Aphantasia Beginner's Guide • Hacker News Board

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#301

Post by selcuka » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 12:44 AM UTC

D-Machine wrote: post #287

ToyKeeper wrote: post #273

I know someone with aphantasia. It's absolutely wild to me that he can't see things in his head. Totally alien from my perspective, since I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. I see what's in my head so vividly that I often won't see things in real life which are right in front of me. But what's even more wild to me is the people leaving comments refusing to believe that different people are actually different. Re…

To be polite, it is called "typical-mind fallacy". To be less polite, it is called "cope".

In fact, the term typical mind fallacy was born from aphantasia [1]:

> Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. [...] Though another psychologist, Dr. Berman, did, at that time, come up with a name for the masking behavior, called the Typical Mind Fallacy: the human tendency to believe that one's own mental structure can be generalized to apply to everyone else's.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/1e5vbuu/mind_bl...

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#302

Post by selcuka » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 12:45 AM UTC

techgnosis wrote: post #292

ToyKeeper wrote: post #273

I know someone with aphantasia. It's absolutely wild to me that he can't see things in his head. Totally alien from my perspective, since I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. I see what's in my head so vividly that I often won't see things in real life which are right in front of me. But what's even more wild to me is the people leaving comments refusing to believe that different people are actually different. Re…

I'm one of the naysayers denying aphantasia in the comments. Why would we default to believing people, though? I get your point. Believe people when they tell you their experience. Sure, that seems like a reasonable thing to do. But in this case, when there is zero evidence besides a self-reported experience, why do we default to believing that there are suddenly two types of people, instead of assuming that semantic…

> why do we default to believing that there are suddenly two types of people

Because we know that there are already more than two types of people, even when we ignore aphantasia? So there is nothing new here.

Also if you read the FA, it explains that there are objective differences:

> People have taken various physiological and behavioral tests in a research lab. Researchers have observed that people who report vivid imagery respond differently to these more objective measures than aphantasics. Although this doesn't let us know definitively that they vividly see an image, it all points to the fact that something is truly different between people who claim to see vividly and those who don't.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#303

Post by throwawaythekey » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 12:50 AM UTC

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…

My experience was I thought everyone was aphantasic and it was a misunderstanding of language.

Then one day when I was 18 I went to the pub and played pool with/chatted up some girls for one of the first times. When I got home I went to bed and closed my eyes and could see the whole scene vividly for the first time ever. I had been drunk plenty of times before so assumed I had been drugged, told my parents and just got a nonchalant 'wtf' reaction.

Since then I've mostly assumed it's a skill issue, and in the past 15 years have maybe visualized ~3 times under similar circumstances (usually sleepy, usually sexual).

I've spent a few meditative sessions trying to train, and gotten the sense that it might be close, but it seems like it would take a good chunk of dedication on my part to make it happen.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#304

Post by ToyKeeper » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:03 AM UTC

techgnosis wrote: post #292

ToyKeeper wrote: post #273

I know someone with aphantasia. It's absolutely wild to me that he can't see things in his head. Totally alien from my perspective, since I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. I see what's in my head so vividly that I often won't see things in real life which are right in front of me. But what's even more wild to me is the people leaving comments refusing to believe that different people are actually different. Re…

I'm one of the naysayers denying aphantasia in the comments. Why would we default to believing people, though? I get your point. Believe people when they tell you their experience. Sure, that seems like a reasonable thing to do. But in this case, when there is zero evidence besides a self-reported experience, why do we default to believing that there are suddenly two types of people, instead of assuming that semantic…

> zero evidence

That's a bold claim. It doesn't tell me there is zero evidence... hardly anything has zero evidence. It just tells me you either reject the evidence or haven't looked. It's not hard to check. For the lazy, Wikipedia provides a nice summary and 82 references to get more details. But that's just a starting point.

> there are suddenly two types of people

This comment is pretty revealing. For almost any trait, there are way more than two types of people. Usually there's a whole spectrum with lots of diversity. It's a beautiful thing. What would be very unusual is if there was only one type of person, or only two types.

Even distinct "types" is a bit of a misleading concept. Instead of distinct types or buckets, most things have more of a cluster or nebula structure. Each individual member of a cluster is different, but has overall similarities, on average, to other members. There will usually be a fairly dense core, and then it gets more sparse with distance. And there will often be several clusters near each other, overlapping, so there is no clear boundary between one cluster and another. That is how descriptive categories work... nebulous clusters in thingspace, where that space is a many-dimensional abstract space with each trait having its own axis, and many degrees of each trait.

For convenience and efficiency, we use labels to refer to these clusters, but when deeper understanding is needed, or more nuanced communication, the labels stop being a useful simplification. It's like trying to dig out a splinter with a shovel; shovels are very useful, but they're way too coarse and blunt for something as precise as a splinter. A deep enough understanding requires us to more explicitly recognize the cluster structure and the multidimensional spectrum of diversity.

Don't mistake the map (the labels, or the "types" of people) for the territory (the rich variety of life).

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#305

Post by jibal » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:12 AM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #171

komadori wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would characterise myself, per your original question, of being able to superimpose imagined objects onto my visual field. I would not say that such a superimposed red circle is entirely indistinguishable from a real one, but the experience is very much akin to seeing. For one thing maintaining superimposed objects requires a degree of mental focus of which I am constantly aware, especially if the object is detaile…

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.…

> 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's your experience. Other people have different experiences.

> That is what seeing is.

What an incredible leap of petitio principii. Yet there are people who can't see despite their eyes being open and the optical machinery working correctly, and there are people who see things without having eyes at all -- in some cases things that are only in their imagination, in some cases due to brain probes, in some cases due to synesthesia, in some cases due to having an array of probes on their backs that translate images into touch sensations which their brains translate into images. You seem to know nothing of any of this, or how the brain works at all, or how language works, but you have a whole lot to say about it in this thread.

BY DEFINITION you have aphantasia, according to your self-description. You seem to believe, for no good reason and contrary to a large amount of evidence, that that everyone else also has aphantasia (i.e., no one has phantasia), but that's a different issue.

I won't respond to you further.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#306

Post by andy99 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:15 AM UTC

techgnosis wrote: post #292

ToyKeeper wrote: post #273

I know someone with aphantasia. It's absolutely wild to me that he can't see things in his head. Totally alien from my perspective, since I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. I see what's in my head so vividly that I often won't see things in real life which are right in front of me. But what's even more wild to me is the people leaving comments refusing to believe that different people are actually different. Re…

I'm one of the naysayers denying aphantasia in the comments. Why would we default to believing people, though? I get your point. Believe people when they tell you their experience. Sure, that seems like a reasonable thing to do. But in this case, when there is zero evidence besides a self-reported experience, why do we default to believing that there are suddenly two types of people, instead of assuming that semantic…

It was funny to watch this discussion turn from skepticism at the top to then a bunch of proponents moving in and crowding out the rational voices. It feels a bit religious to me, at least unscientific, there are obviously no testable hypotheses about subjective descriptions, and so people seem to dig in on their sides more than if there was a real basis for comparison. I default to not believing in it until there is actual strong evidence, same as ghosts and the Loch Ness monster and whatnot.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#307

Post by cdelsolar » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #153

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.

Right exactly. Now I don’t know if I have aphantasia after reading these comments. I have no problem visualizing things, I just don’t “see them” like I would see a pretzel in front of me. Are you saying when you visualize a pretzel you’re literally seeing a brown pretzel with salt grains or are you just imagining that you see it? If you tell me to visualize a pretzel I can sort of imagine the physical shape and color and texture of a pretzel but I don’t really “see” it.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#308

Post by cdelsolar » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:21 AM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #196

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…

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 t…

Yes I agree, for me visualizing something has nothing to do with whether my eyes are open or closed because they’re visualized by a different part of the brain..

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#309

Post by metabagel » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

techgnosis wrote: post #292

ToyKeeper wrote: post #273

I know someone with aphantasia. It's absolutely wild to me that he can't see things in his head. Totally alien from my perspective, since I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. I see what's in my head so vividly that I often won't see things in real life which are right in front of me. But what's even more wild to me is the people leaving comments refusing to believe that different people are actually different. Re…

I'm one of the naysayers denying aphantasia in the comments. Why would we default to believing people, though? I get your point. Believe people when they tell you their experience. Sure, that seems like a reasonable thing to do. But in this case, when there is zero evidence besides a self-reported experience, why do we default to believing that there are suddenly two types of people, instead of assuming that semantic…

I believe it, because I tend to have a hard time visualizing even the faces of people I love and know well. It takes great effort.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#310

Post by zwayhowder » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

case540 wrote: post #260

ozten wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you solve geometry problems. For lots of them I visualize / rotate things im my head.

Funny you should ask. In high school I was regarded as highly intelligent, I was near the top of all of my classes and widely read, with an excellent memory for facts and figures. (Though no visual memory whatsoever).

Then one day we did a IQ test in science class. I scored near the bottom of the class. All of the geometry based "what comes next" puzzles left me flummoxed. Because I couldn't visualise, I couldn't rotate images in my head to identify patterns and so many of the questions were like that.