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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#151

Post by clort »

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 think I've read the article differently to you. It does not say that the afterimage is a test. In fact it calls it an illusion.

> This afterimage illusion, while a product of perception, serves as a bridge to understanding visualization

The way that illusion works is simple. You expose your eye to green light without moving your gaze (stare at the dot). The green receptors in your eye become tired in the receptor pattern of the apple. Then, you switch to the white light which is broad spectrum. You fail to see the green, leaving red (blue is almost green, and our colour triangle is not equilateral). So, you see an afterimage of the apple but in red. This fades quickly as your green receptors recover from the overload. It has nothing to with aphantasia and the article does not claim it does.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#152

Post by nephihaha »

christophilus wrote: post #21
audidude wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't understand flashbacks in movies until about a decade ago when I realized I had it. What a corny and lazy story-telling-tool I'd tell myself.

Oh. Interesting. I’m the same. Are those flashbacks actually a real thing people experience? I had also assumed it was just movie gimmicks.

Yes, unfortunately they are. I say unfortunately because they are often connected with trauma. When something goes very badly, those memories can go cycling around one's head. PTSD can do that too. Some people relive wars years after they happened. It's very real.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#153

Post by jstanley »

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…

I think broadly the same thing, I just think that people who say they don't have aphantasia are sloppy with wording. When you "see" something in your mind's "eye", that's a different type of experience to seeing something with your real eyes.

If it weren't that way then beginner artists would not have such trouble drawing accurate proportions from memory because they would already "see" the correct proportions.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#154

Post by D-Machine »

vehemenz wrote: post #145
D-Machine wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you are almost certainly aphantasic. "It is all just semantics" has to do some incredible acrobatics to make sense of so much language and reported experiences, and doesn't seem biologically plausible either. Of course, we can never be sure, but from a theoretical and empirical standpoint "all aphantasia discussion is just semantic confusion" is not useful and a complete non-starter.

I have doubts about aphantasia as a legitimate phenomenon, but whether it is or it isn't, it seems likely that many of the positive reports are a result of a misunderstanding, semantic or otherwise.

Certainly some self-diagnoses (positive or negative) are definitely based on misunderstanding, much semantic, as I already agreed in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49468528.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#155

Post by andrewla »

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 made a poll to see if anyone can (like D-Machine or jhedwards) actually see a superimposed image and not just "see" a superimposed image: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469365

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#156

Post by nephihaha »

asveikau wrote: post #114

I realized I have aphantasia after reading an HN thread about it a few years ago. I talked to my daughter about it and I realized she has it too. I've tried to explain it to people and they get confused. Just as I get confused about their perception; their imagination sounds to me rather like a psychotic hallucination, to exaggerate slightly. I've had some funny discussions about it. In the end there doesn't seem to…

Yes, some of it can be quite wild, especially dreams but most of it isn't. The fun part of it is being able to place people in funny situations. Many people just do a rewind and visualise real life events from earlier.

Most of the visualisation I do is extremely mundane, like if I'm planning a route or doing something with the garden.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#158

Post by vehemenz »

I wonder what it's like to be born blind and have zero visualization ability.

Then I wonder what it must feel like for that person to read sighted people on the Internet debate their supposed lack of visualization abilities.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#159

Post by ozten »

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…

I can "hear" a song at will. I can "hear" it well enough to think about the instrumentation, etc.

I can't "visualize" a pretzel. I go into an analytical mode and a gut-level physical mode, thinking about pretzels and their different aspects with momentary "pops" of "visualizing", but they aren't stable and continuous, the way I can imagine a song or any sound.

Oddly, I started life as a visual artist before computers. I've met both total aphantasia-suffering artists and artists who can visually project onto a blank page and trace what they are seeing. People are somewhere on this spectrum.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#160

Post by andrewla »

D-Machine wrote: post #144
andrewla wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I can look at a blank wall, and if you say "superimpose a red circle in the middle of the wall" I can very easily imagine that wall with a red circle on it. But I can't "see" it in the sense that you can see the afterimage of the apple on the blank screen. Are you saying you can see in a way indistinguishable from normal vision an imagined object in your field of vision?

The projected image is not typically indistinguishable from normal vision, namely in that there will be an "ephemerality" to the image. Some examples of this ephemerality: - the projected image usually has a translucency, i.e. it doesn't also block what is behind where it would be physically if it were really there - the projected image requires sustained concentration and mental effort to maintain detail, and if you…

I created https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469365 to see how many people perceive things this way.

It is quite possible that this is drawing a line, as you say, between hyperphantashia and regular phantasia, though I'm not yet willing to give up on the idea that we are just giving subjective names to the same phenomenon.

To wit, when I "hear" things with my "mind's ear" I can "hear" them very well in all the layers and components, I can "hear" drums and guitar and bass and voice, etc., but they are very clearly in my head -- they do not have a location in real space the way that real sounds do; I can't "hear" a sound so loud that it makes me cringe or so quiet that I have to strain to hear it.

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