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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#461

Post by nephihaha »

jpfromlondon wrote: post #178
andrewla wrote: post #120

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 am able to see stuff in my head all the time. It is a matter of degree, i.e. some people see things more clearly than others. But the same could be said of real eyesight.

Very few of us have 20/20 vision but that doesn't mean we're blind.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#462

Post by riffraff »

satvikpendem wrote: post #406
riffraff wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, I can visualize things, I can hear noises in my head but I cannot, for the life of me, smell things in my head. So it's easy for me to imagine people who don't have other "mental senses", maybe that works to explain it to other people.

I can smell phantom smells through my nose directly it seems, like I feel the sensation of detecting some smell directly in the neurons connected to my nose. Not sure if that's the same for you or others. It's not in my mind per se, at least not initially.

Perhaps different from mind's eye then! But alas, I can't do that either.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#463

Post by woggy »

nephihaha wrote: post #459
woggy wrote: post #379

I had no idea people could conjure images in their head.

How do you think they write novels and film scripts, or draw from memory?

I'm not sure, when I try to picture something I just get the concept of it in my head. I thought people were just really good at taking that and working out how to draw it out. Makes a lot of sense to me now that some people can be so good at drawing.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#464

Post by dtho »

nephihaha wrote: post #460
dtho wrote: post #424

The ultimate test is having them draw a picture. If they can visualize imagery then they should be an excellent artist. If they are bad at drawing, then they must have aphantasia.

I'm terrible at drawing but I definitely don't have it.

If you do not "have it" and you are unable to reproduce the imagery you see in your mind's eye using a pencil on paper, then that is clarifying. Whatever you consider to be visualization is not even close to the same as actually seeing something. If whatever you experience was a "vivid visualization", then you would be able to reproduce it drawing.

I personally don't experience anything that I would consider "visualization", and I am also terrible at drawing, but I can reproduce a photorealistic drawing of a photograph if I am allowed to look at the photograph while drawing.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#465

Post by nephihaha »

dtho wrote: post #464
nephihaha wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm terrible at drawing but I definitely don't have it.

If you do not "have it" and you are unable to reproduce the imagery you see in your mind's eye using a pencil on paper, then that is clarifying. Whatever you consider to be visualization is not even close to the same as actually seeing something. If whatever you experience was a "vivid visualization", then you would be able to reproduce it drawing. I personally don't experience anything that I would consider "visuali…

I think you are confusing two separate issues. I struggle to do still life as well, when the subject is right in front of me. That's not due to eyesight problems. My visualisation is not perfect but is much better than anything I can draw. However, when I have taken art classes and I practised, my skills improved... Much like music or chess. If I stop practising drawing then my skills deteriorate.

I can write about things in far more detail than I can draw them. Both from my imagination and sometimes memory. I can remember the floor plan of certain buildings I haven't set foot in for over thirty years. (Or at least the parts I had access to.) I can remember which direction they are orientated in, and where the sun rose and set in relation to them. As me to do a drawing, as opposed to a diagram, and I will struggle due to poor art skills.

My drawing skills are more to do with the fact I have mild dyspraxia than my ability to visualise. My handwriting is pretty atrocious too for similar reasons. My visualisation skills are far from perfect but still much better than anything I can draw.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#466

Post by nephihaha »

woggy wrote: post #463
nephihaha wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think they write novels and film scripts, or draw from memory?

I'm not sure, when I try to picture something I just get the concept of it in my head. I thought people were just really good at taking that and working out how to draw it out. Makes a lot of sense to me now that some people can be so good at drawing.

When I try to write dialogue or scripts, I do play the conversation out in my head or even talk to myself... But when writing fiction, I definitely visualise.

I wrote a failed novel some years ago. There were several problems with it, but the geography was not one of them. I can still visualise the headland it's set on made of dark volcanic rock, the nearby village, the low lying islets off the coast and the rounded mountain at the end of the bay. I can visualise the routes between all of these, and they're entirely imaginary... Although nothing that would seem out of place in the real world. The locations play a large part in the story.

The brain does usually distinguish between internal visualisation and real life memories. When it doesn't, and hallucinations occur, that's when mental illness can arise.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#467

Post by the_gipsy »

jhedwards wrote: post #430
the_gipsy wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just have a different interpretation of how you "see" things. Sounds just like any other anecdote of getting distracted on the road, those can be dramatic, but nothing here points to actual visual hallucinations.

I think "visual hallucination" is something very different from the minds eye. The imagination is one source of visual experience, the eyes are another. A visual hallucination is when something goes wrong and the data from your eyes is contaminated or distorted in some way. In my case, my imagination can produce photo-realistic visual experiences which are strong enough to block out the data from my eyes. They don't…

Exactly, so you just got distracted on the steering wheel, happens to the best of us.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#468

Post by ksec »

lampiaio wrote: post #199
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…

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

It wasn't until this site did I know there are people with aphantasia but also have the ability to dream with at least some imagery details.

To answer your question. Nothing. It is just black. Not even a slight hint of shape of Eiffel Tower or even a tall rectangle or just outline of the structure. It is just nothing.

I sometimes think or wonder people who can dream and close their eyes and actually see things must have so much fun.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#469

Post by saghm »

ethbr1 wrote: post #456
vinceguidry wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Color is perhaps the worst thing to try to make this argument with. We can measure it with tools and there's entire industries that would fall apart if human color perception wasn't a knowable thing. Like, the whole Apple iMessage thing with the green and blue bubbles wouldn't, couldn't have even been a thing if human color perception weren't widely shared. We, like all mammals, have very similar neural architecture…

It's not the question of if objective physical green pigment is objective physical green pigment, but rather if what I see when I look at it is what you see (and not in the color blind sense, assuming neither of us are).

Except there are no people like the parent commenter insisting that everyone is capable of seeing their green if they tried hard enough or whatever

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#470

Post by theshrike79 »

asveikau wrote: post #114

I realized I have aphantasia after reading an HN thread about it a few years ago. I talked to my daughter about it and I realized she has it too. I've tried to explain it to people and they get confused. Just as I get confused about their perception; their imagination sounds to me rather like a psychotic hallucination, to exaggerate slightly. I've had some funny discussions about it. In the end there doesn't seem to…

It does affect things though. Like reading books.

I _HATE_ reading books that spend pages and pages explaining how things look to a very detailed degree even when it's not relevant to the plot in any way - it's just set dressing.

I can't see that. It's just word noise to me.

Now I noticed my kid has the same thing, they like other books and actively dislike others. It's the same as me, without me affecting their judgement in any way. Any book that spends too much explaining the environment is boring, books that just get on with the plot are a bit hit.

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