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I still think this is fundamentally about how difficult it is to describe qualia.
Aphantasiac here, happy to discuss or answer any questions
e.g. if you put your hand behind your back and move it up and down randomly, then stop suddenly, can you tell if it's stopped closer to your legs than your neck?
i cant think of a better test for it :( (clinicians?)
I still think this is fundamentally about how difficult it is to describe qualia.
I think this is cope to avoid the realization that some people are walking around with drastically different life experiences.
It's probably a spectrum like a lot of things are, except in this case it is exceptionally hard to to know where you fall on it. The gap may not be as wide as it sounds. Almost everyone is still a functioning thinking human afterall. If the gap were so wide it seems like there would be more obvious giveaways in human behavior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does you mother look like?
She's 5 ft tall, sharp features, curly white hair. i can remember imagery facts, but have not visual memory
Aphantasiac here, happy to discuss or answer any questions
Edit: this comment is shadowbanned, apparently because of a keyword filter.
Aphantasiac here, happy to discuss or answer any questions
Does it apply to audio as well? If you think of a song you know well, do you feel like you "hear" the music in your head, as though playing back an audio file? If you think of a movie scene you've seen, what is that like? Can you recount what was in it, even if you can't "picture" it? Or does this also prevent you from recalling the details of the scene?
And yet, I can somehow imagine the look of a specific person or thing. I can't really see it as a vivid image, like actually seeing something in real life, but I have a sense of imagining it as visually distinct from any other image.
My audio imagination is top-notch though, I can replay songs and sounds in my head perfectly and vividly.