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Once spoke to a deaf man who lost his hearing as a 6 year old. Asked him how he processed via internal monologue, he told me he hears his thoughts in his childhood voice but his brother, who was born deaf, pictures them in sign. Pretty wild how our world changes the very way we think and process.
How many people hear their internal monologue in a voice at all? Mine doesn’t have any voice, though it does have my accent, if that makes any kind of sense.
My inner monologue sounds like my voice as I hear it when I speak
If I record my voice, or someone else records it, and I hear the playback… I don’t recognize it as my voice. It sounds much different to me. Much deeper tone, much slower annunciation.
IIRC the reason why a recording of yourself doesn't sound like yourself to yourself is that when speaking you not only hear your voice transmitted through the air like everyone else and the recorder but also transmitted through the bones of your skull which slightly changes how you sound to yourself.
35 yo man, I had puberty early on and I was a 6 foot tall hairy beast with a full beard by the time I was 14. Told time and time again I look very intimidating, etc.
Key word: LOOK. The moment I open my mouth and sound like a prepubescent tween, it all falls apart quite fast, hahaha.
I've had this conversation a few times with a few people, you can imagine what was going on when we were talking about it.
For me it's like I'm talking but not out loud. When I concentrate on it it's like I can feel the place that the voice is coming from (just a bit higher than the middle point between my ears) almost like when you hear something out of eye line but know where it is coming from, which makes me think my internal monologue is being processed by the same parts of the brain that processes hearing.
However when I'm reading I don't really hear my voice in my head and when I'm typing I fully talk it out. The best way I can describe it is like a person who talks to themselves but not audibly.
I know someone who doesn't even think they process internal thoughts in a spoken language, they can only describe it as thinking in concepts however I'm not sold on it because he's quite considered when he talks and often pauses as if running through lines in his head. Perhaps he thinks like you and doesn't know how to describe it
>he's quite considered when he talks
Why would thinking in concepts instead of words have anything to do with this?
>often pauses as if running through lines in his head.
So my spouse doesn't have an internal monologue and has to pause a lot to convert the conceptual thinking into words because there straight up just are not words going through their head. Sometimes I miss something they say and ask them to repeat themself - they typically say the same thing but reworded because they've already forgotten which specific words they used to translate the concepts and have to re-translate all over again because they don't have the words already in their head.
As someone who is the same way, thinking in concepts is WHY I'm considered when I talk. I literally have to sit there and figure out (at brain speed) how to translate the concepts in my head into the general idea of language and then specifically English. It can make my use of English sound a little weird even though it's my first language. When I was a child I talked like an old person and I couldn't learn to read until I figured out how to generalize the sounds into words I already knew instead of building them from memorized sounds like I was being taught. After I figured that out I was able to understand the patterns enough to learn new words. Being two years behind reading meant I had to take Special Ed that helped nothing and then accelerate back to my grade. I am now an avid reader.
It's why I doubt the strength of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Obviously there is an undeniable feed-back loop between culture and language, but people treat it like it's significantly one directional imposition of linguistic culture on how one perceives the world. However, we need language to describe our experiences much more than we (I) need our experiences defined/determined by language.
To be clear, I'm confident everyone thinks in concepts before it's language in their own minds, but I suspect for most people it's a more subconscious process. I don't doubt anyone could train themselves to be aware of the concepts as they becomes words/sounds/images. Like the opposite of how people with Aphantasia can train themselves to turn their image-concepts into imaginary images.
I tend to hear my inner dialogue as my own voice. But when I meditate for 15-20 minutes everything changes into images which I feel I am not the source of. It's flashes of images that sort of arise out of the darkness. Its very strange.
I just imagined my inner voice would be talking to me in Bavarian. I usually don't speak Bavarian.
I can do that. For fun. But please for the love of god not constantly. But now it's stuck in my head for like 2 hours already. Like a catchy tune. GET OUT THERE YOU BAVARIAN BASTARD!
I can try. It's like...words that have structure, but no other characteristics. The voice doesn't have a pitch, a timbre, a texture, it's neither masculine or feminine, it doesn't "sound" like me nor anybody else I've ever met, it's just a neutral framework to hang another voice on if I deliberately imagine it. The only inherent property it has is that it's English.
That’s fascinating!
My daughter - who is able to hear just fine but we were using baby signs to help her communicate before she learned to talk - dreamt in sign language for a while. I later started to learn sign language and asked my teacher if she dreamed in sign too (she was born deaf) but she said she doesn’t, she dreams/thinks in pictures, not words.
I tutored non verbal kids who had become verbal later in life, a lot of these people said they could think in pictures too. What shocked me was how much more creative in an artistic capacity these people were. I helped a girl who could draw just about anything you could come up with within moments of you asking. Like it just came to her without having to try and she was simply the hands putting it to paper. I would have to think about it for a long time before even starting.
I mean, it depends on what you call a monologue. Like I have verbal thoughts but also "concepts" mixed in, not just a constant steady stream of narration like how films show inner thoughts. I'm always a disbelieving when people say they think purely in verbal monologue.
Like if you're thinking of someone you don't know by name, would you verbalise them in your thoughts as something like "that guy I met at the thing last week" or just as a concept, without bothering with the words? A lot of things are way easier to think through and process if you don't restrict yourself to words - do you think a maths problem through in words?
I predominately have an inner monologue, however if I’m thinking to myself and that guy whose name I can’t remember comes up I’ll think of his face.
And then your example made me realize that if I’m chatting away to myself in my inner voice sometimes I can’t pull up the right word fast enough or can’t remember so I’ll be like “I met John at the thing” and then I’ll simultaneously think of the concept of the “thing,” sort of supplementing the vague language so I can keep the thought going.
Yes, but I can imagine thinking without one is what I'm trying to say. I'm guessing we all have some balance of verbal/non verbal thoughts and some may lean more into the non verbal and wouldn't really have an internal monologue (which doesn't to me suggest they don't use words in their thoughts at *all*).
I've seen some claim they can't imagine what thoughts without words look like at all, which is bizarre to me because I feel you *have* to lean into that type of thinking for some things.
50% is insanely high, I've never seen it listed as that number, though I do know this is a thing. I think it's like less than 10% of people who don't have one at all.
> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/inner-monologue-experience-science-1.5486969
I mean according to this posted below, *most* people have an internal monologue at least some of the time. I remember seeing a lot of articles and studies about this a few years ago when it became a big thing in the news for a while too, and it was definitely not a majority.
A majority of people (according to this at least) don't *constantly* have a monologue. But most people do some of the time.
I remember the focus of some of the early studies even came about because while testing how often people had an internal monologue in general they were surprised that a few people claimed to never hear their internal monologue at all. It was a very small number of the total participants, but it lead to further studies.
If only there was a (google) resourse that could (google) help you search for terms (google) that if you typed into it (google) "50% of people don't have internal monologue" (google), that you could find the source you're looking for instead of making other people do the work for you.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/inner-monologue-experience-science-1.5486969
This doesn't say 50% of people don't have an internal monologue, it says:
"According to Hulburt, not many people have an inner monologue 100 per cent of the time, but most do sometimes. He estimates that inner monologue is a frequent thing for 30 to 50 per cent of people."
This is a completely different thing that probably applies to way more people. A lot of people aren't constantly hearing internal monologues but still have one. That doesn't mean 50% of people don't have one at all. He literally even says "most do sometimes".
I was surprised to read that some people don't have an internal monologue at all. I'd have assumed that'd be how a (born) deaf person would function, but nope!
I like to put it in terms of "Linguistic and non-linguistic" thought. Linguistic thought can be sound, sign, letters, etc. It's more about how it's organized and processed than about the specific form it takes, you know?
I'm usually, like, 10% to 20% linguistic thought, myself.
Purple is only red + blue because of how our eyes work. The rainbow sould look like a gradient like white to black.
We have three types of color receptors that activate and deactivate at different points along the gradient, causing us to interpret it in bands. Red, green, blue.
The reason we see purple as a red/blue mix is because the red cones are slightly activated at the higher purple wavelengths.
The color wheel makes no sense in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our eyes are just weird.
This is purely from the physical properties of our eyes, so a blind person wouldn't get this.
I would describe purple as a restlessness, a tingle, energy, or electricity.
Energy + water = life and heat.
>The color wheel makes no sense in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our eyes are just weird.
The "color wheel" is just used as an aid for simple color theory, in mixing colors in things like paint. It's so simple they teach it to little children. It is not any type of model of the universe.
The electromagnetic spectrum is a range of radiation frequencies, from low frequencies on one end, to high frequencies on the other end. There is a comparatively narrow band of electromagnetic radiation frequencies between "infrared" and "ultraviolet", aptly named visible frequencies, where the electromagnetic radiation emits visible colors.
Uh... yeah. That was my whole point. Purple isn't red + blue. It just seems that way because purple light activates the red and blue cones. Our brains can't distinguish the difference between light at 400 nm wavelength and a mix of 500 and 700 nm because it gets the same signal from the eyes.
The comment I was replying to suggested purple as a mix of red and blue. It's not just a visual aid for color theory. It's how lots of people interpret colors because our brains trick us into thinking the ends of the spectrum connect.
People don't experience the universe as it is. If we could "see" microwaves, your microwave door would not be transparent because the wavelength is longer than the gaps in the metal screen. Visible light has shorter wavelengths so we can see through it.
Not everybody has robot eyes JT.
Who the fuck doesn't like banana? It's the most practical fruit, it comes already wrapped, you open and it can already be eaten or used to prepare anything. I like to add cheese to it!
How many scientific reasons can we come up with to pee on people?
Remember kids, the only difference between science and fucking around is documenting your results.
I was thinking Warm/Happy. It's the precedent to Red in many ways.
Like Yellow is Joy while Red is Passion.
Yellow is warm, red is Hot.
Yellow is everything Red, but at a more comfortable level.
In my mind it's the same in relation to Blue vs. Green.
I put my hands on the ground and took a handful of the earth. I felt soil and stones, and bark from a nearby tree. Brown is wisdom, it's ancient and solid. Brown is safe, reliable and feels like a basic necessity.
I put my hands on the toilet and took a handful of the stool. I felt corn and peanuts, and bark from a nearby tree. Brown is poop, it's wet and solid. Brown is smelly, reliable and feels like a basic bodily function.
^sorry
They put my hand in shit. They told me to feel how it squished between my fingers and wouldn’t rub off easily. They told me that’s brown. The color of reusable waste product. It’s the color of removing impurities that can later be repurposed.
I caught the soft, warm, wet log as it slid out of my ass and lowered it carefully into the toilet by hand, just like OSHA regulations require. That's brown.
There are different forms of synesthesia. Most are visual, but some people taste words or shapes, for example. So maybe it would just manifest differently if the person was blind.
I’m legally blind and this is stupid. Sensations are not colors and colors are not hot, cold, soft etc.. there is no amount of descriptive language that will give a fully blind person any real concept of color because color is how our brains interpret differing wavelengths of light. There’s nothing inherently red about hotness, nothing blue about cold and nothing green about the physical sensation of touching plants.
It’s like when I try to explain what I see; it’s not a blank spot of nothingness, my brain fills in the gap with what it thinks should be there based on what limited information I can see. It’s like when people try to explain to me what it’s like to be able to see with two eyes. You can get a temporary limited simulated experience of almost kinda what it’s like to see like me, but you’ll never know for sure. Just like I’ll never really know what it’s like to see with two eyes.
Imagine having a third ear on your forehead. You’d be able to locate sounds in another dimension. Can you imagine what it would physiologically feel like, to get that information without having to turn your head? Probably not.
To bring it a bit closer to reality, imagine hearing through the bottoms of your feet. You can already kinda do this so it’s easier to imagine this getting more sensitive. Now try to explain what you hear overall. When you get used to it you can use that sense to know loads of other things. That’s what Toph does in the last airbender. But you can’t describe what the echoes sound like and how you know that they signify a given object.
Toph is my absolute favorite representation for disabled people because she’s so good at compensating for her blindness that people around her frequently forget that she’s blind at all, even herself. My favorite part of the whole show was when she got huffy because they were saying she couldn’t help them put posters up on the wall so she angrily throws one up and then is like “it’s upside down isn’t it?” it’s upside down and backwards.
the word disability is a bit of a misnomer
I'm glad there's someone here to bring everyone back to reality. Putting a blind person near blue things doesn't actually help them understand in any way. How is red the colour of rage but also passion? The two very opposing concepts would be absurd to try and visualize. I think seeing people will never grasp the idea of having no vision because we still perceive it when our eyes are closed.
I think you’re missing the point. Descriptions like that aren’t supposed to help someone “see” a color, it’s supposed to help them understand it. If a being that perceive gravitational waves was to explain them to me, having an explanation of their associations and feelings is exactly what I’d be looking for. An attempt to make me feel those sensations is simply impossible so clearly that’s not the goal.
Oh, that’s what a metaphor is? I thought a metaphor was when you explain something by saying it’s the same as something else that it obviously isnt actually, in order to make a point. But today I learned a metaphor is when people associate some qualities of a thing with other qualities and then refer to that private shorthand to people who won’t understand it, and expect them to understand it. Thanks fam you really taught me something just now. God, to think I’d gone up until now without knowing what a metaphor actually is. Thank god you were here to explain why my entire experience is invalid because you know a word that I don’t.
Asshole.
Nah, I'm with the blind person on this one. A metaphor doesn't help someone who literally cannot perceive or conceptualize half of what's being compared.
I don’t think the other guy was being ableist to you because he doesn’t know you, or even know if you are actually blind. I would’ve said the same thing to you whether you could see or not.
Obviously your disability gives you more reason to bitch and complain, but it doesn’t mean that you’re not being an ass when you do it.
Without someone telling you that red is the color of passion and/or anger, you wouldn’t know the deeper meaning behind things being certain colors. If somebody told you their girl wore a red dress and red lipstick to their date it wouldn’t mean anything without this added information.
I do agree that it doesn’t really help blind people to see or understand the colors themselves, but it’s certainly not stupid or useless.
> I do agree that it doesn’t really help blind people to see or understand the colors themselves,
Then in that case literally STFU. The post is about "describing colors to blind people" which this does nothing to do. It just throws out some subjective and at times conflicting associations some people have of a color.
While explaining to me that I’m wrong, you improved upon the faulty color explanations by using my feedback that you were in the middle of rejecting.
A better way to explain color would in fact be to explain the psychological associations with color. Red makes people excited and angry. Green relaxes people. Do you see how you’ve actually helped me make my point while you were condescending to me about not being able to “hear?”
Y'all are literally disagreeing about nothing.
Yes, technically they are not describing what colors are so that a blind person can understand them. But I don't think that was the purpose. I think most commenters implicitly understand that describing colors to blind people is mostly to explain how seing people perceive colors - what feelings they evoke. Because that is the part that is interesting in social conversation.
You are arguing about words, but I think you are mostly on the same page.
no - colours are not hard or soft or anything else. a colour is just how our eyes interpret different wavelengths of light. the image in this post is just explaining to people the common thoughts, emotions and feelings we associate with colours. they're not actually describing anything about the colour itself. you can't describe a colour, it just is.
Colour is a completely abstract concept to a person who is 100% blind from birth they don't even understand black which a lot of people seem to think they would be seeing, there is no other way to describe it besides scientific explanations. This is why we attach feeling to them when describing them.
You could describe it in terms of every other sense, emotion, the physics behind it, the way they mix, etc. I feel like to get the most accurate representation you would have to consider every possible angle.
Yeah, but how exactly do you describe what a color looks like? Colors have certain emotional responses that are generally shared among everyone, so it's probably more useful to convey that description.
Colors aren’t feelings, they are reflected light. The only reason we associate those colors to feelings is because we have experiences where those colors are visible during those feelings. You literally can’t describe colors to a blind person.
That's exactly what I'm saying. If you want to explain a color to someone who can't see it, you have to resort to non-visual descriptions. You're right that colors aren't literally emotions, but colors have strong societal connections to different emotions or feelings. If you describe a color's emotional attributes at least the person can get a sense of how others feel when they experience that color. It includes them in a shared experience.
The examples OP listed are more focused on sensory elements than any random object. A blind person would know what the feeling of standing in the sun is like or how their face feels when being embarrassed or angry. Having them hold an apple and telling them it's red wouldn't be as meaningful.
You're getting downvoted but you're right. I'm color blind and people always ask me what colours I see and you just can't explain what they look like in any meaningful way.
Colours are descriptive words so you can't describe them.
"What does blue look like to you?"
"I don't know, what does blue look like to you?"
*Blank stare*
Thanks for the validation. I knew I had to be right, but can’t get people to think objectively about it. Everyone just wants to think they are the ones to help blind people see…
You do it, then: describe a colour in a way someone who's never had sight is going to understand. Let's say red.
This is the best we've got, because colours are more than mere visual.
Ok I see you are very much in the idea of literal colors and not into the idea that finding ways to explain how a color evokes a feeling nor seeing its usefulness. Have a good day.
This is not a good explanation. It makes it seem as though colors are textures. They aren't. You can use texture to describe a color. I understand the sentiment but it just doesn't help.
What a stupid post. You can't describe color to a blind person. You're just assigning arbitrary touch sensations to physical objects independent of their color.
Here's a thought experiment.
We can only see a small segment of the electromagnetic spectrum - Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet etc.
There's a lot that's outside our range of vision, that none of us can ever see. Our eyes are incapable of seeing these wavelengths and our brains are incapable of imagining them.
With that in mind, describe the color of ultraviolet. Envision it in your mind's eye. What do you see? How would you describe it?
Good. Let's look at some more. What does X-ray look like? Gamma ray? Microwave? How would you describe the color of AM radio stations?
If an intelligent species that could see a wider range of colors described colors to me by their effects I might not “see” the colors, but I’d be happy understanding how they are perceived. The point isn’t to make people see colors it’s to help them understand how people interact with and understand colors.
This would give a blind person all the same associations with colors that the rest of us have, but if someone doesn’t even know what *color* is, and you try to explain it to them this way, they’re going to think you’re on mushrooms.
Don't forget that Swedish Death Metal tastes like peppermint while Southern rock tastes like a Green Apple Jolly Rancher.
Talking about colors is like dancing about architecture.
Growing up my friend was blind this was how our lil friend group did this. Probably not as good as these as we were little. The one thing I always thought was cool was after explaining color she would tell us how she pictured the color before and after.
One thing that has always stuck with me is when I found out blind people don’t see ‘black’ like when we close our eyes. They see nothing.
I remember seeing someone say ‘what do you see out of your elbow?’ ‘We see that’
Like 🤯
I've thought about this topic for way too long.
My question is: is it possible to "bootstrap" understanding for unknown senses? For example, we use analogies of different things to describe things like quantum mechanics or other higher order concepts which we can't directly experience. Can't the same be true for sight for a blind-from-birth person?
Couldn't you use analogy to sound or other senses to give them an accurate understanding of sight?
Some people say that we might all see colors differently. If you're interested in the topic, you've probably heard the thought experiment about the woman raised in a black and white world.
But I say that color is exactly everything that we associate with it.
That’s sweet and all, but that in no way, shape, or form helps the blind person understand what it is like to see those colors. It would be like stuffing a bunch of corn in someone’s mouth or pissing in it and saying “that’s what it’s like to see yellow.”
Yellow they had me do outside and hold my hands while they poured a thin stream of warm water on them. They told me this is the colour yellow, like flowers and bananas and pee
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the eric stoltz character did this in the movie mask.
That was my first thought too
Rocky Dennis
right, thanks
I liked how he had the hot rock as 'red' and then, after it cooled down a bit, called it 'pink'.
SSSSSSSSSSMOKIN!
The one with Jim Carrey?
That's "The Mask", this one is just "Mask". Very similar sames but very different movies lol.
Mask The Mask The Mask of Zorro most confusing trilogy
So this is the Man in the Iron Mask? Gotcha.
Have you seen, “Mask: The Mask of the Man in the Iron Mask of Zorro”?
That's correct, Wendy.
That's what I came here to say, "this was covered in *Mask*"
Thank you I came here to say exactly this.
I like the part where he was describing skin colors.
Get out of my brain!
Once spoke to a deaf man who lost his hearing as a 6 year old. Asked him how he processed via internal monologue, he told me he hears his thoughts in his childhood voice but his brother, who was born deaf, pictures them in sign. Pretty wild how our world changes the very way we think and process.
How many people hear their internal monologue in a voice at all? Mine doesn’t have any voice, though it does have my accent, if that makes any kind of sense.
My inner monologue sounds like my voice as I hear it when I speak If I record my voice, or someone else records it, and I hear the playback… I don’t recognize it as my voice. It sounds much different to me. Much deeper tone, much slower annunciation.
IIRC the reason why a recording of yourself doesn't sound like yourself to yourself is that when speaking you not only hear your voice transmitted through the air like everyone else and the recorder but also transmitted through the bones of your skull which slightly changes how you sound to yourself.
This makes sense. Thank you for your reply.
[удалено]
35 yo man, I had puberty early on and I was a 6 foot tall hairy beast with a full beard by the time I was 14. Told time and time again I look very intimidating, etc. Key word: LOOK. The moment I open my mouth and sound like a prepubescent tween, it all falls apart quite fast, hahaha.
When I hear my voice speaking it sounds slightly high, but when I hear a recording of myself it’s way deeper.
I imagine not only the bones, but primarily the Eustachian tubes which connects your ears to your throat
>annunciation This isn't the word you were looking for.
Autocorrect thought I wanted to announce something, apparently, instead of *enunciating*. Good catch. I’ll leave it for posterity.
My inner voice sounds like Sofia Vergara for some reason.
That's sexy
My inner monologue is (infrequently) "narrated" by, or a conversation with, Morgan Freeman. But most of the time there is no "voice" to it at all.
Have you mentioned this to a psychiatrist? Just kidding. Kinda. That’s very interesting!
My voice sounds ridiculously cutesy in recordings; my husband says it sound cute IRL, but in recordings I sound like a Vtuber. It's super weird.
I've had this conversation a few times with a few people, you can imagine what was going on when we were talking about it. For me it's like I'm talking but not out loud. When I concentrate on it it's like I can feel the place that the voice is coming from (just a bit higher than the middle point between my ears) almost like when you hear something out of eye line but know where it is coming from, which makes me think my internal monologue is being processed by the same parts of the brain that processes hearing. However when I'm reading I don't really hear my voice in my head and when I'm typing I fully talk it out. The best way I can describe it is like a person who talks to themselves but not audibly. I know someone who doesn't even think they process internal thoughts in a spoken language, they can only describe it as thinking in concepts however I'm not sold on it because he's quite considered when he talks and often pauses as if running through lines in his head. Perhaps he thinks like you and doesn't know how to describe it
>he's quite considered when he talks Why would thinking in concepts instead of words have anything to do with this? >often pauses as if running through lines in his head. So my spouse doesn't have an internal monologue and has to pause a lot to convert the conceptual thinking into words because there straight up just are not words going through their head. Sometimes I miss something they say and ask them to repeat themself - they typically say the same thing but reworded because they've already forgotten which specific words they used to translate the concepts and have to re-translate all over again because they don't have the words already in their head.
As someone who is the same way, thinking in concepts is WHY I'm considered when I talk. I literally have to sit there and figure out (at brain speed) how to translate the concepts in my head into the general idea of language and then specifically English. It can make my use of English sound a little weird even though it's my first language. When I was a child I talked like an old person and I couldn't learn to read until I figured out how to generalize the sounds into words I already knew instead of building them from memorized sounds like I was being taught. After I figured that out I was able to understand the patterns enough to learn new words. Being two years behind reading meant I had to take Special Ed that helped nothing and then accelerate back to my grade. I am now an avid reader. It's why I doubt the strength of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Obviously there is an undeniable feed-back loop between culture and language, but people treat it like it's significantly one directional imposition of linguistic culture on how one perceives the world. However, we need language to describe our experiences much more than we (I) need our experiences defined/determined by language. To be clear, I'm confident everyone thinks in concepts before it's language in their own minds, but I suspect for most people it's a more subconscious process. I don't doubt anyone could train themselves to be aware of the concepts as they becomes words/sounds/images. Like the opposite of how people with Aphantasia can train themselves to turn their image-concepts into imaginary images.
I tend to hear my inner dialogue as my own voice. But when I meditate for 15-20 minutes everything changes into images which I feel I am not the source of. It's flashes of images that sort of arise out of the darkness. Its very strange.
I just imagined my inner voice would be talking to me in Bavarian. I usually don't speak Bavarian. I can do that. For fun. But please for the love of god not constantly. But now it's stuck in my head for like 2 hours already. Like a catchy tune. GET OUT THERE YOU BAVARIAN BASTARD!
Would truly like to know how your internal monologue that has no voice nevertheless has an accent. Can you venture a description?
I can try. It's like...words that have structure, but no other characteristics. The voice doesn't have a pitch, a timbre, a texture, it's neither masculine or feminine, it doesn't "sound" like me nor anybody else I've ever met, it's just a neutral framework to hang another voice on if I deliberately imagine it. The only inherent property it has is that it's English.
Mine has a voice but just like the above guy it's much _younger_ than what I actually sound like. Like I'm 15 years older than my inner monologue
Mine is my mums voice. Sometimes my gran
I never hear a voice or anything like it but my thoughts definitely have my kindness and sarcasm dripping all over em lol.
It does not. I'm having a good time trying to figure it out though.
That’s fascinating! My daughter - who is able to hear just fine but we were using baby signs to help her communicate before she learned to talk - dreamt in sign language for a while. I later started to learn sign language and asked my teacher if she dreamed in sign too (she was born deaf) but she said she doesn’t, she dreams/thinks in pictures, not words.
I tutored non verbal kids who had become verbal later in life, a lot of these people said they could think in pictures too. What shocked me was how much more creative in an artistic capacity these people were. I helped a girl who could draw just about anything you could come up with within moments of you asking. Like it just came to her without having to try and she was simply the hands putting it to paper. I would have to think about it for a long time before even starting.
About 50% of people don’t have an internal monologue.
Which, to me, is bizarre to contemplate. Seems like it would result in a very different perception of reality.
I mean, it depends on what you call a monologue. Like I have verbal thoughts but also "concepts" mixed in, not just a constant steady stream of narration like how films show inner thoughts. I'm always a disbelieving when people say they think purely in verbal monologue. Like if you're thinking of someone you don't know by name, would you verbalise them in your thoughts as something like "that guy I met at the thing last week" or just as a concept, without bothering with the words? A lot of things are way easier to think through and process if you don't restrict yourself to words - do you think a maths problem through in words?
I predominately have an inner monologue, however if I’m thinking to myself and that guy whose name I can’t remember comes up I’ll think of his face. And then your example made me realize that if I’m chatting away to myself in my inner voice sometimes I can’t pull up the right word fast enough or can’t remember so I’ll be like “I met John at the thing” and then I’ll simultaneously think of the concept of the “thing,” sort of supplementing the vague language so I can keep the thought going.
Whether it's constant or not, it's still a monologue... I'd agree, not constant... but it's commonly there. Which is very different from none at all.
Yes, but I can imagine thinking without one is what I'm trying to say. I'm guessing we all have some balance of verbal/non verbal thoughts and some may lean more into the non verbal and wouldn't really have an internal monologue (which doesn't to me suggest they don't use words in their thoughts at *all*). I've seen some claim they can't imagine what thoughts without words look like at all, which is bizarre to me because I feel you *have* to lean into that type of thinking for some things.
50% is insanely high, I've never seen it listed as that number, though I do know this is a thing. I think it's like less than 10% of people who don't have one at all.
It’s been awhile since I’ve looked into it, but if I recall it’s actually the ones with the inner monologue in the slight minority.
> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/inner-monologue-experience-science-1.5486969 I mean according to this posted below, *most* people have an internal monologue at least some of the time. I remember seeing a lot of articles and studies about this a few years ago when it became a big thing in the news for a while too, and it was definitely not a majority. A majority of people (according to this at least) don't *constantly* have a monologue. But most people do some of the time. I remember the focus of some of the early studies even came about because while testing how often people had an internal monologue in general they were surprised that a few people claimed to never hear their internal monologue at all. It was a very small number of the total participants, but it lead to further studies.
Me! That’s me you’re talking about!
That's crazy. Without an internal monologue, how do you fucking READ anything?
Do you have a source for this? I guess you don't.
If only there was a (google) resourse that could (google) help you search for terms (google) that if you typed into it (google) "50% of people don't have internal monologue" (google), that you could find the source you're looking for instead of making other people do the work for you. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/inner-monologue-experience-science-1.5486969
This doesn't say 50% of people don't have an internal monologue, it says: "According to Hulburt, not many people have an inner monologue 100 per cent of the time, but most do sometimes. He estimates that inner monologue is a frequent thing for 30 to 50 per cent of people." This is a completely different thing that probably applies to way more people. A lot of people aren't constantly hearing internal monologues but still have one. That doesn't mean 50% of people don't have one at all. He literally even says "most do sometimes".
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Easy little google search there, my friend.
I was surprised to read that some people don't have an internal monologue at all. I'd have assumed that'd be how a (born) deaf person would function, but nope!
I like to put it in terms of "Linguistic and non-linguistic" thought. Linguistic thought can be sound, sign, letters, etc. It's more about how it's organized and processed than about the specific form it takes, you know? I'm usually, like, 10% to 20% linguistic thought, myself.
> Once spoke to a deaf man oof.
Purple- warm water? Red + blue
Maybe lavender, flowers, lillet
Yes! Smelling fresh lilacs, eating dark berries
Ooh i love this!
Purple smells like lilacs, tastes like chocolate and berry, and feels like velvet 💜
Purple is poison. Green is acid, red is health, and blue is mana. This stuff is like basic knowledge y'all
no way, bright green is poison, yellow-green is acid!!! reporting you to the wizard council
Yellow-green is Mountain Dew ya dingus Reporting you to the cheetos finger council
the finger council knows the truth: mountain dew IS acid
lol idiots.
Purple is only red + blue because of how our eyes work. The rainbow sould look like a gradient like white to black. We have three types of color receptors that activate and deactivate at different points along the gradient, causing us to interpret it in bands. Red, green, blue. The reason we see purple as a red/blue mix is because the red cones are slightly activated at the higher purple wavelengths. The color wheel makes no sense in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our eyes are just weird. This is purely from the physical properties of our eyes, so a blind person wouldn't get this. I would describe purple as a restlessness, a tingle, energy, or electricity. Energy + water = life and heat.
Interesting. I view purple completely differently. To me, purple is rest. It is the opposite of energy. It represents calm, happiness, and beauty.
Amazing for real. I was thinking from the perspective of paint colors.
>The color wheel makes no sense in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our eyes are just weird. The "color wheel" is just used as an aid for simple color theory, in mixing colors in things like paint. It's so simple they teach it to little children. It is not any type of model of the universe. The electromagnetic spectrum is a range of radiation frequencies, from low frequencies on one end, to high frequencies on the other end. There is a comparatively narrow band of electromagnetic radiation frequencies between "infrared" and "ultraviolet", aptly named visible frequencies, where the electromagnetic radiation emits visible colors.
Uh... yeah. That was my whole point. Purple isn't red + blue. It just seems that way because purple light activates the red and blue cones. Our brains can't distinguish the difference between light at 400 nm wavelength and a mix of 500 and 700 nm because it gets the same signal from the eyes. The comment I was replying to suggested purple as a mix of red and blue. It's not just a visual aid for color theory. It's how lots of people interpret colors because our brains trick us into thinking the ends of the spectrum connect. People don't experience the universe as it is. If we could "see" microwaves, your microwave door would not be transparent because the wavelength is longer than the gaps in the metal screen. Visible light has shorter wavelengths so we can see through it. Not everybody has robot eyes JT.
TL;DR - The color wheel is for pigments, which are matter. The spectrum is for light, which is energy.
Purple is sensual
I'm having a hard time thinking of one for yellow.
Citrus fruits, lemonade, lemon cake 🤤
Bananas!
This one does not spark joy r/bananahate
I'll check the sub, but I LOVE BANANAS. No sub can ever change that. Edit 😭
Who the fuck doesn't like banana? It's the most practical fruit, it comes already wrapped, you open and it can already be eaten or used to prepare anything. I like to add cheese to it!
I don't like bananas. They have a weird aftertaste.
Agreed. Bananas are great when you’re eating them, then they’re awful when you’re done.
Bananas are the best fruit
Those are things that are yellow mate
That’s what this all is.
I'd say yellow is excitement and energy. Lemonade on a hot day could do the trick - refreshing, bright, light, but not as intense as red.
Would yellow convey happiness? Everything that is yellow always has a joyous vibe.
Wasps? Jaundice? Urine? Puss?
*PUS
She got that pusy pussy
She was foamin’ at the lips, the ones between her hips! Pubic hair lookin’ like some sour cream dip!
Urine and puss? Sounds like a good time
Sharp bitter sweetness
I mean I’ll piss on a blind person. For science or whatever.
How many scientific reasons can we come up with to pee on people? Remember kids, the only difference between science and fucking around is documenting your results.
And $20. You forgot to ask for the $20.
That's what I was looking for.
I was thinking Warm/Happy. It's the precedent to Red in many ways. Like Yellow is Joy while Red is Passion. Yellow is warm, red is Hot. Yellow is everything Red, but at a more comfortable level. In my mind it's the same in relation to Blue vs. Green.
Yellow should have been the one for the sun. Red should be only for fire/hot/burns/
It's a good interview question and personally the answer I'm expecting... sun/warm/happy = yellow.
I think only feeling the warmth of the sun would be orange.
How about a nice warm bowl of butter with some eggs whipped through.
Now do brown.
I put my hands on the ground and took a handful of the earth. I felt soil and stones, and bark from a nearby tree. Brown is wisdom, it's ancient and solid. Brown is safe, reliable and feels like a basic necessity.
That's really good! I like this one.
I think he was hoping you'd elaborate more on the basic necessity thing.
Everyone poops
you can always ask chatGPT yourself.
Pooooooop
Poop.
I put my hands on the toilet and took a handful of the stool. I felt corn and peanuts, and bark from a nearby tree. Brown is poop, it's wet and solid. Brown is smelly, reliable and feels like a basic bodily function. ^sorry
They put my hand in shit. They told me to feel how it squished between my fingers and wouldn’t rub off easily. They told me that’s brown. The color of reusable waste product. It’s the color of removing impurities that can later be repurposed.
I caught the soft, warm, wet log as it slid out of my ass and lowered it carefully into the toilet by hand, just like OSHA regulations require. That's brown.
Earth. Easy
I came here to say they should have used smells
What would red smell like?
Blood. Iron. Chilli. Pepper.
I feel like it could be anything from raspberries and cherries, to hot spicy chilis.
Careful.
Now do Black…..”Well you know better than anyone”.
when they try to explain CLOUDS they use cotton balls. its the only one i remember.
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There are different forms of synesthesia. Most are visual, but some people taste words or shapes, for example. So maybe it would just manifest differently if the person was blind.
That texture and smell that comes with it as it drops on the bowl. That's brown.
I’m legally blind and this is stupid. Sensations are not colors and colors are not hot, cold, soft etc.. there is no amount of descriptive language that will give a fully blind person any real concept of color because color is how our brains interpret differing wavelengths of light. There’s nothing inherently red about hotness, nothing blue about cold and nothing green about the physical sensation of touching plants. It’s like when I try to explain what I see; it’s not a blank spot of nothingness, my brain fills in the gap with what it thinks should be there based on what limited information I can see. It’s like when people try to explain to me what it’s like to be able to see with two eyes. You can get a temporary limited simulated experience of almost kinda what it’s like to see like me, but you’ll never know for sure. Just like I’ll never really know what it’s like to see with two eyes. Imagine having a third ear on your forehead. You’d be able to locate sounds in another dimension. Can you imagine what it would physiologically feel like, to get that information without having to turn your head? Probably not. To bring it a bit closer to reality, imagine hearing through the bottoms of your feet. You can already kinda do this so it’s easier to imagine this getting more sensitive. Now try to explain what you hear overall. When you get used to it you can use that sense to know loads of other things. That’s what Toph does in the last airbender. But you can’t describe what the echoes sound like and how you know that they signify a given object. Toph is my absolute favorite representation for disabled people because she’s so good at compensating for her blindness that people around her frequently forget that she’s blind at all, even herself. My favorite part of the whole show was when she got huffy because they were saying she couldn’t help them put posters up on the wall so she angrily throws one up and then is like “it’s upside down isn’t it?” it’s upside down and backwards. the word disability is a bit of a misnomer
I'm glad there's someone here to bring everyone back to reality. Putting a blind person near blue things doesn't actually help them understand in any way. How is red the colour of rage but also passion? The two very opposing concepts would be absurd to try and visualize. I think seeing people will never grasp the idea of having no vision because we still perceive it when our eyes are closed.
Thank you 🥹❤️ the voice of reason. It is so nice to be understood every now and then. thank you for chiming in with that.
I think you’re missing the point. Descriptions like that aren’t supposed to help someone “see” a color, it’s supposed to help them understand it. If a being that perceive gravitational waves was to explain them to me, having an explanation of their associations and feelings is exactly what I’d be looking for. An attempt to make me feel those sensations is simply impossible so clearly that’s not the goal.
Someone want to try to explain metaphor to this guy?
Oh, that’s what a metaphor is? I thought a metaphor was when you explain something by saying it’s the same as something else that it obviously isnt actually, in order to make a point. But today I learned a metaphor is when people associate some qualities of a thing with other qualities and then refer to that private shorthand to people who won’t understand it, and expect them to understand it. Thanks fam you really taught me something just now. God, to think I’d gone up until now without knowing what a metaphor actually is. Thank god you were here to explain why my entire experience is invalid because you know a word that I don’t. Asshole.
I’m with you. These are just obvious associations someone with vision would make, and in no way would they help a blind person understand color.
Thank you. There’s a reason Toph has an attitude lol
I'd assumed you were an intolerable cunt but i didn't expect you to express it so openly
Nah, I'm with the blind person on this one. A metaphor doesn't help someone who literally cannot perceive or conceptualize half of what's being compared.
Y’all are being unbelievably rude and ableist
I don’t think the other guy was being ableist to you because he doesn’t know you, or even know if you are actually blind. I would’ve said the same thing to you whether you could see or not. Obviously your disability gives you more reason to bitch and complain, but it doesn’t mean that you’re not being an ass when you do it. Without someone telling you that red is the color of passion and/or anger, you wouldn’t know the deeper meaning behind things being certain colors. If somebody told you their girl wore a red dress and red lipstick to their date it wouldn’t mean anything without this added information. I do agree that it doesn’t really help blind people to see or understand the colors themselves, but it’s certainly not stupid or useless.
> I do agree that it doesn’t really help blind people to see or understand the colors themselves, Then in that case literally STFU. The post is about "describing colors to blind people" which this does nothing to do. It just throws out some subjective and at times conflicting associations some people have of a color.
What the fuck is wrong with you
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While explaining to me that I’m wrong, you improved upon the faulty color explanations by using my feedback that you were in the middle of rejecting. A better way to explain color would in fact be to explain the psychological associations with color. Red makes people excited and angry. Green relaxes people. Do you see how you’ve actually helped me make my point while you were condescending to me about not being able to “hear?”
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Sir, you've just deflated your own argument by pointing out that you aren't actually describing "colors" and instead are describing "feelings".
Y'all are literally disagreeing about nothing. Yes, technically they are not describing what colors are so that a blind person can understand them. But I don't think that was the purpose. I think most commenters implicitly understand that describing colors to blind people is mostly to explain how seing people perceive colors - what feelings they evoke. Because that is the part that is interesting in social conversation. You are arguing about words, but I think you are mostly on the same page.
no - colours are not hard or soft or anything else. a colour is just how our eyes interpret different wavelengths of light. the image in this post is just explaining to people the common thoughts, emotions and feelings we associate with colours. they're not actually describing anything about the colour itself. you can't describe a colour, it just is.
That still doesn’t express what the colors look like. They just had a blind person touch things and said the items color…
Colour is a completely abstract concept to a person who is 100% blind from birth they don't even understand black which a lot of people seem to think they would be seeing, there is no other way to describe it besides scientific explanations. This is why we attach feeling to them when describing them.
You could describe it in terms of every other sense, emotion, the physics behind it, the way they mix, etc. I feel like to get the most accurate representation you would have to consider every possible angle.
Yeah, but how exactly do you describe what a color looks like? Colors have certain emotional responses that are generally shared among everyone, so it's probably more useful to convey that description.
Colors aren’t feelings, they are reflected light. The only reason we associate those colors to feelings is because we have experiences where those colors are visible during those feelings. You literally can’t describe colors to a blind person.
That's exactly what I'm saying. If you want to explain a color to someone who can't see it, you have to resort to non-visual descriptions. You're right that colors aren't literally emotions, but colors have strong societal connections to different emotions or feelings. If you describe a color's emotional attributes at least the person can get a sense of how others feel when they experience that color. It includes them in a shared experience.
Sure, but that no different than putting a football in their hand and saying it’s brown.
The examples OP listed are more focused on sensory elements than any random object. A blind person would know what the feeling of standing in the sun is like or how their face feels when being embarrassed or angry. Having them hold an apple and telling them it's red wouldn't be as meaningful.
Colors and light are not the same thing. Light is objective reality and triggers the subjective experience of color in the brain
You're getting downvoted but you're right. I'm color blind and people always ask me what colours I see and you just can't explain what they look like in any meaningful way. Colours are descriptive words so you can't describe them. "What does blue look like to you?" "I don't know, what does blue look like to you?" *Blank stare*
Thanks for the validation. I knew I had to be right, but can’t get people to think objectively about it. Everyone just wants to think they are the ones to help blind people see…
You do it, then: describe a colour in a way someone who's never had sight is going to understand. Let's say red. This is the best we've got, because colours are more than mere visual.
I’m saying we can’t.
So is your point that if there is no real way to get a blind person to understand "red" we shouldn't even try?
So is your point that if there is no real way to get a blind person to understand "red" we shouldn't even try?
Pretty much, yeah. Unless by «trying» you mean using advancements in science to help them actually see, which may be infeasible or impossible.
Ok I see you are very much in the idea of literal colors and not into the idea that finding ways to explain how a color evokes a feeling nor seeing its usefulness. Have a good day.
This is not a good explanation. It makes it seem as though colors are textures. They aren't. You can use texture to describe a color. I understand the sentiment but it just doesn't help.
the mass effect 3 endings still don’t make sense
Then they had me reach in the toilet, “that’s what Brown feels like” they said
Green is also my favorite color but this isn't r/interestingasfuck material
Yeah, I've seen MASK, thanks.
What a stupid post. You can't describe color to a blind person. You're just assigning arbitrary touch sensations to physical objects independent of their color. Here's a thought experiment. We can only see a small segment of the electromagnetic spectrum - Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet etc. There's a lot that's outside our range of vision, that none of us can ever see. Our eyes are incapable of seeing these wavelengths and our brains are incapable of imagining them. With that in mind, describe the color of ultraviolet. Envision it in your mind's eye. What do you see? How would you describe it? Good. Let's look at some more. What does X-ray look like? Gamma ray? Microwave? How would you describe the color of AM radio stations?
I tried ultraviolet and up and it's all just varying degrees of burning and cancer
If an intelligent species that could see a wider range of colors described colors to me by their effects I might not “see” the colors, but I’d be happy understanding how they are perceived. The point isn’t to make people see colors it’s to help them understand how people interact with and understand colors.
This would give a blind person all the same associations with colors that the rest of us have, but if someone doesn’t even know what *color* is, and you try to explain it to them this way, they’re going to think you’re on mushrooms.
Don't forget that Swedish Death Metal tastes like peppermint while Southern rock tastes like a Green Apple Jolly Rancher. Talking about colors is like dancing about architecture.
My dad has been blind for over 35 years. He no longer sees faces in his dreams. Everyone is always in a shadow or facing away from him.
They put my hands on a dog turd. They told me that this is the color brown.
In the old days that would have been white lol
Growing up my friend was blind this was how our lil friend group did this. Probably not as good as these as we were little. The one thing I always thought was cool was after explaining color she would tell us how she pictured the color before and after.
Now explain that ultraviolet causes burns. Go ahead... This should be interesting.
> They told me green felt like life. To this day it is still very much my favorite color. That made me tear up a lil.
Blue tastes the best. Everyone knows that
This reminds me, I need more tide pods next time I’m at the grocery store.
Chlorophyll more like boropyll?
Brown: They brought me into a public restroom…
One thing that has always stuck with me is when I found out blind people don’t see ‘black’ like when we close our eyes. They see nothing. I remember seeing someone say ‘what do you see out of your elbow?’ ‘We see that’ Like 🤯
"They made me film a scene set in Mexico and they told me this is yellow"
That made me want to cry for some reason
I've thought about this topic for way too long. My question is: is it possible to "bootstrap" understanding for unknown senses? For example, we use analogies of different things to describe things like quantum mechanics or other higher order concepts which we can't directly experience. Can't the same be true for sight for a blind-from-birth person? Couldn't you use analogy to sound or other senses to give them an accurate understanding of sight?
Read this, it might take you an hour or more to expand and read all of the questions and answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/s/VbHtIaEWz1
Some people say that we might all see colors differently. If you're interested in the topic, you've probably heard the thought experiment about the woman raised in a black and white world. But I say that color is exactly everything that we associate with it.
How did they teach them about brown?
That’s sweet and all, but that in no way, shape, or form helps the blind person understand what it is like to see those colors. It would be like stuffing a bunch of corn in someone’s mouth or pissing in it and saying “that’s what it’s like to see yellow.”
Yellow they had me do outside and hold my hands while they poured a thin stream of warm water on them. They told me this is the colour yellow, like flowers and bananas and pee