[alephknoll]

Do you have regret? Ever asked yourself why did I do drink coffee just before bed. Have you ever played a game and thought if I do this, then my opponent will do that, so maybe I shouldn't do that. Have you ever had a meeting or interview and you went through how to introduce yourself or conduct the interview in your head?

I have a hard time believing that there are people who have no inner dialogue. Especially in modern societies. I think it's something we all do, it's just that we didn't know there was a word for it.

Ever ask yourself, why did I waste so much time on HN or other social media? Then you probably have an inner dialogue.

[Jensson]

You aren't able to express those concepts in your head without making them into words? Our minds are made to work with associations and feelings, if I regret my time spent doing something that is expressed in my mind as me feeling regret when I think about when I did that thing, there are no words needed for that, same with everything else you talked about. Only time I add words is when I communicate with people, like when I write this post, then I translate those internal concepts into words so it comes out a bit different every time and not exactly how I thought.

If you are mostly thinking in words, how do you even fix or see when you have misunderstood a word? To me that is easy, that word isn't how you think, but to you that words definition seems to be critical then, how do you even manage to parse text then? You must also parse them down to these core concepts that are lower level than words without knowing, or else I don't see how you could function as a human.

[RoyalHenOil]

I don't have an internal monologue, but I do still experience regret; I just experience it as an emotion, not as words. I have thought about what my opponent would do in a game, but I think about it by imagining them doing it, not by verbally describing it.

If I am preparing for some kind of speech or trying to get the phrasing of something just right for an interview, then yes, I do practice saying those words inside my head (or, as often as not, aloud). But it is not exactly an internal monologue because I am not thinking in words; I am just doing memorization work. It's little different from imagining song lyrics in my head, which I can do without really parsing their meaning.

I have never thought something like, "Why did I...?" I have said things like that in order to express the sentiment of self-disappointment to someone else in my company, but it's not a thing I would ever think or say on my own. Internally, my experience is an emotion, not a rhetorical question.

[mc32]

I don’t have a dialogue with myself. I might express something like, that was stupid, or go on a an expletive rant when I hit my thumb, but it’s not directed at myself.

With games, I do take mental notes, but it’s not personal. It’s more like looking at a historical battle, for example and thinking of different options. It’s not personal.

I’m not going to be absolutist. There could be times I’ve had internal monologues but I may not think of them as such. In other words maybe I have the behavior but because I haven’t classified it as such, I remain unaware of it.