>

but who is the audience? is it yourself? or is it some hypothetical listener you imagine based on your life experience? 
and what about all the non-verbal parts of life? are your thoughts limited to what you can express with words?
imagine an apple in your head. what do you see? now click this link - which is closest to the apple you imagined in your head? 

!for me, it's 1. I imagine the whole apple. But it's closer to 5 if I haven't seen an Apple recently!<

I think this is analogous to inner monologue. The vividness of the apple is based on your recent experiences with apples, just like clarity of conversation is based on your recent experiences with (some aggregate  representation of) people you speak to ("you are the average of your five most frequent contacts")
You stated in the post that your refuse to believe otherwise. In which case it is pointless to respond to this post. >

Pretty sure that’s a rule break too. >

Yup >

well i take it back >

Tell it to the judge!!! Also… maybe act like it in your replies >

Some people don't have an inner monologue, but the rest of us do. Maybe you're in the group that don't? >


I refuse to believe that it's neurotypical to have voices talking to you inside of your head

But that's not what an inner monologue is. No one is talking to me. I'm talking. It's my monologue. It's faster than I can say aloud, but if I did it wouldn't be "voices talking to me" it would very clearly be me speaking. >

but then who is you? your monologue or the one listening to it? >

Who is you when you talk aloud in an empty room? You're both the speaker and the listener.
Do you ever literally talk to yourself, btw? I rarely do, but sometimes. And I think that's a way to understand that it's not "hearing voices" or two different parties. >

I never talk to myself out loud
I could have a dialogue in an empty room, and I would be both the listener and the speaker, sure. But it would be a very boring dialogue, because I would always know what the reply to each message would be, since I'm the one generating the replies. In fact, doesn't this mirror the etymology of monologue and dialogue? A monologue is a conversation with a single participant, and a dialogue is a conversation between multiple participants. So by definition, an inner monologue cannot be a "dialog inside my head" - because to have a dialogue, you must be able to identify two separate participants. 
There is one exception when I will talk to myself: when I want to slow things down in order to solve a problem. For example, when diagnosing a bug in a program, or planning how to express an idea in some syntax (code, or language). In these cases, I will make an effort to explicitly "talk to myself" because I want to slow down my rate of thinking in case I'm missing something by skipping over it. 
An inner monologue is a low-bandwidth way of thinking through concepts. Does this mean you're limited to the rate of expression allowed by your first language? 
I think the best way to expose the error in "inner monologue" is to ask: What is you inner monologue saying right now? You likely cannot answer this question precisely, because any answer you give will more accurately be an answer to a different question, namely "what do you want to reply to this comment?" or "what did that last sentence remind you of?" Your "current thought" will always be a response to some external stimuli. You might explain it in terms of an inner-monologue, but I contend you are not experiencing it that way. >


But it would be a very boring dialogue, because I would always know what the reply to each message would be

The purpose of an inner monologue isn't to be in suspense. But yes, many thoughts are boring. It really depends what I'm thinking about, but often it's as tedious as "I should check the mail before I leave today." Nothing exciting, just normal stuff. And it is, by the way, words. Those words, just thought (and moved on from) faster than I can physically speak them. 
Here's another question: Do you ever get a word stuck in your head? I get words stuck in my head, the way you can get a song stuck in your head, SO often. You mentioned that your form of thought is imagining you doing stuff, so I wonder if having a word on repeat going through your brain is foreign to you, too.

An inner monologue is a low-bandwidth way of thinking through concepts. Does this mean you're limited to the rate of expression allowed by your first language?

Nope. The reason it's difficult to express an internal monologue is because it happens quicker than I can adequately express.

I think the best way to expose the error in "inner monologue" is to ask: What is you inner monologue saying right now? You likely cannot answer this question precisely, because any answer you give will more accurately be an answer to a different question, namely "what do you want to reply to this comment?" or "what did that last sentence remind you of?" Your "current thought" will always be a response to some external stimuli. You might explain it in terms of an inner-monologue, but I contend you are not experiencing it that way.

Being a response to external stimuli doesn't mean it isn't a monologue. I'm not sure why you think that's mutually exclusive.
But no, as an example a lot of my thinking tends to be done while I'm riding my bike to work. Nothing to read or write, just me and my thoughts, which are partly focused on watching out for hazards and partly just... thinking.
So like today, if I were to attempt to write out part of my inner monologue for you, it'd be: "Oh fuck did I send that message to C instead of my mom, no there's no way I did my mom was definitely the last person I talked to, not C, it would be so weird if he got a 2am message from me about calling the cops on some dude outside my apartment, I have to check anyway, I'll have to take my glove off [checking, reading] okay cool, I can't put my glove back on until I get to the top of the hill though, can't keep it in my mouth the whole time, I guess I'll just hold on to it, is it weird that I take my glove off with my mouth? no that's normal, I've seen people do that."
How would that manifest in your brain? >


Do you ever get a word stuck in your head? I get words stuck in my head, the way you can get a song stuck in your head

No, not really. Perhaps relatedly, I can't remember the lyrics to any song well enough to sing it in its entirety. If I wanted to memorize the lyrics to a song, I could do it with studying, since I know I can memorize a large stack of notecards. But when listening to music as ambient background noise, I will not naturally commit the words to memory. That's true even for songs I've heard hundreds of times - I couldn't tell you the lyrics to All the Small Things past the first two lines. But if you drop me somewhere in the song I could probably get the next word correct.

Low-bandwidth
Nope. The reason it's difficult to express an internal monologue is because it happens quicker than I can adequately express.

I don't understand this. How can you perceive it if you can't express it? What was the last sentence your monologue said? If you can't answer that, then how can you say that you accurately perceived it? How do you know you didn't miss something? Also, who is on the other side? Is it a conversation between your subconscious and conscious?

Being a response to external stimuli doesn't mean it isn't a monologue. I'm not sure why you think that's mutually exclusive.

Because external stimuli is another entity other than yourself. And if your monologue is directly resultant from another entity, then it's not really a monologue, is it? It's an asymmetric dialogue between yourself and the external world, where you can listen to all of it but the external world can only listen to your actions you commit to it (by verbalizing words, or writing text, or moving matter).

as an example a lot of my thinking tends to be done while I'm riding my bike to work..
How would that manifest in your brain?

I can relate to this example in the context of going for a run, which is also the first experience I think of when trying to determine if I have an inner monologue while isolated from biasing external stimuli like text on the internet. 

"Oh fuck did I send that message to C instead of my mom, no there's  ..... I guess... I've seen... "

If I were on a run and experienced this sequence of thoughts, I would feel stressed, overwhelmed and like I've lost control. My instinctive reaction would be to "tell myself to calm down" - except, I wouldn't actually tell myself to calm down. I'd just instinctively dispose of the series of anxious thoughts that were cluttering my conscious viewport through which I experience the world.
I guess this leads to a question: Can you turn it off? >


I guess this leads to a question: Can you turn it off?

For me personally, it's very difficult. I've tried a few times after learning that some people apparently don't need to do this, but it hasn't been met with much success; it made things much harder, I had to focus 100% essentially, and I couldn't form many complex thoughts without putting words to them.
More importantly, it's kind of like trying to make your mind completely clear like trying to meditate; you very quickly end up having your thoughts drift, or constantly trying to reinforce the thought "clear your mind, don't think, don't think";
it's very hard to turn off your thoughts when you're awake.
Similarly, it's very hard to turn off the thought process turning into words in my mind. >

Why do you insist on believing that everyone's experience is exactly like yours, but that everyone except you chooses to lie about it? Does that sound reasonable and plausible? 
You might be defining 'inner monologue' badly, but most (not all) people have one. 
Don't think of it as 'hearing a voice', just think of it as subvocalising your thoughts, serializing concepts out as language in order to process them. It's just that most people primarily experience language as speech, so they imagine it as spoken words. 
I can have a thought, but until I turn it into words, it remains vague and ephemeral, hard to remember and hard to reason about. All my analysis and filing tools are language-based; they can't do much with amorphous blobs of idea. 
In fact, that's the primary means of dealing with intrusive or disturbing thoughts - self-censor them before subvocalising, so they don't become 'real' and don't stick in the mind. 
I fully accept that that isn't how your brain works - but why are you so convinced that it's not how anybody's brain works? >

An inner monologue isn’t ‘voices talking to you inside your head’…that’s schizophrenia. An inner monologue is just like thinking your thoughts ‘out loud’ but not actually speaking. Whether you choose to believe in something or not is completely immaterial with regards to whether that thing actually exists. I think it’s pretty clear that there are people who have an inner monologue and people that don’t…you can only experience one of these states so just declaring that the other doesn’t exist is just poor reasoning. >

I don't disagree that people do this. But I don't think the attribution to an inner monologue makes any sense. Your interpretation of an inner monologue is derived from how you're consuming your external stimuli. It's not something you invent. 
When you watch a movie, do you have an inner monologue about the movie? >


When you watch a movie, do you have an inner monologue about the movie?

Yes. Yes, I do. >


neurotypical people do not have an inner monologue

Is that part of how you define neurotypical, or a concequence of your definition or just something that happens to be true but could not be true? >

I don't think we have sufficient accuracy in measurement to determine what's typical or not in this case. Because any observation inherently relies on self-reporting, and my contention is that self-reporting is subject to extreme bias because people are misinterpreting their introspection of what an inner monologue is, and who's talking to them. Ultimately it's like arguing over what some specific color looks like - you could never convince another person that your yellow is their yellow.
I don't think many people are "special" - we're all the same product of evolution and genealogically we are all closely related. So I'm skeptical of any differentiation that falls along "50/40%" - I think it's much more likely that a significant fraction of the inner-monologue people are simply reacting to their experience of communicating with others in spoken language.
What is your inner monologue saying right now? Is it planning a reply to this comment? IMO, "inner monologue" is really an artifact of executive function and planning your next action. For me, at least, this is independent from language or some specific way of expressing my intent. It's just my intent, like moving my hand in front of my face. I don't need to explain it to myself. >


Because any observation inherently relies on self-reporting, and my contention is that self-reporting is subject to extreme bias because people are misinterpreting their introspection of what an inner monologue is, and who's talking to them. 

I haven't checked if such a study exists, but would an MRI study that compared brain activity when listening to a measurable voice to brain activity of someone claiming to experience an inner monologue be at all compelling to you?

What is your inner monologue saying right now? Is it planning a reply to this comment? IMO, "inner monologue" is really an artifact of executive function and planning your next action.

This is interesting, because as someone who writes for a hobby, a lot of my planning involves thinking of words. Is there a distinction to you between me thinking of a series of words and how they sound, or having a song in my head, and an inner monologue? >


Is there a distinction to you between me thinking of a series of words and how they sound, or having a song in my head, and an inner monologue?

I think the self-reporting bias comes from conflating writing with thinking. But writing is just one example of expressing yourself, i.e. taking action, i.e. the result of executive function and planning. Writing words to compose a sentence is a creative exercise in the same way as moving a brush to paint a picture.
Both writing and painting are the result of executive function, which is what I contend is the proximate cause of the experience you describe as an internal monologue. A "monologue" is a bad description, because it only describes the artifact of executive planning in the common context of communication. But really you're thinking about what you would say to someone in some hypothetical situation, or otherwise somehow visualizing the reaction of the external world to your hypothetical internal thoughts.
And so you describe it as a monologue because you're planning communication. But if you were creating a painting, or building a cube of legos, or drinking a sip of coffee, how would you describe your thoughts while moving the brush, or stacking the legos, or putting the cup in front of your face? Surely there is not a voice telling you to do those things. And yet you manage to do them. So perhaps "monologue" is a biased description of only a specific subset of your experience with executive function? >


But if you were creating a painting, or building a cube of legos, or drinking a sip of coffee, how would you describe your thoughts while moving the brush, or stacking the legos, or putting the cup in front of your face? Surely there is not a voice telling you to do those things. And yet you manage to do them. So perhaps "monologue" is a biased description of only a specific subset of your experience with executive function?

Those functions are closer to automatic responses of the body; for example, you continue to breathe even if you're asleep or unconscious. 
I would say that taking a 2 systems approach to look at "thoughts" a la Daniel Kahneman, all of system 2 thought requires thinking it through via "vocalizing" one's thoughts in one's mind. 
potentially at least some of system 1 thoughts may require it too. >

While i don't agree with your view. You have stated that you won't change your view, which is a strange thing to state on the CMV sub.
However, how do you apply this to people with varying mental states or illnesses? Because it is well researched and  quite common to hear voices amd have that inner monologue >


. I refuse to believe that it's neurotypical to have voices talking to you inside of your head

Then your post don't belong here.

namely, a browser with a stack of tabs that I read in a FIFO pattern.

That's a queue, not a stack. >


That's a queue, not a stack.

true. I think of a queue and a stack as the same data structure but opposite directions >

Yeah. So they're not the same. >

How do you think then? Do you only think in images? If your thoughts are verbal that’s what an inner monologue is. If you don’t have that that’s pretty interesting >

Mate if you heard voices you would have Auditory hallucinations which would require a treatment. The inner monologue is usually a dialogue going on in my head. 
For Example - If I am making a decision on what to eat while thinking within myself it can be considered an inner monologue. >


a dialogue going on in my head. 

a dialogue between who? >

between one's self; it's a way to organize your thoughts. 
In fact, I don't see how it's possible to organize my thoughts so that they are sophisticated, complex and logical, WITHOUT thinking it through by basically reading out my thoughts in my head to myself.