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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

#171

Post by nitwit005 »

King-Aaron wrote: post #161
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.

Watch people draw, and you'll realize that can't be true, or at least is a very incomplete description of what's going on.

People have processes they go through to eventually get to something reasonably correct. Systems for drawing people, perspective rules, etc. These get extremely elaborate. They shouldn't need any of it if they could fully visualize the scene. They'd just need to copy that image to paper.

You'll hear people say things like "trust the process". They are struggling with what they're drawing looking wrong to them, until they're fairly far along and the shapes are fairly complete. Even when they're doing things correctly, their brain isn't recognizing it.

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

#172

Post by jongjong »

People with aphantasia probably overestimate how good it is.

I think I have good visualisation ability (based on spacial reasoning tests and ability to visualise complex software systems) but it's not like seeing something in real life; there is much less detail. Though on the plus side, I can manipulate the scene flexibly; I can zoom in, rotate, hover but a lot of detail is missing.

It's not blurry, it's more like what happens when you watch an AI-generated video of a four-legged animal walking and you didn't immediately notice that there was a fifth leg which popped out briefly before disappearing again... Or a bunch of mice are running around and one of the mice splits into two. It has a similar kind of quality where it's not constrained by the laws of physics and I only really see what I choose to focus on. What I'm not focusing on essentially disappears. I can zoom into some detail and it becomes clearer/more realistic but I sacrifice the big picture view. It's not uniformly vidid like something I see in real life.

Though I think the emotions I experience are the similar to reality (if it's a memory) so it feels like re-living the moment. The emotional and conceptual aspect is higher fidelity to me than the visual.

Overall though, my thinking style is very emotions-driven. I think I have a kind of synesthesia where every logical and visual concept in my mind is associated with a complex feeling.

But ironically, I don't usually act emotionally in my day to day. People I know would say I'm very rational but it's like my emotions themselves are rational if that makes sense. I feel complex emotions though not very strong ones.

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

#173

Post by hvs »

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'm also aphantasic and dream normally. The only time I've been "awake" and been able to visualize anything was the few times when I briefly woke up in the middle of the night and when I closed my eyes I was able to see a room in vivid detail but everything was in grayscale. This has happened multiple times and is probably more connected to being in sort of a "between-state" of waking and sleeping than the ability to actually visualize with my imagination.

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

#174

Post by passive »

Akronymus wrote: post #65
passive wrote: post #55

I've got a moderate form of Aphantasia, where there are images in my head, but I'm unable to fix them in place and extract information from them. So I might think you have green eyes, but if you tell me they are brown, I wouldn't be able to refute you from my own memory. Practically, it means I'm rubbish at remembering people. I've developed some techniques that help, but if someone changes their look significantly,…

> Practically, it means I'm rubbish at remembering people. I've developed some techniques that help, but if someone changes their look significantly, it's very hard for me to identify that it's the same person. Do you perhaps have a mild form of face blindness?

It definitely manifests as that to some degree, but since it extends to hair, clothing, what car they drive, I think it's a more general situation.

(But I'm also not specifically aware of face blindness as a condition, and had assumed it was generally some form of aphantasia.)

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

#175

Post by D-Machine »

jerf wrote: post #170
pohl wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

This is fairly conclusively disproven by far more than just fMRI / brain-imaging studies. E.g. aphantasics have problem with visual memory recall, visual priming, pupil dilatory and skin conductance responses when imagining light and/or fearful stimuli, and many other results (especially acquired aphantasia) that don't depend on brain imaging and obviously rule out semantic explanations. Likewise, rejecting the reality of the phenomenon also seems to require believing an extraordinary amount of error and/or conspiracy on the part of highly educated and insightful people that explicitly are saying the issue is not one of semantics / description. This is also not to mention the rich history of visualization practices in much of the worlds religions and esoteric practices (which make basically zero sense if this is all metaphor). See e.g. the discussion in a previous HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49464414).

> I invite you to feed your own friendly AI these references then ask it to analyze the recent papers [...]

Likewise, an unbiased AI prompt (or two prompts in separate sessions, with opposite biases) will clearly reveal the "semantics denialist" case has very little to stand on here. Yes, there are communication and linguistic issues, but these only cover a subset of ambiguous cases. Rejecting or denying the reality of aphantasia is an extremely strong indicator you are aphantasic, to some considerable degree.

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

#176

Post by dcw303 »

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'm also aphantasic and dream normally.

I have some intermittent ability to lucid dream. I have noticed that if I am acting as a "passenger", the imagery is vivid and I will be able to recall everything. Sometimes something in the dream will prompt me to think. It might be entering a phone number, or reading text. As soon as I engage the process of thinking, the imagery goes away. Long lucid dreams for me rely on me being able to remain in the passenger seat.

In my waking life I consider my aphantasia similarly - I can imagine things and get the briefest of a "snapshot" of an image, but any attempt to hold onto it means it vanishes - I don't know how that's related but I suspect that it is.

I know this is different to how I am wired for sound, because I have inner music, inner voices, etc. I can replay music at will, change voices, investigate and modify them, all with perfect quality of audio recall. Earworms can be really annoying ;)

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

#177

Post by ButlerianJihad »

“Science” this is not. It seems closer to religion. “Rewriting” imagination is an amusing oxymoron.

This distinction consists of sharing visions and describing your interior life that is ultimately intangible, beyond words, and unknowable to other human beings. There are no diagnostic criteria or indications, but drugs sometimes play a part. This is something that will garner a TikTok “community” of self-identified spectral faithful adherents.

There is no quantifying this; there is no standardized measurement except for ectoplasmic ghost sensors. How can empirical comparisons or baselines be established without a vocabulary or metrics?

Commenters in this thread are making claims about these but even further, judging and speculating on the interior lives and abilities of other people, hypothetical people, people you haven’t met. These seem problematic.

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

#178

Post by jerf »

D-Machine wrote: post #175
jerf wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 This is fairly conclusively disproven by far more than just fMRI / brain-imaging studies. E.g. aphantasics have problem with visual memory recall, visual priming, pupil dilatory and skin conductance responses when imagining light and…

It's possible, but "aphantasia is fairly rare" and "aphastastics abound on HN, even moreso than is apparent if there's a number of people like jerf who are aphantastic and still unaware despite even posting on stories about it" is a bit of an odd combination that I'm struggling with. Yes, I am well aware of the bias that only certain people post, as well as the distinct possibility that there are underlying correlations that could lead to our industry abounding in them. Though prior to this I would have thought quite the opposite given the association between visual processing and success in STEM and engineering.

One easy answer up there with "more study is needed" in terms of being a bit cliche, but cliche because it's often true, is that there may be a richer spectrum or something that isn't even 1-dimensional then we're currently able to grasp, which will become more clear over time and more study. Perhaps it's less rare than we think and the rareness is only those we can talk into agreeing their qualia really is different from others. Or the way we are describing it leads people in the "1-2 out of 5" category to declare themselves aphantastic on HN when they aren't really properly so.

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

#179

Post by logicallee »

fwlr wrote: post #166
logicallee wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

That's really interesting, thanks for your answers!
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