For me there are two ways of "thinking", the conscious one, in which I'm
talking to myself and the unconscious, intuitive one, in which I don't
talk to myself, but get some kind of "enlightenment", just see or
understand something without a conscious thought.
The unconscious thinking works for me on all stuff I'm good at, stuff I
learned und exercised a lot, so in a way the conscious thinking has been done
before, created some kind of neural connection, and know this connection
is activated without my assistance.
For me it's also the case that my logic sometimes works in a unconscious
way, that I just get something, but it's the question how much this
unconscious logic is assisted by former training.
A quite long time I only used the unconscious thinking. As long I
advanced, there has been no need for an other way of thinking. But I got
at a barrier, where my unconscious thinking couldn't go further.
I think, that If you're confronted with something completely new and
very hard, then the unconscious thinking can go some way, but at some
point it won't get further. You need then to change to the conscious
thinking, create the necessary neural connections, and If that's done,
then you're able to think again in an unconscious way.
I think, that you can limit yourself, if you're only used to one way of
thinking
Often I'm debbuging in the same way as you. But sometimes it's very inefficient,
when I'm stumble around without a direction.
Sometimes it's way more efficient to step back, get the bigger picture,
ask yourself some questions, build assumptions and verify them.
Sometimes during the "conscious" debugging, when I'm talking to myself
I'm getting an "enlightenment", and the bug is solved.
I don't see thinking without words as "unconscious" at all. I'm aware I'm doing it; I keep the thoughts in the forefront of my brain and direct my investigation consciously. Its just not in words at all.
E.g. play a kids match game, where you turn up pairs of cards looking for a match. Two of spades, Three of hearts - no match. Turn them back over, try again.
But really, you aren't saying those things in your head - you might but you don't have to. You just look at the cards, and if they don't match you turn them back down. Try another pair - five of diamonds, two of spades - hey! that matches the 1st two of spades I saw!
The whole time you are consciously looking for a match, and unless you're explaining the game to somebody, your language processor can remain idle.
"I don't see thinking without words as "unconscious" at all. I'm aware
I'm doing it; I keep the thoughts in the forefront of my brain and
direct my investigation consciously. Its just not in words at all."
That's right. My naming of the thinking "styles" has been suboptimal.
I think, that the kids game is just easy enough, that your brain
can get the rules and playing it without contorted maneuvers.
This isn't unconscious, you're aware of everything, but in a way
you just see it, without the need understanding. In a way you're brain
understands for you, you don't see the needed steps to get to the
understanding.
But when something is a lot harder, than your brain can't just
understand all at once, then you need to do the steps for "yourself",
by talking to you, by explaining it to you, or by reading an
explanation, and this explanation is "written" in your brain, so that
the next time the brain can do the steps for itself.
I couldn't disagree more. I think the mental conversation is just our idle language-processor following along as we think in other modes.
When learning from a textbook, there are those that need pictures to understand explanations. There are those that need the explanation, pictures are useless to them. I don't think they are necessarily thinking any differently, just entering the knowledge through different i/o ports.
But what's the definition of thinking?
For me there are two ways of "thinking", the conscious one, in which I'm talking to myself and the unconscious, intuitive one, in which I don't talk to myself, but get some kind of "enlightenment", just see or understand something without a conscious thought.
The unconscious thinking works for me on all stuff I'm good at, stuff I learned und exercised a lot, so in a way the conscious thinking has been done before, created some kind of neural connection, and know this connection is activated without my assistance.
For me it's also the case that my logic sometimes works in a unconscious way, that I just get something, but it's the question how much this unconscious logic is assisted by former training.
A quite long time I only used the unconscious thinking. As long I advanced, there has been no need for an other way of thinking. But I got at a barrier, where my unconscious thinking couldn't go further.
I think, that If you're confronted with something completely new and very hard, then the unconscious thinking can go some way, but at some point it won't get further. You need then to change to the conscious thinking, create the necessary neural connections, and If that's done, then you're able to think again in an unconscious way.
I think, that you can limit yourself, if you're only used to one way of thinking
Often I'm debbuging in the same way as you. But sometimes it's very inefficient, when I'm stumble around without a direction.
Sometimes it's way more efficient to step back, get the bigger picture, ask yourself some questions, build assumptions and verify them.
Sometimes during the "conscious" debugging, when I'm talking to myself I'm getting an "enlightenment", and the bug is solved.