MetaJess

But what if my sentence is bad? Suppose that the thought occurs to me to say something offensive that will get me in trouble. One part of my brain generates this thought, a second part notices this would have a bad consequence. What can the second part do?

So maybe I think of some sentence, am about to start typing it... and then I realize what I'm doing and physically wince a little. _That wince has a purpose,_ as the command "wince" overrides the command "write" that would otherwise have been executed by default.

So in Richard's case as well, he was about to do something (speaking up) that a part of his brain judged to have a bad consequence: it substituted another physical action (subvocalized mental dialogue of not being good enough to speak up), which blocked the original intention.

And we know in general that once a conflict has been resolved one way, one's choice can become automated enough to repeatedly go that way. First you are conflicted about something, but then you make up your mind, and on the following occasions do everything the same way.

In other words, once a resolution to a conflict has been found, it may no longer be necessary to bring the conflict into consciousness... and this may include resolutions like "I am about to say X, but then another process blocks it through Y".