merits.

NPC’s are a real thing.

All you have to do is look at modern social media to see that 50% is possible.

My internal voices argue about which internal movie to watch.



Just kidding. I keep those bitches well in check.

It does sound frightening.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I studied spanish, knew quite a bit. My summer job had a lot of people who spoke spanish. To carry on a conversation for me was very difficult, but occassionally my inner dialog was in Spanish, I'd dream of shit in spanish. It didn't last very long. I was kind of glad it went away. I just thought in Spanish, there was no translation.

Sounds like a shitty action movie.

How come I think of like herd cattle? Do cattle think or simply react to stimuli?

Temple Grandin drew a lot of similarities between cattle and autism.

I don't really see it that as being wrong. I see it as another interpretation. What irks me is if the movie uses an actor that clearly does not match the description in the book. A prime example is the Jack Reacher character. Tome Cruise, really? Jack Reacher was described as a hulk of a man, menacing, and not one to mess with.

I just don't understand how everyone doesn't experience this??

If it's just straight up text/information and not literally painting a picture in your mind... WTF?

I can read pretty fast too. It feels like I just scan a paragraph, pick up on key words and keep moving. I don't know how to explain it but it's how I read. If I see something that is unclear or confusing, I'll pause, look at the whole paragph again and then read line by line.

I did this all through my Business Administration degree.

Great Topic!

I had no idea that there were people without an internal dialogue or ability to visualize.

Certainly explains a lot, and has given me a new perspective for observing people’s actions and imagining why they took them.

Easy to make bad decisions if you can’t visualize outcomes.

Just to make sure I have them both, I tried to visualize tiddies. Mmm tiddies.

Success

Your post confuses me a bit. First, you speak of half the people don’t have an internal monologue and can’t visualize their thoughts. You do realize that thinking is done without language and without an inner monologue, don’t you? And, how do you visualize a thought? Do you turn on your inner voice for that?  Also, urges and impulses are not thoughts. Whoever wrote the stuff you posted has no clue how the mind works.

Actually, every thought you have had in your life is abstract.

During my LE career I’d bet that the majority of dumb ass tick turd criminals I dealt with, especially the repeat offenders and entire families of criminal morons, lack both of those attributes.

If I told you; "picture an apple in your mind". I do exactly what the little drawing did. I literally can picture the image of an apple in my mind @TxRanger1838. Furthermore, I can internally discuss features of the apple. A Fuji apple with a brown spot, or maybe a Granny-Smith still in the tree. Or maybe a pear instead of an apple.

It also appears that reading comprehension might not be your stronger skills I see.

Because I said:

"That close to 50% of the human population doesn't have an internal monologue and even some of those, furthermore, suffer from Aphantasia. Meaning they don't have a "mind's eye" and can't visualize their thoughts either."

Meaning, that close to half of the population of humanity possibly doesn't have an internal voice. Not that that close to half don't have an internal voice and can't visualize thoughts either. That's where the:

"And even some of those, furthermore, suffer from Aphantasia. Meaning they don't have a "mind's eye" and can't visualize their thoughts either."

Part comes in... meaning, that in addition to some who don't have an inner voice, they also suffer from Aphantasia.

I do turn to my inner voice. Especially when I'm think three-dimensionally. Right now, I'm laying out OSB boards in my attic for additional storage space. As I poked my head up there, I thought to myself with my inner voice "okay, average space is two-feet between the trusses and I have eight-by-four foot boards. I need to cut X into Y for this part. But over here, I need to cut them differently to fit due to the ductwork."

All while I verbalized that in my head, I mentally drew the attic in my head and pictured the layout of the boars, the boxes that will go there, etc... I was literally talking to myself in my mind, while mentally drawing a three-dimensional blueprint with notes. All in my head.