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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#381

Post by inigyou »

D-Machine wrote: post #368
inigyou wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm wondering if the mental focus that a trained mage requires to sustain an underworld portal, or any other spell, is the same feeling as an ordinary person in real life uses to hold a visualisation.

If you want to get really kooky, read up on Western Esotericism and Chaos Magic or tantric Buddhist practices and etc. They make basically this exact claim that this is how you "do magic" or similar such things, via sustained, "one-pointedness" and focus of attention and the Will ("gnosis"), and that, yes, often this one-pointedness of mind/attention is what lets you manifest things. Untrue, of course, but very clear…

I have no doubt it can allow you to walk on coals or similar.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#382

Post by t-3 »

D-Machine wrote: post #117
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…

This is interesting and I wonder if it might explain some apparent cases of aphantasia. Also seems relevant to some aphantasics experiencing mental imagery when using psychedelics.

I've never experienced visualization under the effect of hallucinogens, but I have once when I took very strong opiates.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#383

Post by mikestorrent »

iamhamm wrote: post #348
techgnosis wrote: post #292

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…

Here’s some evidence for you: when I close my eye, I see black. That’s it. No amount of effort conjures an image. That’s not what most people I talk to about it report, so I am going to assume there’s a functional difference between me and people with functioning visualization.

I believe you. Why wouldn't someone believe you? There's not much reason to claim "I cannot do X" maliciously. I'm hopeless at catching a ball, can't play tennis to save my life, for instance... believe me?

I just want to throw my two cents in: I think I have a pretty good level of visualization ability, but it's not actually projected into my field of vision. It's like having a second monitor plugged in somewhere... _else_. It doesn't overlap with the 3D space of our world. I don't SEE it, but I do "see" it, not as concepts but as something akin to generated memories.

It does often help to look away from visually distracting things so that the mind is more free to use its capacity to generate things.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#384

Post by julienmartlet »

inigyou wrote: post #331
foobarchu wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whereas seemingly half of all people claim they have aphantasia Citation needed. People who experience something will be louder when that condition is brought up or relevant. That's a known phenomenon, it's why conservatives think trans people are everywhere. Most statistics I've seen are more like 2-4% of the population, but it's not a very good measure because the vast majority of people do not know aphantasia is…

Why do conservatives think trans people are everywhere?

"People who experience something will be louder when that condition is brought up or relevant. That's a known phenomenon, it's why conservatives think trans people are everywhere."

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#385

Post by marak830 »

greazy wrote: post #262

I want to know if aphantasia is associated with any other mental models. For example, driving, map reading, spatial awareness. I have a theory that Aphantasia is the symptom of something else, and this other thing relates to how the brain of such individuals stores information. I think it's stored in a more "compressed" state. As an example, I find myself remembering where info is and not what the info acrually was.…

I have Aphantasia, as well as excellent map reading skills and spatial awareness. BUT I'm pretty sure that spatial awareness is something I developed when cheffing (needing to know where things were rapidly) and map reading I attribute to video games (specifically doom originally haha).

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#386

Post by jibal »

D-Machine wrote: post #370
inigyou wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, based on the description they are normally phantasic and are just quibbling semantics.

Frankly, it is very hard to tell at times.

The self-description I referred to is

> 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... Some people on this thread claim that they can see imagined objects in their field of view. I cannot do this.

But he also said

> I can imagine shapes and faces and objects just fine, and can rotate them around if necessary, etc., but I cannot see them because my eyes are not involved; when I close them the imagined images do not disappear. The visualization is akin to seeing, but obviously I am not seeing them.

Initially this struck me as logically incoherent, but reading it again and taking into account the fact that he defines seeing as using eyes--an unreasonable circular precondition--he does indeed seem to be describing normal phantasia, given the reference to images that do not disappear, and to visualization. As someone with near-complete aphantasia, I cannot produce such images or visualizations and I certainly can't rotate them around.

What is quite clear here is that people are describing different sorts of experience, not mere semantic quibbling (which defining seeing as using eyes is certainly an example of) ... and we have physiological data that supports that view. I find it quite bizarre that there are so many people on this page who insist that these differences cannot exist, that everyone is exactly like them (even though there are differences among those who claim this), to the degree that they claim that others are lying, seeking attention, seeking profit, etc. ... there is no reason at all in evidence or logic to support these claims or the position that everyone's mind is the same, in this or any other aspect.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#388

Post by nottorp »

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.

Hmm I'm pretty sure I have some degree of aphantasia, because I read a lot but I never visualize what's going on (or not consciously, at least).

However, back in school when we did elementary geometry I had no problem solving everything, to the point I even qualified for the national math competitions once.

Maybe though, it's because i was drawing helper figures on paper instead of imagining them.

I have no problem with figure matching IQ style tests, as opposed to one of the sibling posters.

Edit: oh interesting, lower in the article. I have absolutely no problem with spatial navigation, on the contrary, I'm better than many people. But for example if we're retracing our steps on a mountain path I can't tell you in advance what were the landmarks to look for. I will recognize them as soon as we see them or notice we're missing any landmarks though.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#389

Post by toolslive »

iamhamm wrote: post #348
techgnosis wrote: post #292

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…

Here’s some evidence for you: when I close my eye, I see black. That’s it. No amount of effort conjures an image. That’s not what most people I talk to about it report, so I am going to assume there’s a functional difference between me and people with functioning visualization.

I have the same. I'm looking at my laptop's screen as I type this, and if I close my eyes while typing I cannot even visualise said screen. Now, I can blind-type, recognise faces, navigate aso without any problem. I can even play chess quite well (fide ~2050, 2200 blitz on chess.com), but I cannot visualise a chess board, nor can I visualise my moves or the moves of my opponent.

However, I don't "see" (pun intended) it as a problem. On the contrary, I'm not wasting cycles on irrelevant details while I'm thinking.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#390

Post by nottorp »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #45
christophilus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see anything, but I also wonder if this is semantics, and we are all describing the same phenomena with different language.

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…

> All the easily accessible aphantasia tests (such as the one in this link) seem to rely on subjectively deciding whether you "see" or not.

I don't know. Have you tried the ball on the table test that's inside the article? What was your answer to the last question?

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