Some people can't see mental images • Hacker News Board

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#191

Post by goatlover » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:33 PM UTC

bigyikes wrote: post #71

the_af wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just remember how a candle is shaped its parts and similar characteristics If you do not somehow "see" the shape of the candle, how do you remember its physical characteristics? Is it like a list of physical properties in abstract form? An irregular cylinder of diameter X, longer than it's diameter, etc? I can see, in front of me, a lit candle if I wish it. I cannot claim it's picture-perfect, but I can see it; a…

Not the parent, but I relate to their experience. It depends on what you mean by “see”. It’s nothing like seeing with my eyes, and it’s nothing like dreaming. When I “see” it is abstract. There are impressions and sensations. I can recall the qualities of something - even the visual qualities - but it doesn’t feel like sight. Can you remember what something smells like? I can recall a foul smell, but I don’t recoil b…

What about memory? Do you occasionally have vivid memories of sight, sound or smell?

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#192

Post by yeellow » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:34 PM UTC

From my recent experience I believe you can train your mental vision, at least to some extent. I play chess and the ability to imagine a position and moves in your head is quite common among chess players, but I was always struggling with it. I could not see the board clearly in my mind and when I was doing exercises on telling the color of a given square I was checking coordinates parity, as I could not see it in my mind. Only recently I tried to train chess vision starting with 3x3 board, than extending to 4x4 and finally glueing 8x8 with 4 4x4 boards. To my surprise after a while I started seeing the board more clearly and I could memorize some simple positions. I've noticed that my general mental vision improved significantly at the same time. If you don't play chess you can start with playing tic tac toe in your head, focusing on seeing the board and marks. I think such exercise is better than imaging an apple, because you can objectively check if what you see is correct. Any board game would do, but start with a small board, and extend only when you feel comfortable. Imagining horse moves on a 4x4 board, focusing on seeing square colors helped me a lot.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#193

Post by khazhoux » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:34 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #127

jdadj wrote: post #101

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.

We all doof from time to time

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#194

Post by normalaccess » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:35 PM UTC

andy99 wrote: post #7

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.

For me it's a gradient, depending on how tired I am. I can go from fairly vivid mental image to full on seeing things with my eyes closed. It's that window when falling asleep that is the most impactful visually and very close to lucid dreaming.

So I would say yes, it is like you are seeing things but in your "minds eye".

If you can "hear" music in your head when thinking about a song it feels about the same as "seeing" without seeing. It's imagery but from a different place.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#195

Post by Xiol » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:38 PM UTC

seneca wrote: post #132

tekacs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the Aphantasia Apples? https://lianamscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/f4c55-1_b... As in: if you look at this image, can you place yourself on a scale of 1 - 5 of with what kind of fidelity you can picture an apple if you try to imagine it? I'm a 5 for example, and in asking many people this question I've gotten a solid spectrum of answers from 1 - 5. Generally in a single group of a handful of peop…

I fully believe this to be real, but I struggle to internalize that there are people who genuinely can't picture an apple. That is a very useful simple tool. Thank you for sharing it. Even this feels like only a partial scale. I can picture what an apple looks like, rotate it in my, and see how light would reflect off of it as it moves. How about smell? Can you call you mind what it would smell like to slice open an…

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'm also a 5.

I can do none of the things you describe. I know how an apple looks, smells, tastes and sounds when you cut into it, but I can't visualise or hear those sounds at will. I cannot call to mind any visual image of an apple.

I also can't visualise my wife or children's faces, although again, I know what they look like (so it's not face blindness).

I do think I also have SDAM as well, which I think quite often goes hand in hand with total aphantasia.

Hasn't really affected how I go about in the world. I don't feel deficient in any way. It was only a few years ago I found out my experience isn't what the majority experiences.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#196

Post by loco5niner » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:38 PM UTC

happytoexplain wrote: post #36

I have no real basis for this, but I always suspected that the majority of differences in ability to picture things is actually just a difference in semantics about terms like "visualizing", "picturing", etc. I don't think anybody is "literally" envisioning things, as in hallucination. On the other end, I don't think anybody is actually unable to "think of" what a thing looks like. But it's really difficult to object…

It's not a confusion of terms. I can easily conjure up picture-quality images in my head, whether my eyes are open or closed. Compare that to my wife who says she can't even see my face in her head, at all, and has a hard time recognizing faces to the point where she asked my not to do anything about the red dot on my face (broken capillaries) because that's one way she recognizes that it's me. She can't see images in her head. She can't recall visual memories in her head, she sometimes struggles to remember which shelf the cups go when emptying the dishwasher. Perfectly normal and smart and capable. Not arguing that it's binary, but there are distinct ends of the spectrum. It might also be stronger for me because I tend to 'think' in pictures when the problem calls for it and it's a 'style of thinking' I'm used to.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#197

Post by tavavex » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:38 PM UTC

tarentel wrote: post #185

kraftman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not quite. I have had a lot of musical training and have a very good musical memory. I can write down songs from my head or hear a song and write it down later, depending on how complicated it is, usually with only 1-2 listens, or play it back, etc. I can visualize things in my head but it is a lot more abstract, or rather, harder to explain.

I think the person you're replying to didn't describe it exactly. It's not really about how good your memory is, I think. It's that no matter what, "replaying" the song in your head isn't going to bring about the same reaction as actually physically hearing music. It's like a simulation, a higher-order perception, thinking of yourself hearing it rather than willing yourself to really hear it in the same way as usual.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#198

Post by chao- » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:39 PM UTC

Anonyneko wrote: post #81

abetusk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The test is this: Close your eyes and try to visualize an apple. Do this for 30 seconds or so. Try to visualize the skin, the reflection, the texture, the stem, the depth, etc. Try to hold a stable mental picture of that apple. After the 30 seconds, rate your ability to picture the apple from 1 to 5, where 1 is complete inability and 5 is as if you were looking at a picture of an apple for those 30 seconds. 1 is apha…

I can visualize an apple, somewhat vaguely, but I've never been able to hold a stable mental picture of anything for longer that a split-second. It just blinks out of existence the moment I "see" it, which makes it rather dysfunctional... Not at all the case with sounds though, I can play back some of the music tracks I listened a lot to, flawed of course but still recognizable. My brain even starts doing it on its o…

I also am often kept awake by my brain playing songs, wishing my brain would stop.

A friend of mine spent about a month very focused on the aphantasia discourse, polling everyone he knew about little details. It forced me to consider it a bit as well, but I never quite landed on an understanding of how much a person's exposure/experience is a factor, versus what is (assumed to be) innate or genetic.

Where it was most interesting was when he asked whether I could imagine music or a song. In that area, I seemed to have a more realistic imaginary experience than any of the friends he had surveyed. I am classically trained in music (and ultimately am not very skilled), so I wonder to what degree I would have this level of clarity with recalling sounds, or even imagining new sounds or songs, if I had not been trained for years in music.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#199

Post by neRok » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:40 PM UTC

neRok wrote: post #183

Regarding "a propensity to hold grudges" and "easily move on, forget, not hold grudges": I find this to be the case. I can easily hold a grudge, because it's like the grudge is a post-it-note stuck to the front of my book-of-knowledge. This means I can readily recall the grudge, and that I can also easily forget/move-on from the grudge (just remove the note). Continuing with the post-it-note analogy, the note can onl…

Just to elaborate on the "fast-facts"/post-it-note point I made: it seems there's actually a lot of "facts" ("conclusions") stored in a readily available manor in my brain. All the references/data that lead to these conclusions are stored in some deeper "archive" section though, and aren't readily available.

I guess you could compare them as if they are API's to different LLM's, and my "consciousness" is the web-browser. So it's like;

  - `fast_facts.llm` is a micro model with good breadth and fast response times, but it has little depth. So it's API can be fetch'd without worrying about it blocking the main-thread/browser.  
  - `all_data.llm` is a full size model, but it's slow to respond, and "costs" more to run. So in the browser, it is only lazily-loaded (ie, not always used), and it has to be called async style because you have to wait for the results to slowly "stream in".

And stream they do, because back to my example conversation where someone asks "how are they arrogant?" — whilst I likely wouldn't immediately remember any examples (unless they happened very recently), at that point the request to `all_data.llm` would have been sent, and so after some umm's and ahh's, I might have an answer. Or I might just say "I can't remember off the top of my head, but also ..." start talking about something else, and then after 30 seconds I will drop the classic "but actually, i just remembered, ...".

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#200

Post by seneca » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

Xiol wrote: post #195

seneca wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully believe this to be real, but I struggle to internalize that there are people who genuinely can't picture an apple. That is a very useful simple tool. Thank you for sharing it. Even this feels like only a partial scale. I can picture what an apple looks like, rotate it in my, and see how light would reflect off of it as it moves. How about smell? Can you call you mind what it would smell like to slice open an…

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'm also a 5. I can do none of the things you describe. I know how an apple looks, smells, tastes and sounds when you cut into it, but I can't visualise or hear those sounds at will. I cannot call to mind any visual image of an apple. I also can't visualise my wife or children's faces, although again, I know what they look like (so it's not face blindness). I do think I also…

This is incredible to me. I wonder if you have some other mechanism of "knowing" or recalling that I don't that substitutes in. It's entirely possible, given that so many people report not being aware their experience is atypical.

I find this absolutely fascinating. I appreciate you sharing.