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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

321–330 of 477 posts

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#321
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a couple of the comments in this very thread above, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49467695 and https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=slibhb are quite relevant to your case. Thinking this is just semantics is a strong indicator you are likely highly aphantasic. It is highly unlikely to just be semantics, because when it comes to visualizing complex objects as a non-aphantasic, the specific details s…

I am reasonably confident I am not aphantasiac in the sense described here. My apple is red with some nice green mottling, dust, etc etc. I can see my wife and children in detail in my "mind's eye". As a child people told me I had a "photographic memory", which I also think is sort of "fake" or semantic, but nonetheless: I can remember images I have seen with visual detail and I can imagine hypothetical objects "visu…

How could it be just semantics if I and others cannot do what you can? The comment you responded to said "I don’t see anything, but I also wonder if this is semantics, and we are all describing the same phenomena with different language" to which you responded "I'm very convinced this is what's going on." -- but what is "this"? They said that they don't see anything, which is by definition aphantasia, but you say that "I am reasonably confident I am not aphantasiac in the sense described here". You are clearly the one who is confused. If your self-report is accurate then people differ in this regard -- and we already know this from differing physical measures when people are tasked with visualizing.

The people who hold that it's just semantics and all minds are alike in this regard are just expressing a belief that has absolutely no evidence to support it and a great deal of counterevidence.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#322
post #65
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is Qualia only until they can measure it. Which they can now. Blaming everything you do not understand on neuroticism? Might as well go back to dunking witches. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220420092150.h...

I'm not really sure what the hostility is about. That's an interesting study albeit small: 42 non-aphantasiacs and 18 self-diagnosed phantasiacs. If one really wanted to quibble I'm sure there are other possible confounding variables which could be involved in both pupil dilation and self-reported aphantasia. I'm not "blaming" neuroticism, I'm pointing out that these self-reporting surveys are subjective in a way tha…

A lot of people here are insisting, with no evidence whatsoever, that a lot of other people are deluded, or are in it to make money, or for an ego boost, or to get pity, etc. ad nauseam ... so don't play dumb.

Aphantasia, hypophantasia, phantasia, and hyperfantasia are all real, per the evidence. Absolutely no evidence supports the contrary claim.

I won't respond further.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#323
What is it called when you can vividly see the silhouette of your hands with your eyes closed -- and particularly if your fingers are brushing against your skull. I didn't discover this 'transparent skull' skill until I was in my 50s -- much like those with aphantasia don't know they perceive things differently than many others.

Totally useless of course -- but it was a weird discovery nonetheless.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#324

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 have 3 kinds of mental vision.

One, which some people call "phosphenes", is the ability to paint mental images on the field of vision that corresponds mentally to the signals I get from my retina. I can only see these kinds of images with my eyes closed and shielded from light. My ability to do this has waxed and waned over the years, and has never been good enough to create photographic imagery. At one point, I lost the ability to generate any colour, and I trained until I got colour back.

Two, the ability which seems to be called "phantasia". This is photographic mental imagery that runs on a separate channel from my visual channel, so I can consult this channel with my eyes open, and see things like people's faces. I couldn't do this at all a number of years ago, and was unaware that I was missing this ability. Then I discovered I had aphantasia, and I did some training which got me up to the level that the OP calls "hypophantasia", or maybe a bit better than that. I think that ability may have waned over the last few years since I last trained up.

The "afterimage test" is physically working at the phosphene level. It does not provide an accurate subjective experience of phantasia.

Three, the ability to visualize 3D geometric objects. It works great for wireframe polyhedra, and also works for maps that I hold in my head and use to navigate while driving. This ability has always been very strong, and I originally mistook this ability for phantasia. This is the ability I would use for your equilateral triangle example. I can position 3D objects in space relative to my body, rotate them, etc. Because I am strong at this ability, it is my job to efficiently pack luggage into the vehicle for camping trips. My partner is bad at this, but is much better at phantasia, and is a visual artist who can draw realistic faces.

What I wrote is based on personal experience. I am not selling anything. I know from internet forums that different people have different wiring in their brains. Some people have subjective experiences that other people have never encountered. It is impossible to prove the existence of first-person subjective experiences to a determined skeptic. The best you can do is collect field reports from a lot of people, compare them, find patterns, then make your own conclusions. This is called phenomenology.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#325

What is it called when you can vividly see the silhouette of your hands with your eyes closed -- and particularly if your fingers are brushing against your skull. I didn't discover this 'transparent skull' skill until I was in my 50s -- much like those with aphantasia don't know they perceive things differently than many others. Totally useless of course -- but it was a weird discovery nonetheless.

Does this happen in the absence of light sources? I believe i have aphantasia but can still see those when one is present.

My guess is my eyelids don't block off enough light. Coincidentally, i have some trouble sleeping with light sources present.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#326
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think I have aphantasia as I definitely don't see anything, but after reading a lot about it I still haven't totally ruled out that it's simply a big semantic misunderstanding with people that describe things in a different way. All the easily accessible aphantasia tests (such as the one in this link) seem to rely on subjectively deciding whether you "see" or not. But this "seeing" seems to be a metaphor (eve…

It's like a low-quality offscreen framebuffer, and if you can see things in a dream, it's like that.

Ha, I was going to describe it the same way. The image is there in the buffer, you have full bit-level access to it; the only difference is that there's a firewall preventing it from being rendered to the primary display. Dreaming allows rendering it to a virtual display which is temporarily considered canonical.

I think the resolution and bit depth of that buffer is the aphantasia spectrum. Some people are working from a 160x120 1-bit image, for some it's 640x480 8-bit, and some can load up an 8K at 32-bit deep color.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#327
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.

Visualizing for me has always been like touching something with my eyes closed. I can't "see" the object, but I have a feeling for all the shapes and contours. You can feel which way a key is in your hand and where each ridge is without having to see it. I solve geometry problems the same way. I can't see the whole thing at once, but I can move my sense of feeling across arbitrary scenes.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#328
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 besides a self-reported experience There are clear differences in brain scans [1]. [1] https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/01/mind-blindness...

I'm on your side of the argument, but while that research may be evidence, it's not definitive proof.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#329
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> zero evidence besides a self-reported experience There are clear differences in brain scans [1]. [1] https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/01/mind-blindness...

I'm on your side of the argument, but while that research may be evidence, it's not definitive proof.

Qualia can't be definitively proven.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#330
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…

This makes me think of how everyone is born with the muscle to wiggle their ears, but if they don't discover it as an infant, it atrophies.
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