Thread: "image thinking"

Have you ever had like when you read a text, you suddenly 'see' a picture or diagram and then you understand what the text is about? Cos I sometimes have this, and It's a really helpfull way to understand complex theories. Maybe I learned myself the trick when I was young, and now it goes unconscious. Does anyone recognise this?

i like the thought of images and thought!, i belive if you imagine what your reading it dose help.. like corrdinate geomatry, to see the lines help'#s alot!!!

i hear it work's the other way too. i
if you visualize youself doing something...
E.g.. catching a ball...

then you be able to do it better...

intersting theroy's..

Originally Posted by Pendragon

Have you ever had like when you read a text, you suddenly 'see' a picture or diagram and then you understand what the text is about? Cos I sometimes have this, and It's a really helpfull way to understand complex theories. Maybe I learned myself the trick when I was young, and now it goes unconscious. Does anyone recognise this?

I can visualize anything, rotate it, add to it. It's like having a CAD system in my head. I often solve problems by such visualization, in some cases not actually having to see an image. It's almost like a background process that renders everything and just answers the question.

The mind is a fascinating thing.

Originally Posted by goodgod3rd

i hear it work's the other way too. i
if you visualize youself doing something...
E.g.. catching a ball...

Yea I heard something about that on a tv program. They gave one group of athletes physical exercise only, and another group had to imagine the complex movements as well. After a lot of time the 'mental practise' seemed to help. Maybe you should try it out for yourself :wink:

Originally Posted by (In)Sanity

I can visualize anything, rotate it, add to it. It's like having a CAD system in my head.

I envy you :wink: I do have a strong imagination, but I can't really control it. For example, my little brother draws pretty good. He says he just draws the picture he imagines in his mind. I can't do that. Yesterday I was reading through a text on economical history and once in a while an image or diagram popped up, but I can't make it happen whenever I want to. The difficult thing is when I understand something in the form of an image, and I want to explain it to someone else.

Goodgod3:

i like the thought of images and thought!, i belive if you imagine what your reading it dose help.. like corrdinate geomatry, to see the lines help'#s alot!!!

i hear it work's the other way too. i
if you visualize youself doing something...
E.g.. catching a ball...

then you be able to do it better...

intersting theroy's..

Like yah!

If I visualize me strangling the illiterate tumor in your body that's currenlty slaughtering the English language - maybe I'll do it better!
Like, yah!
And lol and ha ha!

You're so bloody female.



Pendragon:

Does anyone recognise this?

A social form of autism.
They think in pictures.

But theirs are far more vivid and involved, where ours is, well, weak.

We all think in pictures as well- try explaining to another what a spiral is without using your fingers to illustrate what your mind is picturing; the main difference between how we think and how they (autistics) do is the fog clouding our images.

I blame it on the social- civility is mental sewage
Autistics are not social.

Originally Posted by Abraxas

We all think in pictures as well- try explaining to another what a spiral is without using your fingers to illustrate what your mind is picturing; the main difference between how we think and how they (autistics) do is the fog clouding our images.

True, and actually it's a funny thing us humans invented a concept (like the spiral) which can hardly be caught in words. :wink:

maybe we should just stop thinking words are the only means to carry a message: imagine a book consisting entirely of maps, pictures and diagrams, it could be so effective.

Pendragon:

True, and actually it's a funny thing us humans invented a concept (like the spiral) which can hardly be caught in words

Probably because spirals were invented for clocks and not dictionaries

maybe we should just stop thinking words are the only means to carry a message: imagine a book consisting entirely of maps, pictures and diagrams, it could be so effective.

I've written extensively on this, my boy/girl/thing.

Consider Lagado.
It was a city that Gulliver traveled to in Swift's world. It was filled with scientists, or projectors, who thought that words were only names for things.
And since language was so conducive to bickering, they decided to do away with words altogether since they're only measly labels for things and not the things in themselves.

So imagine all of them, finally freed from the retarding constraints of language and pointing to things instead. They'd have to carry around everything they'd like to communicate to another-so, imagine these packrats lugging their bundles around, sitting down to a conversation about agriculture and pointing to the fruit and ploughs, the milk pails and occasional ox they carry around with them between lectures just to 'talk' about farming.

And imagine one of them at a bar trying to pick a girl up by pointing to a drying condom.
Insanities!

There is much more to words than the letters we assemble from the 26 (in English here)- each word is padded with the nuance, reactive memories and feelings- in other words, experience and meaning- we attribute to each when we process them.
'Penis' meant nothing to me in my girl hood, but now………cock is GOD.
*grin*

Too, consider watching a documentary on a lost city named Palenque- would you honestly learn as much from watching it with the sound off?
No words, no text, just pictures?.


I may have bored you about now, so I'll cut it short with an amusement:
Each word is a world of meaning.
And look how simply adding one letter can illustrate it perfectly: L
Word, world.

Originally Posted by Abraxas

I've written extensively on this, my boy/girl/thing.

boy here :wink: I gotto read that Gulliver book!

Originally Posted by Abraxas

There is much more to words than the letters we assemble from the 26 (in English here)- each word is padded with the nuance, reactive memories and feelings- in other words, experience and meaning- we attribute to each when we process them.

True, so actually we never know wheter we understand eachother or not. If I say to you "Equality is good", you may agree with it or not, but I'll never be sure whether you really understood it. Equality can mean being treated equally in equal circumstances (article #1 of the dutch constitution), but it can also mean complete 'communist' sameness. I think Wittgenstein wrote something about this.

Originally Posted by Abraxas

Too, consider watching a documentary on a lost city named Palenque- would you honestly learn as much from watching it with the sound off?
No words, no text, just pictures?.

Let me turn that around, imagine a book containing all information of a standard world-atlas written out in text. no images or maps included. You'd need a whole room to contain the paper

I think Wittgenstein wrote something about this.

Sure did, using the word 'evidence' I believe. In lay conversation its as nothing but in a courtroom a man's life hangs on that word.

I use the word 'bark', that on a tree and that from a dog are two different things other than one being a noun and the other a verb.
Context gives the word meaning, and word that context its meaning so that either one on their own is a meaningless swamp.

What's the poin of calling Terri Chiavo a famous bedsore if she can't process the label?
She cannot process what you are saying (no context) and so the word makes no sense but to you.

This got me giddy-

True, so actually we never know wheter we understand eachother or not. If I say to you "Equality is good", you may agree with it or not, but I'll never be sure whether you really understood it. Equality can mean being treated equally in equal circumstances (article #1 of the dutch constitution), but it can also mean complete 'communist' sameness

EXACTLY!!
We only bide our time with illusions, and there is no peace quite like illusion. Read Card?-

"She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there'd be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than magnifying differences between people, language might just as easily soften them, minimize them, smooth things over so that people could get along even though they really didn't understand each other. The illusion of comprehension allowed people to think they were more alike than they really were. Maybe language was better"- Xenocide

*No one* experiences the same thing the same way.
And Everyone’s thoughts are forged in experience.
Which means that *no one* ever thinks the same way.

If we all could communicate telekinetically, there’d always be that frustration of knowing second by second that the person in front of you does not see things the way you do. Externally, you'd behave alike or mimic each other but always you'd know its illusion.

Your thinking is clearly socialist. His bleeds for democracy.
Yet the both of you agree on the term 'equality'

And there'd be no peace and no progress as none would be getting along.
Anarchy and hail Satan!

Let me turn that around, imagine a book containing all information of a standard world-atlas written out in text. no images or maps included. You'd need a whole room to contain the paper

Very true.

Now imagine a whole altlas with nothing but arrows and squiggles pointing you in directions.

And which gets you harder? Cheap porn or grossly written Erotica?

Originally Posted by Abraxas

The illusion of comprehension allowed people to think they were more alike than they really were.- Xenocide

Good point, never thought about it in that way. So I guess misunderstanding can indeed be good for keeping peace :wink:

Maybe that's one of the reasons there's so much ideological fighting and bickering in the world nowadays: we allways thought we could get along pretty good, until the internet and other mass media showed that we (for example the americans and europeans) actually differ a lot from eachother.

Originally Posted by Abraxas

Now imagine a whole atlas with nothing but arrows and squiggles pointing you in directions.

True, without words you'd have a hard time making an atlas, but I think it's possible. For example, I've seen a few so called mental maps (the 'picture' someone has formed of an area, drawn out in a map) made by children from Ethiopia or Sudan or so. They hadn't learned writing yet, but could express themselves quite well.

Originally Posted by Abraxas

And which gets you harder? Cheap porn or grossly written Erotica?

Eh yea with my pervert brain I'd go for the written erotic's :P

Pendragon,

So I guess misunderstanding can indeed be good for keeping peace

Misunderstandings are the key to understanding.
When we communicate, we do it on the assumption that the other party understands us (exactly the way we meant it), and that we understand the other party (exactly the way they meant it).

It is only after a misunderstanding has been discovered, that we become aware of the assumption of mutual understanding.

Only after this, attempts can be made to clarify the matter in question.
But this is where people's values and preferences come in -- what they think about communication in general and what they think about other people.
While some are eager to clear up a misunderstanding and be cooperative, some others are eager to call eveyone who doesn't understand them a moron.

Maybe that's one of the reasons there's so much ideological fighting and bickering in the world nowadays: we allways thought we could get along pretty good, until the internet and other mass media showed that we (for example the americans and europeans) actually differ a lot from eachother.

I don't think so.
I think we have always been very much aware of our differences, and proud of them, making a point of them.

What is so capitally wrong is to think that fundamentally different people can get along well. They can't. They have opposing interests, and thus they can never truly get along.

Now imagine a whole atlas with nothing but arrows and squiggles pointing you in directions.

True, without words you'd have a hard time making an atlas, but I think it's possible. For example, I've seen a few so called mental maps (the 'picture' someone has formed of an area, drawn out in a map) made by children from Ethiopia or Sudan or so. They hadn't learned writing yet, but could express themselves quite well.

Look into an artist's sketchbook. Not a word, but everything is clear to him.


* * *


Abraxas,

"She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there'd be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than magnifying differences between people, language might just as easily soften them, minimize them, smooth things over so that people could get along even though they really didn't understand each other. The illusion of comprehension allowed people to think they were more alike than they really were. Maybe language was better"- Xenocide

People have conflicting interests, hence conflicts.
Language can be a way to gloss over those conflicting interests. I wouldn't blame language for conflicts at all.

*No one* experiences the same thing the same way.
And Everyone’s thoughts are forged in experience.
Which means that *no one* ever thinks the same way.

And what is the corollary to this?

What does the idea that "everything is subjective" amount to?

Originally Posted by Pendragon

Have you ever had like when you read a text, you suddenly 'see' a picture or diagram and then you understand what the text is about? Cos I sometimes have this, and It's a really helpfull way to understand complex theories. Maybe I learned myself the trick when I was young, and now it goes unconscious. Does anyone recognise this?

Not unconcious but rather subconciously, isn't it

[quote="Abraxas"]Goodgod3:

We all think in pictures as well- try explaining to another what a spiral is without using your fingers to illustrate what your mind is picturing; the main difference between how we think and how they (autistics) do is the fog clouding our images.

I blame it on the social- civility is mental sewage
Autistics are not social.

I'll try to explain the spiral.
It is a geometrical figure of a line or a part of lne which stretches towards one dimension and can be described as a set of more than one circles connected to each other and getting smaller until the last circle ends in a finishing point.

Not very precise an explanation but it does not take much to explain the spiral.

Originally Posted by Pendragon

Have you ever had like when you read a text, you suddenly 'see' a picture or diagram and then you understand what the text is about? Cos I sometimes have this, and It's a really helpfull way to understand complex theories. Maybe I learned myself the trick when I was young, and now it goes unconscious. Does anyone recognise this?

I'm sorry, I couldn't understand you.. maybe a diagram would help :wink:

what is the link between thought and image?

I do it all the time. Especially when learning about physics, imaging all those atoms flying about and bending spacetime :-D.