You must log in or register to comment.
It’s unclear if the above comment is agreeing or disagreeing with the lower one.
I think most people don’t think about what they think about.
.
And it shows.
I was told “still waters run deep” but sometimes still waters are just… still.
Then what do they do?
Life must be so boring to them.
On the contrary, I imagine them being constantly slightly surprised by things, like they’re along for the ride. Sounds relaxing.
Just that first part … most people don’t think
Therefore they aren’t.
deleted by creator
Imagine being an NT person and just bumping into one topic after another like a moth, I’d much rather know how I got to wherever I ended up. 😅
I’m NT, and “thinking about thinking” is how my brain works. A lot of “normal” brains do, but there’s a HUGE spectrum of how introspective people are.
First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those.
Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those.
Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.
TIL that I am a witch.
J/k… I’ve known that for a long time. 😹
Even without attribution or ever reading this quote before, I just knew it had to be Sir Terry Pratchett and I was right.
That man was unmatchable in his wit and wisdom and how he packaged life lessons on simply being good people into entertaining stories. The world is lesser without him.
i think the world is brighter for having had him. i don’t want to mourn him, i want to celebrate what he’s given us
GNU Terry Pratchett
Never knew what this meant, just looked it up. I should read Going Postal.
You absolutely should, assuming that you are a nerd it’s IMO his best book. I have a lovely hard cover edition.
I’ve heard good things about the whole industrialization arc. I’ll binge it eventually like I did with the city watch, Rincewind, Death, and witches arcs.
RIP Terry Pratchett ❤️
My wife regularly has rogue “brain trains” like this. Keeps things fun :)
My GF sometimes has to ask me what I’m talking about because I ask her a question with no context, but most of the time now she knows, not sure if she just knows me well enough or if she has found a way to join me on my “brain train”.
My wife likes including me in the middle of conversations that she started in her head.
I have to occasionally remind her that I need a little context.
Building off this, im fully capable of having 2 entirely different conversations at once.
Ive been talking to one person at work, stop mid sentence to correct the other crew, and go back to what I was saying with a small reminder.
I’ve had two conversations with the same person at the same time.
Really common with text chatting, since they reply to conversation 1 while I’m replying to conversation 2, then we switch.
At like 3 or 4 simultaneous conversations in different languages things go wrong and I accidentally use the wrong language in one of them.
Everything is fine until you say the wrong strawberry?
It’s more like one person suddenly hears a weird mumble they don’t understand.
Yeah my gf sometimes does this but uses one app for one conversation and another for a different one.
I always assumed that most people do this just much slower. Hence why they would switch fewer topics.
this has nothing to do with neurodivergence. it’s just how brains work. necessarily, in fact. your dad’s just an idiot.
by the way it’s not the same thing but one thing I enjoyed doing when i was younger and talked with my dad for long enough, we would stop at a point and think “wait how did we even get here?” and trace back the conversation to several topics ago.
we both have diverse interests, maybe that’s why things we talked about would keep chaining to random other things. now that i think of it, my dad used to buy lots of encyclopedias before the internet, and we’d just randomly browse them. even on our computer we had multiple versions of Encarta. and now we use wikipedia and it’s so easy to jump from one article to another.
so i guess what we did all those years ago wasn’t far off from wiki surfing verbally.
Not everyone’s brain works like that. My girlfriend, for one. She struggles to make those
arbitraryabstract jumpsArbitrary or abstract?
I have written several proposals for my employer based on this kind of thinking. We have some kind of issue, I push it to the back of my mind, weeks later the issue still exists and I’m listening to a totally unrelated podcast and something the host or guest says triggers a series of seemingly unrelated thoughts and suddenly I have a solution to the issue.
My department head once asked me how I come up with these solutions, I smiled and said I have ADHD and listen to podcasts. He just looked at me with a blank stare then said that doesn’t make sense. I just laughed a little and said, I know but it’s hard to explain how things connect in my mind, the podcasts just help me brainstorm. He just smiled, shook his head, and said well what ever works I guess.
Wow, this also helps me with thinking! Just hearing people talk helps me think. Music is focus too much on it and can’t work.
Yeah it’s weird, you would think it would distract you but it doesn’t. On the music thing, I’ve found that classical music helps me focus but other types don’t. To be specific piano and violin music seems to work best for me. But that’s really only when I’m writing, when I’m working on a problem podcasts, audiobooks, and music I’ve heard a million times already work just fine, new music will distract me though, it has to be stuff I already know.
About the same ! Classical kind of works. But yeah can’t listen to anything new either or I focus on it
I’d recommend reading Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. I’m not sure that all the claims hold up to scrutiny, but it’s nice to see a book that notes the way I like to think has real world application.
Somethings I suspect you’re doing are:
- Analogical Thinking of Deep Structures to create an Outside View (Chapter 5)
- Spacing which gives time away from a problem and asks part of the mind to re-collect the issue so you know those deeper structures well. This is presented in the chapter on learning, but I suspect it’s relevant here (Chapter 4)
Oddly enough, if your boss wants to foster creative problem solving for novel problems, this book might convince him to give you more latitude and resources to do your thing.
So I just got done reading up on this book and ordered a copy. Thanks, I might also grab the audiobook since I sometimes have problems focusing on reading, and listening to a book is the only way I can finish it.
Funnily enough the boss is extremely open to new ideas and recognizes that I’m ready to move on. He’s already told me that he’s petitioning for extra budget now that we have surplus money company wide so that he can move me and two others up into low level management in project management roles. As he said the project management title will be fluid since each of you will be doing wildly different things based on your strengths.
I’m down for it since the majority of the things he says he wants to assign me are things I want to do. Sure there’s a few things I’m not crazy about, but they aren’t anywhere near deal breakers.
Awesome. I’ve been feeding the ebook into a text to speech reader. It’s been working for me.
I’m glad to hear you have a boss that’s open to your mode of thinking. Good luck and I wish you well!
Text to speech is a good idea but it would have to be natural sounding, I find the typical ones are robotic sounding and distracting, for me at least.
Yeah he’s a good guy, we actually graduated together but were just casual acquaintances at that time. A few years back I was covering a holiday and it was just the two of us, nothing going on so we sat at my desk and started talking about highschool, after a while we got to talking about what we saw as the future of the department (he had just been promoted to head the department) and we found out we shared a bunch of ideas. He’s never said anything but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s had to slow roll my promotion because of the highschool ties.
Check out elevenlabs. They used to do a reader I liked, Omnivore. It’s pretty natural sounding. As of now, it’s free, but I like it.
Glad you two clicked. It’s nice knowing someone out there has similar ideas and a different way of solving problems.
I tried to get an ADHD diagnosis a year ago. The practitioner basically said no but it was hard for her because I was so on the line. But when I hear the litany of behaviors by a subset of people with ADHD, it can bring me to tears because it’s nice to see I’m not the only one.
PM work can be fun for sure.
I actually recently checked out elevenlabs, the free tier seemed so limited it didn’t seem like it would work, maybe I’ll have to check them out again and dig a little deeper. Thanks for the suggestion.
Yeah I lucked out with him for sure. The guy he replaced was good, but still operated with an old school corporate mindset.
I got lucky with my diagnosis, my doctor also had ADHD and even though I still had to do the testing to be sure he basically diagnosed me on our first visit. He was also able to teach me how to manage my impulses and channel the energy into projects I can get passionate about. If you are right on the edge I’d seek a second opinion, I’m not knocking the previous doctor but a different one might pick up on something that would put you over the threshold.
If nothing else research coping strategies on your own. Check out this ADHD life, I connected with him years ago through comedy podcast we both listened to and he’s got some great resources.
Believe it or not, that was my first impression as well. I really didn’t use it because it seemed like it would end up costing me money. But about a month ago, they sent out a survey asking why I wasn’t using it. I suspect we werent the only ones not giving it a shake. I didn’t do the survey, but it reminded me to give it a try. Throwing this book in there has been great and the free AI voices have a nice flow for the most part.
Much more than the diagnosis, I’ve been more interested in the coping techniques. I don’t think my manifestation is so bad that I need medication, though I was sincerely curious if it would change things for the better. I might try for a second opinion. The practitioner even gave a reference for someone who died more comprehensive testing, but she doesn’t take insurance. So I’m waffling a bit.
I’ll check out this ADHD life. I feel like it’s been mentioned in other communities, but honestly can’t remember.
Cheers!
If the other person can’t follow your train of thought, it can feel as though the emotional and cognitive connection/trust that was built in the conversation was abandoned along with the previous context. This can happen when there is a non-trivial jump in context between ideas.
Steering the conversation can be done by introducing intermediary steps that are connected to the previous topic in a self-evident way. This maintains that cognitive and emotional connection/trust because you are showing that you value the other person’s understanding and participation.
Figuring out what “non-trivial” or “self-evident” means is probably the hard part but you’d probably want to consider each step in, for example:
Grass, meadow, forest, tree, timber, log truck, mill, paper, exports, shipping dock, ocean, ice caps, ice bergs, titantic, James Cameron, Michael bay, transformers.
You could probably go from each one to the next trivially, steering the conversation from grass to meadow and so on through the list. But to go from grass to transformers without intermediate ideas truly makes absolutely no sense.
Could somebody please explain to me how somebody can not think like this? I always thought this is the normal way to think. There are people who don’t think like this?
Pretty sure everyone does, but they will take you through it first, not drop the topic change without context.
Also it’s considered weird and off topic, so even if they think it they don’t bring it up
I think something like 40% of people don’t have an internal monologue at all, so…
Metacognition and usage of an inner monologue have nothing to do with each other. I don’t need to talk myself through things to conceptualise.
That whole thing sounds made up. No one hears voices in their head unless they are schizo or under the influence
I can play back music in my head when I’m bored or watch an entire movie. Sometimes even just with my eyes open. And I don’t think I have those disorders but who knows
I think I’m just hung up on semantics of it.
I can certainly conjure visuals from data in memory, I can play music back like you said and even change the notes and sounds like a MIDI file being played with a soundfont, but it’s not like a movie where there’s a slightly reverb’d version of my voice in my head dictating out thoughts involuntarily as a voice. Thoughts are thoughts, they’re a separate data type to me than audio or visuals.
A line of thought to me is a sequence of concepts represented by some unknown malleable fuzzy data structure in my brain, not an .MP3 file playing like what “internal narrative” seems to indicate.
At any moment a thought can be cast to another data structure like an image or video or audio, but it’s not anything but a thought until I make the choice, likewise this isn’t limited to just memories but imagination in equal amounts. I can just as well conjure visuals that aren’t real and/or events that didn’t happen and experience them in equal amounts and clarity. This is what I understand as daydreaming. But it’s not exactly like watching a film, or even to the level of vividness of an actual sleepy-time dream.
I’m very much known by my peers IRL from interactions there and my comments on the interwebz for philsophizing and intellectualising as well and often been told by people as a kid and young adult that I have a very vivid imagination if I share some idea in my head, and it wasn’t even an insult I’m pretty sure haha!
Thoughts as its own data structure, not associated with a language or words, sounds so interesting and yet so foreign to me
Tbh that sounds much, much cooler than anything I have experienced in my own head.
I find the breadth of difference in how consciousness displays from person to person endlessly fascinating. For me, my head is full of constant chatter and background music. I have often described it as many interconnected trains of thought, and the best real example I can give is this portion of a Tame Impala song. I can hone in on any one thought or hop aboard that train but it is easy to get disracted and find myself on a different track. I’ve been told this is ADHD actually lol. Most of my deliberate thinking to myself is just a line of words, sometimes repeated compulsively. I am not a visual thinker at all, but I can visualize if I choose to do so deliberately. Again, it’s way too easy to get sidetracked and the visualizations are fuzzy unless I’m meditating or half asleep. It is interesting to note though that in a half asleep state I can achieve something closer to a sequence of semi-related fuzzy conceptualizations, as you describe.
I love to philosophize too, mostly because it’s basically my default mode, something I can literally never turn off, only choose to ignore, like a constant dripping tap. I would have majored in philosophy in college if there was any money in it. But I have never been told I have an active imagination lol I would love to be able to trade perceptions with people momentarily. What an eye opening experience that would be. What a difference it would make in the world.
Sounds like you may be part of that 40%. The majority of people seem to have an inner voice and can create visuals and imagine sounds. Even auditory hallucinations are quite common.
One should never assume everyone’s inner reality is the same as their own.
I appreciate the input. I responded to another comment here in this same thread and I’d like to hear your thoughts as well: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/18751476
I think people generally think in paths like this. The difference is the impulsive conversation topic change, not the train of thought. Some neruotypicals (like my wife) can find it jarring.
I think it’s also the speed and number of connections leading to the topic change. I think many neurotypicals would jump from the carnival to the rodeo, or to the bee story, but they wouldn’t jump all the way to wondering about wasps from talking about the carnival in one go.
From the outside, the topic change is so different that neurotypicals can’t follow the connections.
I never would have thought that a random post would chance my world view. I am genuinely stumped.
This seems right. Their mind wanders, too, but they don’t mention the tangents that come up, or if they do, they specifically state why they’re now thinking about the new topic.
Neurotypical here and yeah my brain often works this way and I believe it does for many others. What’s missing in this vignette are social skills from both parties.
Abruptly shifting topics like that often works better in a conversation with some sort of segue or acknowledgment of the shift: “This is off of that topic but I have a random question.”
The second party could reasonably be confused but when the thought process was explained to them they could have just accepted it and moved on without being denigrating.
So they both just need better social skills is all that I see.
I have a friend who’s the same age as me and we are both ADHD. He pointed out to me once that we were having three different conversations at the same time. I guess that’s a little strange for neurotypical people.
David Hume wrote about this exact thing in (I think) an enquiry concerning human understanding.
Essentially he said all thoughts come from 3 processes:
Cause and effect - think of smoke so think of fire etc.
Continuity in time and/or place - think of kettle so think of toaster etc.
Resemblance - think of a photo so think of the person etc.
The above example would be continuity in place, the carnival lead to thoughts in the same place.
Also cause and effect…why do bees die but wasps not?
Actually possibly resemblance too, as bees and wasps look similar.
I wish I could remember more, it’s been about 20 years since I last read it though.
I’m going to look into it. Thank you.
I guess some people also can’t imagine things which seems so odd to me.
This is actually the case. It’s called aphantasia. Most people can think of a cup and an image of a cup will appear in their mind. People with aphantasia can’t do that.
They still might get a mental concept of a cup pop up though, just not a mental image if that makes sense.
I probably have aphantasia, or at least very close to having it. If someone mentions a cup I can still think about a cup, I just don’t “see” it
I think it’s kind of hard to describe if you can’t do it. I don’t literally see the cup; I’m imagining that I can see the cup. Can you imagine other senses? For example, can you imagine how chocolate tastes, or what it sounds like when somebody’s knocking on a door?
Some people can get very vivid mental images though, with lots of details. If you think it’s hard to describe if you can’t do it, then maybe you’re actually in the same or similar boat as me. I never realised I can’t actually get “mental images” because I assumed whatever pops up in my head is what people were talking about. Just thought it was what people ended up calling the mental concepts, didn’t consider that most people can probably actually “see” mental images to some degree.
And no, I wouldn’t say I can imagine tastes or smells but I can imagine sounds somewhat.
Edit: when I say “see” I mean having an image pop up in your head, like you mentioned in an earlier comment. I don’t get images popping up. I get concepts of something, with kinda attribute labels attached to it. I know a rainbow is a curved shape with the spectrum of visual colours and so on but I don’t get an image of one in my head. I just remember stuff about it.
I’m in the same boat as the other commenter. I can imagine smells just fine, sounds alright. But images I stick to a general concept of a thing.
It kinda goes with an aphotographic memory as well. I can’t describe what people look like for example and if I try I get it wrong.
I can’t imagine smells much, but sounds I can imagine somewhat.
Oh yes I’m also terrible at describing what people look like. Unless I happened to notice very specific things about them so my mind “took notes” of attributes. But even then I can get it wrong.
My instinct would be to think that they do that too, but at a much slower speed, and are less aware of how they got there. So when you explain a train of thought clearly the speed which u topic switched and the number of times it happened feels overwhelming to them. We also tend to intellectualize a lot of stuff and others do not, so they have probably never internally studied how their own thoughts connect before, so it would seem forieng when explained.
But I’m speaking from instinct here, no evidence.
AFAIK I’m neurotypical… No, trains of thought like these are common (see also other respondents on here), and they can also happen in the blink of an eye. It’s just that when the question or comment has formed, I’ll make a mental note to either ask/mention it later after the current topic has concluded, if I think the other person also has interest in hearing it, or to google it later if not. Or to just drop the thought if I come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter all that much to myself either.
You mean you’re able to, gasp, use filters on your thought and exert self-control? What is this dark magic, get outta here
As soon as I saw “carnival” and “wasps,” I understood the connection immediately.
We call them “fair bees”; they are drunk and aggressively non-violent about drinking your daiquiri, as well as rummaging through every trash can. Never been stung by one, but they can be aggravating sometimes cause they won’t leave me or my drink alone… like any obnoxious drunk, really
So I can see how you can get to thinking about wasps from “carnival”. The “fair bees” definitely remind me of wasps being assholes
Yeah, any outdoor environment with food involved immediately brings to mind yellowjacket/bee/wasp type insects not leaving sugary drinks alone.
It wasn’t a carnival, it was a candy themed amusement park, and one of the stands was “make your own lolipop”, and I wasn’t looking, and fuck - I got stung on my tongue by a wasp.
That’s probably the easiest connection for me to make if I had been part of that conversation.
It’s not a “hack” per se, but at least I got lots of free icecream following. Until my parents got to thinking that ice cubes are free…I’m pretty sure this is how all humans think…things relate to one another.
I think if this experience is related to having ADHD, the part that is relevant is the lack of ability to acknowledge that you’ve made a jump at all. In the example it’s a perfectly valid train of thought, but I’d expect an average person to make an effort to bring the other up to speed. Because most people generally expect to continue conversation in the same topic, you spend mental effort trying to keep tethered to that topic and have to share that rope with the other person.
Thank you. I was freaking out. Isn’t this what they call a stream of consciousness?
The real skill is to go back and add new branches to those thoughts. That takes effort.
It may be more extreme, but fairly often with conversations with my wife, after a while we’re like: “How did we end up at this topic” and then we can backtrack it a number of steps to see how we got at a completely different topic.
It’s kind of like clicking through Wikipedia, you open a page and a few subpages, some of those have different interesting subjects and somehow you went from pollination to ancient Mesopotamian mythology.
I think we’re both fairly “NT” but just curious.
ime they simply don’t think
I’ve always found calling people NPCs pretty degrading, but what do you call someone who has no internal dialogue? They’re just… husks?
Neurotypicals don’t have “trains of thought” they have “teleporters of thought”
