Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 477 posts

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#121

Post by xerox13ster »

cocacola1 wrote: post #29

That apple test was wild. I’ve legit never pictured an apple so clearly. First time I could see the mental image of one after closing my eyes.

That wasn't a mental image, that was oversaturated photoreceptors in your eyes still sending an updating status of what they are detecting to your brain and your brain still processing it.

It wasn't any more of a mental image than the color "olo" is.

But yeah, when I close my eyes and imagine an apple, it hangs out in the black void all bright red like that.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#122

Post by D-Machine »

andrewla wrote: post #120

It would take a lot to convince me that aphantasia or phantasia actually exist. Let's talk very specifically about the afterimage test here. Can anyone confirm that they have this ability, which specifically is to superimpose imagined objects inside your actual field of vision? If the answer to this is yes, then okay, I guess I have aphantasia. But none of the other criteria seems to apply. I can imagine a song, and…

> Can anyone confirm that they have this ability, which specifically is to superimpose imagined objects inside your actual field of vision? If the answer to this is yes, then okay, I guess I have aphantasia.

Yes, this is utterly trivial for me, but then I am hyperphantasic by any measure or definition.

It is also common to read people telling others to explicitly do this kind of superimposition (or "projection") in early psychological experiments, and meditative and/or spiritual and esoteric practices. It would be really odd for people to spontaneously just give such specific nonsense instructions if they couldn't just do it.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#123

Post by weezing »

drakonka wrote: post #15

When people talk about seeing something in your mind's eye, do they mean a virtual image actually appears _as if_ you are seeing it in place of the real world or the blackness of your eyelids? Like do they somehow replace the picture from the eyes to the brain with whatever they are trying to visualize in a sort of hallucination? Or do they still 'see' the blacks of their eyelids or the world around them while visual…

It's hard to explain but the image just appears "in my brain". A third eye I guess. I can visualise anything, any object, faces of kids from my childhood school, a map etc.

I am curious how people with aphantasia navigate without being able to visualise the road beforehand.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#125

Post by rappatic »

andrewla wrote: post #120

It would take a lot to convince me that aphantasia or phantasia actually exist. Let's talk very specifically about the afterimage test here. Can anyone confirm that they have this ability, which specifically is to superimpose imagined objects inside your actual field of vision? If the answer to this is yes, then okay, I guess I have aphantasia. But none of the other criteria seems to apply. I can imagine a song, and…

I agree. The afterimage test was a major red flag for me. To see something in your “mind’s eye” has nothing to do with physical vision, yet the afterimage works by exhausting some of the eye’s physical cones. It’s a confusing non sequitur and totally unrelated to the subject at hand. I have always suspected that people with “aphantasia” simply misunderstand the idea of a “mind’s eye,” believing that others can somehow superimpose something onto their actual field of vision at will. Of course, this is not possible.

Edit: it’s also telling that this website sells an “Aphantasia Membership” for a monthly fee.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#126

Post by jawns »

ludicrousdispla wrote: post #118
jawns wrote: post #111

I've known about aphantasia for a long time, but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? When I was in second grade, our teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine a pretzel. I closed my eyes and tried to will a pretzel to appear as an image, and I failed miserably. All I saw was darkness and faint squiggles. I didn't understand why so many of my classmates said they could "see" the pret…

A good analogy for the difference between seeing and visualizing... speaking a statement is to thinking a statement as seeing a thing is to visualizing the thing.

I like this analogy. I have an internal voice, but "hearing" this voice is very different from hearing a voice spoken out loud and registered with my ears. Likewise, when I'm visualizing a pretzel, the way I am "seeing" it is more of an internal, mental process than when I see things by processing the light hitting my eyes.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#127

Post by ludicrousdispla »

LordGrey wrote: post #100

There is a section titled "What's It Like To Visualize?" that provides instructions for creating a temporary after-image, then claims: > This afterimage illusion, while a product of perception, serves as a bridge to understanding visualization. For those with aphantasia, it's a rare opportunity to "see" what visualization might be like for some visualizers. Is that really what it is like for those of you who can visu…

No, it is nothing like retinal fatigue, which is what they are referencing in that sentence.

The later section on "What Do Most Visualizers See?" is a better description, although the level of detail is highly dependent on effort, and lack of distraction.

And I'd argue that detail is not particularly important as the visualization is just there to represent conceptual things.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#128

Post by kstrauser »

Well. Today I learned something new about myself. I can't visualize a thing, but I can pull up something vaguely visualish that represents its inherent thingness, while not at all resembling the thing. For instance, the way I might picture program code looks nothing like lines of text, but more like something black on a black background moving through something algorithm-shaped that bends it. I realize I couldn't make that sound more vague if I tried, but it's still accurate.

Meanwhile, I can hear every sonic detail of every song I enjoy whenever I want to. Want me to imagine the drum break in "In the Air Tonight"? I can imagine every little bit of the gated snares and the reverb on them, and exactly the way Phil's voice kinda shreds immediately afterward.

Go figure.

But wow, that bit about meditation hits close to home. I love meditating and try to do it daily. Guided meditations like "imagine you're on a beach..." drive my batty, though. OK, I'm on a beach. I can feel the sand. The sun is nice. But I'm pressed to imagine the sun shining on the waves, it's probably going to resemble something out of The Matrix more than a drawing of the ocean.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#129

Post by D-Machine »

rappatic wrote: post #125
andrewla wrote: post #120

It would take a lot to convince me that aphantasia or phantasia actually exist. Let's talk very specifically about the afterimage test here. Can anyone confirm that they have this ability, which specifically is to superimpose imagined objects inside your actual field of vision? If the answer to this is yes, then okay, I guess I have aphantasia. But none of the other criteria seems to apply. I can imagine a song, and…

I agree. The afterimage test was a major red flag for me. To see something in your “mind’s eye” has nothing to do with physical vision, yet the afterimage works by exhausting some of the eye’s physical cones. It’s a confusing non sequitur and totally unrelated to the subject at hand. I have always suspected that people with “aphantasia” simply misunderstand the idea of a “mind’s eye,” believing that others can someho…

> I have always suspected that people with “aphantasia” simply misunderstand the idea of a “mind’s eye,” believing that others can somehow visualize something in their actual field of vision at will.

Many people can do precisely this, though the projected image is not usually 100% clear in some form, i.e. it may have a translucence or impermanence, and it can indeed take some practice to develop this skill. But it isn't uncommon at all, and comes up regularly in some spiritual and meditation practices.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#130

Post by Rooster61 »

One thing that I have always noticed about my own internal images (yes, I am not an aphant) is that when I am perceiving something in my mouth (such as a sore spot or tooth), my perception of it visually in my mind is wildly different than if I actually look in my mouth using a mirror. Objects look and feel much larger and more detailed in my mind than they actually are.
Post reply on HN