I love this debate. It'll never be solved, and the best argument is literally "are you sure?". You have no idea what I can see in my head, and I have no idea what you can see.
Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
251–260 of 476 posts
Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#252It would take a lot to convince me that aphantasia or phantasia actually exist. Let's talk very specifically about the afterimage test here. Can anyone confirm that they have this ability, which specifically is to superimpose imagined objects inside your actual field of vision? If the answer to this is yes, then okay, I guess I have aphantasia. But none of the other criteria seems to apply. I can imagine a song, and…
They absolutely exist. I have a VERY strong minds eye and can invent and watch movies if I want to. Once I was driving while my friend described a post-apocalyptic landscape. I was seeing that landscape and not the road. Suddenly (some part of my brain was still paying attention, thankfully) the road rushed back to me and I saw that the cars in front of me had stopped. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid an accident…
Right away the story is impossible to verify. What does "I was seeing that landscape and not the road" actually mean? You can't answer that, and neither can I. I will never, ever, know what you mean by that.
I can guess, and I definitely have already done so.
Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#253Do any other aphantasia folks have the experience of like, that one time they saw a very vivid image, but it only ever happened once for a short time? That happened to me a few years ago. It was a very interesting experience. It’s surefire subjective proof that aphantasia is real - the image I saw was so vivid and colorful, even animated. I can say for sure that I almost never have that experience. At the same time,…
I distinctly remember as a child watching Garfield the cartoon cat walking on the sofa. I remember explaining to my mother how cool that was that I could actually see him as real as anything.
I don't know when that ability faded. I think it was early because didn't really notice until people started talking about it recently. I can paint and draw. I can think about how things look. But, I don't see them. If I'm on the edge between awake and asleep I can force visualization as a lightweight lucid dreaming.
When I code, I think about data structures and algorithms using a mental proprioception. Putting things in space, moving them around. But, I have to remember where they are. Like playing the shell game with your eyes closed.
Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#254You know, I have learnt that I have aphantasia several years ago and it opened my eyes to many things. I have thought that people say a lot of things metaphorically. - Imagine a beach when meditating - If you are nervous about giving a presentation, imaging that the audience is naked - Count sheep in order to fall asleep fast - Undressing someone with your eyes - Visualising what is happening in the book you are read…
Same. This, and also the fact that it is also very highly associated with SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory) -- which I also have. And also, reasonably associated with ADHD -- which I also have, but only recently realised and assessed for at the tender age of 46. The SDAM is particularly useful to be aware of, otherwise you go crazy trying to understand why you remember how much your local pizza cost b…
We strongly suspect we have SDAM as well and only more so after reading your description here. Only got diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago and as on the autism spectrum this year, here in our forties as well.
This whole topic fascinates us in no small part because we've gained or regained marked visualization capacity within the last year or so. Our change unequivocally correlates with our escape from and ongoing recovery from a long-term abusive relationship and all the dissociation that required of us and caused in us. That and no doubt some pharmacological assistance. It's been a wild ride, to remember having greater powers of visualization and then to come back into them.
Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But if i have my eyes closed, it's not like I see it in the black of my closed eyes. Only the excessively literal think that this is what people mean when they say they "see" an image in their mind. Everyone else understands what you describe (imagining an object and conjuring up an image in your mind ) as what the metaphorical "seeing" in "seeing in your mind" means. What you describe, about imagining an apple, th…
Isn't this contracted by comments in this very thread? e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469205
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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#256Not that this needs treatment (or is even curable), but I wonder how many people misdiagnose themselves as having aphantasia because of differences in how imagination works. Red apple test just doesn’t seem to be thorough enough. There were spikes of lactose intolerance, gluten intolerance and all sorts of other self-diagnosed deviations from the norm that has no connection to reality, its some quirk of human psyche…
This is the correct conclusion. We have no shared, objective way to label our visual experience. We will never know the truth here. This is indeed a quirk of human psychology powered by internet trends that encourage people to find reasons to feel their health is special and unique.
Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But if i have my eyes closed, it's not like I see it in the black of my closed eyes. Only the excessively literal think that this is what people mean when they say they "see" an image in their mind. Everyone else understands what you describe (imagining an object and conjuring up an image in your mind ) as what the metaphorical "seeing" in "seeing in your mind" means. What you describe, about imagining an apple, th…
Isn't this contracted by comments in this very thread? e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469205
Ever been lost in thought and ignored your external senses? That's what they're describing, but with visual imagery included and not just however you may normally experience thoughts.
Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#258I've known about aphantasia for a long time, but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? When I was in second grade, our teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine a pretzel. I closed my eyes and tried to will a pretzel to appear as an image, and I failed miserably. All I saw was darkness and faint squiggles. I didn't understand why so many of my classmates said they could "see" the pret…
I can "hear" a song at will. I can "hear" it well enough to think about the instrumentation, etc. I can't "visualize" a pretzel. I go into an analytical mode and a gut-level physical mode, thinking about pretzels and their different aspects with momentary "pops" of "visualizing", but they aren't stable and continuous, the way I can imagine a song or any sound. Oddly, I started life as a visual artist before computers…
Greetings fellow music-hearer.
My s/o will sometimes get irritated when I'm silent for a while on a car trip or at dinner. I'm not trying to be rude, I just get caught up in a song, just as if it were playing in the room. Vocals, drums, instrumentation and effects, the whole thing is just right there.
I can visualize things, usually scenes and favorite places, but they are more abstract than the music is.
Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a dream I think I can see a whole world, but I actually can't. Upon closer inspection, only the relevant characteristics of the thing I'm "looking" at are actually "rendered" or "simulated", and the rest is filled in by a vague feeling of "yeah yeah trust me bro there's a world there" It's basically like AI Minecraft. You know, that project where someone trained a stable diffusion model to predict the next video f…
That makes sense and there are some philosophical questions about whether our own world may be rendered similarly to a video game - do the things not within our senses actually render? Or do they only 'load in' when we observe them? For me the real surprise is the fidelity of the visual I _do_ get. Sounds, sight, and touch feel just like real life (in lucid dreams especially now that I think of it). If the quality of…
Our world exists. Don't overthink it. But dreams aren't real at alll, they just fill in a bare minimum of data and handwave the rest. Which is also what I was getting at with my visual imagination, although the rest isn't handwaved away at all - if I think of an apple on a desk I'm under no illusion there's any more than a ("low res") image of an apple and part of a desk.
Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
#260I've known about aphantasia for a long time, but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? When I was in second grade, our teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine a pretzel. I closed my eyes and tried to will a pretzel to appear as an image, and I failed miserably. All I saw was darkness and faint squiggles. I didn't understand why so many of my classmates said they could "see" the pret…
I can "hear" a song at will. I can "hear" it well enough to think about the instrumentation, etc. I can't "visualize" a pretzel. I go into an analytical mode and a gut-level physical mode, thinking about pretzels and their different aspects with momentary "pops" of "visualizing", but they aren't stable and continuous, the way I can imagine a song or any sound. Oddly, I started life as a visual artist before computers…
How do you solve geometry problems. For lots of them I visualize / rotate things im my head.