[gptgpp]

Hate to dumb down this interesting conversation, but... You guys talk to yourselves when you're alone?

When I'm alone I kind of like... stop existing? It's made me come to the conclusion that our identity hugely depends on social constructs and our relationships with others.

I have thoughts but they're definitely not conversational. It's like, "me hungry, want lasagna" or thinking about mathematical/programming concepts, or "I should read more about this" or "I'm sad/happy this happened."

Somebody help me out here... please give me an example of how you talk to yourself when you are alone? What is that like? You have an actual dialogue with another entity that is also you? It's very hard for me to wrap my head around.

edit: Nevermind found an answer... It's from "psychology today" which I know is not the best, but it seems to cite an actual study and be by an actual psychologist.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/pristine-inner-exper...

Seems the experience of inner monologues/dialogues has a huge amount of variation and isn't well understood. Neat!

I guess we can include Seneca was an inner-monologue-er. So you guys think to yourselves but whenever you change your mind you experience it as some sort of conversation with yourself happening. Cool.

[ljf]

I have full on conversations when I'm alone, with myself, with other people, maybe with myself as a child or at some point I'm thinking about.

I can hear the voices with different sounds - just like my friends voices - as I type this I loudly hear this in my own voice.

I always assumed everyone was like this, but of friends I've spoken to about this I'd say it is 50/50.

Sounds so quiet in your head! Must be peaceful. I imagine mine is linked to (or part of my) adhd (though my I don't have a formal diagnosis).

[dleslie]

It's not ADHD, many people do not have any inner monologue.

Here's an interview with someone like that which goes into detail on how she experiences the world:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/inner-monologue-...

[germinalphrase]

“ I have full on conversations when I'm alone, with myself, with other people, maybe with myself as a child or at some point I'm thinking about”

I am the same.

[jamiek88]

I’m the same and I’m diagnosed with adhd too.

I’ll have follow on conversations from when I was 8 years old!

[shrimp_emoji]

>You guys talk to yourselves when you're alone?

All the time.

>When I'm alone I kind of like... stop existing?

That sounds horrible and alien to me. I definitely exist, and talking to myself articulates and reifies my own thoughts. It's me helping myself think something through or overcome something, emotionally.

If anything, there's "less of me" when I'm talking to someone else since then it's like I'm operating in a relationship-appropriate subset of my true self with them.

>Somebody help me out here... please give me an example of how you talk to yourself when you are alone? What is that like? You have an actual dialogue with another entity that is also you? It's very hard for me to wrap my head around.

I don't imagine a second self that I'm talking to and who's talking back. I'm one entity, and I can just be vocalizing thoughts. "Ok, so this code needs to do X..." Or, if I see an HN thread about how people can't get laid and a commenter is talking about low value women, "Haha, they ARE low value -- how many of them can even install Arch Linux? Granted, that's not because they're dumb; it's probably societal pressures stacked against their ever being exposed to things that would predispose them to install Arch. That's good. I think I'll write that and contribute productively to this awesome thread that I can obviously relate to which is why I'm alone right now and able to vocalize these thoughts without it being weird."

Often, it's also motivational. "Ok, dude. I need to take out the trash. What can I do to get me to take out this trash? What's a good reward? Let's make a deal. With myself. Right now. Because I need a reward to carry out basic functions like taking out the god damn trash." And that helps me come to an accord with myself about the trash. The act of verbalizing it makes the thoughts way more powerful. A silent internal monologue would be way less rousing. I can just sit there, in silence, looking at the trash, thinking that, but my mind might just disinterestedly drift into distraction.

I read once that Japanese subway workers physically gesture and speak out loud (to themselves) things they're about to do and that this minimizes their rate of mistakes. I think it works similarly to that.

[Talanes]

I have the opposite experience, where I (usually) am more myself when I'm alone.

Which I partially attribute to the inner voice feeling like the main consciousness. There's often a disconnect of having to semi-verbally think through something before responding. It takes a conscious effort to switch to speaking naturally without the mental rehearsal.

Edit: >You have an actual dialogue with another entity that is also you?

If I'm working through an idea in my head or trying to catalogue my knowledge of something, it's often framed as a one-sided conversation with someone in my life. Sometimes because it is something I'm likely to speak to that person about, but just as often I know it's just irrelevant junk I'd never actually burden another human with listening to.

[MrVandemar]

> When I'm alone I kind of like... stop existing? It's made me come to the conclusion that our identity hugely depends on social constructs and our relationships with others.

Interesting. Would you describe yourself as more of an extrovert, or more of an introvert?

[StrictDabbler]

I strongly suspect that this is not a difference in internal experience so much as it is a difference in expectation, just as with aphantasia (the inability to imagine).

Imagine a bicycle.

How many sections does it have? Where do the pedals connect? Which bar supports the seat? What color is it? What shape of handles does it have? What kind of tires? Does it have lights? Does it have luggage rack?

Some people look at their internal version of a bicycle and say "oh, I must have aphantasia. I think of a bicycle and a photograph of a bicycle doesn't appear in my mind."

Other people are perfectly satisfied with the blurry sort-of bicycle that they imagined until you start asking about specifics.

I think the inner monologue question is similar.

The inner monologue is a ((set of echoes)(set of impressions)(series of words)) that move back and forth ((in time) (in your mind))(((competing for expression) (attempting to be expressed) (expressed only to you (to your internal ear))) in bits and pieces that you can ((experience)(hear)(perceive)(decide to treat) as) a coherent whole.

Sometimes it feels like a book unspooling, sometimes it feels like the paragraph I just wrote.

When a person compares their internal talk to the internal talk in a movie, sometimes the person feels the movie is accurate, sometimes the person feels the movie is inaccurate, but the actual internal experience is probably very similar in both cases.

What differs is the person's expectations of an "internal conversation." If you expect it to sound like a voiceover you will be disappointed and you will think "everybody else must be different from me".

That's not (I suspect) the case. I think we mostly just have different ideas of how to process our fictional abstractions of the concept.

[MrLeap]

I have an internal monologue. After accidentally dropping a spoon full of ice-cream on my shirt, I ruminated on what it would take for me to look at that event as the catalyst of an abrupt change in the trajectory of my life.

Then it's a flutter of little shards of partial thoughts one after the other, trying to solve the A* from shirt stain to self actualization. Then I went and changed my shirt.

[gumby]

I have no inner monologue (and find the whole idea of one utterly weird) but I’m certainly at times highly introspective. But those introspective analyses are no more linguistic than my thinking about, say, math or sex or programming.

I don’t know if it’s related but I only recently realized (in my 50s) that some people hear the sound of words when they read. Also utterly weird to me, and I imagine it would massively slow down reading. OTOH the big insight for me is that that is probably how some people are able to take pleasure from reading poetry or puns. For me poetry often feels like “annoyingly written prose” unless read aloud.

[barrysteve]

The Onion had a satirical video about a normal guy home alone with nothing to do.

https://youtu.be/9G4fUeuAfGo

Guy talks to himself, visits fridge multiple times for no reason, makes faces in the mirror. The talking-to-himself performance is somewhat common with the people I've known.

I find it humoursly similar to some boring covid moments for me.

The pull to not exist or whatever it's best named, happened to me when I wanted complete freedom from other people and rented an airbnb to get some space. When there's no desire and no expectation to meet people soon, I have gone quiet before.

[throwaway742]

>When I'm alone I kind of like... stop existing?

Wow that's terrifying.

[more_corn]

Sounds peaceful

[robinson7d]

In my personal experience, inner monologue can vary within an individual as well. Some days mine is similar to what you’ve described (“me hungry, want lasagna” - love it!) but other times it can be 2-4 voices all debating a topic from different viewpoints. They’re typically similar to one another but different enough to know which is talking, sort of differences in tone/pitch.

“Monologue” might not be the right word at that point though? I guess it is all me, so the dialogue is a monologue.

[more_corn]

I experience both. (Inner monologue and lack thereof) I prefer the company of my nonverbal self (I also think I’m more wise when I don’t think in words). Many of my hobbies are low thinking / high doing activities. Perhaps I simply don’t like the sound of my own inner voice which is weird because I write me speak with no hesitation.

[sitkack]

You don't talk to yourself? I have like at least 3-9 minds in my head at anyone time.

[overboard2]

1. If yesterday you had not had breakfast or lunch, what would you be by dinner?

2. Can you read in your head?

3. How are you writing your comments?

[jrumbut]

That's so funny to hear! For me there is, if anything, more conversation when I'm alone.