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zero_call comments on Mental Crystallography - Less Wrong
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Is it true that people process things so differently? Or is it more of a subtle difference with overblown consequences? Can we change the bounds of the way we perceive?
Yes. I'd love to list a bunch of first- and second-hand anecdotal evidence for this, but anecdotal evidence is not great evidence. Instead, consider the example of synaesthesia, and the fact that synaesthetes can live for decades without realizing that not all people are synaesthetes. It's easy not to notice huge differences in the way people's minds work.
I wish there were some general test you could take that tells you if you differ from other people in a fundamental way like this.
I've heard of a condition that's like "superempathy" where you actually feel the pain you see in others as if it were done to you. E.g., you see someone injected with a needle, you feel as if you were stabbed with a needle. Such a test would tell you whether you have a normal "ick" reaction, or some sort of abnormal ability.
That came from a novel by Octavia Butler; as far as I know, it isn't real.
That's not where I got it.
The novels in question were Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents and the main character of the novels has "hyperempathy syndrome" which has exactly the effects you describe. And it was invented for the novel; it isn't real.
Upvoted both the good question and the good answer.
My friend thinks in print, usually in the font of whatever she last read. In conversation, she mentally transcribes every word. Not surprisingly, she reads super fast and dislikes homophonic puns.
Wow! I wonder if you could change the nature of her thoughts by priming her with font styles with different associations...
Or could you slow her down with difficult to read fonts? Shut her up with wingdings...
I think in text too.
My inner monologue is aural, but I sometimes read just by looking at the words without imagining the way they sound. I do tend to hear words when I type them, though.
(I can also "play back" songs in my head, but often it's only the melody line...)
In particular, I have realized that trying to visualize the words as you hear them works wonderfully both for:
(a) focusing on what the other person is saying, especially if the theme is difficult to grasp and/or if you tend to get easily distracted; and
(b) associating sounds to words while learning foreign languages.