181–190 of 388 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven’t heard of Galtonism. From my experience as the colorblind child of native Russian speakers, it’s Daltonism (дальтони́зм). https://en.openrussian.org/en/colour-blind
Good lord, I had both of their wiki pages open, and STILL somehow D and G were the same letter in my mind. I should just delete my comment, but let it stand as a monument to my goof.
I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in their minds eye or if there’s really a fundamental difference.
I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer. —— “So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?” Yeah! “And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?” Yeah, you don’t have that? “So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“ Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it. —— …and around we go. Personally, I can see images w…
For me, not only was the color, variety, lighting, and texture crystal clear, but I noticed that when I mentally "cut into" the apple, I could see where the pigment from the broken skin cells had been smeared by the action of the knife into the fleshy white interior of the apple. This happened "by itself", I didn't have to try to make it happen. It was at a level of crisp detail that would be difficult to see with the naked eye without holding it very close.
That was the first time I had paid attention to the exact level of detail that appears in my mental imagery, and it hadn't occurred to me before that it might be unusual. Based on what other people describe of their experience, it seems pretty clear to me that there is real variation in mental imagery, and people are not just "describing the same thing differently".
Continuing with the post-it-note analogy, the note can only hold a small amount of information, and so the grudge will be recorded as something simple like "fuck ___, they're an arrogant twat". So then the situation arises where you're talking to someone else and they ask "what do you think about ___?"; and so you answer "I can't stand them, they're so arrogant"; to which they respond "oh really, how so?"; and you can't give an answer, because it wasn't written on the note.
I think this ties in with memories not making you feel the relevant emotions, because the emotion you felt was also just saved as a "fact". I have found though that if I step through all the facts of an "event" and consider each "moment" along the way, that I can often generate the relevant emotion. So say I was remembering an argument, I can remember various facts about the argument and that I was angry about it, but I can't feel that anger. But if I walk through the moments, like `they said this, which made me think that, to which I rightly responded with...`, then eventually I'll start to feel angry just like I would have.
For an analogy on how I think memories are stored differently: then for non-aphantasiacs, I reckon their brain must save `memory.zip`, which contains `video, audio, smells, emotions, etc`. For a person like myself with aphantasia however, it's like I asked ChatGPT for a summary of `memory.zip`, and then I only saved the summary.
Saying that though, I do wonder about the connection between "fact based memories" and aphantasia's lack of mental imagery. Because if >50% of the usefulness of `memory.zip` is from the video, but you can't "see" the video because you aphantasia — then has your brain decided/learned to not bother saving `memory.zip` and instead just save the summary, or are all components of `memory.zip` also corrupt/unplayable?
I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in their minds eye or if there’s really a fundamental difference.
In my case, I can distinctly remember my experiences from before the infection, and recall a clear difference in visualization capabilities before and after.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer. —— “So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?” Yeah! “And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?” Yeah, you don’t have that? “So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“ Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it. —— …and around we go. Personally, I can see images w…
It's like hearing a song in your head, you can listen to it and maybe keep time roughly but if someone asks you what instruments there are you might not be able to get all of them, or might not remember the drums or the baseline. It's all much more vague. If you asked me to remember my childhood home I can visualise 'all of it' in my head, but maybe not what the type of bricks are like, or where all of the windows we…
I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in their minds eye or if there’s really a fundamental difference.
I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer. —— “So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?” Yeah! “And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?” Yeah, you don’t have that? “So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“ Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it. —— …and around we go. Personally, I can see images w…
Like when in school I'd imagine graphs lines before drawn or best example is a cad test and from reading the directions I could get an idea of what I was about to draw in cad
Man made computers in our image, it use to be a job title.
I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in their minds eye or if there’s really a fundamental difference.
I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer. —— “So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?” Yeah! “And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?” Yeah, you don’t have that? “So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“ Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it. —— …and around we go. Personally, I can see images w…
In college, especially when I was studying Japanese and had to memorize a lot of shapes, I could look at a poster filled with characters and recall it hours later to translate those characters. Your mind is a muscle and it gets better with exercise, and grows weaker when lazy.
This has always been interesting for me, as I think I have aphantasia but also can vividly experience taste in the same manner as if I'm eating foods. In other words, if I think about, say, spaghetti & meatballs, I can feel the exact sensation of the taste of the spaghetti & meatballs. I can even vary aspects of the dish without much effort (e.g. adding dusted parmesan, basil, the pasta is more/less al dente, etc). I…
Fuzzy isn't even the best word to use though. It's not fuzzy but lacking detail while at the same time my brain isn't comprehending that it is lacking detail. It is almost as if my brain can only focus on a few aspects of the picture at once with the most striking characteristics being rendered while the other parts are inferred or filled in with the most perfect placeholder - something that perfectly represents the idea of what is missing, but which it is not.
None of my other senses suffer from this. I can smell pumpkin pie or treated lumber on command. I can conjure music in my head all day (and often do without trying). I can metalize the feeling of cold or warmth. I too can taste spaghetti and meatballs. When I read that my mind immediately went to those cheap pre-made meatballs in the frozen section, my teeth cutting through those dense almost hard meatballs that are somehow so bland yet over spiced.
I also wonder how much of our differences are often our inability to communicate our experiences in a sufficient manner.
I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in their minds eye or if there’s really a fundamental difference.
I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer. —— “So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?” Yeah! “And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?” Yeah, you don’t have that? “So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“ Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it. —— …and around we go. Personally, I can see images w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried a dream journal? We forget most of our dreams because we might have them at 2 am and wake up at 7 am. If you wake yourself up in the middle of the night one or two times, you're more likely to have been in the middle of a dream, and it's still up there in your brain enough to write down. The more you do this, the easier it becomes.
Personally I strongly do not want to get better at remembering dreams. At the moment I very rarely remember anything about dreaming, and on the very rare occasion that some fragment of memory from a dream pops into my head it is super confusing until I identify "oh, that must have been from a dream". I prefer to keep my memory uncontaminated with random garbage :)
That phrasing of "carrying emotional baggage" stuck with me, because together we realized that people can relate to their dreams very differently. If she remembers a dream, she remembers the feelings and feels them all over again. I regard dreams as junk data, and can't imagine "feeling" anything about one longer than a few moments after I wake.