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People love to talk about this stuff because it's the same concept as "what if the red I see isn't the red you see?" but dressed up in more complicated language

People love to talk about this stuff because it's the same concept as "what if the red I see isn't the red you see?" but dressed up in more complicated language and with frankly depressing overtones of fixed intrinsic capabilities or genetic luck of the draw. Everything I know tells me that most people, because they seem capable of doing the same things everyone else can do, all have extremely similar minds and don't differ in major ways like this, at least not in terms of potential. IMO, the only caveat here, and it may be a big one, is that of perception and imagination shaped by experience. I started learning music in my late 20s. Now, in my mid 30s, I can understand lyrics to songs when I couldn't before, identify chord progressions (a concept I had no knowledge of beforehand) and imagine entire arranged songs in my head. It's not that I didn't have a "mind's ear" before, it's just that I hadn't built a bunch of useful skills and conceptual frameworks to work with. Whether my music education developed new neural networks that might be detected or analyzed is another question. This has to be the same way it works for visual artists. Obviously a skilled illustrator, painter or sculptor is going to be better at visualizing imagery than someone who doesn't do those things. If that's the case, just thinking about images a lot makes you better at visualizing images. Ultimately, that's not much of a shocker and isn't very interesting.

karpour 5y ago
I could always perfectly imagine songs, make up music in my head, etc. I have no experience with music. On the other hand, I am almost completely unable to imagine anything with my minds eye willingly. I have been drawing for 15 years now, and i did not notice any improvement in being able to visualize things in my mind. So, at least from my standpoint, it does not seem like a skill that you can easily train.
- rogerclark 5y ago
  This is why it's the same thing as "what if the red I see isn't the red you see?" There's no way to prove what you're saying is true in any useful sense.
  - karpour 5y ago
    It is not. I recently was talking to an artist who told me that if he's drawing a car for example, he can envision everything in front of his minds eye, from any angle he wants. I am completely unable to envision anything at daytime when fully awake. Yes, if someone imagines red, we can't be sure it's the same, but this is about how some people can do something, and some people can't. I participated in a study about aphantasia a while ago, and it's pretty clear that I'm pretty much at the end of a spectrum there. There are indeed people who can imagine extremely vivid imagery. I happen to be able to perfectly imagine sounds and music, as well as compose music in my head, which I assume might be something not everyone else can do. With images, it's the complete opposite for me.
jschveibinz 5y ago
This is generally the opinion of David Hume in his philosophy of imagination: https://iep.utm.edu/hume-ima/ https://iep.utm.edu/hume-ima/
shannifin 5y ago
> "Obviously a skilled illustrator, painter or sculptor is going to be better at visualizing imagery than someone who doesn't do those things. If that's the case, just thinking about images a lot makes you better at visualizing images." What you say seems intuitive, but (and this is just a digression) I also think being able to imagine something and recreate it in the real world are two separate (though related) skills. Imagining something means the brain only has to, say, recreate some of the "effects" of incoming sensory data. On the other hand, creating something in the real world as an artist does, whether with paint or a musical instrument, involves a feedback loop. The artist must identify the real-world color or proportion or sound he imagines, which is a skill in itself, then must participate in a feedback loop of: percieve what you just created, compare to imagined goal (which may now change), edit creation. This requires both the mental skill to do so, plus the motor skill to pull it off (as far as the artistic creation depends on muscle movements). In this way, someone could have a vivid "mind's eye" but be a lousy artist. Or remember musical structures (such as chord progressions) without being able to identify or recreate them (at least not without a ton of trial and error as the skill is developed).
- rogerclark 5y ago
  Agreed. All of this is completely unprovable in the end.
- karpour 5y ago
  As an anecdote, I am an artist and I am barely able to visualize anything. I talked with many other artists about this, and it seems that most artists are able to visualize images in their minds eye, but nobody mentioned to me that it felt like this ability improved as their drawing skills improved.
chownie 5y ago
> Everything I know tells me that most people, because they seem capable of doing the same things everyone else can do, all have extremely similar minds and don't differ in major ways like this, at least not in terms of potential. I had conversations on this subject with a friend who has no mental monologue, I don't think you're correct. I think we get by through making use of the thinking processes we have available, but that doesn't mean that there's no major differences in how we find out our answers, just that we tend to get to roughly the same answers no matter which route we take. For one thing that doesn't take into account how long it takes for your thought process to reach conclusion, if you're incapable of creating mental imagery and have to solve a spatial problem through mental monologue alone might that not take longer to intuit?
- rogerclark 5y ago
  The mental monologue debate is just another case of "what if the red I see isn't the red you see?" There's just no way for you or your friend to prove anything to each other. It's a fun conversation, but you're not going to get any answers. The question of whether someone "has" a mental monologue is also complex. Is your friend saying they don't usually talk to themselves when solving problems, or that they never do? Are they saying they can't talk to themselves? If they don't do it often, and you do it more often out of habit, that's a different thing than "not having a mental monologue". The problem with these articles is that people conflate all of these concepts. Also, a lot of data supports the idea that people aren't very good authorities on how their own minds work. Decades of research on psychology and consciousness can attest to that.
  - chownie 5y ago
    If your approach to the subject is that it's the same as the "what if our 'reds' are different" debate then yeah it's going to be unfalsifiable, you've also just very generously assumed from the get go that I'm conflating ideas plus ignored the end of the prior comment. My friend cannot create a mental voice at all, so not only does he not usually talk to himself mentally, he never does it. He also can't recall voices. If someone is describing a process in steps he has to stop them frequently to write down the parts. This doesn't apply to a process he's seen, he can recall imagery fine. The end of the very last comment I made contained a possible method for comparing these different thought processes, giving someone with poor mental imagery a spatial task and comparing with someone who claims strong mental imagery, the idea being that intuition should be faster under one set of conditions than the other. Funnily enough there's also others in this thread who have mentioned using imagined images to navigate spatial tasks.
grawprog 5y ago
On the note of your post, i've found as i've gotten older my ability visually imagine things has diminished a lot. When i was a kid or even a teenager i could vividly picture and imagine things in my mind. As i got older, i practiced less as i dealt with more practical things in life and i fins now i have a harder time imagining things as vividly. It tends to be more blurry and indistinct.
- okwubodu 5y ago
  Oh wow I rely pretty heavily on mental images even for non-spatial tasks so losing that scares me. Never thought it might fade.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Bad news: I posted the same pattern, then scrolled down and saw your comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440102 Getting older in general is scary, but inevitable. Work as hard as you can each day and minimize BS. Also take time to appreciate the people around you, though.
  - grawprog 5y ago
    I did leave out though, that as i've realized this and practiced more with imaginative things, i have regained some of this ability. So i agree with the overall premise that visual imagination is a skill you can fain or lose due to practice or lack thereof.
Tarsul 5y ago
I'm with you, at least in so far as people may be able to learn these things as well (or improve); but not necessarily everyone. I, for one, hadn't thought in pictures in a long, long, long time. And it took me a while to find out (or remember) why I don't do it. The cause is that I have a tinnitus and whenever I concentrated on a picture in my head my tinnitus would go into overdrive (get louder) and that's why I stopped (not just because the tinnitus was annoying but also because it hindered my ability to think in pictures because the tinnitus is so good in distracting my mind from concentrating). E.g. there are a few IQ puzzles with cubes where you have to picture which side would be the one with the 6 or other puzzles where you have to say whether the last cog in a cog machine turns right or left, I never did these puzzles in "picture mode", always only logically. Also, chess, I was always one of the worst chess players in my school chess club and I guess this is why. However, I started playing Go and although I was (for the longest time) not able to really think ahead (in Go it's even of much more importance to picture the next steps ahead than in chess; in chess at least you can say in your head I do this-then-that-then-that without needing to picture it in detail [for very amateurish play :)]; in Go you have to picture the new stones otherwise you cannot really judge the positions at all), gradually I had more and more moments where I could do it. Also, e.g. picturing the way from A to B (like the way from your home to the shopping centre), for the longest time I couldn't do it because my mind wouldn't let me think more than a split second about pictures (as I said: my tinnitus was quite the killer) but nowadays I can do it. So, there certainly are ways to improve. Although I like to think that all these years not thinking in pictures have helped me improve my intuition and logical thinking, but who knows :)
bobsmooth 5y ago
>Obviously a skilled illustrator, painter or sculptor is going to be better at visualizing imagery than someone who doesn't do those things. I have no artistic ability but I can imagine images very vividly.
amanaplanacanal 5y ago
You are describing what is known as the typical mind fallacy.
prometheus76 5y ago
As someone who can't see images in their mind (except for very rare, very brief, very blurry images that kind of just show up uninvited on their own), I have to disagree with the conclusion of your premise here. It doesn't come with practice. It's like telling a paralyzed person to just practice walking. The wiring just isn't there for some of us. Probably because we're zombies that haven't gone feral yet.
karmakaze 5y ago
Didn't Nikola Tesla invent/design the AC motor pretty much in his mind? I don't see anything like that 'color' in my mind.

karpour 5y ago

I could always perfectly imagine songs, make up music in my head, etc. I have no experience with music. On the other hand, I am almost completely unable to imagine anything with my minds eye willingly. I have been drawing for 15 years now, and i did not notice any improvement in being able to visualize things in my mind. So, at least from my standpoint, it does not seem like a skill that you can easily train.

rogerclark 5y ago
This is why it's the same thing as "what if the red I see isn't the red you see?" There's no way to prove what you're saying is true in any useful sense.
- karpour 5y ago
  It is not. I recently was talking to an artist who told me that if he's drawing a car for example, he can envision everything in front of his minds eye, from any angle he wants. I am completely unable to envision anything at daytime when fully awake. Yes, if someone imagines red, we can't be sure it's the same, but this is about how some people can do something, and some people can't. I participated in a study about aphantasia a while ago, and it's pretty clear that I'm pretty much at the end of a spectrum there. There are indeed people who can imagine extremely vivid imagery. I happen to be able to perfectly imagine sounds and music, as well as compose music in my head, which I assume might be something not everyone else can do. With images, it's the complete opposite for me.

jschveibinz 5y ago

This is generally the opinion of David Hume in his philosophy of imagination: https://iep.utm.edu/hume-ima/ https://iep.utm.edu/hume-ima/

shannifin 5y ago

> "Obviously a skilled illustrator, painter or sculptor is going to be better at visualizing imagery than someone who doesn't do those things. If that's the case, just thinking about images a lot makes you better at visualizing images." What you say seems intuitive, but (and this is just a digression) I also think being able to imagine something and recreate it in the real world are two separate (though related) skills. Imagining something means the brain only has to, say, recreate some of the "effects" of incoming sensory data. On the other hand, creating something in the real world as an artist does, whether with paint or a musical instrument, involves a feedback loop. The artist must identify the real-world color or proportion or sound he imagines, which is a skill in itself, then must participate in a feedback loop of: percieve what you just created, compare to imagined goal (which may now change), edit creation. This requires both the mental skill to do so, plus the motor skill to pull it off (as far as the artistic creation depends on muscle movements). In this way, someone could have a vivid "mind's eye" but be a lousy artist. Or remember musical structures (such as chord progressions) without being able to identify or recreate them (at least not without a ton of trial and error as the skill is developed).

rogerclark 5y ago
Agreed. All of this is completely unprovable in the end.
karpour 5y ago
As an anecdote, I am an artist and I am barely able to visualize anything. I talked with many other artists about this, and it seems that most artists are able to visualize images in their minds eye, but nobody mentioned to me that it felt like this ability improved as their drawing skills improved.

chownie 5y ago

> Everything I know tells me that most people, because they seem capable of doing the same things everyone else can do, all have extremely similar minds and don't differ in major ways like this, at least not in terms of potential. I had conversations on this subject with a friend who has no mental monologue, I don't think you're correct. I think we get by through making use of the thinking processes we have available, but that doesn't mean that there's no major differences in how we find out our answers, just that we tend to get to roughly the same answers no matter which route we take. For one thing that doesn't take into account how long it takes for your thought process to reach conclusion, if you're incapable of creating mental imagery and have to solve a spatial problem through mental monologue alone might that not take longer to intuit?

rogerclark 5y ago
The mental monologue debate is just another case of "what if the red I see isn't the red you see?" There's just no way for you or your friend to prove anything to each other. It's a fun conversation, but you're not going to get any answers. The question of whether someone "has" a mental monologue is also complex. Is your friend saying they don't usually talk to themselves when solving problems, or that they never do? Are they saying they can't talk to themselves? If they don't do it often, and you do it more often out of habit, that's a different thing than "not having a mental monologue". The problem with these articles is that people conflate all of these concepts. Also, a lot of data supports the idea that people aren't very good authorities on how their own minds work. Decades of research on psychology and consciousness can attest to that.
- chownie 5y ago
  If your approach to the subject is that it's the same as the "what if our 'reds' are different" debate then yeah it's going to be unfalsifiable, you've also just very generously assumed from the get go that I'm conflating ideas plus ignored the end of the prior comment. My friend cannot create a mental voice at all, so not only does he not usually talk to himself mentally, he never does it. He also can't recall voices. If someone is describing a process in steps he has to stop them frequently to write down the parts. This doesn't apply to a process he's seen, he can recall imagery fine. The end of the very last comment I made contained a possible method for comparing these different thought processes, giving someone with poor mental imagery a spatial task and comparing with someone who claims strong mental imagery, the idea being that intuition should be faster under one set of conditions than the other. Funnily enough there's also others in this thread who have mentioned using imagined images to navigate spatial tasks.

grawprog 5y ago

On the note of your post, i've found as i've gotten older my ability visually imagine things has diminished a lot. When i was a kid or even a teenager i could vividly picture and imagine things in my mind. As i got older, i practiced less as i dealt with more practical things in life and i fins now i have a harder time imagining things as vividly. It tends to be more blurry and indistinct.

okwubodu 5y ago
Oh wow I rely pretty heavily on mental images even for non-spatial tasks so losing that scares me. Never thought it might fade.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Bad news: I posted the same pattern, then scrolled down and saw your comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440102 Getting older in general is scary, but inevitable. Work as hard as you can each day and minimize BS. Also take time to appreciate the people around you, though.
- grawprog 5y ago
  I did leave out though, that as i've realized this and practiced more with imaginative things, i have regained some of this ability. So i agree with the overall premise that visual imagination is a skill you can fain or lose due to practice or lack thereof.

Tarsul 5y ago

I'm with you, at least in so far as people may be able to learn these things as well (or improve); but not necessarily everyone. I, for one, hadn't thought in pictures in a long, long, long time. And it took me a while to find out (or remember) why I don't do it. The cause is that I have a tinnitus and whenever I concentrated on a picture in my head my tinnitus would go into overdrive (get louder) and that's why I stopped (not just because the tinnitus was annoying but also because it hindered my ability to think in pictures because the tinnitus is so good in distracting my mind from concentrating). E.g. there are a few IQ puzzles with cubes where you have to picture which side would be the one with the 6 or other puzzles where you have to say whether the last cog in a cog machine turns right or left, I never did these puzzles in "picture mode", always only logically. Also, chess, I was always one of the worst chess players in my school chess club and I guess this is why. However, I started playing Go and although I was (for the longest time) not able to really think ahead (in Go it's even of much more importance to picture the next steps ahead than in chess; in chess at least you can say in your head I do this-then-that-then-that without needing to picture it in detail [for very amateurish play :)]; in Go you have to picture the new stones otherwise you cannot really judge the positions at all), gradually I had more and more moments where I could do it. Also, e.g. picturing the way from A to B (like the way from your home to the shopping centre), for the longest time I couldn't do it because my mind wouldn't let me think more than a split second about pictures (as I said: my tinnitus was quite the killer) but nowadays I can do it. So, there certainly are ways to improve. Although I like to think that all these years not thinking in pictures have helped me improve my intuition and logical thinking, but who knows :)

bobsmooth 5y ago

>Obviously a skilled illustrator, painter or sculptor is going to be better at visualizing imagery than someone who doesn't do those things. I have no artistic ability but I can imagine images very vividly.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago

You are describing what is known as the typical mind fallacy.

prometheus76 5y ago

As someone who can't see images in their mind (except for very rare, very brief, very blurry images that kind of just show up uninvited on their own), I have to disagree with the conclusion of your premise here. It doesn't come with practice. It's like telling a paralyzed person to just practice walking. The wiring just isn't there for some of us. Probably because we're zombies that haven't gone feral yet.

karmakaze 5y ago

Didn't Nikola Tesla invent/design the AC motor pretty much in his mind? I don't see anything like that 'color' in my mind.