Post a quote, that could have just been text but instead for some stupid reason is an image, entertain me!

IMAGE(https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/320887947_3230728553905299_6314582809005116567_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=EhjR4Kqe0_gAX-dkiYB&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-2.xx&oh=00_AfBbCUoX4zyuZ8KfWonsuVkv6-6O0d1Lwo-Swk28t-GgZg&oe=63A623A5)

IMAGE(https://www.dumpaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1-33.jpg)

IMAGE(https://www.dumpaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/shower-thoughts-1-3.jpg)

IMAGE(https://www.dumpaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/shower-thoughts-6-3.jpg)

farley3k wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/jPiYLRO.jpeg)

farley3k wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/jPiYLRO.jpeg)

I tried all the different kinds of meth and none of them worked.

farley3k wrote:

IMAGE(https://www.dumpaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/shower-thoughts-1-3.jpg)

There's the apartment next to me, and the one above me, and the other one on the other side of me, and all the other ones in this building...

NSMike wrote:

C'mon, you know that quote wasn't being literal.

But only the literal interpretation makes sense - and the quote ignores it. Investments aren't cats or newspapers, they directly contribute to capitalizing businesses to actually get things done. That's a far cry from being a hoarder.

Robear wrote:

They often have several cars, a few houses, a boat, maybe an airplane, but the rest is convertible into hundreds of millions or more in days, by pulling it out of the markets, should the need arise.

That would be my point.

If I buy stock, it's from someone else who is selling that stock. The company doesn't get anything. It's just the movement of an ownership token. The only company making anything is the broker.

If the company I work for gives me stock as a way to avoid paying payroll taxes and income taxes, nothing is capitalized either. And it doesn't contribute anything to the original business, other than tax evasion.

A lot of the wealth that those guys are sitting in didn't capitalize anything.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/I51DSRt.jpeg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/SAtEPaG.jpeg)

Aetius wrote:

Robear wrote:

They often have several cars, a few houses, a boat, maybe an airplane, but the rest is convertible into hundreds of millions or more in days, by pulling it out of the markets, should the need arise.

That would be my point.

So what you said earlier...

Aetius wrote:

Pretty sure if someone filled their house with cash we'd think they were crazy too. Rich people don't have cash, they have assets, i.e. they own parts of at least theoretically productive businesses.

What you meant was that their holdings in non-productive financial instruments is just like keeping piles of cash around the house? Because that's what I was saying. The modern financiers are not building railroads, digging minerals out of the earth, manufacturing goods, building public libraries, sponsoring orchestras or zoos or public school systems. They are looking to simply grow their *financial* assets under the principle that making more money is their only financial obligation, rather than benefiting the community around them, the state they call home, the workers of any businesses they invest in, or their country.

Those were the impulses of the financiers of the Golden Age, corrupt as they were, they wanted to make sure we had a well-educated, safe, healthy and happy citizenry. Since the 1960's, that philosophy has been reviled, and the very very rich have led that charge.

Once we outright defined money as free speech, we built this outcome of inequality into our political system. The current state should surprise no one.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/GU3oz2D.jpeg)
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/nFN0smF.jpeg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/04udo0k.jpeg)

Rani Timekey was the name of the Persian Doctor Who remake. I had a poster in my room as a kid.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/aa1h6EV.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/LjWQCO6.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/FiQ3kb3.jpeg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/cw0MoQJ.png)

I didn't realize why until getting diagnosed with ADD about 2 years ago, but my internal monologues got me through college. I could never focus while trying to cram a course, so I internally monologued the oral exams, imagining potential questions and how I might answer them. In effect turning my inclination to daydream into something vaguely productive

hot take: everyone has the same internal monologue and it is a weakness in the structures of language itself that causes us to perceive a difference in thought when none exist.

The people who claim not to have internal monologue (like me) imagine that the people who do claim to have an internal monologue have Morgan Freeman in their brain methodically plodding along, narrating their lives at the speed of speech. This, of course, is incorrect since that would be an astronomically slow way of thinking.

From what I have gathered by interviewing dozens of people who claim to have an internal monologue (and also that meme above) is that they think my brain is still, silent, devoid of extraneous "thoughts". And while I absolutely wish that sometimes my brain would just stop for a second, that is not the case. On the contrary I would describe it as a jumbled cacophony of competing narrators, none speaking as a monologue and none fully finishing a thought, and all of them happening instantly as opposed to a monologue where even the simplest of expressions like "I have to go to the bathroom" would take an agonizingly long amount of time -- 1-2 seconds -- to process.

Rather, I suspect that those who claim to have internal monologues and those who claim not to have inernal monologues actually have very, very similar internal operations, but they interpret the devices we call "words" and "language" on the surveys we use to gather this information differently; the same way two different people might describe the same color with two different words. Language is a clunky, slow, crude approximation of thought, and leaves the door wide open for different interpretations.

That's a very interesting idea, Seth. But it leaves open the possibility that thought is more symbolic than language; semantic value without a full syntactic structure. And that, I think, would itself represent the "surfacing" of "unconscious" systems that are deciding what we do next. I see that as a feedback loop, where things that happen "consciously" have simply been surfaced to a top-level feedback loop - much slower than the stuff that we decide unconsciously and then essentially note and justify moments after the fact - which can override our initial "unconscious" impulse.

In this perspective, the internal monologue exists for planning, for gaming out future situations, for careful analysis and reflection/learning from past events when there is time for it. I don't see it as fully narrative; I think most people would say that they can experience times when they just "zone out", like when you're tired and waiting for a bus and nothing attracts your attention. But I suspect that when you are actually speaking to yourself internally, it's a deliberate choice that is used to consider things that are not of millisecond importance, so if you need to feed information back into the "unconscious" decision-making system, it's there.

Is that in any way plausible?

Do you have any papers on the subject?

Robear wrote:

That's a very interesting idea, Seth. But it leaves open the possibility that thought is more symbolic than language; semantic value without a full syntactic structure. And that, I think, would itself represent the "surfacing" of "unconscious" systems that are deciding what we do next. I see that as a feedback loop, where things that happen "consciously" have simply been surfaced to a top-level feedback loop - much slower than the stuff that we decide unconsciously and then essentially note and justify moments after the fact - which can override our initial "unconscious" impulse.

For sure! And when I read this, I understand you to be saying that your perception of thought includes two basic modes: unconscious impulse (instant, disorganized, uncontrollable) and conscious effort. I can see where one would map “no internal monologue” and “internal monologue” onto those categorizations of thought, and I would also assert most people do both things, sometimes simultaneously!

But I suspect that when you are actually speaking to yourself internally, it's a deliberate choice that is used to consider things that are not of millisecond importance, so if you need to feed information back into the "unconscious" decision-making system, it's there.

I would say the opposite: that when I self reflect, or talk to myself, it’s largely disorganized, instantaneous, jumbled, and only “mostly” on topic. It’s only when I am forced to communicate a thought to an externality - like I am doing when typing this - that I focus on organizing my thoughts into language patterns. I’ll never know how others do it since I can’t be in their brains, and I only know how a small sample set of others describe how they do it. But it’s a really insightful idea, for sure: that this isn’t an either/or situation but a both/and situation.

The papers I’ve been able to find on the subject largely take for granted that we’re all processing English terms the same way, but that’s to be expected. Language is still the primary way we have to interpret and communicate thoughts.

I often dovetail this rant into “and that’s why poetry/prose is so important, because it expresses thought in ways typically impossible to do within traditional language,” so I am very warm to the idea that thought might symbolic without syntax.

Or, perhaps, language is syntax without symbolism. Thoughts came before language, after all, I think that we can all agree on that, but language also affects how we think.

Language definitely includes a symbolic component, that's been demonstrated. Semantics cannot be just generated from syntax, that I know of. Referents are needed, at a minimum.

It's interesting. I learned a long time ago that I can talk to myself like talking to another person, then use that conversation and the resulting conclusions in speech or writing, or just use them to adjust my understanding of a topic. This was made much stronger through about 3 years of philosophy study focusing on logic, meaning, the practice of science, truth, etc. (not religious concepts or the like). So I feel like structured, goal-oriented thinking - evaluation of ideas, situations, etc - is not only possible but desirable.

I'm also curious what you think about the idea that thoughts can be a way to feed back into the unconscious decision cycle. I know there are issues with this, because there is some evidence that decisions are unconscious, but I wonder if that excludes modification for future actions through conscious feedback from previous experiences.

Seth wrote:

The people who claim not to have internal monologue (like me) imagine that the people who do claim to have an internal monologue have Morgan Freeman in their brain methodically plodding along, narrating their lives at the speed of speech.

Honestly, when I'm concentrating on something and working to put my thoughts together, it really does get down to something at about the speed of speech. I read the same way. People have told me I'm a slow reader. I guess I am.

Otherwise, my thoughts are often flashes of images or visualizations of actions rather than speech. But if what I'm doing requires writing or speaking, it definitely turns into speech.

NSMike wrote:
Seth wrote:

The people who claim not to have internal monologue (like me) imagine that the people who do claim to have an internal monologue have Morgan Freeman in their brain methodically plodding along, narrating their lives at the speed of speech.

Honestly, when I'm concentrating on something and working to put my thoughts together, it really does get down to something at about the speed of speech. I read the same way. People have told me I'm a slow reader. I guess I am.

Otherwise, my thoughts are often flashes of images or visualizations of actions rather than speech. But if what I'm doing requires writing or speaking, it definitely turns into speech.

I don’t have an internal monologue unless I’m consciously sounding something out. Most of the time, my inner narrative is the sound of a microwave.

Read all the way to the end.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/6yeddFM.png)

Wrong thread.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/X2YTnuK.jpeg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/rJnaiv6.jpeg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/yvgf9fi.jpeg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/6yxTHNv.jpeg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/OJj6zyX.jpeg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/YNa9cM9.png)

Should be "I trust" instead of "I believe".
Evidence is evidence. Facts are facts. Beliefs are neither.

fangblackbone wrote:

Should be "I trust" instead of "I believe".
Evidence is evidence. Facts are facts. Beliefs are neither.

Trust is a facet of belief. Implied and inherent.
Which is why the statement "I believe this to be true, but I don't trust it." Is valid. Belief without trust is noteable.

Edit to add: This one is nagging me. Dude is infamous for giving interviews to religious folks about his faith and beliefs and many of his quotes are pulled directly from responses to questions about his 'faith' and 'belief,' using the terms he was asked about.
But maybe I'm out of line. Sorry!