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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

#291

Post by sgc »

vidarh wrote: post #207
sgc wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there should be some focus on nature vs nurture here. At least some people have some degree of control over how they imagine things, and some training of when to use the best imaginative process as the tool it is would be useful. Struggling with a problem? Perhaps stop visualizing and try linearizing in monologue, or vice-versa, etc.

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

#292

Post by [deleted] »

devindotcom wrote: post #209
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.

[deleted]

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

#293

Post by [deleted] »

devindotcom wrote: post #209
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.

[deleted]

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

#294

Post by jaggederest »

vidarh wrote: post #230
jaggederest wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you draw them and then look at the drawing? I'm just wondering about the "bootstrap" ability, for lack of a better term.

I'm not sure what you're asking. Of course I can look at the drawing. But it still doesn't produce any image that persist when I'm not looking at it.

I guess I'm wondering about the fidelity, but I'm not sure what exactly I meant. Copy-of-a-copy kind of effect, basically.

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

#295

Post by saltcured »

jaggederest wrote: post #215
dudefeliciano wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how would non visual thinkers solve that?

Drawing? doing math around how many edges are common between the two? I turn it and count, but I could also do it other ways, including exploding it into flat shapes or conceptually understanding the nodes and vertices of the graph, or counting the edges and dividing by two since there are 6 total faces.

I am far along the aphantasia line and have spatial thoughts. They lack visual qualia.

I can't directly imagine visual features like color or brightness. It's more like being aware of the spatial positions and structures. Often, but not always, in a volumetric stage reachable by my hands.

I too can think of the cube as folded parts, i.e. one forming the top+front+bottom which the problem states are red, and one forming the left+back+right which the problem states would be blue. I don't really fold or unfold them as some sort of imagined movement, but am simultaneously aware of their in situ and flattened forms.

For the cube as a whole, rather than seeing and rotating it, I have a direct sense of the manifold and can attend to the faces one at a time. It is my attention that "moves" around this stage a bit like a 3D cursor, not an object or view being rotated or shifted. The faces don't have color, but I can attend to them in the order of the problem description to count off the "red" faces. I can also count the remaining unlisted faces or just re-count all faces if I need to confirm my tacit knowledge that a cube has 6 faces.

Both those approaches only work well for relatively simple structures like the cube. It is based in tacit knowledge I have about cubes, boxes, and rectilinear structures. If you asked for some arbitrary polyhedron, I could have a more amorphous sense of the shape and the fact it should be faceted, with ambiguity about its actual shape. I could not count nor attend to individual faces. I can't generalize to reason about origami paper/shape correspondences. I would need actual paper models for trial-and-error.

I can also think about dynamic systems with objects moving or even changing shape, but I wouldn't normally use that to "inspect" an object. My attention jumps around the static stage to examine it piecewise. There is no occlusion to avoid nor a viewing angle that improves my access to the topology information. I only think about movement when I am trying to examine a dynamic system's characteristics. And this can flip between thinking of actual animation and something more akin to having a static awareness of the motion vectors or paths.

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

#296

Post by sethammons »

kaffekaka wrote: post #289
sethammons wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It stretches credulity that someone can occlude their vision with their imagination. Like, you are staring at a dog, you can't imagine a brick wall in front of it and not see the dog any more. Similarly you can't not see the back of your eyelids. Your imagination can kick in and your brain does $THINGS. But the back of your eyelid is still what you are seeing when you close your eyes.

Occluding vision seems extreme yes, but what do you mean when you say "it is just imaginary"? What is an actual image? I ask because you seem to dismiss the notion that some people have stronger inner images than others.

I don't mean to sound dismissive of differing imaginary intensity. It sounds, to me, like people are confusing _imaginary_ vs _hallucination_. Sure, some people imagine a stop sign as an HDR image with a back story and others as "red octagon."

I think that language is hard and it sounds, again, to me, like there are people who think there are AR/VR like experiences when someone closes their eyes. That makes as much sense to me as not seeing the back of your eyelids. People are not "seeing" things - they are "imagining" things to various fidelities.

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

#297

Post by khazhoux »

razodactyl wrote: post #290
khazhoux wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I’m exactly like you. My ability to replay music sometimes surprises me. Sometimes I’ll hear a song on the radio I haven’t heard in decades and be able to anticipate tiny details precisely (like, “here’s where the harmonica comes in in Karma Chameleon” or “here’s where the fretless bass is gonna bend a note”. You?

It comes as language to you? I just anticipate it as if a sound is playing in my mind?

Just as sound, not language. When hearing sing in my head I’ll hear the little details. When listening to song on radio I’ll know when those details are coming, even if I haven’t heard the song in ages.

Same with you I imagine?

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

#298

Post by teunispeters »

Swizec wrote: post #31

For anyone who doesn’t believe this is real, I recommend reading Thinking In Pictures. It’s a great book. Explains 3 types of thinking that people use in their day-to-day: Linear verbal, schematic conceptual, and photo realistic. It’s all a spectrum so you likely use all 3 to an extent. Most people think linearly and sort of describe things in their mind that they’re trying to imagine. It’s a picture but not really.…

Schematic conceptual, and several other modes not listed. I only do verbal with concentration, and never photo.

NOT a picture, I'm aphantasiac. Map, maybe, sort of works. But mapping (mathematics concept) works in some ways superior to the idea of "2d map". GIS associations for instance are intuitive and obvious to me, but so are dictionaries.

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

#299

Post by bobsmooth »

etcetcetcetceta wrote: post #254
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 don’t have closed eye visuals Nobody does, this is all unfalsifiable nonsense, it's an artifact of the language used to describe imagination.

No, we really do. Do you ever get a song stuck in your head?

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

#300

Post by jjk166 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #246
sph wrote: post #237

I keep reading about people with aphantasia in threads like these, and I never hear from who don’t have it explain what do they see and how vivid it is. Does everyone have aphantasia? Is it like ADHD where finding a person that doesn’t claim to have it is pretty much impossible?

I would like to know especially what is the perceived difference between normal imagination and hallucination. The way people with mental visualization explain it it sounds basically exactly what I always imagined hallucinations to be like. And e.g. closed-eye visuals on psychedelics. Why is it so special to have closed-eye visuals when most people have closed-eye visuals anyway?

The difference is when you imagine things normally you are aware that you are imagining them and you have full control over them. I can picture an elephant in the room with me, I can change its size or color, I can give it a top hat, and critically I can make it go away at will. If you're hallucinating, it's just there, however it happens to be, and while you might be able to reason that it's more likely a hallucination than reality, that doesn't make it feel any less real, nor give you control over it.
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