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. Which is fine.
'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.
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.
I feel like my thoughts are entirely monologue reasoning based kind of.
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.
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.
+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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Wow, thanks for the recommendation. I sat down and read a handful over the past couple of hours and really got a lot out of them.
> 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.