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Warrigal comments on Rationality Quotes June 2013 - Less Wrong
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Do you actually hear the voice? I often have words in my head when I think about things, but there isn't really an auditory component. It's just words in a more abstract form.
I wouldn't say I literally hear the voice; I can easily distinguish it from sounds I'm actually hearing. But the experience is definitely auditory, at least some of the time; I could tell you whether the voice is male or female, what accent they're speaking in (usually my own), how high or low the voice is, and so on.
I definitely also have non-auditory thoughts as well. Sometimes they're visual, sometimes they're spatial, and sometimes they don't seem to have any sensory-like component at all. (For what it's worth, visual and spatial thoughts are essential to the way I think about math.)
If you want to poke at this a bit, one way could be to test what sort of interferences disrupt different activities for you, compared to a friend.
I'm thinking of the bit in "Surely you're joking" where Feynman finds that he can't talk and maintain a mental counter at the same time, while a friend of his can -- because his friend's mental counter is visual.
Neat. I can do it both ways... actually, I can name at least four different ways of counting:
"Raw" counting, without any sensory component; really just a sense of magnitude. Seems to be a floating-point, with a really small number of bits; I usually lose track of the exact number by, oh, six.
Verbally. Interferes with talking, as you'd expect.
Visually, using actual 2/3D models of whatever I'm counting. No interference, but a strict upper limit, and interferes with seeing - well, usually the other way around. The upper limit still seems to be five-six picture elements, but I can arrange them in various ways to count higher; binary, for starters, but also geometrically or.. various ways.
Visually, using pictures of decimal numbers. That interferes with speaking when updating the number, but otherwise sticks around without any active maintenance, at least so long as I have my eyes closed. I'm still limited to five-six digits, though... either decimal or hexadecimal works. I could probably figure out a more efficient encoding if I worked at it.