Comment by algoth1

5 hours ago

I wonder if the author is one of those people that doesn't have an audible inner monologue?

I'm not the OP, but I think everyone might have a different definition of what "audible inner monologue" mean.

For example, I don't talk to myself in "monologue". But I can close my eyes or stare at the screen and visualize the solutions. The words that I usually tell myself during that are "what?", "why?", "strange!", "really",... not a monologue or sentences.

  • That's my impression too, that my thoughts are a hybrid, where I'll think in a rapid sequence of whole concepts and visual flashes, and then summarize that in my inner voice "for the record", as a jumping-off point for the next batch of thoughts. But I don't have much control over this, as my inner voice is hard to shut up for any length of time, always giving a running narrative.

The author says they could narrate their own thought process out loud.

I couldn’t do that. I have no insight into my thought processes whatsoever. There are no semantic (or any other) processes to witness. It’s complete crickets at all times…

My wife is the opposite - constant chatter in her head. And she can trace every thought exactly. (No idea how people like her can focus or even function!)

  • We focus/function via the inner monologue. It doesn't just do its own thing while we're trying to focus or get something done, it walks through the issue and comes up with solutions and then criticizes them and iterates, and as far as we're concerned, that's us solving the problem.

I am such a person and I've always done 'chain of thought' in a notepad in order to think through complex things, well before LLMs were a thing. There are certainly tasks I can 'one-shot' but I've learned from experience that for some problems that just results in me focusing on irrelevant things.

  • Curious whether the lack of audible inner monologue is a benefit for you?

    I feel like I'm the opposite, where most of my thinking is done in inner English, which feels slow. I.e. as opposed to instantly realizing the result of deep subconscious processing or something, I usually go the slow language way, if you get what I mean.