Thinking, to me, feels like a conversation. For hard problems, the conversation is between two entities, neither of whom is myself, but where one is generally close to myself and the other holds unknown truths. The objective is for the one who is similar to me to ask all the right questions to get the more knowledgeable entity to explain those truths. For easier problems, I talk to myself.
When I do visual thinking, including dreams, it’s in the style of a movie, often with drama or action, and sometimes more obvious movie effects. The saddest dream I ever had ended with scrolling credits.
Most of the time it’s like talking to myself. When I’m actively analyzing something it’s like having a discussion with people who all are me but all taking different stances (and one of them is a joker who can’t stop looking at it from a comedian viewpoint).
Sometimes, thinking is talking to myself or to somementalbody else.
Sometimes, thinking is floating about somewhere experiencing it mostly visually.
Sometimes, thinking is just living the moment.
Sometimes, thinking is having mental fun, like rotating cubes in my head.
Sometimes, thinking is just self-awareness, ‘about’ nothing.
When reflecting on it just now, thinking feels like listening to myself speak, with the words but no sound. The more concrete thoughts are at a conversational pace, and some others are in a pace too fast to comfortably speak. This often seems “laid over” a background of an unrelated scene, with dreamlike images flitting about which mildly represent concepts.
Interesting. I thought that my thinking would be mostly words, like inner monologue or talking to myself. Now that I pay attention it is more like images, emotions, concepts constantly flashing through my head, most gone before I even notice them.
Introspectively it seems that my thinking has changed and I just haven’t noticed until now. Or that my conscious mind has finally learned to shut up and pay attention.
I can’t pin down what thinking feels like. There are a bunch of snippets of sensory experience flying around, some being compared to each other (colliding?), and most being present only briefly before they’re sucked away. Analyzing this is extra difficult because I even 10 minutes later, I have almost zero recall of all but the most vivid experiences.
Thinking is like using (at least) one of my senses, but without actualizing the associated physical reality. Right now I can access memories that contain information in audio, visual, tactile and olfactory formats with little effort. I often experience multi-person conversations or music as part of a thought process, but have also known myself to mentally fly around a map, generate pseudocode, mix flavors, sketch an image, or even explore a texture as part of thinking.
...With a little reflection, I find that much of my internal process hinges on something like infographics with little sensory labels, primarily audio but often tactile or even olfactory, but hardly ever actual text. For a complex operation, I seem to zoom in and out on these objects to get the detail/context relationships and see how they interact.
My thinking style has changed twice in my lifetime; I’m going to ramble on about this for a while. I will do a better job of describing me now than when I was younger, because I have a bad memory and it’s hard to remember how I used to think.
When I was young (up until the age of 10-12) I just thought in thoughts. I was very quick back then; I could do mental arithmetic and problem solving much faster than I can now, for instance.
Then for just a few years, I started thinking visually. I read all the time during this period; I probably read a ten times as many books in junior high and high school than I have since (I’m 4th year in college). When I remembered something I’d picture the page on the book where I had seen it.
Now I think more verbally. I hear something like a “mental voice”. It’s very slow compared to either of the others. I think I’m starting to skip my mental dialogue a little lately. I go to lectures and don’t read books, which I never would have done in high school. I also am a lot more social; I’m not sure if there’s a connection. When I remember something it can be visual or verbal. I also remember things somewhat abstractly sometimes, especially ideas like math. It feels like they’re part of me. I’m not sure how long the abstract thing has been going on, it may not be new.
Thinking is like taking a bunch of concepts and jamming them together as one might jam together legos until something fits. I usually do this systematically, as I can feel the first thing that fits is not always the best fit, so I want it organized enough to try everything.
Mostly not like any sensory modality, especially when thinking about relatively simple things. Sometimes talking to myself or to others, or manipulating visuospatialized mathematical structures.
Sometimes talking to myself, sometimes manipulating visualizations (usually heavily mathematical), but mostly not like anything at all, or at least not like any normal sensory modality.
“How does thinking, in general, feel to you?” Do you mean this metaphorically? Can you give some examples of how thinking feels to you?
Thinking, to me, feels like a conversation. For hard problems, the conversation is between two entities, neither of whom is myself, but where one is generally close to myself and the other holds unknown truths. The objective is for the one who is similar to me to ask all the right questions to get the more knowledgeable entity to explain those truths. For easier problems, I talk to myself.
When I do visual thinking, including dreams, it’s in the style of a movie, often with drama or action, and sometimes more obvious movie effects. The saddest dream I ever had ended with scrolling credits.
Thinking feels like shaping clockworks out of clay and air, a couple of meters behind my head.
Watching very short films, arranging items in space, sometimes snatches of conversation intrude.
Most of the time it’s like talking to myself. When I’m actively analyzing something it’s like having a discussion with people who all are me but all taking different stances (and one of them is a joker who can’t stop looking at it from a comedian viewpoint).
Hmmm.… thinking feels to me like poking leaves floating down a river.
I really have no idea how to interpret that.
Depends what I’m thinking about.
Sometimes, thinking is talking to myself or to somementalbody else. Sometimes, thinking is floating about somewhere experiencing it mostly visually. Sometimes, thinking is just living the moment. Sometimes, thinking is having mental fun, like rotating cubes in my head. Sometimes, thinking is just self-awareness, ‘about’ nothing.
When reflecting on it just now, thinking feels like listening to myself speak, with the words but no sound. The more concrete thoughts are at a conversational pace, and some others are in a pace too fast to comfortably speak. This often seems “laid over” a background of an unrelated scene, with dreamlike images flitting about which mildly represent concepts.
Interesting. I thought that my thinking would be mostly words, like inner monologue or talking to myself. Now that I pay attention it is more like images, emotions, concepts constantly flashing through my head, most gone before I even notice them.
Introspectively it seems that my thinking has changed and I just haven’t noticed until now. Or that my conscious mind has finally learned to shut up and pay attention.
I can’t pin down what thinking feels like. There are a bunch of snippets of sensory experience flying around, some being compared to each other (colliding?), and most being present only briefly before they’re sucked away. Analyzing this is extra difficult because I even 10 minutes later, I have almost zero recall of all but the most vivid experiences.
Thinking is like using (at least) one of my senses, but without actualizing the associated physical reality. Right now I can access memories that contain information in audio, visual, tactile and olfactory formats with little effort. I often experience multi-person conversations or music as part of a thought process, but have also known myself to mentally fly around a map, generate pseudocode, mix flavors, sketch an image, or even explore a texture as part of thinking.
...With a little reflection, I find that much of my internal process hinges on something like infographics with little sensory labels, primarily audio but often tactile or even olfactory, but hardly ever actual text. For a complex operation, I seem to zoom in and out on these objects to get the detail/context relationships and see how they interact.
My thinking style has changed twice in my lifetime; I’m going to ramble on about this for a while. I will do a better job of describing me now than when I was younger, because I have a bad memory and it’s hard to remember how I used to think.
When I was young (up until the age of 10-12) I just thought in thoughts. I was very quick back then; I could do mental arithmetic and problem solving much faster than I can now, for instance.
Then for just a few years, I started thinking visually. I read all the time during this period; I probably read a ten times as many books in junior high and high school than I have since (I’m 4th year in college). When I remembered something I’d picture the page on the book where I had seen it.
Now I think more verbally. I hear something like a “mental voice”. It’s very slow compared to either of the others. I think I’m starting to skip my mental dialogue a little lately. I go to lectures and don’t read books, which I never would have done in high school. I also am a lot more social; I’m not sure if there’s a connection. When I remember something it can be visual or verbal. I also remember things somewhat abstractly sometimes, especially ideas like math. It feels like they’re part of me. I’m not sure how long the abstract thing has been going on, it may not be new.
Thinking is like taking a bunch of concepts and jamming them together as one might jam together legos until something fits. I usually do this systematically, as I can feel the first thing that fits is not always the best fit, so I want it organized enough to try everything.
Mostly not like any sensory modality, especially when thinking about relatively simple things. Sometimes talking to myself or to others, or manipulating visuospatialized mathematical structures.
Sometimes talking to myself, sometimes manipulating visualizations (usually heavily mathematical), but mostly not like anything at all, or at least not like any normal sensory modality.
Thinking feels to me like talking to myself.
Thinking feels to me like reading.