You just changed my mind a little about Facebook. I mean, I still think they’re a threat to democracy, but you made me see the value of a feed with a small group of people.

This is insane. I had no idea it was that bad. Do you have any sources where I could learn more?

Perhaps thoughts is the wrong word, since they as a concept often are associated with words, but the things that go through my mind are concepts, and I often have a word label for them, sometimes it's right there, sometimes it's not. Sometimes I have concepts in my head that have no label, and that I can express, but the concept which I can imagine in a few seconds often requires a couple paragraphs to describe directly.

Another argument for OPs view (with the caveat above) is that these concepts must predate speech. We have an imagination before we have speech, and that obviously doesn't require words.

I tried this when reading Ready Player One (I counted to eight in my head to stop vocalizing). I did read it much faster (in fact, faster than my partner who is a native English speaker/reader). I cannot vouch for how much I remember of the book though. I think it's less, because I remember watching the movie thinking "oh, right, that's what happened" about a major plot part. That's never happened with other books that I first read, then watched the movie/series adaptation of.

This is an incorrect understanding of the nature of the movie, imho. Neo is a philosophical super-hero, not a physical, and so it's unfair to compare him to physical super-heroes.

The character is established in the scene where he wakes up, having done something on his computer. He has books on philosophy (Simulacra and Simulation). He's obviously been searching for a long time, and his _mind_ is something most minds of his age aren't: ready to see the real world. Morpheus even says that they typically don't extract people his age because their minds can't handle the reality.

That's way beyond me. What is a "philosophical super-hero" - in what way is any amount of philosophy heroic at all, let alone super-heroic?

I don't think it's "beyond you", I think it's so simple you passed right above it.

A "philosophical super-hero" in the context of Matrix, circa 1999 is something along the lines of:

Everybody's asleep like Jim Careys in the Truman Show. Reality is not what we think it is. We're all slaves, we're all miserable even if we think we're happy. It's all a lie. “They” control us. “They” know and keep us ignorant. “They” are the reason why we suffer so much and we're not even fully aware of it.

Enters Neo. Neo is a cool dude who should have been Will Smith but he declined to do Wild Wild West — crazy sci-fi in the machine seemed less blockbuster-worthy than big machines exploding in the Far West, yeah, that was a bad call. But I digress.

Neo who's not black, unlike Morpheus, is not like the rest of us. No no no: he's AWAKE(ning). He's woke, man! Like F, this should have been Will Smith, that smug look haha. Oh boy, I digress. Not that Matrix itself is boring but.

Then there's Zion. It's really the Bob Marley ideal, because why not, heaven can only be full of hippies of sorts, and the idea is that if humans "escape" the bad guys, they can all go party to Zion. Cue NOT Laureen Hill, that was a fail honestly.

So, imparted with this supreme Knowledge about “them” and heaven and Morpheus' BFF and so on, Neo can do a whole lot of cool tricks because he now "knows". And there he goes, solves the puzzle in a trilogy because that sounds nice, and the good people are now free. Probably. Or not. Who cares at that point. The whole story was never about that anyway.

So, that's the level-1 "philosophical hero". He just "gets it" and that makes him stronger. There's also a big nod to human versus machine in that the Matrix, the bad guy-s, they don't understand "love" the way we do, and Neo.. well, he's the romantic you know, he loves Trinity and that's the key to his ultimate surviving. “A truly original take on what it means to be human”, said nobody ever who wasn't born the day before.

So, yeah, I'm sure you can see all of that, and (rightfully imho) thought it wasn't much "philosophy" material.

HOWEVER! there's level-2. For the "woke" people among us, you know, those who "get it" like Neo. (I'm joking but I think it's a little bit like that, there's a smugness to Matrix fans, even those who seem to indeed "get it".)

This is my liberal interpretation of level-2. I've looked at YouTube videos analyzing the movies because frankly I didn't get it, like you. And then I had my own "awakening" in life, but it's much less glamorous than Neo, it means shitty experiences for stupidly long times and then somehow emerging the other side and being alive enough to tell about it. Long story short, I kinda "get" what they possibly mean. It's as old as the oldest mythologies conceptually, e.g. the "Maya" in Hindu (Sanskrit: “magic” or “illusion”).

So the matrix is an image for "whatever you think is impossible", the opposite of what is sometimes termed "abundance" mindset — I can't do this, I'll never have that, this is impossible for me, etc. It's a veil on reality, and critically self-imposed, of our own doing in a modern interpretation, more agnostic about gods if you will.

Anybody who does something in this world must at some point on the way remove such limiting thoughts, usually much wider than the mere topic — whether business owner, moviemaker, musician, scientist, etc. In HN of all places the sample is skewed as hell, but some of us probably see that most people are self-imposedly very limited in their "possibles".

I could elaborate but you get the gist. Everything else is filling with analogies and good moviemaking, probably, or not, whatever, who cares at this point.

Level-3 exists, some people do that: they take pop content and slap philosophical references because "quotes" and "easter egg". But then they elevate the easter above the egg and we're all dying of an empty brain because Matrix is now officially better than the Odyssey and La Comédie humaine combined.

Did any of this speak to you, should you have read even just 1 paragraph? :D

I think you made a very fair interpretation of what I mean. But then, I saw the Matrix seven times in theaters the first year (1999-2000). Then I saw it many more times on DVD/streaming. But it took until I was about 40 before I realized that it was about something more than just the story. My meta-cognition seems to have been stuck in the early teens level until my 40s.

Not OP, but their description fits mine perfectly. When I write, I don't know what will come out until it does. This goes for this comment (funnily, typing this is not harder because I'm aware of the process - it just pours out) as well as the novel I'm writing. When I'm not writing the novel, but thinking about it, there are two different stages: "thinking about the chapter I plan to write" when I form the sentences, but that quickly becomes impossible because I can't keep more than a few sentences in my head.

When I'm not in front of the computer, I often abandon this process and instead focus on the larger concepts: the alien species and their evolution and civilization, the plot and the major events that need to be there. These are all concepts or scenes. I don't want to say they're "visual", they're more "concepts".

I can compare this to wanting a cup of coffee. I don't think "I would like a cup of coffee" (although that is what I might say if I have to vocalize it). It's more a feeling (wanting) and a concept (a cup of warm coffee). The label underlying the concept is secondary.

When I think of my novel in the shower, I haven't the slightest idea idea how I exactly will get to the major event at the end (because there are several major events before that which I haven't gotten to). This can only unfold when I write.

Edit: I just did the "Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire" and I don't have aphantasia, but I realize that when asked about scenery that I've seen, it's easier to have a clear picture, whereas completely imaginary scenarios are concepts, rather than vivid images.

> "thinking about the chapter I plan to write" when I form the sentences, but that quickly becomes impossible because I can't keep more than a few sentences in my head.

I mean, I doubt I could keep more than a few sentences in my head without any mistakes, although if I were to mentally rehearse more than that they would likely come back to me to some degree as I went to write it out. As you form the sentences, is it like silently talking to yourself (how I'd describe my experience)? Or something else?

Yes, when I put things in words, it becomes a monologue with words. I can start it, but especially with fiction, it quickly becomes impossible to keep it in my mind. For lack of better expression: words are secondary to me. They are the labels that are needed when I communicate with others, and on rare occasions with myself. But most of the time it's a stream of concepts, rather than words.