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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#431

Post by loa_in_ »

zwayhowder wrote: post #310
case540 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you solve geometry problems. For lots of them I visualize / rotate things im my head.

Funny you should ask. In high school I was regarded as highly intelligent, I was near the top of all of my classes and widely read, with an excellent memory for facts and figures. (Though no visual memory whatsoever). Then one day we did a IQ test in science class. I scored near the bottom of the class. All of the geometry based "what comes next" puzzles left me flummoxed. Because I couldn't visualise, I couldn't rot…

In my experience with IQ tests involving complete the sequence many of the solutions when I looked up the intent behind them made very little sense to me.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#432

Post by selfhoster1312 »

layer8 wrote: post #415
antonvs wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have aphantasia but you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t. Here’s a simple question: how close are your waking visualizations to images you see in vivid dreams? From what you’ve said, assuming you do experience vivid dreams sometimes, it sounds like the answer is “not very”. Many people without aphantasia report waking imagery quite close or at least comparable to what they experience in dreams. If…

FWIW, I don’t have aphantasia; I can visualize stuff in my head, but it’s nothing like actual vision, and neither is how I see in what I would call vivid dreams. My dreams and my wakeful “mind’s eye” are pretty similar, I would say. The point is, they are only faintly comparable to actual vision, but I would never characterize that difference as aphantasia, or say that I have trouble visualizing things. It’s very dif…

That sounds like hypophantasia, i.e. not the absence of internal imagery, but a very vague one.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#433

Post by hirvi74 »

UpsideDownRide wrote: post #380
hirvi74 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on your side of the argument, but while that research may be evidence, it's not definitive proof.

What would you accept as a proof if that doesn't clear the bar for you?

One, a study with more than 32 people. Two, replications with equally strong observations.

I've read a lot of research on fMRIs and mental disorders. Something like this pops up every other day. Not a single one has really study the test of time ion terms of diagnostic utility.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#434

Post by hirvi74 »

inigyou wrote: post #329
hirvi74 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on your side of the argument, but while that research may be evidence, it's not definitive proof.

Qualia can't be definitively proven.

I meant definitely proven with in a realistic sense. Smoke causes lung cancer, albeit only something like 20% of smokers get lung cancer. It's been proven, but not in the mathematical sense of the word.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#435

Post by antonvs »

jawns wrote: post #250
antonvs wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have aphantasia but you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t. Here’s a simple question: how close are your waking visualizations to images you see in vivid dreams? From what you’ve said, assuming you do experience vivid dreams sometimes, it sounds like the answer is “not very”. Many people without aphantasia report waking imagery quite close or at least comparable to what they experience in dreams. If…

Right now, while staring at a blank wall, I visualized a red, 3D apple with a cartoonish worm emerging from it and then taking out a cleaver and chopping up the apple. It was similar in detail to what I'd see in a cartoon, but (like I said above) in another mental plane. So no, I don't think I have aphantasia.

How does it compare to the imagery you see in dreams?

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#436

Post by goatlover »

numeri wrote: post #210
mucha wrote: post #64

For folks that are thinking this is just semantics or qualia, the site mentions this: "We can also see activation in the visual cortex during fMRI studies, the area in the brain that processes images from the eyes, further suggesting actual visualization." (edited to add) Also, Aphants lack pupil response when asked to imagine dark/bright scenes: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220420092150.h...

there are also people who have become aphantasiac after neurological damage, which seems like pretty cut and dry evidence against the qualia argument.

Maybe I misunderstand, Why is it an arguments against qualia? Qualia doesn't deny a neural substrate, just that qualia isn't reducible to the neural activity, being that one is objective and the other is subjective.

It's sort of the difference between logical supervenience and metaphysical, or weak emergence and strong emergence. Qualia being something additional to the neural description.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#437

Post by [deleted] »

techgnosis wrote: post #252
jhedwards wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#438

Post by vinceguidry »

ethbr1 wrote: post #427
saghm wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At best, what you're describing seems like a skill issue with the people describing it. Using multiple different metaphors that imply the thing you're saying is unrelated (mind's eye , visual ization, image, etc) is just bad communication. I'm not making any argument for or against your hypothesis that everyone can actually do it but might just struggle. I just find it pretty confusing to even understand what anyone…

At the end of the day, it's the "Is your green my green?" question and is unknowable. You cannot describe something that someone lacks or has a substantially different subjective experience with, truly. The best we can do is show that the effects of your seeing green are the same as mine (biologically, behaviorally, etc). If you're curious about the broader subject, would highly recommend reading An Anthropologist on…

Color is perhaps the worst thing to try to make this argument with. We can measure it with tools and there's entire industries that would fall apart if human color perception wasn't a knowable thing.

Like, the whole Apple iMessage thing with the green and blue bubbles wouldn't, couldn't have even been a thing if human color perception weren't widely shared.

We, like all mammals, have very similar neural architecture that evolved to keep us safe from predators. It's pretty reliable.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#439

Post by lojban »

jhedwards wrote: post #429
techgnosis wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is such a weird response, what do I have to gain by lying about such an event? Why would you want to "verify" it? I am sharing a lived experience: my visual experience of the image of the dystopian landscape was so strong that my cognitive experience was consumed by the image in my mind, to the extent that I no longer saw the image conveyed by my eyes. I suppose, hypothetically, there are people who come to HN t…

I think I may share the same experience as you, but I've never known if what I have is closer to aphasia or hyperphantasia.

From the way people describe their experiences, it's difficult to know what they truly mean. I don't think anyone is lying, but it must be hard to convey these experiences with our language as it is.

In your first post, I thought "that's definitely not me", but in your second post I thought, "oh, that's actually 100% me"

To me, everything I imagine is on a different mental plane. This is what I thought people meant by a "minds eye". You don't see it literally, but it's there in your imagination.

What confuses me though is that for some people, it sounds like it's an overlay on their actual visual perception, something so vivid they could practically rotoscope it. I could never do that; I imagine I'd be a better artist if I could.

My imagination on this plane is so vivid that I'll get lost in it, and not see what's in front of me, as you describe it, simply because I'm "not paying attention" until some immediate danger jolts me "awake". I colloquially call this "zoning out" or "daydreaming"

Actually, I think my imagination might be part of what makes it so hard for me to read books. I'll get distracted by the world building, playing the different scenarios in my head, that I'll forget about the words in front of me, and minutes will go by before I remember I'm supposed to be reading a book.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#440

Post by jaggederest »

estearum wrote: post #418
jaggederest wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am on the other end, high five inverse brother. When I see an apple in my mind, I can take it, rotate it, pull the stem off, look at the blossom scar on the bottom, cut it open, count the seeds, and peel the skin off, crush it into a cup and have juice. I can see the blemishes, if there are any, which side faced the sun, and how shaded it was, and I can tell you what the worm had for breakfast (it was apple. that p…

Yeah that's totally insane to me. Interestingly, a lot of aphantasics are pretty good at spatial reasoning. It seems surprisingly non-visual. In retrospect, the earliest sign that my cognition was different was in being asked to recall some event. I can virtually never remember being at a moment in the past. People ask me if I remembered doing some very-important-thing and the honest answer is consistently: No, but I…

Completely opposite on that front, here, as well. I can't even really associate, I have visual memory all the way back to my earliest childhood memories (specifically, 3-4 years old, stepping on the track of a sliding door in San Diego, I believe, it hurt, I wanted to go see the pool outside), and my memory is so visual that sometimes I can see people's face, and what they were wearing and where we were standing, in the conversations we had but not necessarily hear what they're saying. I also have some semantic memory, something like "we talked about x for a while, and then I think we did y", but it's much hazier.

Honestly I love the fact that humans are so cognitively diverse and that we all can share our experiences.

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