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Some people can't see mental images

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Re: Some people can't see mental images

#281

Post by vanadium1st »

Speaking of the Apple test, as many other commenters here I truly believe that people who describe themselves as being at 1 are actually much closer to 4, they just aren’t aware of it or don’t understand the concept well. https://lianamscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/f4c55-1_b...

I’m an artist - I draw professionally and studied drawing in a group setting. It seems like a profession that would require the highest level of visual imagination. And I wish I could see clear pictures in my head, but I don’t. I need to have a reference in front of me, constantly compare it with my sketch, and refine it using knowledge and techniques that took years to learn.

When discussing this concept with my artist peers, many say they’re at 1. But they clearly aren’t - I can see that in their work process. There’s an immediate difference in art quality depending on whether the artist is drawing from reference or not. If someone could truly see the picture in their head and draw from it, they could skip years of art training and become good almost immediately. Such a genius would be clearly obvious to their peers. But I haven’t met a single person like that - it seems like everyone works with roughly the same hardware as I do and has to develop the same workarounds to become good.

I believe that Kim Jung Gi was a 1. I’m sure there were other historic geniuses with such a superhuman ability. But I’m also sure that 99% of people just aren’t there - whether they admit it or not.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#282

Post by suddenlybananas »

loco5niner wrote: post #196
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 i…

Prosopagnosia is not what aphantasia is.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#283

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

skinkestek wrote: post #231
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.

The way I understood it was the apple on a table test: I was asked to close my eyes and think about an apple. if you do it now, close your eyes for about 10 - 20 seconds and think very hard about an apple on a table. spacer spacer spacer spacer then immediately after opening your eyes tell me what color the apple was. For me and many others it is an absurd question. We only thought about the thing apple on the thing…

The apple was red.

I didn’t even try to imagine anything. Apples are just conceptually red by default. I can also tell you that it was tart, and crisp. I didn’t imagine those sensations either, they were just the first words that came to my mind when thinking about apples. The table is brown. I didn’t try to imagine anything table either, but the table in my kitchen, where there might be apples, is brown.

Can you see how this exercise is flawed?

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#284

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

lm28469 wrote: post #218
bigyikes wrote: post #15

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…

When people tell me they can see things in their mind I usually ask something like: "imagine a ball, can you see it?" "yes" "ok what color is it? " I never heard anyone say anything other than a variation of "hm I don't know". It's just an anecdote but still

“Yes — I can imagine it. A simple sphere, maybe sitting in a soft pool of light.”

“I’m picturing it as a bright red ball, glossy and catching a bit of light on one side.”

Great, huh? Except that’s what ChatGPT said when I asked it those two questions. It certainly isn’t picturing anything. If a robot which only ‘thinks’ in terms of chain-of-thought of abstract tokens can act as if it truly sees things, what makes you think this test has any validity at all?

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#285

Post by teamonkey »

kraftman wrote: post #260
teamonkey wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have aphantasia. I know what something looks like, I just can’t see it. It’s not like a written or verbal list though. I also have no internal voice so that wouldn’t make sense. It’s just like the concept of what I’m thinking of is right there in all its detail. Its extremely spatial - I’m thinking in 3D even if I’m not visualising it. On the visual side, sometimes if I try hard I can make out an amorphous blob. Mo…

If you think about something famous, like the Eiffel tower, or big ben, you don't picture them?

No. I’m remembering the Eiffel Tower as a very specific moment when I saw it the last time I went to Paris, but it’s more like a description of the scene.

Not really a description though, that seems… slow? The elements are all there just not in visual form.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#286

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#287

Post by maximus-decimus »

ivape wrote: post #33
sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

> He knew, of course, that people talked about “picturing” or “visualizing,” but he had always taken this to be just a metaphorical way of saying “thinking.” Now it appeared that, in some incomprehensible sense, people meant these words literally. This is the quintessential aphantasic experience. I still struggle to believe that other people "see" things in their heads.

So, if you watch a poor person begging for food on the street, how do you process that in the future? Do you rely on the remembered feeling and literal observation in words? How do you not remember what you saw?

How will you remember this comment in 2 hours? Will you visually see the words? You don't need to visually see something that happened to remember it happened or the idea of it. I don't need to visualize Harry Potter in my head to remember the fact he has a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead. I just remember the fact.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#289

Post by lll-o-lll »

ivape wrote: post #33
sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

> He knew, of course, that people talked about “picturing” or “visualizing,” but he had always taken this to be just a metaphorical way of saying “thinking.” Now it appeared that, in some incomprehensible sense, people meant these words literally. This is the quintessential aphantasic experience. I still struggle to believe that other people "see" things in their heads.

So, if you watch a poor person begging for food on the street, how do you process that in the future? Do you rely on the remembered feeling and literal observation in words? How do you not remember what you saw?

Adding a data point. I don’t think this is aphantasia, but rather SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory). For the future, the memory has to be recorded as facts as the original experience is gone. This means the emotions and other aspects cannot be experienced again. Recording things like, I saw this, I felt like this, I intend to do this.

Not all people who can’t visualise have this SDAM thing (though it is a common overlap), but SDAM means I would remember an event like this less than a problem at work (as an example), without intentional effort to transcribe it.

This sounds a bit cold, but it’s not as cold as it looks. If I read your description of the poor person begging for food, I am emotionally moved. In a similar way, if I examine my memory of the poor person begging for food, I am emotionally moved. I might not be reliving the experience, but the narrative I’ve preserved is enough.

This is why I like listening to my wife describe things we’ve done together. I often don’t remember it, but the narrative is still emotionally impacting. She’s my external memory for things that have happened in our lives.

Re: Some people can't see mental images

#290

Post by mandolingual »

jibbit wrote: post #268

If you could see a photographic-quality image in your mind, you could answer questions about it the way you’d answer questions about a photograph in front of you. 'what’s written on the sign?' 'how many windows?' That's photographic memory. Since that’s not real, the 'normal visualization' everyone's comparing themselves to doesn’t exist either. Yet we keep treating as credible people who assert what others experienc…

'If you could see a photographic-quality image in your mind, you could answer questions about it the way you’d answer questions about a photograph in front of you'

...yes. I wouldn't describe it as photograph-quality, for me it's fuzzier and lower fidelity than that, but yes.

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