Volume of Thoughts

[Cramulus]

file under: thinking about thinking



Here's a thought experiment that kept me up last night...


So you can hear your thoughts, right?


Can you hear them in different volumes?

Try having a quiet thought, and a loud thought. For real, take a second and do it. I'll still be here.











So if you did in fact find that you can have loud thoughts,
whatever that means,
can you force yourself to think a thought so loud it's uncomfortable?






and the followup:
Can you imagine a noise so loud it's uncomfortable to think?

[LMNO]

In this instance, we seem to be diverging in two directions with the word "uncomfortable".

For ease of use, we will call sounds the ear hears as "real" sounds, and the sounds of thoughts as "imagined".


For real sounds, volume becomes uncomfortable because the sound vibrations actually damage the physical structure of the ear, which triggers a pain response.

For imagined sounds, the uncomfortable feeling may come from the distracting nature of the thought's volume.  The discomfort may also be from the memory in evokes, or from the disturbing nature of the thought.  But I cannot see how the thought would produce the physical damage that a real sound would produce.


Also, I can imaginge a thought so loud it removes all other thought.  I assume (and would like feedback from) people who have suffered/endured bouts of mania also have experienced this.  There was a guy in front of the liquor store the other day who muttered, "The church is closed," repeatedly for the entire time I was near enough to hear.  Perhaps this qualifies?

[Captain Utopia]

 

MAYBE IT GOES SOMEWAY TOWARDS EXPLAINING THE VISCERAL HATRED OF PEOPLE WHO USE ALL-CAPS?

This is an awesome experiment btw, I'm totally going to turn up the volume of my thoughts today and see what happens.

As it turns out, my thoughts are fairly quiet -- as in, I'm having trouble thinking any quieter than I usually do, although thinking louder is easy.  But then, I also speak fairly softly... I wonder if there is anything to that correlation?

[Cramulus]

when I posed this experiment to one of my roommates, she observed that the volume of a thought is related to its intensity/significance.

To her, quiet thoughts were things like, "I wonder what time it is."
Loud thoughts were things like, "THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE."

[LMNO]

Switch volumes on that, for a laugh.


"The house is on fire."


"I WONDER WHAT TIME IT IS."

[Triple Zero]

So you can hear your thoughts, right?


Can you hear them in different volumes?

Try having a quiet thought, and a loud thought. For real, take a second and do it. I'll still be here.

What I found is that I'm subvocalizing.

This is also a technique for speedreading. Apparently most* people subconsciously form the words in their head as speech, when reading. I suppose the mirror-neurons for speaking fire, or something.

One trick in speedreading is to de-condition yourself to subvocalize whatever you read. Apparently the "need" to form read text into spoken words is a real limit on the speed with which you can read and comprehend. Even if you read faster than you can speak, that probably just means you can subvocalize faster than you can speak (intelligibly). Dropping the subvocalizing lets you absorb texts at the maximum speed your brain can handle, and that is something you can train by practice.

One way to un-learn subvocalizing is to count to ten over and over out loud while reading. Cause apparently you can't vocalize two things at the same time.

(link to some speedreading article I have in my bookmarks--not sure if this one talks about subvocalizing though, sorry)


ANYWAY, to get back to your question, Cram. I found that as I try to make my thoughts "louder" the subvocalizing simply got more pronounced. Up to the point where my speech muscles started moving a littlebit. Same as when I tried to think "quieter", the subvocalizing again got more pronounced (cause I was focussing on it), but the feeling of just-barely-not activating muscles felt more like whispering or just speaking quietly.

Hmm maybe that's another trick to unlearn subvocalizing then, just try to think more quiet?


*people born deaf do not do this, and they indeed are able to read faster, or have an easier time learning speedreading.

[Triple Zero]

For imagined sounds, the uncomfortable feeling may come from the distracting nature of the thought's volume.  The discomfort may also be from the memory in evokes, or from the disturbing nature of the thought.  But I cannot see how the thought would produce the physical damage that a real sound would produce.

"Your brain makes it real."
    \

[P3nT4gR4m]

I'm with Alphapance - I don't think you can imagine a noise that would actually hurt. I do think, however, that it's possible to imagine pain that actually hurts - like that sympathetic cringe response most guys have when they hear or see someone being kicked in the nuts. You know the one? Doesn't actually hurt per se but there is something bordering on being the birth of a seed of sensation - expand on that, hold that in your mind then really concentrate on remembering how a nadshot really feels - the cold sharp cutting pain in the nad itself, and accompanying warm ache that spreads throbbing up through your belly...

I'm pretty sure I could actually experience that pain just by concentration but I'm not gonna 

[Cramulus]

Like trip, I found that my perceptions of volume were based on subvocalization.

In order to imagine an uncomfortably loud noise, I had to imagine myself standing in front of a really huge speaker. And I knew the noise was uncomfortably loud because I could imagine what it would feel like - the bass vibration running through my organs, the overwhelming wall of sound, the slight pain in my head... but these are imaginary sensations, not the experience of discomfort.

Alright, what about other limitations? Can you imagine a smell? It's a little bit weird, you tend to recognize smells, not imagine them. Can you imagine a smell which will make you sick?


Do you think it's possible to imagine a drug experience so vividly that you experience it?

I've definitely felt drunk before due to periods of acting like I'm drunk at a LARP or something. Kind of a "fake it till you make it" method acting technique. It's not exactly like being drunk, but it has some similar qualities.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I can imagine smells as easy as I can imagine sounds and pictures. I believe there's a mixture of people who find one or more of the senses to be easier or harder to imagine. And I'm pretty sure I could imagine a smell that might not make me sick (very few IRL smells do that to me either) but I would get nauseus.

With the drug thing I'm pretty sure that if one were to practice the "fake it til you make it" thing for long enough you'd get quite effective at it.

Delusional insanity taught me a just how much the brain is capable of imagining. What I learned is that there really is no limit but maybe insane is a kind of "cheat" I've never quite replicated any of the effects to such a degree since I came back. Wouldn't be at all surprised if it was doable tho.

[Cramulus]

If you can turn an imagined drug experience into a real drug experience, you could begin imagining new drugs, no? I'm not sure if that's even possible, but it's a great thought experiment. After all, a drug experience is an internal state - for the most part, seems to be the brain's domain.

[Doktor Howl]

If you can turn an imagined drug experience into a real drug experience, you could begin imagining new drugs, no? I'm not sure if that's even possible, but it's a great thought experiment. After all, a drug experience is an internal state - for the most part, seems to be the brain's domain.

Odd, I thought most drugs just changed the information the brain receives, rather than acting on the brain itself (minus cocaine and a few others that whack you right in the pleasure center, of course).

[Cramulus]

I'm a bit rusty on the physiology of drug use, but I do know that some people with disassociative personality disorder have different eyeglass prescriptions for each personality. Feel free to whack me with a barstool if I'm taking this too far, but it does seem to demonstrate that our brain has more reigns on our physiology than is commonly understood. I'm very curious about how much of this is accessible to us.

[AFK]

I think that is very true.  My brother who just got committed.  They are thining it was the OCD that triggered the depression.  That is, the compulsive thoughts fucked up his brain chemistry to the point where he developed the depression.  They can't find any incident or instance in his past that would've triggered any of this.  He started getting the obsessive thoughts after he developed this weird heart palpatation.  But after he had that under control, he still obsessed about that, and started obsessing about many other areas in his life.  And eventually, the depression. 

But to the original question:  I'm not sure you can really think a thought so loud that it hurts.  At least for me, a loud thought would be something that is a very immediate situation.  Or a thought involving something very important.  If there was any discomfort, it was in thinking about the results of the particular situation or issue, not the "loudness" of the thought.  So, I think it would be more about implications than volume. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I find it very easy to feel imaginary sensations... probably too easy, as that's why I can't watch the news and have trouble with well-described tragedies. And it's easy to think things that hurt.