> apes obviously don't think in words ever because they don't fucking talk in words ever. right, so they are limited to other thought processes in order to parametise non-material concepts, like pictures and sounds. > that's not evidence that thinking in words (literal human mouth noises, lmao) is more efficient than any alternative.  and yet you've failed to provide any alternative that is more efficient, if there was a more efficient alternative that the human brain is capable of, it would be used for communication already, because we are not limited to speech any more, yet here we are, on the internet, using the english language to debate something. > >explain / argue > you obviously need to think in words to do this because they are done with words. that's a tiny portion of all thought.  a rational argument isn't necessarily a communication between two people, you can produce a rational argument in your own mind to attempt to determine whether something is true or not, for example. that's a huge portion of thought and also applies to engineering, the example you gave earlier. "here is my argument/explanation for why this pressurised steam engine will produce motion and not explode when i light the furnace" > i can symbolize concepts as matter with any property and make them interface in my mind. it's infinitely less constrained than thinking in human mouth noises (words). > symobilize  what do you think a symbol is retard, if you're symbolizing things to think about them you're slapping a visual label on a non-material concept to make it more efficient to think about, so that instead of having to re-understand a concept every time you use it, you can just summon the thing that you use to symbolise it into your brain and slot it into whatever thought exercise you're currently undertaking, that's literally what vocabulary is, except you're doing it with "symbols" aka pictures like an ape-brain
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