@Hyolobrika Its from electronic gaming and means a non-player character. They are generated by the game and are mostly useless so it's used to describe people that just follow along, like sheep. Most leftist voters are NPCs
@Hyolobrika I think I'm lacking context here but in video games it's a Non-Player (or Playable) Character. It's the characters in games you interact with that are controlled by the computer.
It's been adopted as derogatory slang for people who are perceived to be incapable of thinking for themselves.
And how do you decide whether someone is capable of thinking for themselves?
Whether or not they agree with your personal politics? Lmao
@Hyolobrika No, the metephor is about a shephard caring for his sheep and leading them to green pastures. Not following like sheep. The bible is full of admonishments to "be sure in your own mind" and test what people teach, and be shrewed etc. So it's only similarity is the use of sheep.
@Hyolobrika I think that's the point I was trying to stress. It's a slur basically but slur is kind of a strong word for it. It's akin to calling someone an idiot or a dumbass, etc. I don't use the word, myself.
>a shephard caring for his sheep and leading them to green pastures.
>Not following like sheep.
So, following like sheep then? Because that's what "leading sheep" kind of applies.
@Hyolobrika but yes I think it's often used in political discussions online as a sort of ad hominem attack
@Hyolobrika Well I suppose it does imply that, but it's based on knowing who the shephard is and understanding and trusting why your are willingly following him.
and no there is nothing about not listening to your own reason, quote the opposite.
There is something close to that but it is about will (desires) not reason.
@Hyolobrika no, its just difficult to express my thoughts to those with such limited understanding and capacity.
@Hyolobrika I think it's just a new zoomer version of the millenial phrase of calling someone "basic"
So is the idea that if you don't have an internal monologue then you don't have a soul or don't think for yourself?
Because I don't think the latter is necessarily true, and as for the former, you kind of need to define "soul", I guess.
Personally, I have an internal monologue, but sometimes I come across a concept that can't be verbalised, and then I just have some kind of "feeling" in place of a word in my internal monologue.
Maybe my internal monologue isn't always on, I don't know.
Wbu?
@Hyolobrika @mitchconner @steeznson from what I can tell from both my own experience and external sources, our internal monologue isn't actually speech as we know it. It's a chain of thoughts loosely associated with language concepts and if we think on them with the language part of our brain they retroactively get translated into words, but the brain doesn't waste processing power on thinking with exact words all the time. Hence it's easier to have an internal monologue than to speak out loud.
We can also explicitly have an internal monologue coerced into words, but it's more like manual breathing.
I noticed that the most when I learned English enough for my brain to switch to thinking in it for the first time, when I was abroad and had to use it pretty much exclusively for a whole day. Since a language is also a way of thinking, I sometimes catch myself at chaining a Polish-like monologue with English-like monologue without realising it until I try to think back on it more explicitly and realise it doesn't fluently translate into either.
@Hyolobrika @mitchconner @steeznson and of course as you mentioned it allows us to think about concepts we can't put into words at that moment.
I think, for thinking I have more of an external monologue than an internal one. I’m always talking out loud to myself and even when I try not to do it, I will still move my lips and mumble. Except when I’m reading or writing, it seems. Like now, I’m thinking of what I’m typing and when I read I think of what I’m reading both quietly. And when I’m thinking of how my thoughts can be heard by other people that way and I don’t want that, that seems to motivate me not to vocalise them.
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I wonder if that woman’s way of thinking is what happens when you study maths or linguistics enough. It sounds like she’s talking about the sentence diagrams used in linguistics.
@Hyolobrika @mitchconner @steeznson or you might just think that's the case due to the whole retroactive translation thing. For me it also seems like I'm thinking with words, up until I encounter one of those mentioned situations that make it obvious I wasn't.