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Re:Computational Thinking Benefits Society (2014) by Jtsummers on Thursday October 13, 2016 @07:27PM (#12705044)
Some people literally don't hear an inner monologue. It doesn't have anything to do with literacy. If you can speak you have the faculty of language to produce such a thing. But some people think in images and abstract sounds. When I program I rarely hear a monologue, I mostly visualize the structure of the program being formed. My internal monologue is primarily present when I'm in the act of writing or imagining a dialogue or speech I intend to take part in, acts specifically involving words. My driving trips don't involve a monologue, my mind is filled with images of where I'm going and a visual (sort of) image of the vehicles around me (situational awareness), and a graphical representation of the route as a totally not to scale map.

Look up the definition of computational thinking. It isn't AI.

Re:Computational Thinking Benefits Society (2014) by tbrownaw on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:47AM (#12706482)
The harder I'm thinking, the less sense my inner monologue seems to make. Even for fairly simple things -- other than reading -- it tends to be a jumble of half-articulated sentence fragments and images. When I'm thinking hard, there tend to be significant portions that I have no idea what to call them.

So the inner monologue clearly isn't how I think (what I use to think), but seems to be something more like samples from a debug trace or audit log.

Re:Computational Thinking Benefits Society (2014) by unabst on Thursday October 13, 2016 @07:47PM (#12705149)
> driving trips don't involve a monologue

You're not thinking when you're driving though. The term is highway hypnosis. When we know what we're doing, we become unconscious and unaware, granting us bandwidth to think of other things. When I drive I think of other things.

For the most part, I don't think we're referring to the same things with "thinking". If we were, we'd see we're contradicting a lot less.

> definition of computational thinking

Right. And disagreeing with this definition (or formulation) is where I started, so no surprise there. I would say the original article deviated from (or may have even been irrelevant with) the formal definition (or maybe not).

(edit: What I'm saying is, if you're thinking straight, it is already computational, so there is no need to make the distinction. I still stand by that statement after considering everything thoughtful posted here, by you and everyone else.)

Re:Computational Thinking Benefits Society (2014) by tbrownaw on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:35AM (#12706453)
You're not thinking when you're driving though. The term is highway hypnosis.

That's a thing to avoid because it's dangerous; it isn't the usual case.

Re:Computational Thinking Benefits Society (2014) by unabst on Sunday October 16, 2016 @05:16AM (#12717757)
That's not the point though.

Even just driving is "just doing it". Most driving is autopilot. Awareness is not necessarily "thinking". We don't deliberate/contemplate/philosophize while driving unless we're incompetent. And we can very much decide/simulate/execute/do without much thought. Thought helps, but those things themselves are not thinking. We have our gut, our instincts, our imagination, our intuitions, and our spurs of the moments, all which are used as opposites to "deliberate thought". Considering all computing the brain does as "thinking" undermines all of these differences.

It'd be easier if my use of the word was just wrong, but reviewing the definition of "computational thinking", they only refer to the deliberate kind also. If there was a better word than "thinking" for what I'm referring to, I'm sure "computational thinking" would adopt that expression also.

At the end of the day we're just nitpicking semantics, and there are better uses of our time.