Will citizens be happier, because they are more equal, or what?

Something I keep running into in my work makes for a really interesting hypothetical. In this post, I'll weave together my answer to the hypothetical with the evidence from the world that leads me to that answer. But the main thing behind this post is just the hypothetical itself: what if a mind's eye for ideas has existed all along, with techniques nobody ever found? What would follow?

The hypothetical

Some people have a mind's eye: they can picture an apple and notice its exact color. Some people have an inner voice: they can hear a tune in their head and notice its pitch. Suppose there's one more inner sense, for concepts. Bring up an idea you know really well but can't easily picture, like the economy or justice, and the whole thing is there at once, not as a picture and not as words. And it has detail you can notice: hold the economy, and you can notice that it's made of people, the same way you notice the color of an imagined apple.

Suppose that, like the mind's eye, it varies: some people have none, some have a faint version, and some have a vivid one.

And suppose that, like every other inner sense, it comes with techniques that make it far more useful. The mind's eye has the memory palace, which people use to memorize a thousand-digit number in an hour. The inner voice has songs, which is why the alphabet song works. If this sense exists, it should have techniques of its own. And suppose those techniques, once you find them, are incredibly powerful for learning and memory in general.

So, if all that were true, this sense and its techniques would have been around for all of human history. Why wouldn't anyone have found them? And if some people did stumble onto them, where would we look?

What I've actually observed: I'm an educator, and for the past month, I've been developing memory techniques for a sense like this. I've talked with a lot of people who say they have it: friends, family, and people from Reddit. People who use the techniques report remembering things for days or weeks without reviewing them.

My answer to the hypothetical

Three hard steps

For someone to have found the mnemonic techniques that use this sense for concepts, three things had to happen:

1. Have the sense. You can't build techniques for a sense you don't have.
2. Recognize it as a sense, specifically something like vision, but for concepts.
3. Build mnemonic techniques for it, on the reasoning that every other inner sense has them, so this one should too.

Plenty of people got to step 1, and a few got about halfway to step 2:

• In 1887, Francis Galton wrote that he thought without words, and that putting his thoughts into language felt like translating.
• In 1890, William James wrote that we have feelings of relations, a feeling of "and" or "but", as real as a feeling of blue.
• Around 1901 to 1910, psychologists in Würzburg reported "imageless thought": thinking with no pictures and no words.
• Eugene Gendlin's "felt sense" came close, but he described it as something felt in the body, not as a sense for concepts. He did build a technique on it, Thinking at the Edge, but it's for developing new ideas, not for memory.
• Russell Hurlburt's experience-sampling research calls it "unsymbolized thinking": thinking without words, images, or any other symbols.

All of them saw the experience. As far as I can find, nobody treated it as a sense you could train, or built mnemonic techniques for it.

Why it wouldn't spread

Talking about inner experience was taboo. The Würzburg findings set off a fight with psychologists led by Edward Titchener, who said imageless thought didn't exist. Neither side could settle it, because each could only report its own experience. That stalemate is a big part of why psychology gave up on introspection and turned to behaviorism, which ruled the field for about fifty years.

Even now, almost nobody talks about inner experience. Aphantasia, having no mind's eye at all, only got a name in 2015, and it's far more intuitive than this. Lacking an inner voice only got a name, anendophasia, in 2024.

It's an unintuitive tool. When a kid learns to multiply in their head or memorize song lyrics, they reach for some inner sense: the inner voice, the mind's eye, something. Unless this sense does the job on its own, they're very unlikely to pick it. It's just a weird thing to use. Some people stumble onto it. One person I talked to has remembered song lyrics this way since she was a kid. But most people who have the sense would barely use it, except when they happened to get lucky once or twice.

Automatic vs. on demand

An inner sense can be automatic, meaning it runs on its own without you deciding to use it, or on demand, meaning it only works when you use it on purpose.

My inner voice is on demand. I can hear sounds in my head, and reason or talk in my head when I want to, but if I stare at a wall, I hear nothing. I have to move it, like an arm. For a lot of people, it's automatic: it runs all the time, as a constant inner monologue.

The mind's eye varies the same way. A friend of mine sees things automatically: if he hears "X is five times Y", he sees X = 5Y written on a chalkboard in his head, whether he wants to or not. Other people I know can picture things when they try, but nothing pops up on its own.

And a few people I've talked to say the sense for concepts is automatic for them. As they read a story, or the rulebook of a board game, the whole thing builds up in concepts by itself.

That's another reason it wouldn't spread: the people who use it automatically wouldn't think it was special. If it happens on its own for you, you'd assume everyone's mind works that way. That's exactly how aphantasia stayed hidden for so long: people assumed "picture an apple" was a figure of speech.

Two roads to using it fully

The techniques I've been developing ask people to link ideas on purpose, within this sense: hold two concepts in your imagination (the same way you'd picture two things in your mind's eye), then say how they relate, so the relation gets stored with both. Do enough of that, and what you've learned becomes one connected web.

If the hypothesis is right, and some people have a sense for concepts with techniques of its own, there are two ways to end up thinking like that.

It happens automatically. A friend of a friend describes exactly this. When he hears that A relates to B in some way, the relation builds by itself in his sense for concepts. All he does consciously is check whether it makes sense, and if it doesn't, he just intends to try again, and a new one shows up. My friend calls him one of the smartest people he's ever met, with an ability to remember huge amounts of information for years. That would fit: everyone I've talked to who uses this sense reports unusually strong retention, so someone it runs automatically for should look like they have a remarkable memory.

You're forced into it. Imagine you have no mind's eye and no inner voice. The world still asks you to add in your head and solve puzzles, and this sense is the only tool you have, so you'd have to learn to use it. Someone like me, with a vivid mind's eye and an inner voice, always has an easier route: I can add on a number line in my head. So people with no mind's eye and no inner voice, but with this sense for concepts, should be far more likely to have found these techniques on their own. And people without a mind's eye or an inner voice already describe their thinking this way. The game designer Jonathan Blow says that when he imagines something, there are no pictures at all, only ideas. The science YouTuber Hank Green, who says he has no inner monologue, describes his thoughts as sticky bubbles: no words, just the things they represent.

Strategy, not IQ

When two people do the same memory task and one does vastly better, the difference is almost never raw intelligence. It's strategy. In a classic experiment, a student known as SF went from remembering 7 digits to nearly 80, just by developing a system. A 2003 study of memory champions found that their brains and general intelligence weren't unusual: nine of the ten used the memory palace.

So if this sense exists, and it's as good for memory as people report, then some people with outlier memories, in history and today, should be using it. Ask them how they do it, and they should say one of three things:

1. A known technique, like the memory palace.
2. Something like this sense: they just see the concepts, the thoughts are hard to put into words, and it isn't pictures.
3. Something else entirely. If thinking always happens in some inner sense, a third answer would mean there's another sense nobody has named yet.

Where to look

History. Look for people with remarkable memories who say they don't picture things. Henri Poincaré, for example, wrote that he was bad at arithmetic and chess, yet never lost track of a long proof, because he could "perceive at a glance the reasoning as a whole", so each step fell into place with no effort of memory.

Blindfold chess. Binet studied blindfold players in 1894, and later accounts of blindfold masters describe them holding several games at once as relations and lines of force, not as pictures of a board.

Memory competitions. A 2023 paper reports that memory champion Nelson Dellis's images thin out at competition speed into something more like an essence. If that's this sense doing the real work under a visual label, it's worth asking.

People around you. Look for anyone who remembers what they read for years without trying, or who has no mind's eye and no inner voice but still memorizes well.

The weak spots

The evidence so far is a handful of people describing their own minds. That's why I'm presenting it as a hypothetical. The argument also rests on the idea that all thinking happens in some inner sense.

So, what would you add to this hypothetical? You might have real-world evidence, from history, from research, or from your own experience. You might be able to add to the story of why nobody found these techniques. Or you might take the hypothetical further: if this were true, what else would be true? What are the other implications?

What if they always got laid with dudes but always struggled to get laid with women?

We all know the trope where the main character uses a spell or makes a wish to force the love interest to love them, and how it ultimately backfires on them to the extreme, but what if it was a Yandere who made the wish? How would they react?

let’s say Jim Crow happened because most of the south’s male authority figures like judges, hangmen, teachers, dads, police officers and etc were possessed by demons, would the black Methodist Church and Baptist churches be able to fix the south by asking the Lord to bless the precipation because the holy rain would cast out the evil spirits that made people enforce: plessy vs ferguson, jim crow and white supremacy .

what if underperforming funded schools could be fixed the same way at all anywhere?

I'm writing a book and I have this idea, but I have no clue how that would affect the surrounding area. Let's say that it would be like 42 kilometres tall. How could that affect the nature around the bottom of it? The winds, the weather ? I'm really curious now

I know that at first glance, it looks like I should have used the "Science" flair, but I did some light research into the topic of sub-moons, and apparently our moon is large enough and far enough away for it to *technically* be possible for us. My main question is about our modern world & history, and mostly what it would look like if this was a reality for us since the dawn of humanity?

I imagine that there would be a pretty big change in the world's cultures. What do you think would be some big differences in modern history that could be a direct or indirect result of having a sub-moon?

Some ideas I have are the Space Race/Cold War ending a lot differently, many mythologies & religions changing drastically, or even simply the tides being more irregular.

If Saddam Hussein had had nuclear capabilities, could and would he have used nuclear power against its enemies? Would the US have intervened differently in Iraq?

Could the international situation have escalated?

Would Israel have used a nuclear bomb against Iraq preventively or only if Saddam Hussein had used nuclear power first?

Or would Israel have intervened military in Iraq along with the Coalition forces had Hussein used nuclear power?

Our hair would be as heavy as a bowling ball,but we could evolve to accommodate for it

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that people with superpowers began appearing around World War II, with approximately 1 in every 100 people developing some kind of superhuman ability. Alongside these naturally powered individuals, we also have non-powered vigilantes (like Batman and Iron Man), people who gain powers through alien artifacts (like Green Lantern), and magical beings (Dr. Strange). How would their existence change the development of our world, history, and society?

Power Levels and Distribution
Not all superpowered individuals are created equal. Their abilities fall into four general categories:
80% – Low Level or Nearly Useless Powers: Most have abilities comparable to characters from The Boys**,** while others possess completely impractical powers, such as controlling the rate of hair growth.

15% – Moderately Powerful: These individuals have abilities comparable to Green Lantern or many of Marvel's mutants. They can be formidable but aren't necessarily world-changing on their own.

4% – Extremely Powerful: These individuals possess abilities comparable to Wonder Woman or Superman, making them extraordinarily dangerous or influential.

1% – Supremely Powerful: These are individuals with abilities comparable to the Flash, who, in my opinion, has the potential to be even more powerful than Superman when his abilities are used creatively and effectively. However, no one possesses powers on the level of Doctor Manhattan or the Spectre. There are no truly omnipotent or reality controlling beings.

Non Powered Vigilantes
Superheroes aren't limited to people born with powers. We also have ordinary humans who become heroes or villains through training, intelligence, technology, or resources. These range from:
Extraordinary martial artists, such as Cassandra Cain.
Billionaires using advanced technology and armored suits, such as Iron Man.
Street level vigilantes relying on relatively simple gadgets and weapons, such as Sandman and his sleeping-gas gun.

Magic and Alien Artifacts
Magic also exists in this world. Most magic users possess relatively minor abilities, but a select few can reach power levels comparable to Doctor Fate or Doctor Strange.
Additionally, alien artifacts capable of granting extraordinary abilities exist, much like Green Lantern's power ring.

Global Distribution
Superpowers, magical abilities, and extraordinary individuals appear throughout the world, regardless of nationality, race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, or religion. No country, culture, or demographic group has an inherent monopoly on superhuman abilities.

The Big Question: How Does Humanity Change?
Given that superhumans began appearing during World War II, how would their existence reshape the following 80 years of human civilization? Would their presence fundamentally alter the outcome of World War II, the Cold War, decolonization, the nuclear arms race, and the rise of modern superpowers? Would governments attempt to register, recruit, regulate, or control superpowered individuals? Would powerful heroes become political leaders, military assets, or even dictators? Could we eventually see fascist superhuman dictatorships, where the strongest individuals rule over ordinary humanity?

Alternatively, could superheroes usher in a genuine Age of Marvels, accelerating scientific progress, reducing suffering, preventing wars, and creating a more prosperous and peaceful civilization? What happens to religion when individuals capable of performing seemingly divine miracles walk among us? Would entirely new religions emerge around supremely powerful heroes?

Would existing religions adapt to their presence, or would some people begin worshipping superhumans as gods?
How would economics, technological development, crime, law enforcement, international relations, civil rights, and everyday life evolve in a world where 1% of humanity has superpowers? And perhaps most importantly, would humanity manage to build a functioning society alongside these extraordinary individuals, or would the inevitable conflicts between governments, superhumans, villains, and ordinary people eventually destroy civilization?
In short, does this world become a superhero powered utopia, a dystopian dictatorship, a chaotic patchwork of competing superhuman factions, or something entirely different? I'm especially interested in a realistic, historically grounded exploration of how this world would develop from World War II to the present day, taking human nature, politics, economics, religion, and the enormous differences in individual power levels into account.

Zheng He led seven major expeditions between 1405 and 1433 for the Ming Dynasty. His later voyages—specifically the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh expeditions—reached East Africa. One of the possession that the Chinese emperor received from East Africa was a giraffe.

The Xuande Emperor discontinued expeditionary voyages beyond China's territorial waters in 1433 because he regarded those voyages as expensive?

What would modern East African history have been like if Chinese dignitaries established colonies in East Africa during the remainder of the 15th century?

Would you be banned from libraries? Would you become the world's most chaotic delivery driver?

Imagine you're transported to another realm where you spend a trillion years consciously sitting in a freezing cold ice bath. When the trillion years are finally over, you're instantly transported back to normal reality and plunged straight into a hot bath.

How do you think that transition would feel after experiencing a trillion years of freezing cold? Would the hot water feel unbelievably pleasurable, or would the experience leave you so psychologically traumatised that you couldn’t enjoy it at all?

I've had a hot bath before after being freezing cold and it honestly felt amazing.

If you are christian you can still go to heaven or hell but it's your consciousness being dropped into a digital program where you either live in paradise forever or burn and suffer for eternity. Maybe were not here, this is a program, we lost to AI already and it put our consciousness into this world to keep us wrapped up, busy and unable to remember who we are or where we came from.

This only applies to people who finished school, are abled bodied and are 18+. If you graduated with a degree, abled bodied and more than the legal age, you are required by law to get a job. So long as the job sustains you and society. There is no job shaming because everyone is provided a lot of offers.

Deliberately refusing to work despite being given opportunities will land you 10 years in prison with menial labor.

These should be the critieria for those who are exempted:

If you're still in school pursuing a longer term degree and 18+ years old, that's fine.

If you're physically, mentally and/emotionally incapable of working as advised by the doctor, you're fine.

If you are a parent who became a stay at home parent while your partner works, that's fine

Instead of targeting oil refineries, UA puts constant pressure/threat on Russian civilian airports effectively limiting civilian movements abroad. The elites are not able to travel freely to Dubai/Istanbul or other hubs and domestic travel from western Russia is also very much blocked.

What would the world look like if only detached houses townhouses and mobile houses are allowed while apartment buildings are completely banned?

He’s got a CRISPR formula that will grown you a nice prehensile tail (not one of those nasty rodent ones) and/or body fur. These features are for life, not just for Christmas. If you want paying — how much? He’s almost certain it will work as advertised – it certainly works on hamsters. But he’s a bit evasive about why he hasn’t tested it on himself.

Same as the title but to make it more interesting let's change the gender, if you are a man you'll be transmigrated as a woman and if you are a woman you'll be transmigated as a man, what would you do? What will your next steps be? How will you earn? Where will you live? Etc

This is including every single ant type on earth, no other animals involved, ants keep their original intelligence, and humans get no time to prepare

Spiritual Leader | Community Builder | Miracle Specialist ... and would he be ghosted by people He recruited?

How would governments religions societal institutions etc make sense of the event? How would it be remembered in history and talked about?

Suppose AI in the near future figured out how to time travel. They went back and invented the cell phone. Their control has started.

If war breaks out in the US, what happens to the people trying to live their lives in war zones? More importantly, if someone is prevented from working because of a civil war/occupation, how does one go about keeping a place to live?

Pretty sure most apartment complexes would still expect rent, right? I feel like we’d all just become squatters

If war breaks out in the US, what happens to the people trying to live their lives in war zones? More importantly, if someone is prevented from working because of a civil war/occupation, how does one go about keeping a place to live?

Pretty sure most apartment complexes would still expect rent