Most People Now 'Think' in Pictures...do you?

Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years ago to Ask the Gulch
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I think in both, words/reason and in pictures but it's always the "Words" that allow me to see these pictures.
In a sense, Words are worth a 1000 pictures for me.

Interesting to note, ancient man and probably other mammals think and thought in pictures.
Just think of a familiar path that ultimately lead to the den of a bear...it wasn't pretty,...one's instinctive response to this mental image would be to go the other way and survive another day.

How about you?
SOURCE URL: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/most-people-now-think-pictures


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  • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years ago
    As one of the old timers with macular degeneration, I discovered that sight is not to be trusted. Before two surgeries and ongoing shots into the retina, I was seeing telephone pole and street lines as curved, not straight. I would ask my husband, if something was crooked.
    Now, I see that if all you trust is what you see, or think you see, you might have an issue! Luckily, all is straight again, and I can still use our 2,000 plus book library pretty well, at least for now.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      May your sight, pictures and words continue unhindered Stormi...Join them together as long as you can for more integrated metaphoric pictures and knowledge; which of course, leads to greater and greater consciousness and what I've come to call: Sight of Mind.
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  • Posted by DoctorObvious 7 years ago
    As a small child, my parents read to my siblings and me every bedtime. Mom read Dr. Seuss and books like Old Yeller, and Dad read us The Iliad, and Edgar Allen Poe (he was an English Teacher, and Mom was an Art Teacher). I still remember Mom started to cry when Old Yeller died. Words create images and images create words. The literary skills of Winston Churchill were augmented by his constant love of painting.
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    • Posted by $ blarman 7 years ago
      Amen. I still revel in the literary master works of fiction writers such as Asimov, Tolkien, and others. People wonder why books are almost always better than their movie depictions and the answer is simple: imagination. To really imagine something, one has to invest in it - to expend energy creating a mental picture and endowing it with some semblance of reality. Merely watching what someone else has created requires very little effort and very little involvement.
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years ago
    I have remarked that the kids are reverting to the Stone Age, in kidding. Actually, now I understand that the texting with symbols and the over use of imogee things ties right into what the author is saying. Then add the drop in IQ and it makes sense. Friends have asked why you cannot reason with some people, because they are picture people who no longer have critical thinking skills - like the journalists and extreme liberals.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      Just as the left brain and the right brain merged to be one, that integration leads to the use of pictures, concepts and words and those integration's lead to moral and ethical behavior, encompassing the natural mutuality we had for others outside the family unit.
      It stands to reason, lack of knowledge, or even faux knowledge, causes the masses to devolve back into the once lost bicameral species we once were.
      This is why, most rulers historically, did not favor educating the masses...they could not withstand the competition.
      Hearken back to a more accurate understanding of the fall of Babylon. Not by the Creator but spoken by the rulers: "We must go down and confound their language...lest nothing be impossible unto them."
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      • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years ago
        That is exactly like when the Hillary camp exchanged e-mails with the CFR, confirming their hared goal of socially unaware people. It was what Rand saw coming when she wrote "Anthem,a wrold without books, with out "I", without light at night. Herds with no thought, no concept of self (as Millennials today), who thought only in the collective. The mind could only grow when the character could read and see the world as "I" - exhilarating for him.
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  • Posted by $ Radio_Randy 7 years ago
    Not to be facetious, but I wonder if a blind person can think in pictures. Imagine describing a blue sky or red sunset to a person born without sight.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      Interesting question...They might form some sort of visual idea by the way something feels...some can navigate once their environment is known to them. There must be some way they can arrange that knowledge spatially.
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  • Posted by term2 7 years ago
    My memory works in pictures. I replay the pictures in my mind to remember where things are etc. I dont remember a lot in words, but I see the words suspended in space to recall them. maybe I am a little crazy, who knows. BUT, its worked for me.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      That's remnants of the "bicameral" brain combined with the use of your mind...the fact that you can manipulate those images is proof you use your mind.
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      • Posted by lrshultis 7 years ago
        Recall that Jaynes spoke of "bicameral mind" and not of "bicameral brain". I look at the brain as being split into two parts which have a somewhat limited connection and can be considered as bicameral. To me, the mind is just a condition of the brain which can be considered a self. Whether the self is split bicamerally is unknown. The degree of selfishness is what is important, in that, only a self can get past living with just imagery to a reasoning with concepts. A self is needed for any understanding of rights and for the creation of empathy and any concern for others by reference to oneself.
        When young I would daily listen to radio serial programs such as Tom Mix, I Love a Mystery, Superman, etc. and create imagery for what I heard. I have always thought in both imagery and words as well as sometimes in bodily feelings. It is a mixture with different parts of the brain working together. In math, I have images of the math symbols and formula before doing any actual reasoning about them as well as new images being created from the reasoning. A bicameral brain of mind is the kind of mind that a Homo Sapiens Sapiens has and needs no breakdown to produce consciousness. It is there whether one wants it or not. One need only be selfish to learn how to use it whether in images, concepts, or combinations of those.
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        • Posted by $ 7 years ago
          It's the brain that's split...not your mind. It wasn't widely understood, (come to think about it, neither is it today), that one's mind resides outside your head. So Jaynes, like many today, use those terms interchangeably.
          I, in my work, as you know, try to be more specific.
          Besides, I give Jaynes or his publishers, a break because it just plain sounds better to say: The Bicameral Mind and a bit awkward to say the Bicameral Brain.
          Part of the process, and Jaynes later alludes to this, is the left and right brains began to cooperate and in many ways...began to operate as one, on our way toward conscious introspection.
          Your last point in the first par can be put into objective language. One needs a mind to gain a "rationally self interested identity. The bicameral brain only has or develops an ego made up of stuff you've done which one uses to define self.

          A bit of background in reference to the breakdown Jaynes is describing. Everything we did or thought, prior to awareness of self was directed by an illusionary voice. Some voices represented different gods, some their rulers and still yet, others the voices of ancestors. These voices about 2500/3000 years ago, became increasingly confusing between what yours said and what mine said...then the voices went silent...can you imagine the chaos, the confusion. (interestingly, a natural event happened during this time...and I am tempted to think these two occurrences are linked.- (Our magnetic shield became the strongest it has ever been...according to retroactive measuring tech.) We were forced by nature and survival needs, to start thinking for ourselves and controlling ourselves which eventually bore a mind and a cooperation between our left and right brains.
          Just observing the recorded/reported actions of mankind shows they had no conscience, awareness of one's own behavior...just like we see in many today...usually the one's morally outraged, those that rule over you but fail to rule themselves...this is where my premise of the upside down paradigm comes from.
          The process Jaynes painfully outlines is still going on today...globally, only a small percentage of us are actually Conscious Beings; but that doesn't mean we all have mastered our minds, self control and self introspection...sadly...as a species, we have a long way to go.
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          • Posted by lrshultis 7 years ago
            Might you elaborate about the mind residing outside the head? I consider it a manifestation of the brain along with the nervous system. I once facetiously called the sexual organs a second brain since they have so much control over so much of human behavior, many times out voting rational thought.
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            • Posted by $ 7 years ago
              That's funny, but that's where the observation comes from...actually a metaphor for one's lack of self control.
              The brain produces vibratory electrical measurable energy...ref. delta, beta, etc, waves, which produces a field of energy outside one's head. This field, I pose, is part of the quantum energy field and is where we are able to inspect our self, observe our own behavior and therefore gain an ability to override the animalistic desires of the brain.
              If you think about it, the brain itself has no ability to view itself or control itself beyond survival functions.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years ago
    I'm not sure what to attribute the trend to. Not sure it is as simple as words vs pictures. I think it has more to do with really exercising the mind, which a weaker media makes a necessity. Today boredom has been abolished.

    For what it is worth, for some reason (maybe my wooden blocks), I associate every letter and the first few numbers with a color. If you give me a letter, the letter in that color pops right up in my mind. A is red. E is blue. T is brown...
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 7 years ago
    When wannabe novelist me is writing a scene, I visualize it. Then I use words to describe it along with any dialog and action.
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    • Posted by Dobrien 7 years ago
      Einstein struggles as would anyone trying to describe what transpires in their consciousness.

      "It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit case which can never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the narrowness of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins)"

      Einstein basically practiced something called image streaming. The idea is that there are a bunch of images that are constantly streaming through our brains, no matter what work we are pre-occupied with. This image streaming can become a meditative practice if you either control the formation of these images or just follow them with single minded focus. Something of what Einstein practiced was wired into image streaming. This means that a lot of his discovered were actually just creative thought processes perceived intuitively.

      We think of meditation as following the breath, but for Einstein meditation was following thought. He had learned how to see the burst of light expanding, traveling at the same speed for the two observers. To the moving observer on the train, the circle of light expanded equally on all sides. To the stationary one on the platform, the light expanded also, but in addition Einstein saw the movement of the train caused one side to meet the wave earlier than the other side. I mimic his thoughts, one-by-one, I think with him and, in this moment, what Einstein thought I think. His insight becomes mine. Our conclusions: simultaneity is relative. Moving clocks run slow. Lengths are foreshortened along the direction of motion. No laboratory is needed, only the mind and the amazing power of pure thought.
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      • Posted by $ 7 years ago
        Full Consciousness can be achieved, however, not at the observed rate we see today...but even so, some individuals have evolved, moving the ball forward...see spiral dynamics...I think some of us here are there.

        "control the formation of these images or just follow them with single minded focus." this is what my neothink mentor calls: Down line focus.

        I think these insights come from quantum entanglement wave exchanges to our minds and decoded by the brain. One can, on occasion, receive insights they might deem, no academic right to have...now That is spooky!
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    • Posted by $ Suzanne43 7 years ago
      Reminds me of a teacher in-service that I attended. The presenter said the word, "zebra" and then asked each of us what we saw in our minds. All the primary teachers (me included) saw a picture of a zebra in the grasses of Africa, The upper elementary teachers saw the word "zebra" in block letters. There was no wrong or right answer. The point was that we were influenced by our teaching positions. So in short, we need both pictures and words..
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      Exactly, using my last example above.
      Seeing in pictures AND using words rationally is an unbeatable combination.

      However, the youngin's these days only use and respond to pictures...just go to facebook...that's 99% of what you see there.
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      • Posted by $ allosaur 7 years ago
        Facebook, Twitter, even texting with a cellphone~bah!
        Me old dino be old-fashioned. I tell people who want to talk to me just to freaking talk to me.
        Call Me~like Blondie sang back in the 70s when there weren't cell phones period.
        The setting of my novel is 1914 where I'm comfy with old stuff.
        Love to use the word processor in my PC, though.
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 7 years ago
    I agree with the premise of the article, but for us older folk pictures and diagrams work equally as well as words. Way back in high school the only math class that I excelled in was Geometry. Hands on experience of working on automobile mechanicals before the advent of electronics was basically creating pictures in one's mind.
    Then taking a month long tech college class in "Maintaining Hydraulic Systems" then seven years working in that field you had to memorize diagrams and pictures to repair variety of components. When my brother(degreed Hydraulics Engineer) came to visit me and showed me photo's of a project he installed for a customer I was able to name the major components in the photo. He was very surprised that I was able to remember such information.
    So, in some ways picture memory works very well if you're using it in a productive area of work.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      Correct but today, pictures are used as propaganda, to elicit extreme emotions, to trigger violent reactions or to avoid words, principles and concepts.
      Also, perhaps as well, to make waist and lazy the mind.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years ago
    When I was five my mother read books to me, "Black Beauty" etc. while we both sat on a sofa. As I sat opposite her, I read along with her - only I read upside down, connecting the words that I saw in the book as Mom pronounced them. Mom was unaware of this, since I didn't mention it to her. When I was six, we started learning to read in school. I raised my hand and said I knew how to read. The teacher handed me the book she was going to teach out of and told me to read it out loud. Delighted, I proudly picked up the book, turned it upside down and started reading. The teacher, thought it was a joke but couldn't figure out what, exactly the joke was. Looking back now, I realize that the teacher was a very young woman and this was likely her first job. She told me what I was doing was all wrong and that I wasn't reading correctly, which really puzzled me because all the words I read were the same ones she had read. She finally insisted that I learn to read right side up and eventually did. Since my Mom in my experience was always right I thought that teachers were a strange lot, but I wasn't about to make waves in my 1st grade class. So, I turned the book around and pronounced, "Sam can run." I have never to my knowledge ever though in pictures. I find it difficult to even imagine anyone thinking without words. It would be very difficult for me.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      Down line focus using pictures of one's imagined progress is really quite amazing and when your good at doing that, you can jot down notes at the same time...it's also great to describe how things fit and what they will look like.
      I used that process when I imagined, then drew my house.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years ago
    I do not know about "most" people; and I suspect that the author and his sources do not know "most" people. The anecdotal examples are interesting support for the thesis, but the actual quantity of "most" people believing this or that has not been established.

    Moreover, I point out, that even if "most" people still think in pictures as "most" people did in the Stone Age, the fact remains that millions, perhaps a billion literate people are linear-rational thinkers. In addition, it is also true that linear-verbal reasoning is also limited by its nature. The best thinkers unite both. This applies not only to verbal exposition and debate, but to music, sculpture, and theater (cinema). It is the objective mode of thinking.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      And that's the overall point I think...much of the world is not literate and the proliferation of Pictures in social media only perpetuates the thinking in pictures eliciting irrational emotional responses.
      However, one can "Think" in pictures without the emotional responses, for instance, forming a plan of action or development of an invention could be formulated this way.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years ago
      The other thing that just struck me is that, We dream in pictures do we not? We don't dream in words...and for most, words are only spoken in those dreams...?
      My own research seem to show that 70% of my sample inquiries do not hear words spoken in their own voices in their heads...when they are trying to remember something or rehearsing something...they move their mouths. My sample size of young people of high school and college age is up to about a 1000 now.
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      • Posted by Ed75 7 years ago
        I think that pictures originate only when the words those pictures represent are available to the observer. When we understand what it is that we observe, it is because we have been taught with words to identify those characteristics. Otherwise, if we have no way to relate what we see to the ramifications of that observation, (words versus pictures) we would be helpless. Thankfully, either way we identify our thinking is acceptable.
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