I’m so deeply fascinated by that because it’s not how I experience consciousness. Very cool. I think I’m far in the opposite direction: I have a voice that sounds like me, but I don’t control and it asks me questions and gives opinions. It’s like having a copilot.

That's odd. Can you silence the voice? Do you exert influence over it?

If I start trying, it completely goes away, replaced by my monologue. I'm sure a lot of people know that feeling where you very intentionally drive your own internal voice. I can do that.

I think it's related to my ADHD. Reading is very difficult because as I read, my voice just completely wanders off, CONSTANTLY. "Oh hey, 'gargantuan' that's a great word. Reminds me of a video game monster... Oh did you just read 2 whole pages without absorbing a single bit of it?"

To add a bit more commentary: this is the one time I consider my ADHD to be a terrible disability. I cannot read. I just can't. Grad school was HELL when I had to read. But my ADHD and associated strong independent inner monologue is immensely powerful when I'm trying to solve problems myself, such as doing software design.

Yeah, my inner monologue sometimes feels like I'm driving it, and sometimes I am definitely definitely not driving it. I don't know if it's "my voice" or not, it's just... the the thing in my mind that outputs (silent) language.

And yeah, I can have conversations with the voice. Yeah, it can help to focus moving my thinking forwards on some problem-solving thing. But, alas, often when I'm doing that it just starts saying obviously-silly things, as if it's a Markov model. Sentences that might sound structurally reasonable but that are obviously not what I meant to say/think, and obviously not true.

But it almost never interferes with reading. Reading is too compelling. Even if my thoughts go off in some other direction while reading and I do the "just read a page but absorbed nothing" thing, there's no voice involved then, it feels like a different process.

Is that just an ADHD thing though or part of human nature? Reading in the beginning is difficult yet, after training your brain to sit and process by reading an hour in the morning you can change things. Very fast.

This is called discursive thought and is very common. The goal of non-dual mediation is to recognize these thoughts and realize they are not you.

They are you; they are a part of you, but they are not all of you. They are as much you as your foot or your eye is you. You are not an atomic entity.

Perhaps I should have written “to not identify with them” just like you rarely identify your core self as your foot.

If not you, what do you think they are?

You do not need to identify with them. They come and go like the wind. They are no more “you” than your hair on the barber shop floor.

I see now from your other answer what you meant, I thought you had meant not you in some sense of being externally created or imposed.

As someone with ADHD, I have those same experiences, just not verbally. I can verbalize them if I have to, but they are wordless.

The only time I experience the sort of word-based hijacking you're describing is with what I think of as "internal argument". I'll think of a previous or possible future discussion and structure my reply in words. Although since words are slow, often the words will sort of collapse and I'll shift to sort of a mental outline mode, where it's more a feel of structure with occasional words or phrases cropping up.

Relevant book:

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Paperback – by Julian Jaynes

I also have a very constant inner voice, sometimes multiple, maybe it's an ADHD - although my ADHD I can read fine (although sometimes I need to get up and walk around absorbing what I've read and considering the implications)

That sounds like you're practiced in metacognition; "Why am I thinking this?" etc.

I've always been a bit perplexed by the claim of not having an inner monologue, but after reading the replies to your comment I wonder if I'm closer to not having an inner monologue than having one. I thought it was about not being able to summon an inner voice at all. Regardless, it's fascinating to read peoples descriptions and see that it lies on a spectrum.

I definitely experience it when reading & writing carefully and sometimes in deep thought with conscious effort, but never minute to minute and definitely not compulsively. I'd describe my minute to minute like you, more abstract and intuitive. Yet at the same time I'm very introspective, it just doesn't happen with an inner monologue.

edit: after reading the study, I think I fall into the not having an internal monologue. Fascinating.

In one of Feynman's books, he discusses and experiment that he did with people keeping time in their heads (count 30 seconds) while simultaneously reading a passage of a book. Some people had absolutely no issue with doing this, but many people found it impossible.

When he asked people how they kept track of how much time had passed, he found that people who pictured a number in their heads were able to keep time and read without issue, while those who "spoke" the time to themselves found it impossible to read.

Just tried it on this thread. I speak the time to myself and had no problem reading this comment and formulating a reply while keeping time.

Did the same and couldn't keep the time. I can feel the 1 second beat, but I forget what second I'm at after a few seconds

May I ask you if your inner voice has an accent, can you recognize a tone to it? It was very weird when I realized that other people can imagine their thoughts having a physical voice.

When I do have it, it does have a sound and sounds mostly like me.

My inner voice by default sounds like how much own voice sounds to me, but I can make it sound like anyone I know, even with accents, though I can't speak with those accents because I don't know how to move my mouth to precisely make the sounds.

Yeah, mine is my voice. When I was thinking rather or not to reply and what I would reply with it was just my voice - as it sounds in my skull, not as it sounds in recording - just talking through the details as if I were speaking out loud to myself.

Now I feel like I need to read the study to better understand the definition.

I’m pretty skeptical of people that make this claim. It’s just surprising to me that a base level feature would work so differently. I’d expect some variation in models (like that old Feynman video about counting), but if you can speak and use language it’s hard for me to accept literally no internal voice is going on.

I’ve always kinda suspected people making this claim are lacking introspection to such an extreme extent that they don’t even recognize the inner voice that’s omnipresent.

> I’m pretty skeptical of people that make this claim.

Your essential point for justifying this skepticism is that you cannot imagine people are this different. In my experience people are always a little bit more different than you can imagine. After all, there are people that tirelessly work to charitable ends on one end and people that run death camps on the other.

> people making this claim are lacking introspection to such an extreme extent

It's perfectly acceptable to you to imagine that you are (essentially) fundamentally better or more complete than them, but not that perhaps they are your equals and merely experience life differently. I think it could be valuable to figure out why one is easy to you while the other is hard.

I have an inner monologue when reading (or otherwise interacting with language), but mostly not when actually doing stuff. There must be some stuff you do where you don't have an inner monologue? I think it's a matter of degrees, like when programming my inner monologue consists mostly of variable names, but not like a procedural "I'll do this, then this, then it will do this".

If you're having a hard time grasping that, try doing or thinking about things while doing a mantra. I think you'll find that you're still able to "think" while the only thing your inner dialogue is saying is some kind of mantra. (It may take some practice)

You can also try speed reading apps which force you to absorb information without the time for an inner monologue.

I find this helps with introspection as you can observe ideas without the (direct) bias of language. Being able to recognize and observe the thing that's making your inner monologue happen is a useful skill, I think. I can't really imagine being bound to language like you're describing, and it often takes me a while to put more complicated ideas into words.

Languages categories are never going to be accurate. Is a whale a fish or a mammal? Well technically a mammal, but if you want to put someone in charge of them it's probably better if it's the department of fisheries than whoever's in charge of buffalo. One of of them has boats. The word is just a word, a pointer at a vague collection of things with similar properties. Being able to think about and work with the things directly without the distraction of language is very important to me.

Man, this is a really weird thread. I don’t vocalize my thoughts internally either unless I need to formalize and remember them. My guess is that the people who can’t imagine not having an inner monologue just don’t take control of that process, since I can’t imagine they’re unable to think at all without mentally vocalizing things.

And now it sounds like a lot of meditation is training to be able to think the way you or I do, haha.

Is there any useful, productive research out there about this stuff? The only time I’ve come across any convincing or scientifically rigorous psychology was when Feynman did some for fun in his spare time and wrote about it

A few thoughts:

- Maybe!

- Don't accidentally get caught in the fallacy of "how I experience existence must be how everyone does

- Is it possibly just a semantic distinction at that point? If you are completely consciously unaware of an internal voice that speaks your language, does it matter if it's there or not?

I’m with you on 2, but it doesn’t seem like just me - it seems like vast majority except the occasional person claiming it’s different for them.

It’s not a semantic distinction to me, since the mechanism underlying it would then be the same and it’d just be their recognition of it that varied which is way less surprising.

Indeed, there are legions of non-dual meditation apps and meditation teachers who train people to deal with this inner voice in ways that are helpful.

If such people were not rampant, I do not think these teachers and apps would be so popular.

A lot of therapy is also focused around self-talk and rumination too.

Well here is one other random sample who has to turn the inner voice on when necessary :)

Instead of a voice I have a constant song playing in my head when I am not focused. The song changes multiple times per week but if I am on idle I have a song.

When I speak the song turns off, but no voice comes on, unless I consciously prepare my words.

Now when typing this comment, I have a voice (which is my own voice) say the words I am about to type milliseconds before I type them.

I also have a song playing in my head most of the time (even while reading but not writing , like you). I’m a hobbyist musician; maybe that’s part of it.

But I also have an inner voice . I think the music stops when the voice starts, not sure.

For the last week I’ve had “right down the line” by Gerry Raferty (70s pop song) playing.

This repetetive inner soundtrack thimg can be really annoying sometimes, hampering or even killing concentration on "real thoughts". Any pro tips on how to turn that off? Best approach I found is bulldozing it over with a really powerful but not too beautiful/memorable song. The famous "rickrolling" piece seems to work OK for this. (I.e. not by actually hearing it, just by intentionally "playing it internally".)

This is the best thread on HN. Thank you everyone for being so goddamn interesting.

I truly believe this can be quite different between people. Personally I don't have "a" inner voice, but a quorum of three, all of which together form "my" thoughts

probably better than a bickering Italian couple! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/25/the-last-gre...

That kind of variation isn’t too surprising to me. The claim that there isn’t one at all though I don’t really buy.

If I would hazard a guess, I'd say it's possible that the region of the brain processing language has developed elsewhere than with your average human, leading to less connections from language (Broca's region) directly to auditory region.

This hypothesis would explain hearing the inner monologue when reading, as reading actually transcribes visual data directly to their phonetic counterparts.

Is it that much different from aphantasia? My sister cannot "see" anything in her mind at all, whereas for me mental images are so strong that I sometimes stop seeing the world in front of my eyes in favor of the one in my head. That's a pretty radical difference in a "base level" feature.

I think it’s different - there was an old post by an early FB employee who has no ability to visualize images after a head injury and has to adapt as a result for that.

Thinking of images is also different than thinking of words (since all of us speak the language).

I’m not saying it’s impossible, but that I suspect its more likely a lack of introspection - I’d need to be persuaded empirically somehow and don’t know how to test it.

> Thinking of images is also different than thinking of words (since all of us speak the language).

No more of speak the language than see with our eyes. Personally while I do have some kind of inner voice, my thoughts tend much more heavily to the visual. And memories too. If I need to recall a phone number or spelling then I'll imagine it written.

Thanks - something for me to think about. These HN threads do have a history of changing my mind (or at least softening my position) on topics where the true answer can be harder to know.

My introspection is quite good on this; I've been doing meditation on and off for decades. Sorry, but I don't have an internal narrator. Instead, the meditative interruptions that come with words are generally imagined discussions with other people or things to write about.

Like you, I had a hard time believing people were different in this. The whole idea of an internal narrator seemed absurd to me. Why would anybody need a narrator for themselves? They're right there! But enough people claim that this is their real life that I'm willing to believe it, however tedious and exhausting that sounds to me.

Imagined discussion is what I'm talking about. It's not narration like "I'm picking up the coffee mug now, I'm clicking the button now" - it's silent speech with oneself. Often it's trying to predict what will happen or thinking about things with language. It's not that every action must be stated by some narrator, but that a narrator exists to discuss things with oneself.

Without language and semantic meaning tied to ideas, what does 'thinking' mean at all?

My point is more that there are always thoughts (typically in the form of words, but sometimes images) flowing through your mind all of the time. Meditation and 'mindfulness' is focused on recognizing them as they happen and getting control of that kind of thing (at least enough to reduce thought loops, rumination, unwanted emotional response, etc.).

For me there are significant periods without words or images. I also almost never "discuss things with oneself". I understand that people do that, but for many years I just thought it was metaphor occasionally made real in film and books. The sort of storytelling convention that is made fun of here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CahNAauFgys

I get that you have a hard time understanding thinking without words because that's your main experience. But please understand that it's different for other people.

And not just people. Animals can be very thoughtful. Watch documentaries, for example, of animal cognition and problem-solving. From crows to chimps, an awful lot of thinking happens, just not in words.

The animals example is a good one, thanks for the thoughtful response.

I have also wondered if the two are related. I have aphantasia, and also the majority of inner monologue I experience is when sounding out words during reading. It's pretty much quiet all the time in my head (which I guess is not everyone's experience?) and much of the thinking seemingly happens at the conceptual level.

Do you not consider introspection a base level feature? I think the point of these aphantasia-related discussions is that people make wrong assumptions about what is base-level.

Does you inner monologue have an accent? Can you recognize a definite tone to it? I heard someone mentioning "I loved your accent, so I'll imagine you narrating my thoughts from now on" and the idea of your thoughts being pronounced in your mind with accents sounded completely alien to me.

I can apply any character voice I can imagine to the inner voice. The default that I "hear" most of the time isn't even my voice - the timbre is a bit lower and more neutral, and it lacks my distinctive vocal affectations. But if I want to hear it as an Irish woman, or whatever else, I just do. Perhaps it's relevant that I always did character voices and accents out loud as well, since I was a kid wanting to be an actor.

For many cognitive processes, I don't see a clear survival value to conscious awareness of that process, so I don't expect that awareness to be a reliable feature. The survival relevant result of that cognition can still come through.

I also think that an internal voice that doesn't get conscious awareness is likely to become a process that doesn't present as voice. So it's not like someone can just pay more attention and hear something, because it stopped talking a long time ago.

It is not surprising. That you can use verbal language does not mean something inside must use it continuously. In fact, it makes sense that it is used only when relevant. That you can move your hand does not mean you continuously use them. If an «internal voice is going on», you are somehow letting it. This is especially valid for people with heightened introspection (owing to the higher control that internal assessment gives).

Language is still a learned skill. It is quite normal to assume someone not raised in civilization and doesn't speak any human languages does not have an inner monologue expressed in words. While we do all thinking in terms of words (thats how we express ideas) it doesn't necessarily follow. I do have quite a loud "copilot" but I can see how it's a configurable behavior

If you don’t have language I’d guess a lot of things are different about how you think.

If you can speak, read, and write though?

Meditation is exactly the practice of letting your inner monologue chatter until it dies away and you're fully tethered to your sensations and surroundings. So if one can learn to meditate, in theory one can meditate all the time (therefore not have inner chatter/monologue) The more interesting question is what is the usefulness of inner dialogue in itself. A way to rehearse/articulate thoughts to be communicated to someone else? A roleplay with yourself to prepare for a future encounter? Thinking doesn't necessary need the 'echo' of hearing a voice. That's separate, that's more intriguing to me

Meditation is recognizing the omnipresent voice and trying to quiet it down. It’s partly why I suspect those that think they don’t have an internal monologue just aren’t recognizing it.

I think you can get better at quieting the voice or letting thoughts pass, but I don’t think you can really turn it off for longer than a few moments. Gurus that claim they have and have “reached enlightenment” just seem to be lying either to themselves or everyone else (or both).

How or where did you acquire such specific beliefs about what minds can or cannot do?

My skepticism probably comes in part from an anti-religion, anti-mystic reflex. There’s a lot of woo around this stuff so it often puts me on guard.

Obviously nobody is claiming psychic powers here, but I wouldn’t expect brains to operate that differently - so it’s surprising to me.

You might enjoy "37 ways words can be wrong".

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...

Maybe it's similar to how an artificial neural network can converge to different local optimums for a particular problem, depending on its initial parameters and training method. Our brains might just find different ways of representing thoughts, be it through words, images, sounds or even just abstract concepts. If none of them are strictly better than all the others, then there's no selective pressure for the brain to prioritize development in one specific direction over others.

>but I wouldn’t expect brains to operate that differently

Everyone's neurotransmitter balance is different. Of course that will cause brains to sometimes operate wildly differently.

Sure, but there are 4 billion years of selective pressure behind us that make us a lot more alike than different. Maybe this runs at a higher level in the 'brain software stack' that has more variation, but it seems like it'd be a more common lower level type of thing.

Ultimately this is just a hunch though about what I suspect is more likely, I can obviously be wrong.

Everyone's brains operate the same from a basic view, but have very different details. We all think in different ways, we all experience life differently. We just apply similarly understood terms that make it seem like it's all the same. Who knows how varied our actual consciousness is.

I'm on the opposite side of that spectrum. I have such a strong internal dialogue that I talk to myself vocally when doing stuff. Not always, but very often.

It sounds peaceful. Do you experience it that way?

In my experience, it's not significantly more peaceful than how other people experience life: I can still ruminate, it just doesn't involve an internal monologue or dialogue.

I’m curious about this too. I definitely experience my endless inner monologue as “compulsive thinking.” Even when I have nothing interesting to think about my mind keeps chattering on endlessly and I find my thoughts in that state tend to be more anxious in nature.

May be you're like me? I have a lot of thoughts, I just don't use language internally to express them. It makes it hard sometimes to articulate what I'm thinking to another human being, but thinking through language, and especially in SPOKEN language seems so excruciatingly slow and ineffective I'm quite glad I don't have to do it in order to think.

Could people without inner monologue be anxious? How would that kind of overthinking work?

You overthink things just without words. Anticipation itself can cause anxiety.

For sure. For years I thought "inner monologue" was just a metaphor for the interplay of thoughts. I was really surprised that many people literally have an internal monologue going all the time. That seems so exhausting to me!

Similar, inner monologue is a (weird) willed activity for me.