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People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

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Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#131

Post by vidarh »

majiy wrote: post #90
JoshTriplett wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not the person you asked, but a fellow Aphantast: I cannot imagine visually at all. End-of-Yoga-class imaginary journeys are completely useless for me. I'm also faceblind. But I can imagine music I'm familiar with without any problem, and have a inner monologue (it blew my mind when I learned that some people do not). Also I have visual dreams, but nowhere near to the level of details that I have heard other people d…

Some people have inner dialogues. Some authors are literally writing down what characters are saying in their head, and sometimes what they see them "do" as well.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#132

Post by vidarh »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #49
vidarh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people hear it more like a recording.

Yeah, I can do that, but I think it is the same thing on a spectrum, just like the visual imagination.

Hearing your own voice Vs high fidelity musical instruments and other people's voices seems like a very wide spectrum. And indeed, it is wider as some people don't hear anything at all, including no inner monologue (I know someone like that - she's a good writer, and it freaks people out to realise the she can't 'hear' the words before she writes them, which is weird, because my vocalisation of words I wrote noticeably lags my writing)

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#133

Post by vidarh »

jareklupinski wrote: post #68
vidarh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my part (as someone with aphantasia) my proprioception is good, and to go further, my sense of space and my spatial reasoning is well above average. I can also draw what I can't see pretty well from memory.

that's interesting too! i can visualize clearly, but have _terrible_ artistic skills; nothing in my head can make it out unless through CAD :)

My drawing style is different from memory, though. Clearer lines, vs closer to impressionist if I draw from something in front of my eye. The difference is quite stark.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#134

Post by vidarh »

jibbit wrote: post #108
misthop wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq

seems ironic (and not at all trustworthy)! if you're right, you can't actually imagine what being able to do it would be like

The people who question this usually turn out to clearly have aphantasia.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have achieved visualisation during meditation, once.

I also can visualise while dreaming.

I do not visualise while awake other than that one time.

The difference is extremely stark and very obvious.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#135

Post by karmakaze »

chiefgeek wrote: post #17

I’ve worked as a professional photographer for twenty years and I visualize absolutely zero with my eyes closed. It’s only recently that I learned of aphantasia. Even on most psychedelic journeys I don’t have closed eye visuals, NN-DMT being the consistent exception. Everything is more of just a “knowingness”.

I've also had this kind of topological knowingness which I couldn't name. Another comment here says "schematic conceptual" which captures what it feels like for me.

Another good explanation here is that it's all taking place but that last step of creating the visual is suppressed (as intended) while conscious as that would be hallucinating.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#137

Post by logicallee »

fwlr wrote: post #122
logicallee wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's correct. How do you answer this one: a hollow cube lying with one face on the horizontal like a die on a table has a hollow pyramid inside with the same base horizontal on the bottom like a usual pyramid. Inside the pyramid is as large a sphere as will fit. A horizontal ray is cast from outside of the cube through the entire structure, passing through each surface it would hit. The location of the ray is n…

This is a bit more stream of thought, hopefully that is helpful. The pyramid can’t take up all the space inside the cube, only another cube could do that. So there must be some points that are “inside cube, outside pyramid” and other points “inside cube, inside pyramid”. The pyramid is given as wholly inside the cube so there are no “outside cube, inside pyramid” points. Same for sphere inside the pyramid. So it’s {…

yes this is correct. Thanks for writing that out, it's really interesting to read how you solved this without picturing it.

It's a bit surprising to me that it was unclear what I meant by horizontal/level, I thought this word is well-known and easy to understand. Here's what I mean by horizontal: For me, it means that with respect to the ground, the ray isn't rising or falling as it travels, i.e. it's level (like a plane flying in level flight with respect to the ground, not rising or falling). This constraint doesn't really matter I guess, except that I said that the cube is also level on the ground on one of its surfaces, so since you have to cast the ray in a horizontal/level way, you can't cast the ray at an angle through one of the corners so it goes through the opposite corner of the cube, since - if you think of the ray like a plane - you can only move the angle of the ray side to side not up and down, it stays in level flight = horizontal, so you can't cast it through both opposite corners if the cube is lying flat on the horizontal on one of its surfaces. As I just wrote this paragraph, I pictured what my description of casting through both corners the would look like and why it's not level with the ground anymore. I guess it's harder to follow my words without picturing it.

You mentioned it's not clear how being horizontal constrains the ray, based on what I wrote and what I meant about it being level, is it now clearer how this constrains some of the rays that can be cast? (Like how you can't cast a ray through the opposite ends of the cube now)? Or is that hard for you to follow? For me I think maybe my words could be written in a bit confusing way but I think someone can understand them if they can picture what I referred to. Without that mental picture it could be difficult though.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#138

Post by Izkata »

izzydata wrote: post #15
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is cope to avoid the realization that some people are walking around with drastically different life experiences.

I think a lot of people that can "see" in their mind are over-estimating their ability and a lot of people who can't are under-estimated their ability. 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 l…

> If the gap were so wide it seems like there would be more obvious giveaways in human behavior.

There was a couple who streamed on youtube who reacted to meme compilations, and years ago one of the things they reacted to referenced a similar topic. During that stream everyone learned the woman has no inner voice (including herself, she'd never even thought about it before and had no idea an inner voice was a thing).

While he was asking her what it was like, he brought up the voiceovers in tv and movies that were supposed to represent a character's thoughts. She had no idea that's what it was supposed to be, and always just thought it was some nebulous narrator describing what was going on.

I think any such signals would be a similar "wrong mental model" situation where you can usually only tell by poking at it with very specific questions or actions.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#139

Post by vidarh »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #126
vidarh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have aphantasia as well, but have had visuals once during meditation, much clearer than in dreams. I've never managed to repeat it. Does it happen regularly for you? Any tips? Like you my spatial reasoning is very good, but no image.

This makes no sense if you can visualize things when you’re dreaming your brain has no problem visualizing things it’s just correctly suppressed when you are awake

It's not suppressed for the vast majority of people. If you consider that "correct", odds are you too have aphantasia.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#140

Post by pohl »

vidarh wrote: post #124
_ink_ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but also fully aphant: yes, I have visual dreams. I is very hard for me, to tell whether I also hear things in my dreams, but I think yes. For other senses, I am quite sure that I don't experience them while dreaming.

Same here. The fact that I see things in my dreams is one of the reasons I feel I can know for certain I don't see things when I "imagine" things.

I'm still not sure the real difference isn't just where people draw the line in generalizing what it means to "see" and "hear" things.

My dreams are more vivid than when I imagine an apple, but I still call it "seeing something in my head"—even when I know that it isn't exactly like "seeing"—and the sensation is different enough that I wouldn't blame someone if they chose to avoid calling it "seeing" something.

How can we be sure that we're not just labeling the experience differently?

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