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Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

I'm extremely curious to get a deaf person's take on this. That introspection is an auditory hallucination makes intuitive sense to me. I experience it this way.

How does it work for someone who's primary languages are non auditory? Do you think in sign or written language? Some other way?

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I'm multilingual. Growing up, friends asked me which language I think in. The answer is "neither". I can produce sentences in my brain in either language if I want, but it's strange to me that anyone would feel that thoughts are in any particular language.

I would feel incredibly limited if all my thoughts had to be synthesized into a language before they could be acted on. In fact, i often struggle to find words to express ideas that I can perfectly think about.

> it's strange to me that anyone would feel that thoughts are in any particular language.

Not all thoughts, but many are. They've done studies where they've tested people's critical thinking and asked that they use their native tongue, and a second language in which they're fluent.

Turns out you're more rational and dispassionate when thinking in a second language, where in your native language you engage more of your emotional centres and are more likely to fall prey to common cognitive biases.

Obviously not all thoughts or thinking need to be expressed this way, but language can be a tool to organize and direct thought.

Surely that is dependent on the language?

I loved learning Spanish because I found myself using a more emotional style of talking (paralinguistics).

And watching an Italian friend who had English as a second language, it was weird to see them be gesturally and vocally much more boring when speaking English (I think picking up on the more dry language usage here in NZ).

I don't think it's so much about how you express yourself, as much as it is about how you have more deeply rooted associations with words and phrases in your native tongue.

On Language Processing Shaping Decision Making, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096372141668026...

Emotionality Differences Between a Native and Foreign Language: Implications for Everyday Life, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721414566268

"In fact, i often struggle to find words to express ideas that I can perfectly think about."

Same. I'm curious about what's happening here - sometimes visual thinking, sometimes kinesthetic, maybe a mix?

I'm not deaf, but my primary thinking style is visual.

Sometimes it's exactly what you'd imagine - I visualize a data model, or an algorithm implementation.

Other times it's more abstract, symbolic, or analogy based

Can you expand on that? How do you make visual analogies, or express abstract ideas visually?

I would argue that you understand the relationship between an alligator and a water buffalo immediately... Now your brain is turning it into language to come up with words like "predator/prey" or "hidden danger" or whatever. But the abstract relationship did not require language before your brain started to reason about it. I think it's the other way around.

Reason, perhaps. Reason via internal monologue... that's the part related to this theory.

Sometimes when architecting something I'll imagine an elderly person with a child and that'll indicate that I'd want to utilize inheritance instead of composition

And then there are people like myself who have aphantasia and can't visualize and (as in my case) can't hear an internal monologue. I can still think, obviously, but it's often done "somewhere else" (or at least that's how I think of it). I found it best when learning something, for example, to soak in as much of it as I could, then go do something else. I expect to get insights appearing out of the ether later on as some part of my brain assimilates it.

I don't know if this is because of the bicameral mind, but I expect that most people have cognition happening on different levels or in different channels all the time.

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