Yesterday I discovered I had been a victim of the Typical Mind Fallacy thanks to accidentally finding out that someone very close to me doesn’t have an internal monologue, doesn’t think in words and has a visual photographic memory. Despite knowing that such people existed I thought I would know if someone close to me was one. As a result I thought it would be an interesting and fun exercise to gauge the conscious perceptions of the community.
The below questions are judged on a 0-99 scale (they are not binary or predictions, the embedded Elicit formatting was just too great to not use), they attempt to find where the reader sits on a series of common mental metrics.
How vivid is your visual imagination?
How vivid is your sound imagination?
How vivid is your taste imagination?
How vivid is your smell imagination?
How vivid is your touch imagination?
Do you have an internal monologue?
How frequently do you think in words?
How good is your memory?
How much control do you have over your mind? (For example, the ability to stop all thoughts on command)
Do you have a type of Synaesthesia? (0 = none, 100 = very intense and encompassing)
If anybody has an unusual mental experience (or normal one!) please share it with us in the comments. If you do, don’t leave out the obvious, try to avoid the illusion of transparency.
I've been curious about the phenomenon of memory, or perhaps more precisely, recall. For example, I can recall standing at the top of a granitic, sub-alpine cliff at the head of a waterfall. I can also "recall" standing near Wesley at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity. Obviously I know that one happened to me and one didn't, but to me the two mental processes seem to be of the same catagory, and I'm suspicious that this is true of everyone but that few recognize it. I do recognize a very few "memories" that feel somewhat different - one is standing on a tropical beach with small waves lapping, palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze, general aroma of tropical island. One thing that seems to be key to this set is the inclusion of scent, and I speculate that it's more tightly bound to a sense of "I-ness". Even this set, however, seems less like memories of instants in time, and more like reconstructions of repeated experiences.
Yesterday I discovered I had been a victim of the Typical Mind Fallacy thanks to accidentally finding out that someone very close to me doesn’t have an internal monologue, doesn’t think in words and has a visual photographic memory. Despite knowing that such people existed I thought I would know if someone close to me was one. As a result I thought it would be an interesting and fun exercise to gauge the conscious perceptions of the community.
The below questions are judged on a 0-99 scale (they are not binary or predictions, the embedded Elicit formatting was just too great to not use), they attempt to find where the reader sits on a series of common mental metrics.
How vivid is your visual imagination?
How vivid is your sound imagination?
How vivid is your taste imagination?
How vivid is your smell imagination?
How vivid is your touch imagination?
Do you have an internal monologue?
How frequently do you think in words?
How good is your memory?
How much control do you have over your mind? (For example, the ability to stop all thoughts on command)
Do you have a type of Synaesthesia? (0 = none, 100 = very intense and encompassing)
If anybody has an unusual mental experience (or normal one!) please share it with us in the comments. If you do, don’t leave out the obvious, try to avoid the illusion of transparency.