this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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I'm not convinced. People don't mean the same thing when they say "internal monologue" so it's not that clear whether the differences are that big.
Is an internal monologue like having a narrator talking constantly? Is it actually like hearing an external sound, or is it an awareness of the concept of the sounds and words along with all the other bits of meaning and fragmented thoughts that run through my brain? If you don't have any sort of internal monologue how do you ever manage to speak or write? Does writing something down feel like someone else has taken control of your hands and leave you surprised when you read it, because you don't have the idea in your head forming words first?
For me it works very like Pratchett's Third Thoughts. I find myself watching my own reactions and speech as if they were happening to other people. And adding footnotes inside my head about what I really intended to mean/say/do (never spoken or I'd be tarred and feathered and run out of town probably). That's the short version - the longer more accurate version WOULD get me tarred & feathered etc. I think.
That's a good point.
I suppose for me the odd one is the image thing. Can you visualise, in your minds eye.. a (something absurd say a giraffe headbutting a panda)? Some people just can't.
Well, I'm not sure a giraffe could headbut a panda, the angles are all wrong.
aha! so you can visualise a giraffe's head missing the panda!
it's a very complex topic lol.
I don't know if I can visualise it. I don't "see a picture" or run a video in my head. Thoughts are a complicated web of interlinked ideas that constantly change as you focus on them. Telling me to visualise something like that brings up lots of ideas which include what giraffes and pandas look like, but also thoughts about how levers work, links to zoos where I have seen giraffes and pandas, the panda toy I had (and lost) as a kid, a whole mess of things that are definitely not visual, And it's all simultaneous, it's not like one single thing.