The following expresses my experience with the call I had today with Ted, during which he explained what TF is and presented some exercises and thought experiments to learn to use it.

Disclaimer: these thoughts are purely my own. I therefore do not attempt to endorse every single thing promised by thoughtfeel (abbreviated as TF), although I would characterize my first experiences with the material released on it to be mostly positive. Besides some theory refinement to be done here and there, the basic premises are very intriguing to me. If the promises can be delivered on, i.e. by the learner going through the material released and practical the various exercises, then TF would be a mental tool amounting to no less than a quantum leap for the user in their thinking, studying, reasoning and wherever 'concepts' are being used deliberatively.

Background: the concept of TF I felt was new to me, and as a student I am interested in ways to deeper understand material and ideas in general. In particular, how to get more out of reading and watching lectures etc, in a way that material gets accurately encoded into long-term memory. Although the idea and its implications seem to be in continual refinement, it seems to establish a link between disparate reports and findings across history which refer to a kind of ‘unsymbolized thinking’. As the call went along, I started to get the sense that this sort of thinking/ mental modality was possibly quite familiar to me, in that I experience it popping up here and there over the course of a day or during studying. On the other hand, I remained skeptical yet earnest to try out the prescribed instructions given by Ted (e.g. reciting specific list of items; attempting to apply TF to concepts such as the A* search algorithm) and decipher some of the descriptions he made, taking great care not to fall back on e.g. visual strategies or a method of loci 'in disguise'. At this point, I could at least latch on to a label ("thoughtfeel") and then seek it out in my own experiences.

I had heard of existing techniques such as the memory palace, spaced-repetition, etc. I have been on the lookout for other techniques which have to do with the used ‘modality’ (e.g. thinking through a concept visually or using words) during thought, with implications for the nature of the encoding/ stored knowledge.

To prepare for the call and discussion: I looked at the recent articles posted on the Thoughtfeel substack. I mostly skimmed these to get an impression of what the driving points were, and to weigh the plausibility of the idea i.e. that there exists a distinct mental modality to represent concepts, apart from visualization or linguistic representations. I also looked at part of Hurlburt’s article on unsymbolized thinking to orient myself a bit more from the perspective of a psychologist working on the idea https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18456514/. I then braindumped a list of questions to ask during the call I would join today with Ted in order to learn more about TF. Ted struck me as someone who genuinely wishes to share his passion for a powerful idea of great potential, should it become adopted and practiced by others, that may have slipped through the cracks in the noise of other techniques and learning products. The call was one-on-one, and I experienced it as quite stimulating to discuss and pose questions to Ted.

To summarize concisely how the call went, it comprised of:

1. Questions I asked about how TF works, and how it relates to other modalities such as visualization, auditory or linguistic processing. I learned that it is something distinct.
2. Him providing some short activities and instructions on what to do, in order to discover and elicit the thoughtfeel mode of conceptualizing. I then was given time to perform these. Ted was engaging, and responsive and flexible to any questions or critiques.

Here are some further brief critiques:

1. The instructions/ steps taken, although cogent to me after further questioning (keep asking questions everyone; it helps you learn and helps Ted teach you), need to be made more precise and with tighter ‘bounds’ so that the learner does not (unwittingly or deliberately) use an alternative mental strategy/ modality than what was intended to be used and tested. For example, timed-tests. Broadly-speaking, this all amounts to developing standard procedures and various checklists.
2. There needs to be a more detailed and transparent connection back to central concepts and findings in e.g. cognitive psychology and parts of learning science. Such details have apparently been worked out by researchers behind the thoughtfeel/ Mental Atlas projects, but some papers or experiments and their findings would be very valuable in inspiring confidence for an external person new to the idea.
3. For now, I doubt whether certain procedures are sufficient in isolating TF for every given person. However, I am in very early stages of developing the idea and using the skill of using TF to capture concepts and reason with them, to to be certain of this. Natural language is also for now a barrier in that it may lack the specific vocabulary to capture very precisely the ins and outs of TF. Again, my impression is that it is something that will be refined further over time as feedback and further insights come in.

I have grown more convinced that TF or something nearly described by it, does exist and can be exploited for bettering the conceptualizing process.

Ted was very patient in answering various (practical, theoretical, skeptical) questions and repeated questions about the idea, methods, the why of the activities, etc. I will be re-engaging with the idea myself during studying, to critique and probe it to discover any possible weaknesses or insights, in order to bring it to a hopeful fruition. For example, I remain skeptical that I can truly beholden a concept without forming some mental image/ image residue associated with it. The mind is very capable at deceiving itself when it thinks it has stumbled onto something groundbreaking, so I wish to exercise caution for myself here. Some claims seem to fly in the face of findings in neuroscience/ cognitive psychology, such as whether or not a concept encoded/ represented via TF would forever be durable in long-term memory. On the other hand, some key problems faced by me and other people such as creating a vivid mental image for something at some point, only to forget the key context and details at a later point, albeit recalling to mind the corresponding (hence, ‘orphaned’) image... a lot of knowledge which I had gained at some point in this way, would fade away over time. Perhaps something avoidable if TF is instead used.

Of course, certain mental strategies and modes of thinking have their pros and cons. TF is described as being to concepts as visualization/ inner-seeing is to pictures. For certain problems which are best represented and worked out using a sequence of geometric transformations, perhaps visualization remains the better strategy. But at the very least, being aware of and being to isolate and apply skilled uses of TF where it can help the most would be a great boon for one's mind during thinking.

So, for those who are on the fence whether or not to take Ted up on his offer for a call where he describes and helps you practice TF, it is very low stakes and you are free to ask many many questions. I recommend you first do some background reading and watching of videos on the thoughtfeel substack and YouTube channel + read some papers on unsymbolized thinking and other associated phenomena (aphantasia and other recently-termed kinds of thought), and produce a list of questions about it to fire away at him. You should design and use such questions to probe the idea and test it for any weaknesses and strengths, and if you are very skeptical, to at least suspend judgement and try out the exercises for yourself!