Comment by Havoc
6 hours ago
I don't think the out loud or someone listening / reacting matters at all here. Suspect it's entirely this:
>The thought that was comfortable as a vague impression has to become a sentence, and sentences have structure.
It's not unlike what people like PG say about writing improving thinking...it's the being forced to go from fuzzy directional notions to something you can put on paper in that will stand up to critique.
Same with rubber duck debugging. The verbal part means you need to articulate it clearly but it's not the speaking that helps. Same with writing a detailed spec/prompt for an LLM - I know if its too fuzzy ("set an appropriate timeout") the LLM will spin it's wheels so it forces clarity.
Also suspect that a big part of who we consider intelligent is linked to this. Maybe their internal monologue is just more crisp - closer to what they'd tell a rubber duck.
I often construct full sentences in my head. And have conversations with my mental model of some other person. In full sentences
I'm with you there. I have to either hear the full sentences narrated by my internal voice or see the words flashing in my mind in order to "think". This is great for building and maintaining deep mental models but it is also highly susceptible to "bit rot" (such as forgetting the rationale or evidence for a specific assertion or position) days/weeks/years later. I have a friend who simply can't understand how inter-linked note systems (like the kind Obsidian enables) are helpful. It's just a bewildering mess to them and they think more linearly.
Thus, writing things down is a necessity for me: it's not for a need for structure but rather that my "context window" gets filled too quickly. I can counter my own arguments but it's more fun, and often quicker, to do with someone else. Besides, there is such a diversity of thinking out there it would be foolish to not take advantage!
Same here. When I was younger I liked imagining having conversations with people from the past like Plato or something, thinking about their reactions to The Future. (Though I guess I only really imagined my own side of the conversation.)
> I often construct full sentences in my head
I've only ever heard that associated with schizophrenia, but I don't even know if that's true or not.
Haha, I found this genuinely funny. It’s called an internal monologue. Google tells me that it’s the majority position with 30 to 50 percent not having one.
Personally, I find it very difficult to understand how people could not think in words, like you were speaking to another person. Obviously you also have mental imagery and sound etc, so not everything is just words. Internal speech is one channel of thought, but for anything complex I would have thought it was mandatory.
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It might be correlated with neurodivergence. But it’s also just correlated with high verbal ability in general, presumably. I find it quite natural to think in complete structured sentences, and it’s often perplexed me why other people seem to find this concept so alien. And no I’m not schizophrenic.
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I think I've got this from growing up with a narcissist. Thoughts are constructed and seemingly endlessly whittled to try and create a sentence that can avoid getting belittled.
It's hard to talk in groups, because you have to have a sentence mentally critiqued by 3/4 people in turn, so the topic has usually changed before you can say your piece.
I have done this for my entire life (no diagnosis) ... but I also find it easy to write stories and books.
Your comment made me pause in the "wait, other people don't do that?" way.
What? It's never occurred to me that this isn't entirely normal, I've done it all my life. I thought people without an inner monologue were the unusual ones.
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I assume your anecdotal experience is rare.
I think there are tradeoffs though, and this has been a thorn in my side during technical interviews where you are expected to think out loud because:
1. Sometimes you have a vague sense of the shape of the solution, and ime it can be helpful to sit with it for a while before trying to shape it into words.
2. Talking out loud forces structure but it also rate-limits how quickly you can iterate through ideas to find one that plausibly solves the problem at hand
This was my first thought too. Thought, I will say that even though I think in speech for basically everything conceptual, and find it difficult to imagine even being able to not do this, I do often have these… ill defined ideas. Notions of something or other. I have a few words to describe them and they just sort of point in a direction rather than being fleshed out. It’s this sort of thing, like a thought-stub, that benefits the most from inspection and being forced into a better defined form. These are also often the more difficult things, and the reason they’re fuzzy is that it takes a lot of effort to make them sharp.
The value of writing an AGENT.md might be more in the writing of project overview than in the subsequent ability to run an LLM on the project.
One can't think aloud.
It's illogical to use one word when another is more concise and succinct like talking and speaking in this case.
Some words are self-explanatory like thinking.
The post you're replying to didn't say that, but regardless, I would say 'thinking aloud' is a pretty good descriptor for the word-by-word narration kind of thinking where you sort of both say and hear it in your head. I have heard that some people who who experience 'inner monologue' experience their thoughts nearly exclusively like this.
It seems like you saying that people who can do alone what most people do alone, have an advantage. Sure but seems more like an agreement with the article than otherwise.