zemaj comments on Lights, Camera, Action! - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Alicorn 20 March 2010 05:29AM

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Comment author: zemaj 20 March 2010 07:12:52AM 2 points [-]

"How does thinking, in general, feel to you?" Do you mean this metaphorically? Can you give some examples of how thinking feels to you?

Comment author: Rain 26 March 2010 02:44:24AM *  3 points [-]

Thinking, to me, feels like a conversation. For hard problems, the conversation is between two entities, neither of whom is myself, but where one is generally close to myself and the other holds unknown truths. The objective is for the one who is similar to me to ask all the right questions to get the more knowledgeable entity to explain those truths. For easier problems, I talk to myself.

When I do visual thinking, including dreams, it's in the style of a movie, often with drama or action, and sometimes more obvious movie effects. The saddest dream I ever had ended with scrolling credits.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 22 March 2010 12:53:56PM 3 points [-]

Thinking feels like shaping clockworks out of clay and air, a couple of meters behind my head.

Comment author: Bongo 20 March 2010 08:28:04PM 3 points [-]

Watching very short films, arranging items in space, sometimes snatches of conversation intrude.

Comment author: reaver121 20 March 2010 10:23:38AM *  3 points [-]

Most of the time it's like talking to myself. When I'm actively analyzing something it's like having a discussion with people who all are me but all taking different stances (and one of them is a joker who can't stop looking at it from a comedian viewpoint).

Comment author: zemaj 20 March 2010 07:35:32AM 3 points [-]

Hmmm.... thinking feels to me like poking leaves floating down a river.

Comment author: wnoise 20 March 2010 10:58:09PM 1 point [-]

I really have no idea how to interpret that.

Comment author: aleksiL 23 March 2010 10:12:47AM 2 points [-]

Interesting. I thought that my thinking would be mostly words, like inner monologue or talking to myself. Now that I pay attention it is more like images, emotions, concepts constantly flashing through my head, most gone before I even notice them.

Introspectively it seems that my thinking has changed and I just haven't noticed until now. Or that my conscious mind has finally learned to shut up and pay attention.

Comment author: Alicorn 20 March 2010 07:13:17AM 2 points [-]

Thinking feels to me like reading.

Comment author: AndyCossyleon 26 August 2010 06:46:59PM 1 point [-]

Depends what I'm thinking about.

Sometimes, thinking is talking to myself or to somementalbody else. Sometimes, thinking is floating about somewhere experiencing it mostly visually. Sometimes, thinking is just living the moment. Sometimes, thinking is having mental fun, like rotating cubes in my head. Sometimes, thinking is just self-awareness, 'about' nothing.

Comment author: FrankAdamek 26 March 2010 01:18:27PM 1 point [-]

When reflecting on it just now, thinking feels like listening to myself speak, with the words but no sound. The more concrete thoughts are at a conversational pace, and some others are in a pace too fast to comfortably speak. This often seems "laid over" a background of an unrelated scene, with dreamlike images flitting about which mildly represent concepts.

Comment author: wnoise 20 March 2010 07:28:20AM 1 point [-]

Thinking feels to me like talking to myself.

Comment author: kithpendragon 11 May 2012 07:57:04PM 0 points [-]

Thinking is like using (at least) one of my senses, but without actualizing the associated physical reality. Right now I can access memories that contain information in audio, visual, tactile and olfactory formats with little effort. I often experience multi-person conversations or music as part of a thought process, but have also known myself to mentally fly around a map, generate pseudocode, mix flavors, sketch an image, or even explore a texture as part of thinking.

...With a little reflection, I find that much of my internal process hinges on something like infographics with little sensory labels, primarily audio but often tactile or even olfactory, but hardly ever actual text. For a complex operation, I seem to zoom in and out on these objects to get the detail/context relationships and see how they interact.

Comment author: lispalien 26 March 2010 10:34:27PM 0 points [-]

My thinking style has changed twice in my lifetime; I'm going to ramble on about this for a while. I will do a better job of describing me now than when I was younger, because I have a bad memory and it's hard to remember how I used to think.

When I was young (up until the age of 10-12) I just thought in thoughts. I was very quick back then; I could do mental arithmetic and problem solving much faster than I can now, for instance.

Then for just a few years, I started thinking visually. I read all the time during this period; I probably read a ten times as many books in junior high and high school than I have since (I'm 4th year in college). When I remembered something I'd picture the page on the book where I had seen it.

Now I think more verbally. I hear something like a "mental voice". It's very slow compared to either of the others. I think I'm starting to skip my mental dialogue a little lately. I go to lectures and don't read books, which I never would have done in high school. I also am a lot more social; I'm not sure if there's a connection. When I remember something it can be visual or verbal. I also remember things somewhat abstractly sometimes, especially ideas like math. It feels like they're part of me. I'm not sure how long the abstract thing has been going on, it may not be new.

Comment author: spriteless 25 March 2010 12:37:12AM 0 points [-]

Thinking is like taking a bunch of concepts and jamming them together as one might jam together legos until something fits. I usually do this systematically, as I can feel the first thing that fits is not always the best fit, so I want it organized enough to try everything.

Comment author: VAuroch 27 March 2014 09:46:29PM -1 points [-]

I can't pin down what thinking feels like. There are a bunch of snippets of sensory experience flying around, some being compared to each other (colliding?), and most being present only briefly before they're sucked away. Analyzing this is extra difficult because I even 10 minutes later, I have almost zero recall of all but the most vivid experiences.