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Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

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Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#331

Post by costco »

beaugunderson wrote: post #330
costco wrote: post #304

I don't see anything. I feel like we're talking past each other. I am skeptical that "visualize an apple" to some people gets them the mental equivalent of a Blender model where they get a 360 degree view of the image and from there they are able to apply arbitrary transformations. I can "replay" songs in my head with pretty good fidelity to the original if I remember enough of it, but I think that's fairly common.

Can you change the songs you replay in your head? I think there is a spectrum of audio imagination as well. For example, I can speed up/slow down, add reverb, change pitch, remix, change lyrics, etc.

Yeah I can do pretty much all of those. I'd prefer being able to do this sort of thing with images though :\

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#332

Post by listenallyall »

azurelake wrote: post #314
listenallyall wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "actual experiences". Normal people can not imagine an object like a red apple and actually see it, same as if one existed right in front of them. They can "visualize" it (just like you, it sounds), as in they can think of what it looks like, they would recognize one, they can even imagine broader scenes involving this apple (like an entire grocery aisle) but there is no "actual experience." You couldn't walk…

> Define "actual experiences". People without aphantasia literally count sheep to go to sleep.

No, they literally do not. "Counting sheep" is a mental exercise. Or do you think people invite actual sheep into their bedrooms?

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#333

Post by SaidinWoT »

listenallyall wrote: post #190
ergonaught wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fMRI can probably spot it for people like myself who are fully aphantasic. But: 1. "Imagine a table. There is a ball on the table. The ball rolls off the table onto the floor." 2. "From memory, what color was the ball? The table? The floor? What did you see under the table?" Neither I nor any other, uh, aphants, that I have known have answers to those questions. Imagination still works, and answers to those questions…

"mind's eye" is a metaphor. You, like everyone else, have two eyes, in the front of your face. There isn't an extra one embedded in anyone's brain.

Just to understand the baseline you're working form, what data are you drawing on when stating what's "normal"? It has appeared to me throughout this conversation that you are starting from the assumption that your internal experience (at least, with regard to mental imagery) is consistent with the majority and making assertions about the majority based on that.

If you are actually drawing on a larger amount of data, specifically pertaining to the mechanisms of people's internal experiences, that'd be useful to know. If you are not, I'd gently suggest that you're working from a flawed statistical assumption, and that looking at the numerous interactions in this thread where people describe materially different internal experiences ("I can only recall tastes in terms of descriptors" - "I can experience a taste by imagining it"[0]) may be more informative without presuming universal consistency.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40764813

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#335

Post by sethrin »

eysgshsvsvsv wrote: post #239
isoprophlex wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds incredibly sad and frustrating. I can't imagine what it's like to suddenly lose that ability, being so dependent on it. Indeed many of my childhood memories are mostly sequences of pictures, the emotional content kind of "floats" on the imagery. It must be very frustrating, being forced to reinvent how you experience your inner life and memories. Edit, after reading some more comments: are you musically i…

Well maybe it's a good thing. You live in the present instead of an imaginary past. The past is gone no matter how much your mind tries to come up with images. The memories no longer have any existential significance apart from causing you trauma, generating false sense of pride, etc. Helps you to do and try new things instead of relying on a past you once lived and no longer exists.

I do tend to think I live a bit more in the present because of aphantasia. However, I also do have an experiential memory. It's not great, and largely not visual, and to the degree there are any visual elements they're pretty useless, like burnt fragments of a Polaroid. I think you're kinda having a hard time imagining this condition.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#336

Post by nicolas_t »

tootie wrote: post #278
harimau777 wrote: post #258

I've sometimes wondered if I could have aphantasia or perhaps be low enough on the visual imagery spectrum to have some of the practical effects of aphantasia. When I try to visualize an object, I can in some sense visualize it but it feels very indistinct. It's like I can't see the object as a whole only the specific details I focus on. For example, I have a friend who wears circular glasses and has a handlebar must…

It's a spectrum and I think your experience is probably typical. A minority of people see nothing and another minority of people see vivid images. Most people get varying degrees of fuzziness.

I see vivid images of pretty much everything except faces. Faces are blurry (but then I can't recognize people's faces in the street and instead rely heavily on contextual clues, what they were, etc...)

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#338

Post by navjack27 »

smeej wrote: post #290
navjack27 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seeing blackness because you closed your eyes. Seeing stuff in the mind's eye usually has to do with seeing stuff in open eye everyday life but not hallucinatory it's like on another plane of your normal vision and it's not a constant image it has to be invoked and concentrated upon almost like a flickering image that you could feel and see in your skull that's like behind your eyes and up a little bit. It's r…

My mind's eye doesn't care whether my eyes are open or closed. I can copy things back and forth between "reality" and "internal reality" quite seamlessly, so I can either keep my eyes open and bring things from my mind out into reality, or I can close my eyes and bring things from reality into internal reality. I don't strictly speaking have to close my eyes for the second one, but for example if I need to picture th…

Yeah also same. But I'm trying to clarify for a lot of people who think they don't visualize because the bar is set where they think that they have to close their eyes in order to visualize things.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#339

Post by burbage »

rldjbpin wrote: post #223

is there a version of not being able to visualize faces of people you know? asking for a friend. from all i read about things like this, the more it become apparent that we all experience things in a unique way.

Sure. At least, I've never been able to do this.

That doesn't mean I can't recognise people when I see them, though that can sometimes be a struggle. It's just that I can't (or don't) "picture" them later.

I've never considered it a problem. For a start, because I've no clear idea of what I look like, either, I've never had to worry much about that. Slightly more strangely, and it took me a long while to realise this, I've never taken or collected family photographs; I've managed to remember who my relatives are perfectly well without having to get them to pose, yet it's my relatives who think that's odd.

If there is a downside, it's that I'd make a terrible witness. But I have a feeling that most witnesses are fairly terrible, it's just that most of them don't know it. As you said, we all experience things in unique ways, and that's only a problem if we forget it.

Which is largely why I don't care for "aphantasia" as a label. It's like having a word for people who don't dream in music or visualise mathematical functions; it'd include so many, that it'd serve no purpose.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#340

Post by smokel »

satvikpendem wrote: post #197
listenallyall wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you believe that "normal" people have some magic hi-res virtual movie projector that superimposes crystal clear visions inside their heads. No, it's all just memories and concepts. Their response to thinking about the Mona Lisa is the same as yours. You know which way she faces, don't you?

> I think you believe that "normal" people have some magic hi-res virtual movie projector that superimposes crystal clear visions inside their heads. No, it's all just memories and concepts. Some people do, hyperphantasia. I can do this, perfectly visualize the details of the Mona Lisa and examine it from any angle in my mind's eye. If I am in a semi-lucid state while nearing sleep, I can do it even more intensely, a…

How can you be sure that you actually see the details, and that you are not merely experiencing the feeling of seeing those details?

Have you tried drawing the Mona Lisa from various angles? To what level of detail can you comfortably reproduce it?

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