Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aphantasia and Psychedelics

psychedelirium.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 122 posts

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#51

Post by card_zero »

perrygeo wrote: post #49
card_zero wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't really say anything here yourself other than that you're awed by it. Also that I'm the one who has to do all the work apparently.

If you're gonna come out and say "trust my gut, this is bullshit" - yes, you do need to do all the work.

Why's that, then?

I'm digging around in the Wikipedia article on "burden of proof", quick, head me off at the pass before I quote it.

Heh, it mentions "burden tennis". It all devolves to who's got the status quo on their side and who's making the extraordinary claim, or not. I can see why fistfights are a popular way to resolve disagreements.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#52

Post by cindyllm »

card_zero wrote: post #50
graeme wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all we ever get about aphantasia is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment questionnaire, subjective impression. Is there any other way to get information on what people see internally? The idea that great artists, for example, don't have dramatically different visualization than people who report not seeing sharp images or images at all seems like the theory in need of proof. You can't just say the evidence is subj…

Did I say I'm right? I assume we're all wrong in ways yet to be discovered, that's my default position on everything. And I've modified my viewpoint slightly just now: I accept that there are loose groups of people who experience imagination differently. So I'm being decently open-minded here, what do you want, blood?

[dead]

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#53

Post by elric »

The more I read about aphantasia, the more I'm convinced half the people who claim to have it are simply of the anxious persuasion. The language used to describe imagination, or the perceived lack thereof, is pretty conducive to fostering doubt and confusion.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#54

Post by temp0826 »

loves_mangoes wrote: post #17
CjHuber wrote: post #4

I have aphantasia and psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. DMT however is one of the only things that gave me strong visuals, LSD in combination with DXM too so I wonder if it has something to do with the sigma receptor

The visuals you get from psychedelics and the visuals from imagination are different. Psychedelics seem to affect your real visual field. You're not imagining textures melting with colors and walls turning into liquid, it becomes what you see. I normally have aphantasia, at about 2/5 on one those pop scales that show various versions of an apple. I can sort of rotate geometric shapes without the notion of color or te…

I do suspect "visions" can come from different sources as well. I've worked at an ayahuasca retreat center and have drank about 500 times so had some opportunities to investigate this. My vision is typically very "closed" (often it is just a massive intuition increase, it takes me a huge dose to get really into the visionary aspects). I have had visions seemingly from the top of my head (these are the most intense, all encompassing for me), in my "mind's eye"/imagination, in my normal visual field, and from my heart space, and sometimes a mix of all of it. My big suspicion is that DMT induces a type of synesthesia, a mixing of all of the senses, plus intuition, thoughts, and memories, plus a big increase in sensitivity (meaning what we see/feel is not precisely a hallucination).

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#55

Post by perrygeo »

card_zero wrote: post #51
perrygeo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're gonna come out and say "trust my gut, this is bullshit" - yes, you do need to do all the work.

Why's that, then? I'm digging around in the Wikipedia article on "burden of proof", quick, head me off at the pass before I quote it. Heh, it mentions "burden tennis". It all devolves to who's got the status quo on their side and who's making the extraordinary claim, or not. I can see why fistfights are a popular way to resolve disagreements.

Google scholar has 5000+ hits on the term, I'd suggest starting there. Once you've completely your meta-analysis proving that it's all "bullshit", let us know. That's how science works. You think your 10 minutes scrolling wikipedia substitutes for decades of research? Surely, since you and your gut feel so strongly about it, the evidence should speak for itself.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#56

Post by cryzinger »

e-khadem wrote: post #22
thrance wrote: post #6

I feel like there's more to aphantasia than just "can you see the apple or not?". I can't for the life of me imagine an apple. At best, I get a very faint and dark picture of something resembling the fruit. Plus, there's one on the desk right next to me, so I shouldn't have too much trouble with the assignment, but here we are. On the other hand, I have a pretty good memory (compared to my peers) and I can recall viv…

There is a simple (unofficial?) test for aphantasia, and I have tried it on many of my peers, it seems to be accurate. _Close your eyes and ask someone else to read the instructions for you. If you really want to take it stop reading here._ . . . Imagine a room with a table in it. Someone comes in, puts a ball on the table and the ball falls down from the table. - What age was the person that came in? - What hairstyl…

I'm not sure that these types of questions necessarily capture the different levels of what people might "see," though. I couldn't tell you the age or even face of the person I imagined, but I can say with confidence that they were male; I also didn't imagine the table in much fidelity, but I very clearly pictured the person approaching the table from my right side (his left side) and that when the ball fell, it rolled towards me.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#57

Post by card_zero »

perrygeo wrote: post #55
card_zero wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why's that, then? I'm digging around in the Wikipedia article on "burden of proof", quick, head me off at the pass before I quote it. Heh, it mentions "burden tennis". It all devolves to who's got the status quo on their side and who's making the extraordinary claim, or not. I can see why fistfights are a popular way to resolve disagreements.

Google scholar has 5000+ hits on the term, I'd suggest starting there. Once you've completely your meta-analysis proving that it's all "bullshit", let us know. That's how science works. You think your 10 minutes scrolling wikipedia substitutes for decades of research? Surely, since you and your gut feel so strongly about it, the evidence should speak for itself.

You can tell me what the testable hypothesis is.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#58

Post by roxolotl »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #38
roxolotl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re saying you think people who report aphantasia see mental imagery but don’t think of it as imagery? And that the brain scans indicate difference but not around mental imagery?

Yeah essentially, or alternatively neither group has visual imagery. I think it fundamentally comes down to phenomenology being very hard to express in language.

That’s why the self reports seem valuable to me. If someone says “I’ve never seen something in my minds eye” and then they do dmt and say “oh shit I can see things in my minds eye now I totally get what people mean now” it seems to imply there’s a spectrum of visualization capabilities. There’s also people who’ve gone in the opposite direction due to injury.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#59

Post by cassianoleal »

mdswanson wrote: post #10

An aphantasia "beginner's guide" for those who aren't familiar or just want to learn more: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

I read much of that guide. I was initially led to believe that I have aphantasia. I certainly don't see things that don't exist - that would be an hallucination. I can imagine and describe it in vivid detail if I want, but it's not there - I don't see it in the same way I see the physical reflection of light on surfaces.

Similarly I don't hear sounds that are not produced by difference in air pressure hitting my ear drums. Again, that would be an hallucination. But I can certainly imagine sounds, again in great detail, including musical melodies and different instrument timbres.

Then, I get to the part about dreaming. I don't dream often, which also seems like a sign that I have it. That said, on some of my dreams, all sensations feel very real. Images, sounds, conversations, faces, colours, emotions... Those are hallucinations for all practical purposes though.

Except the fact that I have those vivid dreams seems to say I don't have aphantasia.

Not that it will make a lot of difference in my life, but where does that leave me? :D

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#60

Post by bonoboTP »

cnity wrote: post #24
card_zero wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel in my gut that this is fad-driven internet bullshit, and I would like to learn less, if it were possible. > Dr. Adam Zeman, a neurologist from Exeter, receives a patient who can no longer imagine — known as patient MX. MX goes blind in his mind’s eye after undergoing surgery. > Media outlets like the New York Times report the findings. This leads to an outpouring of new discoverers. Hmm

My gut feel has always been that it is just a language thing where some people think that when others imagine things that they literally see it right in front of them _the same way_ they see real things. Like, when I imagine a scene or object in my head, I am not literally seeing it. It's like some vague in-between thing. And that people who claim to have aphantasia just have a higher bar for what it means to "see" s…

My gut feel is that people's experiences can be quite different. V.S. Ramachandran's books have nudged me to take these things more seriously.

I think visual imagination is also related to spatial rotation abilities. For example can you imagine yourself in your hometown, then imagine an "animation" as you (from a first-person perspective) fly up vertically, then turn in various directions and sort of feel where the landmarks are in the mind's eye? Or does that sound nonsense to you? Would you agree that being faster at certain tasks (that require a visual scratchpad - e.g. imagining a tabletop and being told what happens e.g. add a triangle on the left, add a square halfway overlapping the triangle etc) indicates that someone has more vivid imagination?

Post reply on HN