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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

#311
post #18
post #3

Aphantasiac here, happy to discuss or answer any questions

That's an embarrassing question, so no real need to answer it. But... men, ahem, like to imagine sometimes, well, naked ladies. As a substitute. When they don't have a partner and no pornography. But people with aphantasia can't imagine anything. This sounds like a significant practical hurdle. Is it? (Unless one thinks masturbation is bad anyway.) Edit: this comment is shadowbanned, apparently because of a keyword f…

Speaking for myself: I don't miss what I never had. But I can remember or imagine sensations, which seems more relevant to me anyway? (Again, I can't compare to what I've never experienced.)

It's an interesting angle to investigate though. Eg is there a reliable or at least common connection between aphantasia and response to porn? Again speaking for myself as someone with pretty total aphantasia, visual porn does very little for me. I guess it did as a kid, but I think that was more about finding things out? Video can work, but only by communicating actions that appeal to me. Most of it seems almost entirely pointless; I had never considered the possibility that it's because vision isn't as connected to experience for me as much as it seems like it is for most other people? I guess I've just always imagined that other people were better at relating to the experience of the people in the images or videos.

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

#312
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am fully aphant, but when i played the trombone it absolutely helped me to rehearse purely mentally during the day before a test. There wasn't anything visual about it, though. I just went through the motions mentally, over and over.

Outside of that, the whole visualization to practice idea rarely does anything for me. (I still use the term visualization even now that I've discovered it doesn't mean for most others what it did for me!)

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you only remember facts, can someone else pretend to be that person you remember with those facts?

That's a fascinating question - I'm aphantasic and mildly face blind (I thought the two female leads in Disclosure Day were the same person for most of the movie and that we were jumping back and forth in her timeline). I've always assumed I'm face blind because of the aphantasia, but I know several aphantasics who have no problem recognising faces. In answer to the question though, no - even as someone with face bli…

Heh. I hate that about movies. Then when I finally figure out who is who, one of them changes their hairstyle and I have to figure it out all over again!

It's like the two Ryans who insist on pretending they're different people.

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