How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#61

Post by _dain_ » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #58

_dain_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No. ahem. yes we do. we really, really do.

Really? Like you literally see the things you imagine? How do you function? How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination? I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.

>How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view?

They don't block the view, in the same way that the image from your left eye doesn't block the image from your right eye, even though they're overlaid on the same "mental space". Hold up your finger in front of your eyes, and focus on a distant object. You can see two images of the finger, but also see straight through them simultaneously. It's kinda like that.

And it usually doesn't manifest when I'm intensely concentrating on one task (unless deliberately imagining something is part of how I solve the task). At any rate, driving is mostly a system 1 activity, carried out autonomically. In real life, people's thoughts drift all the time when they drive. It's unavoidable and mostly not a big deal.

>How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination?

Because they're on different channels. Like stdout vs stderr.

>I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.

Again, most people are like this. You are the one who is unusual. You probably have aphantasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

It's common for aphantasics to be initially completely incredulous at the concept of mental imagery, so you're not alone here. See this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...

>Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery1 to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#62

Post by krapp » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

_dain_ wrote: post #61

krapp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Like you literally see the things you imagine? How do you function? How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination? I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.

>How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? They don't block the view, in the same way that the image from your left eye doesn't block the image from your right eye, even though they're overlaid on the same "mental space". Hold up your finger in front of your eyes, and focus on a distant object. You can see two images of the finger, but also see straight through them simultaneously. It's ki…

I don't profess complete incredulity at the concept of mental imagery. My experiences don't match those of people who claim to have aphantasia at all, I'm capable of imagining objects, events, actions, etc. in my mind. I just don't actually see them as if they were there. That's the part that seems unusual to me.

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#63

Post by donpark » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 9:51 PM UTC

CommieBobDole wrote: post #4

So, wait, are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of your eyelids gets replaced with something you actually see, like it's projected there? I can imagine what something looks like, and I guess I sort of 'see' it, but closing my eyes doesn't make it any more real. It doesn't seem to involve the eyes or any part of t…

It 'feels like' like seeing. There is sense of dimension and position in the space and objects. I can imagine people I know and places I've been to with amazing details but visual details like texture are limited to where I'm focusing. Rest of the view is filled with 'feels like they are there'. It's not retrieval because when I try to focus on non-memorable parts of a face, I can tell that details are made up on-demand using common variety.

And what I 'see' is affected by light over closed eyelid as well as inner blood vessel, minor debris and micro organism floating over the cornea, meaning input from the eyes does play a role even with eyes closed.

While I have very vivid imaginations, I don't think I have photographic memory because what I can recall is rather too creative.

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#64

Post by coumbaya » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 9:51 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #58

_dain_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No. ahem. yes we do. we really, really do.

Really? Like you literally see the things you imagine? How do you function? How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination? I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.

Well it's not like it's blocking your view, it's kind of a separate thing, you know it's not real and you retain the entierty of you eye's information.

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#65

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 9:52 PM UTC

_dain_ wrote: post #61

krapp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Like you literally see the things you imagine? How do you function? How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination? I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.

>How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? They don't block the view, in the same way that the image from your left eye doesn't block the image from your right eye, even though they're overlaid on the same "mental space". Hold up your finger in front of your eyes, and focus on a distant object. You can see two images of the finger, but also see straight through them simultaneously. It's ki…

[deleted]

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#66

Post by _dain_ » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #62

_dain_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? They don't block the view, in the same way that the image from your left eye doesn't block the image from your right eye, even though they're overlaid on the same "mental space". Hold up your finger in front of your eyes, and focus on a distant object. You can see two images of the finger, but also see straight through them simultaneously. It's ki…

I don't profess complete incredulity at the concept of mental imagery. My experiences don't match those of people who claim to have aphantasia at all, I'm capable of imagining objects, events, actions, etc. in my mind. I just don't actually see them as if they were there. That's the part that seems unusual to me.

well where is your mental imagery? can you not do it with your eyes open?

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#67

Post by julianeon » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

Could someone summarize the technique? This was a video tl;dr for me (though I’ll watch it if the summary sounds interesting).

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#68

Post by nurbl » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

iseanstevens wrote: post #10

CommieBobDole wrote: post #4

So, wait, are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of your eyelids gets replaced with something you actually see, like it's projected there? I can imagine what something looks like, and I guess I sort of 'see' it, but closing my eyes doesn't make it any more real. It doesn't seem to involve the eyes or any part of t…

I don’t even need to close my eyes and the images are fairly vivid. AR before AR. I thought for a long time that’s how it was for everyone. Anyone else have that?

Yes. I don't have very good conscious control of it, but if I start "daydreaming" the images can pretty much override what my eyes are seeing. I wouldn't say it's overlaying like AR, for me it's more like tuning in to a different channel. I guess somehow the things my eyes see are still registering, e.g. if something new comes into view I will pop back to reality.

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#69

Post by GolfPopper » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 10:00 PM UTC

norrius wrote: post #22

davidhunter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I am like you in that I cannot actually see anything visual in my minds eye but I can still 'visualise' it. For example, I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain. It was a revelation when I found out that most people can actually see things visually in their minds eye. A friend of mine can actually place imagined objects into their field of view, like AR.

> I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain. I think I'm the same. It's as if I can imagine a geometry, but it doesn't have any texture or colour. It's not black, not grey, not brown... It's a shape in its pure form, maybe like a wireframe, without a physical manifestation. However, I can imagine music and actually hear it. I had this a couple of times where I "replay" a song…

That sounds a lot like me as well. I have a very hard time getting an actual realistic picture, with color and detail, in my head. At most its a faint and hazy thing. And while I don't have face-blindness - I recognize people from their faces easily - picturing the faces of even close friends and family members in my head is very hard, and mostly comes down to a few half-remembered features, tied to words.

But a geometry, or set of relations between objects (whether that's connections or just relative positioning, like a map) is pretty easy, and I can move around, rotate and focus on the geometry with less effort than it takes to imagine, say, an apple.

But familiar music can be played back in my head with only a little effort, or a slight reminder. Not just the lyrics, or the melody, but the full audio as I heard it, missing only background parts that my mind didn't "catch". Rarely (a couple times a year), I'll get a partial song "stuck" and won't be able to get it out of my head until I track it down and listen to it until the end. I can't "invent" a tune though, just replay ones I've heard several times.

Re: How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

#70

Post by justinlloyd » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 10:03 PM UTC

The article kind of comes off as spammy/scammy and I fully expected to reach a point where the author wanted to sell me a course for $99 on how to achieve whatever it was he was hawking.

I have a propensity for staring at points in space and daydreaming/visualizing to the point where it thoroughly annoys my wife. Right now I am rotating a small grey elephant wearing blue boots and a red blanket with gold edging on the blanket in my mind's eye whilst staring at the HN web page and there is not a single thing anyone can do to stop me from doing it. It's also free which no doubt irks a number of CEOs and founders who have yet to figure out how to monetize it.

I have a family member who describes themselves as "visual primary" but during conversations of what this means woefully admits that they need to "see things" to know what they look like, cannot visualize rotating an elephant nor picture what the underside of a soup bowl might look like if they had never looked under that particular soup bowl but had looked under many other soup bowls throughout their life. I liken the ability to visualize as my first encounter with NeRF "Yes, it's like that! Seeing things from other angles even though you'd never seen that particular angle."

The human mind, it is quirky to say the least. Quirky in that I can now rest easy because the amount of HN karma I have accumulated has taken on a pleasant shade rather than the jarring visual noise it previously was when it was below 2000.