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I learned of my own aphantasia in HN in the past (and now I learn that I also probably have this other thing, dang...). Otherwise I could sign my name under the

I learned of my own aphantasia in HN in the past (and now I learn that I also probably have this other thing, dang...). Otherwise I could sign my name under the rest of your post. I still have the doubt whether there is a real difference between people or just optimism when they describe how they imagine things. I also wonder why they don't use this visual imagination to entertain themselves. In fact, I do have a quite concrete musical imagination, not very far from actually hearing the music I want (in fact, I have experienced episodes -especially when tired- of thinking I had actually heard it, when I was only hearing it in my mind) and I do spend considerable amounts of time playing music in my mind just for fun, both as background music for some other activity I'm doing or as a standalone activity. On the other hand, this makes me thing they are on to something - if it's possible to play music in one's head, why not images? But I just can't with images.

carapace 7y ago
> I also wonder why they don't use this visual imagination to entertain themselves. As a kid I used to do exactly that. I can recall realizing one day that most people didn't use their imagination like a TV. I used to have "serials" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film ) I would watch/create as I went to sleep at night. Here's an odd detail: Every once in awhile my brain would notice that my head was sideways and get confused about how to orient the visual "presentation": vertically in line with gravity, or horizontally in line with my head and eyes, how it would be if I was sitting up or standing. When that happened it felt like trying to watch a TV turned sideways. The vast majority of nights this didn't happen.
FPGAhacker 7y ago
This is amazingly strange to me. Not about the music, but the lack of imagery. If someone asked you what your favorite scene in a movie is, how would you respond? It would seem to me that fiction books would be exceptionally boring if I was not able to visualize what I was reading. If someone asked you to draw a sketch of your bedroom, could you? what would you be basing it on?
- Thinkx220 7y ago
  Another question I have is can these people describe objects?
  - NateEag 7y ago
    If they're ones I care about, yes. I cannot see it in my head, but I can remember enough facts to describe it adequately. If I hadn't really noticed it before you asked, not remotely. Police sketch artists seemed like demon summoners working black magic to me before I knew it was possible to visualize.
- NateEag 7y ago
  Another aphantasiac here. My favorite scene in a movie is a fact, as is what happened in it. I can remember what it was, even if I can't rewatch it in my head. Do you need to replay the whole thing to know what scene you liked the most? Books are glorious fun. My experience of them is intensely verbal, though - my wife is intensely visual and often gets frustrated with books I loved because they don't use enough visual language for her to construct an internal movie from. So we get different things out of novels. I would fail horribly if asked to sketch my bedroom. I can regurgitate the basic layout as a series of statements but can't begin to show you what it looks like (despite several years of doing okay in art lessons). If I'm not looking at it, I cannot draw it.
  - FPGAhacker 7y ago
    That’s fascinating! It makes me happy to know that you enjoy books. Have you ever watched any videos by 3blue1brown? I personally find I have difficulty understanding concepts until I find a way to visualize them. Which of course becomes very challenging for abstract mathematics. I wonder if you find things that are traditionally difficult to visualize easier to comprehend. Such as having greater intuition for higher dimensional math.
    - NateEag 7y ago
      I have not watched anything by 3blue1brown. I think it may be easier for me to comprehend things that are hard to visualize. Higher math was a struggle for me at first, as I was not a natural reductionist, but once I had a really good calc prof, and after that it worked pretty well for me. These days I can barely even do long division because I haven't had to use mathematical skills since I started working as a programmer, but when I was doing more advanced math, it seemed like it was less of a struggle for me than many of my classmates. That was especially true of formal proofs and linear algebra, I think.

carapace 7y ago

> I also wonder why they don't use this visual imagination to entertain themselves. As a kid I used to do exactly that. I can recall realizing one day that most people didn't use their imagination like a TV. I used to have "serials" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film ) I would watch/create as I went to sleep at night. Here's an odd detail: Every once in awhile my brain would notice that my head was sideways and get confused about how to orient the visual "presentation": vertically in line with gravity, or horizontally in line with my head and eyes, how it would be if I was sitting up or standing. When that happened it felt like trying to watch a TV turned sideways. The vast majority of nights this didn't happen.

FPGAhacker 7y ago

This is amazingly strange to me. Not about the music, but the lack of imagery. If someone asked you what your favorite scene in a movie is, how would you respond? It would seem to me that fiction books would be exceptionally boring if I was not able to visualize what I was reading. If someone asked you to draw a sketch of your bedroom, could you? what would you be basing it on?

Thinkx220 7y ago
Another question I have is can these people describe objects?
- NateEag 7y ago
  If they're ones I care about, yes. I cannot see it in my head, but I can remember enough facts to describe it adequately. If I hadn't really noticed it before you asked, not remotely. Police sketch artists seemed like demon summoners working black magic to me before I knew it was possible to visualize.
NateEag 7y ago
Another aphantasiac here. My favorite scene in a movie is a fact, as is what happened in it. I can remember what it was, even if I can't rewatch it in my head. Do you need to replay the whole thing to know what scene you liked the most? Books are glorious fun. My experience of them is intensely verbal, though - my wife is intensely visual and often gets frustrated with books I loved because they don't use enough visual language for her to construct an internal movie from. So we get different things out of novels. I would fail horribly if asked to sketch my bedroom. I can regurgitate the basic layout as a series of statements but can't begin to show you what it looks like (despite several years of doing okay in art lessons). If I'm not looking at it, I cannot draw it.
- FPGAhacker 7y ago
  That’s fascinating! It makes me happy to know that you enjoy books. Have you ever watched any videos by 3blue1brown? I personally find I have difficulty understanding concepts until I find a way to visualize them. Which of course becomes very challenging for abstract mathematics. I wonder if you find things that are traditionally difficult to visualize easier to comprehend. Such as having greater intuition for higher dimensional math.
  - NateEag 7y ago
    I have not watched anything by 3blue1brown. I think it may be easier for me to comprehend things that are hard to visualize. Higher math was a struggle for me at first, as I was not a natural reductionist, but once I had a really good calc prof, and after that it worked pretty well for me. These days I can barely even do long division because I haven't had to use mathematical skills since I started working as a programmer, but when I was doing more advanced math, it seemed like it was less of a struggle for me than many of my classmates. That was especially true of formal proofs and linear algebra, I think.