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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#471

Post by theshrike79 »

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…

The best way I can describe is that my brain is a vector database. Stuff is linked to other stuff.

There is no visual component to any of it, it's just "feels" as the kids say.

I couldn't imagine any of my family's faces in my head even if my life depended on it. I'm not face blind, my brain just doesn't work like that.

I also have zero internal monologue. I can "talk" in my head, but it's just me, there's no discussion or multiple participants and none of it is unprompted. I'm pretty sure I'd have myself committed if I started hearing random voices or music in my head unprompted...

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#472

Post by theshrike79 »

My brain is like a vector database, it stores the "feelings" of information, not the actual information - if that makes sense?

I can make lightning fast connections in my head when something happens, like when something breaks in production, I see the symptoms and the vectors just connect from effect to the cause.

Can I explain to others why and how I know where the problem is? Nope. ...Or yes, but it'll take a long time for me to follow the feeling-vectors and put them into words I can actually communicate to other people.

For actual people and characters in books I also retain the shape and ...something about them, but I couldn't explain how most people in my life look like to a sketch artist.

When I read a book, I kinda retain the "feeling" of the characters and maybe one or two visual traits. I can read thousands of pages of a character's adventures and I can maybe tell you their general body type and clothing - if they have an "uniform" they tend to wear.

I've read all 5 books (over 5000 pages) of The Stormlight Archive and I couldn't tell you what Kaladin (the main character) looks like. I have no visual recollection of his hair colour, eye colour, skin tone or body type.

It always baffled me when a movie adaptation of a book came out and people were really upset that the characters looked wrong. And I was just "... you remember what the people in books look like??". It turns out they do.

Oh, and DEFINITELY no voice in my head. I'd get myself committed if I had someone talking to me in my brain

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#473

Post by theshrike79 »

jumploops wrote: post #229

Both my brother and I have aphantasia, though neither of our parents have it, nor 3/4 grandparents. What’s maybe most interesting, is that we both seem to have “spatial” perception. To try and be a bit more specific, when I think about “things” I can organize them in my mind in relation to other “things.” The most clear example is a path I’ve walked through a building, where the halls, rooms, and corridors are all co…

This is exactly how my brain works too, everything is related to everything.

A specific set of words can trigger a memory of a song for example.

There's a lot of "I know it when I see it" kind of things, I need to find one link in the path to the relevant thing to get there.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#474

Post by theshrike79 »

davidsojevic wrote: post #57
Artgor wrote: post #2

You know, I have learnt that I have aphantasia several years ago and it opened my eyes to many things. I have thought that people say a lot of things metaphorically. - Imagine a beach when meditating - If you are nervous about giving a presentation, imaging that the audience is naked - Count sheep in order to fall asleep fast - Undressing someone with your eyes - Visualising what is happening in the book you are read…

I only learned about aphantasia a few years back and, like you, so many things in my life just clicked when I realised I was an outlier. I could never relate with people when we'd read a book that had become a movie and they're like, "but they're not at all how I imagined them" and all I could think was "but the person in the movie has the exact characteristics described in the book!" When people would ask me to imag…

I remember the massive hubbub about the Mortal Engines movie specifically.

The only thing I remembered about the main character was that she had a scar on her face.

Fans were nitpicking every single strand of hair and I was like "You guys remember that, do you make notes when reading or what?". Apparently people visualize books so hard that they "see" the characters and remember them.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#475

Post by jibal »

estearum wrote: post #420
jpfromlondon wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not sure what could be motivating your reasoning here, but you've ignored several times the physiological evidence of differences in visual cognition between self-reported aphantasics and non-reporters that shows up in: fMRIs, skin conductivity tests, visual priming tests, and pupil dilation tests. Agreed no logical inconsistency, just very strange laziness and prickishness.

He doesn't even know what an argument is ... he says "MY argument is this:" and then just makes an assertion, not an argument. Of course there's no logical inconsistency in his raw assertion -- there's no logic of any sort. But what I pointed out about his previous comment is that he asserted that no one "sees" objects in their minds -- implying that it is those who claim that they do who are lying -- and then he attacked aphantasics as attention seeking and angling at it being some sort of disability (a remarkably stupid mischaracterization, but then that's true of just about everything he said, like his remarkably hypocritical accusation that I had a nerve touched -- I simply chose to fisk the incoherent ranting of a troll). So his whole "argument" is inconsistent in its framing and presentation and who he is criticizing. It's hard to call it logically inconsistent because there's no logic ... his claims don't flow from reason or evidence, just sheer emo. His utter irrationality, cognitive ineptitude, and bad faith are epitomized by his response to my demand that he prove his claims with saying "Precisely, unfalsifiable nonsense."

The guy has a lot of baseless and downright false opinions, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296897

And he seems to live in a perpetual state of annoyance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296897

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#476

Post by jibal »

jibal wrote: post #475
estearum wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what could be motivating your reasoning here, but you've ignored several times the physiological evidence of differences in visual cognition between self-reported aphantasics and non-reporters that shows up in: fMRIs, skin conductivity tests, visual priming tests, and pupil dilation tests. Agreed no logical inconsistency, just very strange laziness and prickishness.

He doesn't even know what an argument is ... he says "MY argument is this:" and then just makes an assertion, not an argument. Of course there's no logical inconsistency in his raw assertion -- there's no logic of any sort. But what I pointed out about his previous comment is that he asserted that no one "sees" objects in their minds -- implying that it is those who claim that they do who are lying -- and then he att…

Oops, the second link should have been https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49287006
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