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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#391

Post by jurgenburgen »

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?

Because they hear about it all the time in their bubble.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#392

Post by vanderZwan »

I know someone whose partner was murdered in an extremely horrible, brutal way. Years later they told me in a completely unrelated discussion that they have aphantasia. I always wondered if in their case it might be trauma-induced, but obviously don't want to ask given the topic. Either way I think it's for the best in their case.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#393

Post by red369 »

brookst wrote: post #258
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…

Greetings fellow music-hearer. My s/o will sometimes get irritated when I'm silent for a while on a car trip or at dinner. I'm not trying to be rude, I just get caught up in a song, just as if it were playing in the room. Vocals, drums, instrumentation and effects, the whole thing is just right there. I can visualize things, usually scenes and favorite places, but they are more abstract than the music is.

Sigh! I am so far from having this ability.

Reminds me of the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy talks about having an easy time in the hole because he could listen to music in his head.

It's interesting to think each person is somewhere different on multiple spectrums:

- Hyperphantasia - Aphantasia

- Being able to imagine music/voices (are these linked?)

- Inner monologue (is this the same as being able to imagine someone's voice?)

- Memory vividness

Most of these things seem rarely discussed. How much is known about the relationships between these?

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#394

Post by tomveber »

estearum wrote: post #290
D-Machine wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, sadly the absolute denialists saying "it is just semantic confusion" don't really have a tenable position, as a quick read through this whole thread would instantly reveal.

Yeah, this is a valid critique of the whole internal monologue idea, but interestingly aphantasia has been quite empirically confirmed and the simple apple test has been validated!

The self-report objection has been tested, though. Aphantasics show no imagery priming in binocular rivalry, no pupil constriction when asked to imagine bright shapes, and flat skin conductance to frightening text while responding normally to frightening pictures. A questionnaire that predicts autonomic responses nobody can fake is doing more than semantics.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#395

Post by jpfromlondon »

jibal wrote: post #311
jpfromlondon wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Nobody hallucinates or "sees" the object Prove it. > If you quiz someone long enough you can get them to acknowledge they don't see anything "in their head" whatever that means. This is simply false, as numerous people here have demonstrated. > irrationally annoyed Yes, irrationality and emotive reaction is evident. > I suspect because it's unfalsifiable attention seeking You suspect a lot of things based on no evi…

aaw, touched a nerve have I because I'm suggesting you're not special?

>Prove it.

Precisely, unfalsifiable nonsense.

>You can't keep track of your own argument

MY argument is this: people don't actually see things or even have imagery inside their head, which is normal, and self-proclaimed aphantasiacs are attention seekers who think they have a disability or special characteristic...there is no logical inconsistency in my argument.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#396

Post by jpfromlondon »

andrewla wrote: post #194
jpfromlondon wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>they imagine that they see something and lack the language to convey the imagined unperceived object, the notion of phantasia or aphantasia is merely a by-product of the term "picture it in your mind's eye" or the like, leading many ignorant people to believe that something is literally rendered within the individual's head.

I think by any reasonable definition everyone has aphantasia, which is why it's a nothing burger.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#397

Post by xg15 »

I don't have aphantasia, but I'd be interested to know how it influences coding and software development.

I think, coding typically involves a lot of keeping track of the "runtime state" of the program, i.e. how variables, data structures, objects, resources, threads etc change state during various points of the program. Same goes for the "architecture" of a software system.

As a programmer, that's what you're usually do "in your head" when understanding or writing code.

I do a lot of that by visualizing. I'd be interested to know how people with aphantasia are doing it.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#398

Post by Marciplan »

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’s ok to just sympathize instead of running to those conclusions

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#399

Post by shric »

xg15 wrote: post #397

I don't have aphantasia, but I'd be interested to know how it influences coding and software development. I think, coding typically involves a lot of keeping track of the "runtime state" of the program, i.e. how variables, data structures, objects, resources, threads etc change state during various points of the program. Same goes for the "architecture" of a software system. As a programmer, that's what you're usuall…

I have aphantasia and I don’t have much trouble thinking of data structures and so on without visualising them. It’s hard to describe how I do it. I do imagine it would be easier with visualisation. If it gets hard I’ll use a pen and paper or an editor to make diagrams.

Things I seem to be average or above average at that I’d expect aphantasia to be a disadvantage for:

- the “chimp test” (search if you don’t know what this is)

- chess (but I have hit a wall at 1500 on chess.com and I find it very hard to explore future moves in my head more than a few. I feel like if I studied chess 8 hours a day for 30 years I still couldn’t hope to play blindfold chess)

- remembering numbers and computer facts.

- spelling including remembering spellings of obscure surnames I’ve never heard of before

I think even people without aphantasia can’t typically use visualisation for reliable storage of things even in the short term, correct me if I’m wrong. A extremely rare few have a photographic memory.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#400

Post by wahern »

antonvs wrote: post #222
jawns wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my own personal experience -- which I presented immediately after the sentence you quoted -- I didn't originally understand how to visualize, and then later discovered more about how to actually visualize. So clearly it's not like the case where a person is born without a sense of smell, because in that case nobody's going to present an "at first I didn't know how to smell, but now I do" story. I'm not saying that…

Sounds like you have aphantasia but you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t. Here’s a simple question: how close are your waking visualizations to images you see in vivid dreams? From what you’ve said, assuming you do experience vivid dreams sometimes, it sounds like the answer is “not very”. Many people without aphantasia report waking imagery quite close or at least comparable to what they experience in dreams. If…

Few people routinely mentally visualize with the same breadth and vividness as dreaming, unless perhaps they have poor dream recall or don't dream very vividly. It's probably more rare than aphantasia.

On the flip side, this means with some introspection and reflection most people can appreciate how those with aphantasia think; most people use a mix of mentalisms for cognition, it's just not as apparent as visualization. And unless it's happening subconsciously, I'd venture to say visualization as the dominant mode is the exception, it just stands out because it's more common when you're deliberately thinking in a self-aware manner, and the other modes are difficult to identify or articulate.

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