A few years ago a lot of people were blown away to find out that a sizable fraction of the population has no inner monologue. Some people can’t “hear” themselves think or “hear” remembered music, movies, things loved ones said. Related, some people can’t envision things: they can’t see an apple in their minds eye, because they don’t have a minds eye. For those of us who can, this is a bit mind blowing; I honestly can’t imagine how I’d go through my day. But for those who can’t hear or see within their minds, finding out that others can sounds like insanity. “You have voices in your head?”
Now here’s another way in which people differ: “conditional hypotheticals.” Take for instance, if Person A were to ask Person B:
“How would you feel if you hadn’t eaten yesterday?”
Most of us, I would assume, would respond with something like “I’d be hungry,” or “I’d be happy to be on my diet,” or “I’d be filled with an unquenchable rage to destroy my enemies and see their women driven before me.” You know, normal stuff. But there are those people who simply cannot understand the question. “But I *did* eat yesterday.”
In retrospect, over the years I’ve encountered this sort of thing *a* *lot.* For example, a few years after the invasion of Iraq and the taking out of Saddam, I got into a pointless online argument. My argument went along the lines of “What if we *didn’t* invade?” The point being that the inspection regime was coming to its end. Within fairly short order Saddam *would* have been able to restart his WMD programs. That could well have led to a far, far worse war. Or not, who knows, it can be fairly argued either way. But what astonished me was the other guy, when I asked my hypothetical: “But we did invade.” No amount of trying to get him to see alternate histories would budge him past the fixed point of “it happened, that way.” I thought he was just being a jackass. Now… perhaps he was just *incapable* of seeing alternatives.
Perhaps this issue is a feature of lower IQ. Perhaps, like the lack of an inner monologue, it can hit just about anyone. But whatever, such people should probably be kept from important roles dealing with planning for the future, especially when future plans are dependent upon learning from past mistakes. Someone with this issue would seem to make a *terrible* strategist.
This issue has arisen before in popular culture…
8 responses to “Conditional Hypotheticals”
Must be nice, my inner monologue not only wont shut up, but keeps arguing with the leprechaun.
A lack of an inner monologue sounds pretty damn sweet when I want to go to sleep and my brain won’t SHUT THE FUCK UP.
This comment alone would justify adding an “upvote” function …
there was one here where I live where the school board was discussing security. one board member, a Marine, went on for a few minutes, just wargaming the situation out. he was on the right track..looking at weaknesses, basically pointing out that you can harden the building all you like, if the kids still come outside to play..it’s really all for nothing.
https://www.wmur.com/article/hampstead-official-criticized-for-describing-how-he-would-attack-school/5207738
several members of the school board completely flipped out, accused him of wanting to slaughter children, and would not accept anything other than his immediate jail followed by execution.
eventually he had to resign from the board.
That sounds like some situations I’ve been in. “If I had to carry out this or that horrible thing, how would I do it?” as a way to prepare for, counter and defeat anyone actually tryign to carry out said horrible act. it’s a *good* way to prepare… and there have always been those who seemed to not understand. I always assumed they were just claiming to not understand as a way to be oppositional jackasses, but maybe…
And now a lot of the “you’re just negative” reactions i got during my engineering career *might* be somewhat partially explained. It wouldn’t seem like someone unable to comprehend conditional hypotheticals would be able to get an engineering degree, but maybe they could with a *touch* of it. And maybe someone can willingly stop their ability to comprehend such things as a defense mechanism. If someone has a favored engineering design, or political policy that is being shown to be flawed through a conditional hypothetical… why, that other guy is just being negative, or is actively psychotic! He *wants* to do this or that horrible thing! Why else would he say it?
I just do what the voices in my head tell me to do.
There’s also the similar phenomenon of mind-blindness:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-blindness
… mind-blindness implies being unable to predict behavior and attribute mental states including beliefs, desires, emotions, or intentions of other people. The mind-blindness theory asserts that children who delay in this development will often develop autism.
All right, the big question nobody’s asking: is this more prevalent in men or women?