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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

#201

Post by al_borland »

misthop wrote: post #53
badgersnake wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure I have this. How did you find out?

When I learned through my sport career that visualize the race actually meant visualize and not just talk it through with your inner monologue. It was deeply reinforced when my wife first told me she sees an entire movie when she reads books.

I went to some seminars that talked about this a lot. How visualizing doing something perfectly can be as good, or better, than actual practice. There was also a lot of, “close your eyes, imagine a bike, what color is it?” type stuff.

Not being able to visualize anything, all of this fell very flat. It wasn’t until later I found out there actually are people who can visualize things as if they were happening. I have trouble wrapping my mind around what that must be like, but I bet all these visualization exercises make a lot more sense.

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

#202

Post by j_bum »

culopatin wrote: post #198

Aphantastic people of HN. Do you struggle remembering things in detail? My gfs family is all aohantastic and they just realized that it’s why they tell stories that are all a bit inaccurate. They remember the story but when placement, colors, shapes, etc come up, they can’t really tell you what it was. Comes up in weird ways

Yes. It’s called Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM).

I suffer from it quite badly. I can remember broad and important details, but struggle to remember even moderate details from anything beyond the past 2-3 months, with sharp falloff after that.

Once I started using Immich and was able to see my old photos from across adulthood and childhood (I used to just dump them onto HDDs), I experienced a sharp reconnection with myself and my past.

Maybe they could find something similar (Apple Photos, Google Photos, Immich, etc.)!

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

#203

Post by Twirrim »

asdfman123 wrote: post #187
antonvs wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, but the subject is not people with no imagination. It’s people whose imaginations aren’t visual.

I see

We don't... at least not in our minds anyway.

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

#204

Post by King-Aaron »

bnegreve wrote: post #191
nitwit005 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> They are struggling with what they're drawing looking wrong to them, until they're fairly far along and the shapes are fairly complete. In general I agree, but I have a counter example. I have a friend that has always been very good at drawing, and when he draws, it's immediately obvious that he has a very precise idea of what is going to happen. People often gather around him because it is entertaining to look at…

Yep, I often find the hardest thing is coordinating the hands to produce what the brain is showing. My frustration often stems from the meat gloves just not being fast or accurate enough to keep up.

(Designer/illustrator/animator, now software engineering.)

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

#205

Post by vidarh »

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 find these takes kinda insulting because they directly dismiss as false direct personal experience of a lot of us. I have experienced visualisation.

I know the vast chasm between the two states from direct first hand experience.

So do many others.

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

#206

Post by red369 »

r0ze-at-hn wrote: post #87

It has been a lot of fun talking to those who are Aphantasiac. I am the complete opposite to the point where I think almost exclusively in imagery and when talking to folks I translate visuals to words on the fly. For a long time when people said that they saw black when they closed their eyes I assumed that meant that they choose to "see black". This is less about being able to see and more how we utilize that. So w…

Thanks for the comment - I love the assumption about choosing to see black. I find it a very amusing reversal of the usual Aphant confusion about whether people are "literally seeing something with their eyes closed or not".

I'm fairly sure I used to commonly see things with my eyes shut when I was a kid, and now don't. That may seem like something that someone really couldn't be unsure of, yet I am!

I do see when I dream, although I'm not sure how vivid it is. I can occasionally see things vividly when falling asleep, and there was a period where I was practicing, and I felt I could visualise things more often. Sometimes I was literally seeing them with me eyes (closed), and other times it felt more like picturing with my mind's eye. I'm still confused about whether people are literally seeing with their eyes or not.

"...choose to see black" :)

Actually, I've just remembered Tolkien writes from the point of Dwarves, about Elves' memory being more like waking than dreaming. I don't know what I thought when I read it before I had heard of Aphantasia, but now it reminds me of the spectrum of mental imagery.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/w5g9iq/the_mem...

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

#207

Post by vidarh »

sgc wrote: post #185
vidarh wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 noticeab…

This entire conversation is new and fascinating to me. I used to be much more visual but I would say that my primary mode of thinking now is monologic. However I would never think to describe it as hearing. It is more like an imaginary 'voice' that is not the one I use with other people (it is absent timbre etc and just a much simpler more efficient voice abstracted from physical constraints). I use it to write out m…

For my part I have a constant droning monologue on my voice I can only stop by sleeping or intensely focusing, like meditation. It's unambiguously my voice, as if I'm about to speak, but my vocal chords just don't engage but the sound appears in my head instead.

My monologue uses several languages... But my monologue has always been there, since years before I learnt my second language.

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

#208

Post by D-Machine »

vidarh wrote: post #205
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 find these takes kinda insulting because they directly dismiss as false direct personal experience of a lot of us. I have experienced visualisation. I know the vast chasm between the two states from direct first hand experience. So do many others.

This is partly why only aphantasics argue for the "it is only semantics" explanation. For anyone else, this explanation makes no sense, because they have at least one vivid example showing otherwise. Only if you have no vivid visual experiences does this argument have any appeal.

Also the well-documented cases of acquired aphantasia are especially troubling for the skeptical "semantic disagreement" cases, given that acquired aphantasia is entirely within-person.

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

#209

Post by devindotcom »

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…

Interesting to me that three different people have responded with the same "I'm also aphantasic and dream normally" start to their message.

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

#210

Post by D-Machine »

bvanheu wrote: post #200
vidarh wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I "see something in my head" while dreaming, it is like seeing: There is a clear visual image. I don't see the black behind my eyelids. I can tell colours. I can tell shapes. When I "imagine" something while I awake, it is not remotely like seeing. There is no image overlaid on the "real world" whether obscuring the black behind my eyelids or anything else when they are open. I can't tell shapes, or colours. If…

I don't think "imagination" should be remotely like seeing. it's completely different than dreaming or seeing with your real eyes, I would qualify it as a "different sense" if you will. for me, it's much less detailed unless I focus my imagination on the less detailed part.

The distinction between imagination and seeing is regularly blurred, most commonly in dreams, but also on psychedelics or quasi-psychedelics (e.g. cannabis), and also in altered spiritual states (meditative practices).

The two experiences are different, most of the time, yes, but only "completely 100% different" IMO to aphantasics, or those who are high in aphantasia. I.e. hyperphantasia is a thing, and a normal thing for most people in altered states (and schizophrenia might be seen as involving an extreme form of hyperphantasia intruding where it shouldn't, in some cases).

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