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> I don’t personally think that other animals will have a verbal inner monologue in the way that I do I find it funny that this article and the quotes within s

> I don’t personally think that other animals will have a verbal inner monologue in the way that I do I find it funny that this article and the quotes within state that humans have a "dense internal monologue" as if that is some requirement of the species. Some quick Googling indicates that people with internal monologues might only make up 30%-50% of people [0]. There are frequent Reddit posts with some variation of "TIL people [have|don't have] an internal monologue" full of comments of people from both sides, and a significant portion of people who don't have the classic internal monologue, but something in between instead. We can't even begin to truly describe our own minds, how could we possibly know how all species would think? 0: Hurlburt, R.T., Alderson-Day, B., Kuhn, S. & Fernyhough, C. (2016). Exploring the ecological validity of thinking on demand: Neural correlates of elicited vs. spontaneously occurring inner speech. PLoS One, 11(2), e0147932. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147932

NayamAmarshe 2y ago
Inference can bring some compassion. One doesn't need to think too much to know the only difference between us and other species is the ability to philosophize and as such, it should bring even more harmony and compassion, instead of beliefs that justify exploitation of nature. I don't know why we assign ourselves so much importance, some of our thoughts allow us to bring harm to others but we don't want to be treated the same way we treat them. All we really need is education, the education of putting ourselves in someone else's shoes (or hooves).
- prometheus76 2y ago
  I don't entirely agree that all it takes is education. Many people have grown up on farms, have lived with animals all their lives, and yet have no problem eating animals.
  - NayamAmarshe 2y ago
    I suppose there are many factors involved but education is the key component. Knowledge, and a culture of knowledge can cause a massive shift in thinking and actions.
    - prometheus76 2y ago
      Essentially, what I hear in your statement is "if I can just teach people how I see the world, then they will see the world the same way." I firmly disagree with that assessment. Someone can be educated and yet see things differently from you.
  - rickydroll 2y ago
    They also have a different relationship to eating animals than people who think meat comes on a plastic tray wrapped in shrinkwrap. From what I've seen, the attitude is more mindful of the animal you raised and interacted with. You don't want to waste any part of their sacrifice in becoming food for you. I take it a step further and say that if you're going to eat animals, make the best possible, best-tasting meal out of them.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      I lean heavily into the "I don't want to feel existentially guilty, so anonymous cubes please" camp. The flip side is that I also have no quasi-romantic attachment to it being "real" meat.
- dbingham 2y ago
  I think part of the issue is disagreement about what "harmony and compassion" actually looks like. One of the sibling comments immediately jumped to the assumption you're referring to veganism and the use of animals in the food system. I'm not going to assume that's what you're referring to, but I will use it as a case study. The problem with veganism's approach to this is that it's a limited extension of empathy. If you've been following along with the advances in plant behavior, it's pretty mind blowing. There is a growing body of evidence that plants have cognition (using a different system than animal's nervous system), memory, environmental awareness, the ability to learn, and communicate. In other words, it seems increasingly likely that plants are _also_ conscious. In fact, there are hints of evidence that microbes are aware and making decisions. It may well be that environmental awareness and consciousness are just the defaults of life. So then, for autotrophs like us, what does harmony and compassion look like? How do we feed ourselves at scale without causing harm or exploiting nature?
  - catlifeonmars 2y ago
    > How do we feed ourselves at scale without causing harm or exploiting nature? Half jokingly, maybe we don’t, and human society develops morality that is not compatible with the continued existence of humans.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    I do not believe that veganism can be criticized for a lack of empathy versus plants. Even if we value identically plants and animals, plants are exploited in a much more benign way than animals. In the past, there were many domestic animals which could be said to have lived quite a happy life for their kind, until the moment when they were slaughtered. Nowadays, the vast majority of the domestic animals live in conditions that can be hardly named other than torture. On the other hand, the cultivated plants do not really live in any worse way than in their wild state. The majority of the cultivated plants are either annual plants, which are killed a very short time before the moment when they would have died anyway, or they are perennial plants from which we take only their fruits, which have been developed by the plants especially for being taken by animals, as a payment for being aided in reproduction. So without giving any preference to cultivated plants or domestic animals, the more ethical choice is to continue to exploit in the current way only the former. I believe that in the future not even cultivating plants will be the most efficient way for producing food and other organic substances. The most efficient way will be to use solar energy gathered by photovoltaic cells to capture carbon dioxide and dinitrogen and incorporate them in some simple organic molecule or molecules, perhaps glycine or a mixture of urea or ammonia with a simple carbohydrate or a short-chain fatty acid. Whatever will be synthesized using solar energy, at a better efficiency than currently achieved by plants, will be used to feed some genetically engineered fungi (or parasitic plants, i.e. non-phototrophic plants), which will produce any kind of desired food or other useful complex organic substances. (A first step in this direction is shown by the recent news about strains of the Trichoderma fungus that have been genetically engineered to produce either whey protein or egg white protein, but in the future it should be possible to make for instance fungi able to grow fruiting bodies that are bananas or turkey thighs).
taeric 2y ago
Agreed that it is very crazy how shallow projections from humanity to other animals often is. Really gets annoying when folks try and reverse morality in discussing behavior that 'not even animals would do.' Or, heaven help me, discussion of "balance." I've grown to view leaf season as basically trees conducting war on shrubbery.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Or even shallow projections from humans to other humans, like with fundamental attribution error. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_erro...
tekla 2y ago
> Some quick Googling indicates that people with internal monologues might only make up 30%-50% of people [0]. That probably explains so much.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
canadianfella 2y ago
[dead]
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 2y ago
> people with internal monologues might only make up 30%-50% of people It's incredible to imagine there are people out there just thinking in language as they go about their lives. I wonder how it must work. Are they literally lining up one word after another in their minds? I guess it has to work that way to feel like some sort of "consistent internal monologue"? At scale, though, imagining a roomful of people thinking in single-threaded monologues does explain a lot about why some teams take forever to get anything done.
- xdennis 2y ago
  I'm surprised you find us weird. I always thought of muteminds as psychos. For example, if you spend a day alone, do you just wallow in silent nothingness? Or do you talk to yourself aloud because you can't do so silently?
- gnulinux 2y ago
  Yes I literally line up one word after the other. As I think, I converse to myself. "Should I do it this way? No, well that's overkill and too difficult. Can I get away with just that? Yeah that's likely fine" I think there are definitely extra-verbal aspects to my thinking e.g. sometimes when I tell myself "how about this" "this" refers to a thought or graph or concept or whatever. Other than that, my thinking is like speaking.
- shishy 2y ago
  Just because someone has an internal monologue doesnt mean they think slow. Its just a voice in your head you can talk to. Its not how you think.
  - gnulinux 2y ago
    It can also be how you think. I think like that (speaking to myself) and I'm not a slow thinker, at least I don't think so... The thing is, when speaking doesn't involve muscle movements, and just a stream of word/concept objects it can be much faster, and also doesn't have to be single-threaded (so to say). But from my subjective experience it feels like I'm talking to myself, one word after the other.
tim333 2y ago
>how could we possibly know how all species would think? Owners of cats and dogs get a reasonable idea from observation. But yeah, doing all species is tricky.
mc32 2y ago
Count me as one of those people. I don't know what the hell people mean by inner monologue. Maybe I have one, but I wouldn't know what it is. I feel like it's trying to explain to a blind person what sight is.
- alephknoll 2y ago
  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.
  - RoyalHenOil 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    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.
pmarreck 2y ago
I occasionally talk to myself (or to "the powers that be", humoring the idea that we're in kind of a super-advanced-VR classroom sim), but I wouldn't qualify it as an "internal monologue"
machiaweliczny 2y ago
Yeah I uses to have these but currently don’t
zamber 2y ago
Weren't these TIL's about hearing an imaginated voice VS imagining the meaning?

NayamAmarshe 2y ago

Inference can bring some compassion. One doesn't need to think too much to know the only difference between us and other species is the ability to philosophize and as such, it should bring even more harmony and compassion, instead of beliefs that justify exploitation of nature. I don't know why we assign ourselves so much importance, some of our thoughts allow us to bring harm to others but we don't want to be treated the same way we treat them. All we really need is education, the education of putting ourselves in someone else's shoes (or hooves).

prometheus76 2y ago
I don't entirely agree that all it takes is education. Many people have grown up on farms, have lived with animals all their lives, and yet have no problem eating animals.
- NayamAmarshe 2y ago
  I suppose there are many factors involved but education is the key component. Knowledge, and a culture of knowledge can cause a massive shift in thinking and actions.
  - prometheus76 2y ago
    Essentially, what I hear in your statement is "if I can just teach people how I see the world, then they will see the world the same way." I firmly disagree with that assessment. Someone can be educated and yet see things differently from you.
- rickydroll 2y ago
  They also have a different relationship to eating animals than people who think meat comes on a plastic tray wrapped in shrinkwrap. From what I've seen, the attitude is more mindful of the animal you raised and interacted with. You don't want to waste any part of their sacrifice in becoming food for you. I take it a step further and say that if you're going to eat animals, make the best possible, best-tasting meal out of them.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    I lean heavily into the "I don't want to feel existentially guilty, so anonymous cubes please" camp. The flip side is that I also have no quasi-romantic attachment to it being "real" meat.
dbingham 2y ago
I think part of the issue is disagreement about what "harmony and compassion" actually looks like. One of the sibling comments immediately jumped to the assumption you're referring to veganism and the use of animals in the food system. I'm not going to assume that's what you're referring to, but I will use it as a case study. The problem with veganism's approach to this is that it's a limited extension of empathy. If you've been following along with the advances in plant behavior, it's pretty mind blowing. There is a growing body of evidence that plants have cognition (using a different system than animal's nervous system), memory, environmental awareness, the ability to learn, and communicate. In other words, it seems increasingly likely that plants are _also_ conscious. In fact, there are hints of evidence that microbes are aware and making decisions. It may well be that environmental awareness and consciousness are just the defaults of life. So then, for autotrophs like us, what does harmony and compassion look like? How do we feed ourselves at scale without causing harm or exploiting nature?
- catlifeonmars 2y ago
  > How do we feed ourselves at scale without causing harm or exploiting nature? Half jokingly, maybe we don’t, and human society develops morality that is not compatible with the continued existence of humans.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  I do not believe that veganism can be criticized for a lack of empathy versus plants. Even if we value identically plants and animals, plants are exploited in a much more benign way than animals. In the past, there were many domestic animals which could be said to have lived quite a happy life for their kind, until the moment when they were slaughtered. Nowadays, the vast majority of the domestic animals live in conditions that can be hardly named other than torture. On the other hand, the cultivated plants do not really live in any worse way than in their wild state. The majority of the cultivated plants are either annual plants, which are killed a very short time before the moment when they would have died anyway, or they are perennial plants from which we take only their fruits, which have been developed by the plants especially for being taken by animals, as a payment for being aided in reproduction. So without giving any preference to cultivated plants or domestic animals, the more ethical choice is to continue to exploit in the current way only the former. I believe that in the future not even cultivating plants will be the most efficient way for producing food and other organic substances. The most efficient way will be to use solar energy gathered by photovoltaic cells to capture carbon dioxide and dinitrogen and incorporate them in some simple organic molecule or molecules, perhaps glycine or a mixture of urea or ammonia with a simple carbohydrate or a short-chain fatty acid. Whatever will be synthesized using solar energy, at a better efficiency than currently achieved by plants, will be used to feed some genetically engineered fungi (or parasitic plants, i.e. non-phototrophic plants), which will produce any kind of desired food or other useful complex organic substances. (A first step in this direction is shown by the recent news about strains of the Trichoderma fungus that have been genetically engineered to produce either whey protein or egg white protein, but in the future it should be possible to make for instance fungi able to grow fruiting bodies that are bananas or turkey thighs).

taeric 2y ago

Agreed that it is very crazy how shallow projections from humanity to other animals often is. Really gets annoying when folks try and reverse morality in discussing behavior that 'not even animals would do.' Or, heaven help me, discussion of "balance." I've grown to view leaf season as basically trees conducting war on shrubbery.

Terr_ 2y ago
Or even shallow projections from humans to other humans, like with fundamental attribution error. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_erro...

tekla 2y ago

> Some quick Googling indicates that people with internal monologues might only make up 30%-50% of people [0]. That probably explains so much.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

canadianfella 2y ago

[dead]

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 2y ago

> people with internal monologues might only make up 30%-50% of people It's incredible to imagine there are people out there just thinking in language as they go about their lives. I wonder how it must work. Are they literally lining up one word after another in their minds? I guess it has to work that way to feel like some sort of "consistent internal monologue"? At scale, though, imagining a roomful of people thinking in single-threaded monologues does explain a lot about why some teams take forever to get anything done.

xdennis 2y ago
I'm surprised you find us weird. I always thought of muteminds as psychos. For example, if you spend a day alone, do you just wallow in silent nothingness? Or do you talk to yourself aloud because you can't do so silently?
gnulinux 2y ago
Yes I literally line up one word after the other. As I think, I converse to myself. "Should I do it this way? No, well that's overkill and too difficult. Can I get away with just that? Yeah that's likely fine" I think there are definitely extra-verbal aspects to my thinking e.g. sometimes when I tell myself "how about this" "this" refers to a thought or graph or concept or whatever. Other than that, my thinking is like speaking.
shishy 2y ago
Just because someone has an internal monologue doesnt mean they think slow. Its just a voice in your head you can talk to. Its not how you think.
- gnulinux 2y ago
  It can also be how you think. I think like that (speaking to myself) and I'm not a slow thinker, at least I don't think so... The thing is, when speaking doesn't involve muscle movements, and just a stream of word/concept objects it can be much faster, and also doesn't have to be single-threaded (so to say). But from my subjective experience it feels like I'm talking to myself, one word after the other.

tim333 2y ago

>how could we possibly know how all species would think? Owners of cats and dogs get a reasonable idea from observation. But yeah, doing all species is tricky.

mc32 2y ago

Count me as one of those people. I don't know what the hell people mean by inner monologue. Maybe I have one, but I wouldn't know what it is. I feel like it's trying to explain to a blind person what sight is.

alephknoll 2y ago
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.
- RoyalHenOil 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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.

pmarreck 2y ago

I occasionally talk to myself (or to "the powers that be", humoring the idea that we're in kind of a super-advanced-VR classroom sim), but I wouldn't qualify it as an "internal monologue"

machiaweliczny 2y ago

Yeah I uses to have these but currently don’t

zamber 2y ago

Weren't these TIL's about hearing an imaginated voice VS imagining the meaning?