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So you can draw photo realistic impressions of those memories? Come on now. I can visualise pretty vividly, but I know that my memory is conning me, the texture

So you can draw photo realistic impressions of those memories? Come on now. I can visualise pretty vividly, but I know that my memory is conning me, the textures and details are the feelings of textures and details. If I actually interrogate the visualisation the detail is not there. It's like trying to read writing in a dream, you imagine that it's perfect because the feeling is the same, but try to actually read - the detail is not there.

cortic 6y ago
>the detail is not there. Usually no, but (anecdote); I cannot normally remember my credit card number, dreaming years ago i read the number aloud and when i woke i could remember the numbers that i had recited in the dream, i checked and they were correct... So at least sometimes in dreams the detail is real. I have a theory that memory recollection is linked to social impulses, that our minds forget things on purpose (without our knowledge lol) as a tool for social integration. I've seen some indirect evidence of this in some sports, where people tend to be just about as good at a sport as their social peers, change social peers and they become better or worse accordingly. -this would have interesting implications for aphantasia treatment.
jjk166 6y ago
Well I can't draw anything very well, but I can see in my mind a photo-realistic image indistinguishable from what I am perceiving in real time. No matter to what degree I interrogate it, I find no discrepancies with the real world. Everything I revisit is exactly as I remember it. I can read text in my dreams. I can make arbitrary changes to whatever I visualize and project them onto the real world as if my eyes were seeing it for real. Compare your memory of, say, song lyrics - you might misremember some of the words but that doesn't mean your memory of the lyrics aren't real, you are remembering a real and coherent set of words, not making them up as you go. When you hear that song again and you know what word is coming up next that is not your mind conning you, that is just successful recall. Likewise you probably know the melody of the song; though you might not be able to transcribe it, you would immediately notice if even a single note was off. More impressive, you can probably correctly identify a song you haven't heard in years from a fraction of a second long sample. If you show me some tiny portion of a photograph of something I've seen before, I will similarly be able to identify it instantly. I used to think that everyone experienced the world the same way as I did. Personally, as a visual person, I found graphs to be the most intuitive way of conveying information. How could anyone not understand a graph? But my brother can't make heads or tails of them. He's an incredibly intelligent person, but he fundamentally does not process and store information visually. I've met many other people who can think in ways I can't, such as people who can think visualize objects in 4 dimensions. If you want further evidence that thought processing is not constant across different people, consider that it is not even constant over a single lifetime. What language do you process language in? If you learn a second language, most people, myself included, eventually reach a point where you can think in that second language without using your primary language as a mediator. The brain is simultaneously incredibly powerful and incredibly plastic. Entire regions can be repurposed to function in radically different ways. All evidence points to extreme variability in how our individual minds work.
- plutonorm 6y ago
  Ok I kinda believe you. But I do not understand why you wouldn't be able to draw perfectly. Why can you not simply overlay what you see with you're minds eye over the real world? I do this when I am drawing, that's why I'm not a bad drawer. And it's also how I know the limitations of my visualisation. As I learn to draw, say, faces better, the detail and accuracy of my visualisation improves.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    I can't draw what I see with my mind very well for the same reason I can't draw what I see with my eyes very well: my hands are terrible. I do enjoy drawing, but it sucks to be painfully aware of how different what I produce is from what I intended to produce. Where I am not limited by my dexterity, such as with computer aided design, I can perfectly recreate what I envision.
    - plutonorm 6y ago
      So you can't trace a picture using tracing paper?
      - jjk166 6y ago
        Not photo-realistically, no. Fine motor control and visualization are different skills. I can probably keep a pencil point to within .5mm of where I want, but that still produces a very crude final result. It would be absurd to conclude that just because a physicist isn't a champion at billiards that he can't think in terms of vectors, or that someone with a speech impediment can't process words clearly in their mind. That someone who can see an image clearly should be able to perfectly reproduce it does not logically follow.
- alfonsodev 6y ago
  I do have aphantasia, but I've experienced that level of realism in specific dreams that happen in the morning, after I partially wake up but I need extra sleep and then fall sleep, and I dream with colors, reflecions in materials, I can't interrogate the dream as I haven't reach that lucid dreaming skill, but it makes me think that the hardware it's there, but there are some circuit that is not connected while I'm awake and I try to imagine or think. I was born with severe farsightedness and astigmatism(12 dipoters) and it went unoticed for a while, I learned to walk before I got glasses, I think it might be the reason my brain didn't connect the graphic card for thinking, does it make sense?

cortic 6y ago

>the detail is not there. Usually no, but (anecdote); I cannot normally remember my credit card number, dreaming years ago i read the number aloud and when i woke i could remember the numbers that i had recited in the dream, i checked and they were correct... So at least sometimes in dreams the detail is real. I have a theory that memory recollection is linked to social impulses, that our minds forget things on purpose (without our knowledge lol) as a tool for social integration. I've seen some indirect evidence of this in some sports, where people tend to be just about as good at a sport as their social peers, change social peers and they become better or worse accordingly. -this would have interesting implications for aphantasia treatment.

jjk166 6y ago

Well I can't draw anything very well, but I can see in my mind a photo-realistic image indistinguishable from what I am perceiving in real time. No matter to what degree I interrogate it, I find no discrepancies with the real world. Everything I revisit is exactly as I remember it. I can read text in my dreams. I can make arbitrary changes to whatever I visualize and project them onto the real world as if my eyes were seeing it for real. Compare your memory of, say, song lyrics - you might misremember some of the words but that doesn't mean your memory of the lyrics aren't real, you are remembering a real and coherent set of words, not making them up as you go. When you hear that song again and you know what word is coming up next that is not your mind conning you, that is just successful recall. Likewise you probably know the melody of the song; though you might not be able to transcribe it, you would immediately notice if even a single note was off. More impressive, you can probably correctly identify a song you haven't heard in years from a fraction of a second long sample. If you show me some tiny portion of a photograph of something I've seen before, I will similarly be able to identify it instantly. I used to think that everyone experienced the world the same way as I did. Personally, as a visual person, I found graphs to be the most intuitive way of conveying information. How could anyone not understand a graph? But my brother can't make heads or tails of them. He's an incredibly intelligent person, but he fundamentally does not process and store information visually. I've met many other people who can think in ways I can't, such as people who can think visualize objects in 4 dimensions. If you want further evidence that thought processing is not constant across different people, consider that it is not even constant over a single lifetime. What language do you process language in? If you learn a second language, most people, myself included, eventually reach a point where you can think in that second language without using your primary language as a mediator. The brain is simultaneously incredibly powerful and incredibly plastic. Entire regions can be repurposed to function in radically different ways. All evidence points to extreme variability in how our individual minds work.

plutonorm 6y ago
Ok I kinda believe you. But I do not understand why you wouldn't be able to draw perfectly. Why can you not simply overlay what you see with you're minds eye over the real world? I do this when I am drawing, that's why I'm not a bad drawer. And it's also how I know the limitations of my visualisation. As I learn to draw, say, faces better, the detail and accuracy of my visualisation improves.
- jjk166 6y ago
  I can't draw what I see with my mind very well for the same reason I can't draw what I see with my eyes very well: my hands are terrible. I do enjoy drawing, but it sucks to be painfully aware of how different what I produce is from what I intended to produce. Where I am not limited by my dexterity, such as with computer aided design, I can perfectly recreate what I envision.
  - plutonorm 6y ago
    So you can't trace a picture using tracing paper?
    - jjk166 6y ago
      Not photo-realistically, no. Fine motor control and visualization are different skills. I can probably keep a pencil point to within .5mm of where I want, but that still produces a very crude final result. It would be absurd to conclude that just because a physicist isn't a champion at billiards that he can't think in terms of vectors, or that someone with a speech impediment can't process words clearly in their mind. That someone who can see an image clearly should be able to perfectly reproduce it does not logically follow.
alfonsodev 6y ago
I do have aphantasia, but I've experienced that level of realism in specific dreams that happen in the morning, after I partially wake up but I need extra sleep and then fall sleep, and I dream with colors, reflecions in materials, I can't interrogate the dream as I haven't reach that lucid dreaming skill, but it makes me think that the hardware it's there, but there are some circuit that is not connected while I'm awake and I try to imagine or think. I was born with severe farsightedness and astigmatism(12 dipoters) and it went unoticed for a while, I learned to walk before I got glasses, I think it might be the reason my brain didn't connect the graphic card for thinking, does it make sense?