> When I was a kid growing up in Far Rockaway, I had a friend named Bernie Walker. We both had "labs" at home, and we would do various "experiments." One time, we were discussing something -- we must have been 11 or 12 at the time -- and I said, "But thinking is nothing but talking to yourself inside."
> "Oh yeah?" Bernie said. "Do you know the crazy shape of the crankshaft in a car?"
> "Yeah, what of it?"
> "Good. Now tell me: how did you describe it when you were talking to yourself?"
- "What Do You Care What Other People Think?", Richard Feynman
Concisely describe the space battle you see in your mind's eye in less than 0.5 seconds. It's not that it can't be described. It's that I'm looking at / living a shot from a movie in realtime or faster than realtime. If I tried to write that out ... it would be too slow and actually over-specified.
Verbal thinker hear as well. Weak mind's eye, but imagined scenes or objects are actually easier to visualize and describe than memories of real objects or places, most of the time.
For me, scents are rich sensory experiences. Yet I can’t describe cinnamon to you, other than that it smells like cinnamon. It’s like an opaque pointer, I can compare equality but not inspect it beyond that.
That reminds me of the password used to enter the TARDIS control room in Doctor Who: "Crimson Eleven Delight Petrichor". But you could not say the password verbally, the words are irrelevant. You need to visualize the color, and the recall the petrichor smell in your mind, ...
Strongly verbal thinker here: weak "mind's eye" (or nose, or ear). I can remember and later identify images, music, etc with a high degree of accuracy, but when I call something up for "internal recall" my memory will almost always lack the fine detail of reality. It's very rare that I can "play back" or "conjure up" something in my head vividly. I don't absolutely require an internal monologue to think. With some things, like sports or gaming, there's a lot of non-verbal processing going on.
I can do reasonably complex verbal, mathematical, or IT work just in my head, and often have an internal monologue running while doing so. It not that my working memory[1] is especially good, it's just that if I'm spending more than a couple hours on it, I've mostly memorized it, so I can think about the solution, or at least the next step or steps, and then type or write them out. (Closing my eyes can help eliminate distractions, but isn't required. Good headphones playing something non-intrusive and blocking out audible distractions are at least as important, probably more important.)
What I can't do in my head is solve complex problems in real 3D space. If I'm trying to fit components into a box for a hobby project, or doing some moderately complicated carpentry for a home-improvement project, I prefer being hands-on. Need to be hands-on, really. I can't fit the pieces together in my head, even if I'm looking at a page full of all relevant measurements. 3D modeling software is okay, pencil and paper and drawing tools a very poor and painful substitute.
Interestingly, when I'm working with a hands-on project is one of the few times when I can make a very sharp mental picture. I can be looking at a piece of lumber, or a bare enclosure, and know it exactly what it will look like when I'm done.
The Buddhist concept of “emptiness” comes to mind. I’ve read a lot of descriptions of it, but only really grasped the concept through the subjective experience of meditation.
Further to that end, the clarity of a totally calm mind. Words can be used to poetically convey that state — but while they get close, I’m not sure they can adequately describe what pure thought is.
How do you know when to refactor code out into a new class? It starts with a hunch. You might notice that some logic had acquired a distinct shape relative to the code around it. You get this thought before the new code has a name or even a description, and now you can start to play it. It's like this in the general idea-space too.
