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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

#161

Post by King-Aaron »

nitwit005 wrote: post #150

I never find the ability to visualize things, or imagine voices or sound, too interesting, as I have never used those abilities to do anything practical. I do not rehearse words in my head before talking, or create an image in my head before drawing art. Doing art teaches you that you only have a general sense of what a lot of objects look like. People need reference for almost everything they haven't drawn before, a…

You are hopefully aware though that this is not the norm. Many (if not all) artists tend to visualise their work before and while they are doing it.

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

#162

Post by maroonblazer »

nitwit005 wrote: post #150

I never find the ability to visualize things, or imagine voices or sound, too interesting, as I have never used those abilities to do anything practical. I do not rehearse words in my head before talking, or create an image in my head before drawing art. Doing art teaches you that you only have a general sense of what a lot of objects look like. People need reference for almost everything they haven't drawn before, a…

When away from my instruments - guitar and piano - visualizing playing whatever pieces I'm working on is enormously valuable in that when I return to the instrument my retention is significantly improved compared to when I don't visualize my playing. I'm pretty sure this has been tested in RCTs, but I don't have them readily available.

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

#163

Post by flippingheck »

jaggederest wrote: post #155
flippingheck wrote: post #101

I'm pretty sure I have this, for all senses, and I only just learned there's things other than iñner eye (which I only learned of a few months). If people have an "inner taste" or "inner hearing", why bother eating a sweet or playing music? > Asked what sits beside the television, they answer without hesitation, but “we experience these as an awareness of a set of spatial facts.” This helps me understand what little…

> If people have an "inner taste" or "inner hearing", why bother eating a sweet or playing music? Because the interior version is strictly inferior to the real thing, at least for me. It's, maybe, 80% as good, but that last 20% is a real humdinger. Especially for music, I have a hard time hearing it in my head and not playing/singing/drumming along with it. Currently working on "Winds of Change" by the Scorpions as p…

80% is still pretty high!

Does 80% mean "tastes like a dull chocolate bar, but still basically a chocolate bar", or more like "like a nice chocolate bar but somehow 20% less enjoyable in some looser way"?

Perhaps this is why I can't identify the beat in the music.

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

#164

Post by jaggederest »

flippingheck wrote: post #163
jaggederest wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people have an "inner taste" or "inner hearing", why bother eating a sweet or playing music? Because the interior version is strictly inferior to the real thing, at least for me. It's, maybe, 80% as good, but that last 20% is a real humdinger. Especially for music, I have a hard time hearing it in my head and not playing/singing/drumming along with it. Currently working on "Winds of Change" by the Scorpions as p…

80% is still pretty high! Does 80% mean "tastes like a dull chocolate bar, but still basically a chocolate bar", or more like "like a nice chocolate bar but somehow 20% less enjoyable in some looser way"? Perhaps this is why I can't identify the beat in the music.

Like a nice chocolate bar, but echoed - so I can remember what it tastes like enough to want one, but not satisfy the urge to actually have one. Ephemeral, rather than satisfying.

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

#165

Post by buttercraft »

nitwit005 wrote: post #150

I never find the ability to visualize things, or imagine voices or sound, too interesting, as I have never used those abilities to do anything practical. I do not rehearse words in my head before talking, or create an image in my head before drawing art. Doing art teaches you that you only have a general sense of what a lot of objects look like. People need reference for almost everything they haven't drawn before, a…

I, for one, find it very practical.

I do a lot of thinking by visualizing relationships between concepts in a kind of graph. When I draw, I visualize the scene first. When I build widgets in my wood shop, I visualize the result and all intermediate states. When I was writing 3d renderers (a long time ago), it was immensely helpful to visualize the points and triangles in my head.

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

#166

Post by fwlr »

logicallee wrote: post #137
fwlr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Your words are not unclear! You are doing a fantastic job of using words that work very easily with mental imagery, and but not at all without. I said I didn’t understand horizontal because without mental imagery I have no “floor” for the ray to be parallel to - I could have found something to be the referent for the horizontal if I had to, but once I thought I had explained why “horizontal” was mentioned I stopped trying to figure it out further.

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

#167

Post by sowbug »

I'm aphantasic. I dream normally, seeing all sorts of imagery. I have accidentally had a couple lucid dreams in my lifetime, which got me interested in the methods to trigger them intentionally, all of which have failed.

The Wake Back to Bed (WBTB) method has been especially frustrating, because I'll see my usual nothing when my eyes are closed, but then for the very briefest instant I see a dream image that immediately disappears the moment I notice it.

I wonder whether whatever makes my brain aphantasic is also responsible for switching off those almost-lucid images.

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

#168

Post by saghm »

sowbug wrote: post #167

I'm aphantasic. I dream normally, seeing all sorts of imagery. I have accidentally had a couple lucid dreams in my lifetime, which got me interested in the methods to trigger them intentionally, all of which have failed. The Wake Back to Bed (WBTB) method has been especially frustrating, because I'll see my usual nothing when my eyes are closed, but then for the very briefest instant I see a dream image that immediat…

I have no clue if I'm aphantasic (I genuinely have trouble feeling like anyone describes anything resembling my experience in conversations like this), but I had many years of lucid dreaming from being prescribed medication for my insomnia as a kid. It started out being pretty much every night, and then slowly became less frequent until nowadays it's maybe once every month or so.

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

#169

Post by slibhb »

sowbug wrote: post #167

I'm aphantasic. I dream normally, seeing all sorts of imagery. I have accidentally had a couple lucid dreams in my lifetime, which got me interested in the methods to trigger them intentionally, all of which have failed. The Wake Back to Bed (WBTB) method has been especially frustrating, because I'll see my usual nothing when my eyes are closed, but then for the very briefest instant I see a dream image that immediat…

"Wake back to bed" works for me. I don't do it intentionally, I often wake up between 3 and 5, use the bathroom, go back to bed. It only triggers a lucid dream maybe 5% of the time but I've never had one without that.

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

#170

Post by jerf »

pohl wrote: post #140
vidarh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

I've also wondered whether this entire conversation is just all of us collectively talking past each other for the entire conversation and we all in fact have quite similar experiences. The recent use of brain imaging to examine this question is sort of interesting, in that perhaps it could concretely and relatively objectively answer that question. Though my interest is somewhat diminished by the questions that have been raised around the entire premise of brain imaging as a solution to this problem, e.g., https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1602413113 (2016), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32483374/ (2020), https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/e53/4032512 (2017).

I invite you to feed your own friendly AI these references then ask it to analyze the recent papers trying to study aphantasia and come to your own conclusions about whether they're actually doing all that much. My own suggested that while there are some improvements since the papers I cited that it is still difficult to say that they've solved the problems in those studies.

Still, directionally, while inferring from "brain activations" to qualia is a difficult path, if there was enough data to show big and consistent correlations that would tend to satisfy me that maybe there is some sort of real difference and we're not just talking past each other. It's not such a shocking claim that I need truly shocking evidence to believe it, just some support.

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