byron
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2024
Yes. No speech, and no concrete concepts (like a specific apple vs. a vague impression of one). They're NPCs.A 2011 study suggested that only 30-50% of people globally experience some form of inner speech. Others just don't. I would not be surprised if sub-saharan africans are in the "lower than 30%" end of numbers
Have you seen "reasoning model" LLMs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasoning_language_model
Basically, you ask a question, and instead of just giving you an answer straight away, it has a conversation with itself in order to work out the answer. The process is very similar to how a person with an internal monologue works out an answer - by talking to himself.
I have a hypothesis that we could test for an internal monologue by asking a person a question that requires engaging "system 2" cognition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow but telling them that they're not allowed to say anything out loud other than the answer. I suspect that some people simply cannot do it - not without speaking aloud.
I think that a lot of the loud, obnoxious behavior of black people, where they just chatter constantly, is them attempting to engage "system 2" but without an inner monologue. So for example, if you're watching a movie and you figure out some important plot point, you might do that internally - saying silently to yourself, "ah ha! this is what the bad guy is going to do!" But a person with no inner monologue doesn't have that option. They have to say it aloud or just not think it at all.
If my hypothesis is correct, they can actually answer the breakfast question if you prompt them to work it out by speaking aloud. It'd be fascinating to study this, but nobody would publish your results.
Obviously, not all black people. And obviously, some white people's brains work this way too. But as with most things, the percentages between the groups are different.