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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

191–200 of 476 posts

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#191
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In a sense I agree with you that this is the intent of the article. I find this kind of laughable because I do not consider myself to have aphantasia (I can visualize things just fine) but the afterimage test is not even vaguely representative of how I visualize things. But you can see people on this very thread claiming that they in fact do perceive visualization that way, and can overlay it on their physical vision…

I think the poll itself is faulty. You appear to be suggesting that the two things - seeing an afterimage and being able to consciously superimpose an imagined image into your visual field are related. An afterimage is literally a physical phenomenon as I explained before, and it passes quickly. There is an explanation of this, in an article that somebody posted a link to the other day in the discussion about Olo. https://dynomight.net/colors/

> Can you superimpose onto your actual visual field an arbitrary imagined image? Not just imagine what it would look like, but see it

This is your only question. No I cannot is my answer.

I don't know if its because I am aphantasic (which I definitely am) or not or if a phantasic would be able to do that either. Just because they can see something in their minds does not mean that they could superimpose it over the visual world they were seeing. I can only guess at this, but 'minds eye' is like another dimension. You can imagine things there, and your brain can simply focus on them instead of the signals you are getting from your optic nerves, or your auditory sensations, or the feelings from your butt as you sit on the chair.

I do not see things in my minds eye but I can conceptualise them perfectly well. I basically never remember if I have any dreams, perhaps I do not, but I do remember waking as if from a dream and realising that I had had a significant recognition moment, as if I had experienced a thing before. Perhaps I had a non-visual dream.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#192
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.

Ugh no. Even if the thing is right in front of me, I might not be able to draw the right proportions. It might be because I am no artist though, but my point is seeing with my own eyes is not strictly better. At some point the image in my head becomes better than what I see, e.g due to distance or lack of light.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually agree with you about the "is my red the same as your red" -- I do not believe that aphantasia is real but simply that people are talking past each other and getting hung up on semantics. I see things with my eyes, experience has taught me that when I cover my eyes I cannot see things, when I close my eyes I cannot see things. That is what seeing is. I cannot see with my ears, I cannot see with my fingers.…

> when I close my eyes I cannot see things. That is what seeing is. [...] The visualization is akin to seeing, but obviously I am not seeing them. [...] a lot of people like you are saying "well, I can 'see' but I can't 'see-see' I most definitely am not accusing you of this, and your other comments I think make clear you have considered this, but I would be wary of collapsing a continuum to a binary here. Most of th…

I'm with you -- human experience is complicated, and language is a poor approximation to our inner lives.

But there are lots of people on this thread who are saying "well, of course you can't *see* the apple, it's just a helpful metaphor", but there are a lot of people (including yourself) who say that you can. I want to see if I can pick out that difference. I almost wish the survey instead said "No, of course I can't *see* it, nobody can" to really nail down that perspective.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#194

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…

You're absolutely right. Nobody hallucinates or "sees" the object, it's like an object instantiation with default properties that you can name/describe, nothing more. If you quiz someone long enough you can get them to acknowledge they don't see anything "in their head" whatever that means. This nonsense makes me irrationally annoyed, I suspect because it's unfalsifiable attention seeking, some people I've met mentio…

I agree, of course nobody can actually do this (barring mind-altering drugs or brain trauma, and even then, not voluntarily). But there are people on this thread an on the attached survey (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469365) who say that they can. Maybe it turns out that I have aphantasia after all and this is just an ability that I'm missing.

I am curious to see how many people say that they can do this to get some sort of baseline though.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#196
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…

It does seem kind of misleading to ask someone to close their eyes to visualize something in their mind. It has nothing to do with your eyes.

I can visualize my house in my mind while simultaneously seeing whatever is in front of me. Though the “mind’s eye” description is apt because it is like seeing with a totally separate set of eyes that has zero awareness of my real eyes and sight.

It’s almost like remembering the experience of seeing it, or inventing a new memory of seeing it.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#197
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense I agree with you that this is the intent of the article. I find this kind of laughable because I do not consider myself to have aphantasia (I can visualize things just fine) but the afterimage test is not even vaguely representative of how I visualize things. But you can see people on this very thread claiming that they in fact do perceive visualization that way, and can overlay it on their physical vision…

I think the poll itself is faulty. You appear to be suggesting that the two things - seeing an afterimage and being able to consciously superimpose an imagined image into your visual field are related. An afterimage is literally a physical phenomenon as I explained before, and it passes quickly. There is an explanation of this, in an article that somebody posted a link to the other day in the discussion about Olo. ht…

In my opinion, as someone who does *not* think that they have aphantasia, the two things are definitely not equivalent. I know what the afterimage is, I know what it is to visualize something, and they are completely different both qualitatively and intellectually.

But as I keep saying, there are people on this thread that are saying they are literally equivalent. I don't know if I believe them, but that is what they are saying -- talk to them!

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#198
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…

> but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? Every time the topic of aphantasia comes up, this question always gets asked. I get that it's apparently inconceivable that someone who doesn't have aphantasia just assumes that everyone who claims they do is just doing it wrong or misunderstanding what the mind's eye is or that the claimant's own experience is just flat wrong. It's dismissive an…

> If someone is born without a sense of smell, they don't have people question if they really can't smell anything or if it's a skill issue.

You're talking about something that affects 1 in 10,000 people and is very easily tested for. Whereas seemingly half of all people claim they have aphantasia, and nobody can agree on the definitions of any of the words we use to evaluate it. The situations are not at all similar. I'd be willing to accept that about 1 in 10,000 people are born without some mental capability that others have that tends to be called "visualizing", but that is well under 1% of the people who say they have aphantasia.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#199
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…

One thing I've always wanted to ask the aphantasia crowd: think of the Mona Lisa (or the Eiffel Tower). What happens?

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#200
post #159
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…

Have you ever seen a pretzel (or anything) in a dream?
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