When is it better to think without words?

Experimental psychology and “insight”

• Commenters connect the essay’s themes to “insight” problem solving: getting stuck due to fixation, then suddenly seeing a solution.
• Verbalization is said to increase fixation, while visualization can help break it—consistent with some lab findings.
• Some criticize the essay as unmoored from existing research and wish it cited the problem‑solving literature more directly.

Different inner modes of thought

• Wide variation is reported:
  • Constant, sentence‑like inner monologue.
  • Primarily images, spatial/kinesthetic “feel”, or emotion with little or no words.
  • Aphantasia (no imagery) with purely linguistic or “silent text” thought.
  • Hyper‑vivid imagery, sometimes remembered decades later.
• People describe reading either as “hearing every word” (slower, high comprehension) or as absorbing paragraph shapes and concepts (fast, lower comprehension).
• Many note difficulties visualizing abstractions or, conversely, difficulty thinking in pure language.

When wordless thinking seems better

• Visual art, music, athletics, mushroom hunting, and some forms of coding are described as almost entirely nonverbal.
• Several programmers and mathematicians report “seeing” structures, architectures, or proofs as shapes, flows, or motions, then later translating to code or notation.
• Insight “in the shower,” dreams that metaphorically encode technical problems, and naps/meditation are framed as high‑value nonverbal processing.

Costs and constraints of language

• Language is seen as both helpful structure and restrictive abstraction: it compresses, constrains, and can freeze an idea prematurely.
• Some feel a rich, multidimensional idea becomes a “crippled shadow” when verbalized, sometimes even breaking their connection to the original intuition.
• Others feel wordless thinking risks confusing feelings with logic and makes external critique impossible until ideas are eventually expressed.

Writing, communication, and collaboration

• Many insist that wrapping insights in words (or code, diagrams) is essential for checking rigor and sharing knowledge, even if discovery was nonverbal.
• Writing is described as a crucial “translation layer” and trainable skill; speaking is often seen as a weaker, more lossy channel.
• People report powerful “second‑processor” effects when collaborating with similarly wired thinkers, though some caution this may involve projection rather than true shared mental content.

Meta‑claims about thought itself

• Some argue all real thinking is inherently nonverbal, with words as “sportscasting” layered on top; LLM‑style language manipulation is contrasted with this view.
• Others push back on superiority claims, noting every style has blind spots: verbal thinkers ruminate; nonverbal thinkers struggle to explain.