When is it better to think without words?

This is one of those things that you don't really tend to think about (pun not intended!) until you experience a change in your thinking or meet someone who thinks like you do!

> If we can avoid the compression step, and do the manipulations directly in the high-dimensional, non-linguistic, conceptual space, we can move much faster

With my neurodivergent brain I've always conducted my thoughts in an "uncompressed format" and then eternally struggled to confine it all into words. Only then for people to misinterpret and question it. They might get caught up in the first sentence when the end of the paragraph is where you need to be!

That's why when you meet someone who thinks like you the depth of conversation and thinking you can achieve together is vast and also incredibly liberating! Your no longer limited by words in same way.

Since becoming ill I've suffered badly with brainfog. The cutesy name for a cruel experience. Sometimes there's no memories to draw on when your thinking, the cupboards are bare. You can't leap from thought to thought because they disappear before you get there or after like a cursed platformer. You might be able to grab hold of the thought but you can't reach inside or read it. It's all wrong somehow like when your suddenly convinced a word is spelt wrong even though you know it's right. You can't maintain focus long enough to finish your train of thought.

Even that subconscious processing is affected I used to prime my brain with information all day and instead of waking up with the solution I'll wake up frustrated but not knowing why. Just the vague notion that I failed at something that used to come so easily.

> That's why when you meet someone who thinks like you the depth of conversation and thinking you can achieve together is vast and also incredibly liberating! Your no longer limited by words in same way.

Hmm.... I have to say, while I like the idea of being unlimited by words - the state of 'purer communion' is one I have frequently sought - I think it is far more likely that what is going on is that you mind is projecting 'likeness'. Both people in the conversation imagine that the other 'gets it' - a delusory and false assumption. After all, no one knows what goes on in another's mind - we simply don't have access.

I think talking is our means of 'ideas exchange', and that the greatest connections comes after lots of conversations, where one can (rightly) assume a shared understanding because one knows the terms are more-or-less lined up.

Language is an unavoidable throttling valve to me. And additionally, it's not the brain that's actually registering value/meaning either for me. You can call it the subconscious if you like, but I prefer 'soul' as that sense of oneself that is always there, has innate knowing, etc. Which is to say, there really is no way to express the depth of experience to another. But this is fine.

That description really resonates with me, it feels a lot like what I've been experiencing on and off for several months. I sometimes describe it like being able to see and examine an idea sitting in front of me on the table but having a hard time picking up and being able to manipulate it enough to write it out. Or like your fingers are working poorly like when it's very cold and you're not wearing gloves.

If it’s projection, wouldn’t they get the same experience with anyone? Or maybe only with someone that’s also projecting that you also “get it”. The proof is in the pudding, though, I think. Collaboration with someone who matches your wavelength like this seems to be very productive in terms of concrete results.

I get what you’re saying, in my own way.

But what I do not get is how you would convey these thoughts to someone else that thinks the same way as you, seeing as these thoughts don’t neccesarily seem to be contained to words or sentences.

> Both people in the conversation imagine that the other 'gets it' - a delusory and false assumption

'getting it' isn't an all or nothing thing. It would be an illusion to take it to an extreme.

The idea of some people in your life being able to get you better than others, more quickly and with fewer words, is a fact of life. Comparative human connection bandwidth can be estimated by vibes, history, outcomes.

I believe the idea is that people who think the same way will find it easier to interpret the true nature of the thoughts behind forms of words which may be less comprehensible to people thinking in other ways.

Well this is why that the non-verbal part of communication conveys most information. A single video call tells more than a million words.

This is easiest to recognize in the creative arts, but really you see this in every domain. A musician tapping a rhythm or humming a tune might make no sense to a layman, but another musician often understands what they mean right from the get go. Not because they necessarily know the piece, but because they think about music in a similar way.

I'm curious about some specific examples. Like can you explain a thought that came to you without words and then try to explain how you tried to explain it.

I feel like my thoughts are entirely monologue reasoning based kind of.

I don't think its the same thing as whats described in the article.

When i talk with someone very aligned with my thinking and knowledge (fellow it collegues/friends with simiiliar skill level) we do not a lot of words to be aligned and convey complex thoughts.

We reference and use words which we both know, we read and reference similiar news stories etc.

But the way they describe it with colors, vibrations etc. is probably somethig you can't just convey.

Finding someone who thinks like you can feel like unlocking a second processor

The GP comment really resonated with me so here's my best shot at it.

When I'm searching my pockets with my hands, I might have just had a verbalized thought like "where did I put my keys?" This is followed/accompanied by the physical sensations of my hands searching my pockets, and if they don't find the keys there, I might reach out with mental "hands" to the places I might have left my keys, recalling what I've been doing, summoning the sense memory of placing the keys down. During the process, I might think things like "oh, I was in the garage earlier..." but parts of the thought are much less like talking and much more like tracing my fingers along grooves.

This is true of thoughts about the physical world, but I do it with abstractions too. When I'm considering the architecture of a computer application, every memory or bit of reasoning might not be verbal, but more akin to feeling different parts of a shape or trying to call to mind a sensory experience. I'll then very often, when speaking aloud, have to wrestle my way back into English. "The thing that connects to the other thing with the... options. Sorry, no, I meant, in the body of the POST there's a field named..."

This is partly why written communication has always been much better for me than talking out loud. I can edit what I said to more closely match what I meant. I can recognize and edit out extraneous thoughts that were necessary for me to find the right words but muddy the waters too much if I say them without explaining all the thought behind it.

I am much better with written too, but more so I feel because my monologue under pressure from scratch wouldn't be as focused or systematic since in social situations there are so many random questions, factors, and things to process. While on my own I can let my monologue systematically work in its specific tempo without being interrupted.

Searching physical items is something I am terrible at, usually because my monologue doesn't care for it and rather would do something else or think about something else. So I tend to have monologue about something entirely other than searching and I walk randomly hoping I find the keys as a background process. Sometimes my monologue will get to a really interesting idea for me and then I just have to try it out and forget that I had to go outside in the first place.

It is really, really hard for me to direct my monologue to everyday routine activities.

> It is really, really hard for me to direct my monologue to everyday routine activities.

+1 to that, I would say it's virtually impossible for me, and I really entirely on nonverbal/muscle memory for said things, and that's the only reason I'm able to function at a "bathes and eats" level, much less gainful employment. It might not be neurologically accurate, but it sure feels like I have a verbal hemisphere and a nonverbal hemisphere.

often times the answer is instantaneous but the articulation takes ages to show people how to get from a to z

insight often lives in the ability to skip a b c d, then post processing is to allow mortals to understand

sometimes my verbal skills fail me and the steps are missing

this is why i disagree that if you can’t write it, you don’t know it

in another words, i may know the note to sing but not have the voice to sing it

> I've always conducted my thoughts in an "uncompressed format" and then eternally struggled to confine it all into words. Only then for people to misinterpret and question it.

This resonates so much with me. To a point where I don't write/contribute in public forums out of fear for this misinterpretation.

Strangely, your post has made me push through that exact fear to write this, so any perceived misinterpretation has positively impacted at least one stranger. This is a good reminder for me that focusing only on negative consequences misses the unintended positive ones of still putting something out there, even if its not a perfect representation of the "uncompressed format".

Thank you for sharing, and I wish you a speedy recovery.

I've too often made the experience of having something that feels significant and whole in my head, and in the process of trying to articulate it to another person, it becomes almost completely lost. What comes out is a two-dimensional, crippled shadow of the original idea, and it (this is the worst part) cuts off my connection to the complex form.

This is why writing is important. it gives you the time to actually thinking about the best words to represent what is in your head. you may still fail, but it will usually be better than whatever comes dribbling out of your mouth.

unfortunately, if knowledge isnt written down in some form, (code, english etc) then it doesnt really exist in a civilization sense, so you need to get good at writing.

see all Paul Grahams essays on writing.