Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind • Hacker News Board

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#71

Post by hasenj » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

blakeross wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions. About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.

Yesterday I was reading something about how children think without words, because they hardly know any word yet.

I mulled over that for a bit, and concluded that we all think without words in fact. The thought comes first, then it's translated into words inside our minds. It should be obvious that the brain can only form words after it's formed the thought.

So in your case, I find it impossible to believe that you don't have imagination. I think it might just be inaccessible to you (to your consciousness).

I think most thoughts are in fact unconscious. What we consciously perceive of our own thoughts is just a small part of it, the high level output.

So I'm thinking that for you, the "consciousness barrier" so to speak is just a little higher than it is for most people.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#72

Post by stordoff » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #52

There are a lot of basic assumptions about thought that don't apply to everybody. My wife, for example, can't process "left" and "right" without great effort. She's intelligent and is a gifted artist in a variety of mediums, and is not dyslexic in the least. But if you tell her to "turn right" in a car it's very confusing for her to translate that into which direction she should take. Even more confusingly, she's a v…

That reminds me of a tangentially related thing I experienced. I never had a problem with left/right until I heard someone explaining the "hold your thumb out, if it makes an L that is left" 'trick'. Before hearing about that, left and right came naturally, and I 'just knew' which was which. After hearing it, I constantly second guess myself, and there is a brief (but noticeable) hesitance before I can say "Ok, that's left".

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#73

Post by stordoff » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

kaoD wrote: post #3

> If I tell you to imagine a beach, you can picture the golden sand and turquoise waves. Yes, with great detail. > If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing. Yup (and it's spinning for some reason!) > And mom’s face? Of course. Not at all! I've always been intrigued about this. I have a very rich "mind's eye", but always struggle with drawing faces in my mind. My experience with imagining faces: I get th…

I don't have a problem picturing faces, but it's not something I do by default. If you consider imagining something as setting up a camera shot on a scene, I usually find that faces are out of frame or in the background. Actually imagine the face is a more conscious action.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#74

Post by ksml » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #66

blakeross wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions. About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.

Great article! What is the overlap between aphantasia and absence of memories? The example you gave was that you couldn't remember going to see Les Mis a year before, so that's not stored as a fact somewhere? There was a (possible hoax) story a while back about a guy who could only remember the previous 15 or so hours of his life. He kept journals and had to jog his memory daily. One interesting proposal was that he…

> There was a (possible hoax) story a while back about a guy who could only remember the previous 15 or so hours of his life. He kept journals and had to jog his memory daily.

This is probably not the same condition, but those with anterograde amnesia cannot form new memories and will forget things within minutes. The movie Memento was about this, and Oliver Sacks wrote about a man with it in "The Lost Mariner." I could definitely believe that story... Strange and awful things can happen to the brain :-/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#75

Post by NicoJuicy » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

blakeross wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions. About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.

I don't think i visualize things ( if i understood correctly). Although it seems just partially.

I do have dreams, but don't remember them ( after 10 minutes, i forgot them for sure).

I never understood how people could draw robot faces to describe a person at a police officer... It seems weird...

I have memories, but trying to describe something i will say "general things" like colors, objects, ... I can't describe my own house in detail... I describe my house with facts...

I had a crush on someone ( i dated her even a couple of times) and i even said her hair was dark-blonde... While i was not paying attention during chatting... ( it was not ...)

I find it dificult to describe color "variations". Not blue or brown, but a color like turqouise says nothing to me.

Is that the same thing then?

What i find similar: you mentioned engineers who have the same thing (i'm a .net architect) and i'm an INTJ personality according to Meyer Briggs ( http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ.html ) which is also something of 2-3 % of the people ( like you mentioned the % of people who have Aphantasia). Perhaps this has something to do with each other?

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#76

Post by ksml » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

chippy wrote: post #17

blakeross wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions. About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.

I would suggest researching a bit about "modalities" in NLP. If you have heard of NLP before and it rings alarm bells, forget the magical thinking stuff about NLP ...the interesting beginnings of the project began on some good scientific research in how people imagined things in their mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_systems_%28NL... In essence, people can think visually, kinetically (feeling), au…

> For example: I'm sure you can imagine what it felt like when something really funny happened to you, right? And you could probably also remember listening to a song you heard on the radio. Now - recall what it felt like when you were on a beach (or a snowy mountain), and recall what it sounded like. If you cannot remember, imagine the feeling of the sun, sound and imagine the sound you might hear.

Did you read the whole article? I'm pretty sure he cannot do these things. He mentions he can't really imagine music or sound either and has a hard time recalling experiences in general.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#77

Post by patrickburke » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #53

kaoD wrote: post #3

> If I tell you to imagine a beach, you can picture the golden sand and turquoise waves. Yes, with great detail. > If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing. Yup (and it's spinning for some reason!) > And mom’s face? Of course. Not at all! I've always been intrigued about this. I have a very rich "mind's eye", but always struggle with drawing faces in my mind. My experience with imagining faces: I get th…

It's not uncommon, I don't think. A lot of people have trouble with faces (in various ways, and to various extents) despite having otherwise "normal" visual processing and memory.

60 mins did an episode on face blindness, and apparently the psychologist Oliver Sacks couldn't even recognize himself in the mirror.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#78

Post by ksml » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

blakeross wrote: post #13

frooxie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought the "neutral inner voice" was universal. For me, most of the time, I don't have any kind of inner voice. I don't usually think in words; thinking is more like combining abstract symbols/feelings/concepts in a way that's more immediate and less linear than language.

Really?! That is fascinating to me. I am 100% language on the inside.

This is slightly off-topic, but I just wanted to say thank you for writing this article! I never knew people thought/imagined in so many different ways.

Personally, like codingdave, my "milk voice" is my own voice. I can "hear" my voice, with texture, inflection, and everything, as if I were reading my thoughts out loud. The milk voice doesn't have to be my own; I can vividly imagine the voice of anyone else I've heard. I have often wondered about that; how is it that with so little sample data (hearing someone talk for only a few seconds) I'm able to imagine them saying _anything_, with any inflection?

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#79

Post by bane » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #52

There are a lot of basic assumptions about thought that don't apply to everybody. My wife, for example, can't process "left" and "right" without great effort. She's intelligent and is a gifted artist in a variety of mediums, and is not dyslexic in the least. But if you tell her to "turn right" in a car it's very confusing for her to translate that into which direction she should take. Even more confusingly, she's a v…

I don't think it's uncommon. It gets even harder when trying to figure out relative left-right to other people.

Here's a tip I learned once: hold your hands out, palms facing away from you and fingers up. Point your thumbs at each other and index fingers straight up. The left hand will form an "L" (for left) and the right hand will form a backwards "L".

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#80

Post by BraveNewCurency » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC

hasenj wrote: post #71

blakeross wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions. About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.

Yesterday I was reading something about how children think without words, because they hardly know any word yet. I mulled over that for a bit, and concluded that we all think without words in fact. The thought comes first, then it's translated into words inside our minds. It should be obvious that the brain can only form words after it's formed the thought. So in your case, I find it impossible to believe that you do…

I saw the movie "FireFox" when I was growing up. In one scene, he's trying to steal a thought-controlled Russian airplane. "You must think in Russian" his handler tells him. After the movie, we thought that scene was controversial, and spent hours wondering if people think in a particular language or just think in abstract ideas.