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TIL Some People Have an 'Inner Monologue'

2024-12-13 · letter vlog · Hank · 6:09 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion

Hank says he has realized he has no internal monologue and thinks in wordless bubbles of ideas, though he remembers having one in high school and college; he argues that introspection reveals little and that his self is probably many separate parts (attention, experience, body, memories, worry) tied together by the story his brain tells about who he is. He ends saying he is not fully fine but fine physically, and plugs the discounted Complexly calendar.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank has no internal monologue: he thinks in wordless bubbles of ideas (John as a bubble, aphantasia example) and only finds words when conveying thoughts

  • ★★★ Hank says he has heard that some people have an internal monologue, a constant string of words through the mind, and realized he does not have one. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Hank jokes that he thinks he is the normal one, but admits he knows he is not, and says they will get to why later. (playful) — 00:00:20
  • ★★★ Hank says he thinks in thoughts: when a thought is needed it floats into his consciousness, bumps around with other thoughts and may combine with them into new thoughts. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank says that when he thinks of John he has no words but a bubble of the things about John; John is many things stuck together in the shape of a John Green. (playful) — 00:00:40 · John Green
  • ★★ As an example of his wordless thinking, Hank says the idea of an internal monologue might attract the idea of aphantasia, raising the question whether people with aphantasia are more or less likely to have one. (speculative) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says he does experience words when he starts thinking about how to write his thoughts down or say them, and that converting thoughts into words is work for him. — 00:01:20
  • ★★ Hank suggests that for people with an internal monologue, converting thoughts into words may be easier because that work is already done. (hedged) — 00:01:45

00:01:57 — He once had a monologue; introspection tells little; the self as attention, experiencer, body, worry and story, many me's tied together by pattern-making

  • ★★★ Hank says he remembers having an internal monologue in high school and college, with strings of words running through his head all the time. — 00:01:57
  • ★★★ Hank finds it bizarre that it is not only that different people think differently: he himself thinks differently than he used to; minds are so strange that he is obsessed. — 00:02:12
  • ★★★ Hank says thinking about thinking reveals surprisingly little: one would expect a consciousness to be good at figuring out what consciousness is, and yet it is not. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ Hank says he knows who he is, the Hank bubble of his ideas and stories about himself, but this narrative pulls things together without his knowing whether they are related or are him. — 00:02:40
  • ★★ Using the metaphor of attention as a flashlight, Hank wonders whether he is the flashlight, the one experiencing what it shows, the hand that points it, or what forces it onto unwanted things. (hedged) — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Hank says he also feels he is his physical body and its experiences, and that these are all different things, separate from the story he tells about who he is, which ties them together. — 00:03:30
  • ★★ Hank says the part of him that makes him focus on worries does not feel like him because he cannot control it, but maybe that makes it more him; it is definitely part of him. (hedged) — 00:03:45
  • ★★★ Hank says he does not think his attention, body, memories and experiences are the same thing; he ties them together because it makes sense, creating patterns in his brain that are his thoughts of who he is. — 00:04:08
  • ★★ Hank says he certainly has no internal monologue about who he is, which would be far too hard: a person is too big to think about in an internal monologue. (playful) — 00:04:25
  • ★★★ Hank says lately he thinks these may be different me's collaborating while barely aware of each other, held together loosely by his brain's pattern-seeking, perhaps where no pattern exists. (hedged) — 00:04:37

00:05:06 — Conclusion (a collection of whatever works), Hank is not 100% fine but fine physically, sign-off and a cancer aside

  • ★★ Hank says that, like much of life, he might just be a collection of whatever works, and sometimes whatever works does not work that well. (hedged) — 00:05:06
  • ★★ Hank says he is fine, though not a hundred percent; he has been better, he is fine physically, and they are getting through it. — 00:05:10
  • ★★ Hank says that now whenever he tells people he is not doing well he has to add that he does not have cancer. (playful) — 00:05:20 · cancer
  • ★★ Hank asks viewers to go to complexly.store for the Complexly calendar at 30% off before the new year, also helping fund Complexly's work; it is the last chance to get it. — 00:05:30 · Complexly

00:05:35 — Complexly calendar 30% off at complexly.store

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Complexly calendars are discounted 30% to sell them, full of art celebrating the last 25 years of human advancement, at complexly.store. — video description · Complexly

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Internal monologue · personal identity

Also: Projects: Complexly

Works: Complexly calendars

Concepts: Aphantasia · Attention · cancer · consciousness · Introspection · Narrative identity · pattern recognition (psychology) · Worry

Also centred on personal identity: We're all Scared · The Space Time Continuum: Thoughts from Dublin · Becoming Someone Else · Who Am I?! - Some thoughts on Personal Identity · Can You Ever Really Change? · Are We The Same Person?

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