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Those of us with Aphantasia[1] are jealous of people that can visualize anything at all, let alone a memory palace. Not all of us are "jealous" of course, but

Those of us with Aphantasia[1] are jealous of people that can visualize anything at all, let alone a memory palace. Not all of us are "jealous" of course, but a memory palace seems like an incredibly useful technique if you can master it. I wind up just taking a lot of notes and relying on a Reminders app. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

yoz-y 5y ago
One thing I haven’t understood with Aphantasia is this. Do people actually see stuff when they imagine things? Some test I’ve seen ask to imagine some object and close your eyes then ask if you see a black wall. Is it actually possible to see anything else?
- burkaman 5y ago
  For me it's like switching an input to receive data from the "mind's eye" rather than my real eyes. My real eyes are just seeing a black wall and I'm still aware of that, but I'm more focused on the imaginary thing that my mind's eye is seeing. It's much more vague and flickery and I can't focus on it much, but I imagine some people are better at it than I am. It does not feel the same as normal "seeing", so if I were asked that question I would probably say I still see a black wall.
  - glaukopis 5y ago
    This describes my experience perfectly. I feel like when people discuss aphantasia online, the word "seeing" gets overloaded to both refer to the act of picking up visual stimuli through the optic nerve, as well as a conceptualization action. When I "see" things in my mind's eye, I'm referring exclusively to the latter, and I think most people with normal visualization abilities do the same. Due to the confusion of language as well as the testimonies of some rare people with incredibly vivid mental images that are on par with actual physical sight, I thought I might have aphantasia for a period of time, but after reading up on it, I feel like aphantasia is a much stronger condition than most people on the internet think it is. "Just seeing black" when you try to visualize something isn't enough - it seems like that's just a sign of being a person with a fairly typical brain who's using the word "see" in its literal sense. For example, in the star test (https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/aioyga/simple_aphantasia_test/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/aioyga/simple_a...), if I was a person who understood "see" in the first sense, I'd say that I was a 1. If I instead switch to using the second sense of the word, I'd easily be a 6. It feels like any test that asks you to rate the vividness of the item you "see" in your mind's eye will fall prey to this problem. I saw a comment on HN where the commenter suggested asking someone to visualize an elephant in profile, and then ask them which way the trunk is facing to see if they're aphantasic or not. I'd also suggest that if you ever imagined a person running beside your car while you were taking a road trip as a child, you also probably don't have aphantasia.
    - mdswanson 5y ago
      A better experiment, IMO: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/cpwimq/ball_on_a_table_visualization_experiment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/cpwimq/ball_on_...
      - yoz-y 5y ago
        According to that test, I’d have Aphantasia, I guess. I could answer none of the questions immediately, even though I can imagine a table and a ball and somebody pushing it. I guess visually it would be like if you replaced a ball on a picture by the text “ball” and made the table out of “table” labels.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Why should that be better? I've read that and had a myriad of possible visualizations, beginning with some billiard ball on a pool table(which of them?), over some larger ball on a garden table, to tennis balls(which color? they come in neon yellow, orange, pink and even green!), and whatnot else. It only makes sense to abstract all the possibilities out, and ask how the EFFING EFF should I know?!
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Do people actually see stuff when they imagine things? Apparently so. That's how my wife describes it. She scores an easy 6 on the "star test" - https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/aioyga/simple_aphantasia_test/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/aioyga/simple_a.... Myself, I normally score 2-3 on it.
  - skydhash 5y ago
    I do a 6 too. And I can do all kind of imaginary stuff with that red star.
  - yesenadam 5y ago
    There seems confusion caused here and in those reddit comments, mostly from two senses of the word "see". The reddit instructions say > Close your eyes and imagine a red star. Which image do you see? I see 2, but most people see 5 or 6. It seems some people are (a) reporting what they actually see with their eyes closed, i.e. mostly nothing, a 1. Others are (b) imagining a star and reporting what that looks like in their mind's eye. I didn't think that aphantasia meant the (a)-type literal seeing, so I just read up on it again, and the descriptions seem to refer to (b)-type imagining/visualization, like imagining a giraffe then being able to describe what you see in your imagination. It doesn't mean you can actually see it, with open or closed eyes. It seems this test convinced a lot of people they have aphantasia, as it seems most people are a 1. And I suspect most of those who say 6 are talking about what they imagine, not what they physically see. I'm a 1 in sense (a), but in sense (b) a 6, well, I can imagine any kind of red star, like most people, I believe.
    - semperdark 5y ago
      Some of the comments report training themselves to produce closed-eye visuals, which I could believe with enough practice. I don't think that has anything to do with aphantasia, though, and I'm in the same box you are.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      That was my initial suspicion as well, but I've addressed this distinction with a few people, and come to believe there's a little confusion. I am 2-3 on (a) and (b). My wife is 6 on (a) and (b). She reports that she does actually see stuff as if it was there. Conversely, I only barely see the things, and at the same time, I can barely "imagine" them in the sense of (b). E.g. my process of "imagining a star and reporting what that looks like" consists of keeping the words, the tokens "red star", repeated by my inner voice on a loop, and then exploring the graph of associations. It's a non-visual process. I don't "see" it, but I can tell you all about it because I know how stars look like and what properties they have.
- LordGrey 5y ago
  Like all things, there is apparently a whole spectrum of visualization: Aphantasia (the black wall) and Hyperphantasia (AR-like superimposition of images upon reality). What I find interesting is that every single one of us is somewhere on that scale, and we don't quite understand the perspective of someone who is on a different place on the scale. Your own question highlights that ("Is it actually possible to see anything else?"). We are all trained from birth to deal with our senses and mental capabilities as they come, barring an injury. What each of us perceives is the de-facto normal. Learning that others don't have senses just like ours is something of an eye-opener.
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    Like others have mentioned, dream state lets me get past the otherwise ‘black wall’ state, so I can relate to the other, just frustrating that I can’t access it at will.
- ane 5y ago
  You don't "see" it but your brain is looking at something. It's like jumping into a 3D universe in your head.
  - skydhash 5y ago
    Reading a book for me is basically the same as watching a movie. Every scene plays in 3D in my head. Every single scene. Which is why I don't read horror stuff. Too scary.
- klipt 5y ago
  If you read to yourself, do you hear the words read by an "internal voice"? Which you know is different from real, "external" sounds, but you're still processing as audio internally? If so, you're imaging the sense of sound. Visualization is just doing the same thing with sight. You can still tell that "internal sight" is different from real "external" sight. Also I believe visualization is a skill that can be improved with practice. It's just a form of 2D working memory and it's known that working memory can be improved with practice.
  - yoz-y 5y ago
    I can imagine a sound that I’m familiar with. But for images i can think about a form of an object, or imagine rotating it, but it is nothing like seeing. Oh well.
    - klipt 5y ago
      > But for images i can think about a form of an object, or imagine rotating it, but it is nothing like seeing. I expect if you practiced that frequently, and gradually (over days or weeks) tried to add more details or colors etc you would find it improves over time. But whether that's actually a worthwhile investment of time is another question :-)
6510 5y ago
We can still edit their memory palace and have fun like that. Put kerosene on the porch and set fire to it. Make the Donald the doorman wearing a mankini etc
aomml 5y ago
Aphantasia alone won't stop you from using memory palaces. If you can remember what you did this morning and where you did those things, you can use a memory palace. It's more about locations and events than visualizing pictures. There are some discussions and examples here: https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Aphantasia_and_Memory https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Aphantasia_and_Memory https://forum.artofmemory.com/tag/aphantasia https://forum.artofmemory.com/tag/aphantasia
- LordGrey 5y ago
  Thank you for the link. I have tried to use memory palaces. The result is that now I have to remember two things rather than one (the memory palace location and the thing I'm trying to remember). To be fair, I also seem to have Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM) and that will impact personal memory recovery quite a bit. SDAM is common in conjunction with Aphantasia, and perhaps the two combined are conspiring against me in this instance.
  - mdswanson 5y ago
    Same with me. Full aphantasia and SDAM.
tmabraham 5y ago
I think I might have aphantasia, but a while back I learned successfully learned how to use a memory palace...

yoz-y 5y ago

One thing I haven’t understood with Aphantasia is this. Do people actually see stuff when they imagine things? Some test I’ve seen ask to imagine some object and close your eyes then ask if you see a black wall. Is it actually possible to see anything else?

burkaman 5y ago
For me it's like switching an input to receive data from the "mind's eye" rather than my real eyes. My real eyes are just seeing a black wall and I'm still aware of that, but I'm more focused on the imaginary thing that my mind's eye is seeing. It's much more vague and flickery and I can't focus on it much, but I imagine some people are better at it than I am. It does not feel the same as normal "seeing", so if I were asked that question I would probably say I still see a black wall.
- glaukopis 5y ago
  This describes my experience perfectly. I feel like when people discuss aphantasia online, the word "seeing" gets overloaded to both refer to the act of picking up visual stimuli through the optic nerve, as well as a conceptualization action. When I "see" things in my mind's eye, I'm referring exclusively to the latter, and I think most people with normal visualization abilities do the same. Due to the confusion of language as well as the testimonies of some rare people with incredibly vivid mental images that are on par with actual physical sight, I thought I might have aphantasia for a period of time, but after reading up on it, I feel like aphantasia is a much stronger condition than most people on the internet think it is. "Just seeing black" when you try to visualize something isn't enough - it seems like that's just a sign of being a person with a fairly typical brain who's using the word "see" in its literal sense. For example, in the star test (https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/aioyga/simple_aphantasia_test/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/aioyga/simple_a...), if I was a person who understood "see" in the first sense, I'd say that I was a 1. If I instead switch to using the second sense of the word, I'd easily be a 6. It feels like any test that asks you to rate the vividness of the item you "see" in your mind's eye will fall prey to this problem. I saw a comment on HN where the commenter suggested asking someone to visualize an elephant in profile, and then ask them which way the trunk is facing to see if they're aphantasic or not. I'd also suggest that if you ever imagined a person running beside your car while you were taking a road trip as a child, you also probably don't have aphantasia.
  - mdswanson 5y ago
    A better experiment, IMO: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/cpwimq/ball_on_a_table_visualization_experiment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/cpwimq/ball_on_...
    - yoz-y 5y ago
      According to that test, I’d have Aphantasia, I guess. I could answer none of the questions immediately, even though I can imagine a table and a ball and somebody pushing it. I guess visually it would be like if you replaced a ball on a picture by the text “ball” and made the table out of “table” labels.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Why should that be better? I've read that and had a myriad of possible visualizations, beginning with some billiard ball on a pool table(which of them?), over some larger ball on a garden table, to tennis balls(which color? they come in neon yellow, orange, pink and even green!), and whatnot else. It only makes sense to abstract all the possibilities out, and ask how the EFFING EFF should I know?!
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Do people actually see stuff when they imagine things? Apparently so. That's how my wife describes it. She scores an easy 6 on the "star test" - https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/aioyga/simple_aphantasia_test/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/aioyga/simple_a.... Myself, I normally score 2-3 on it.
- skydhash 5y ago
  I do a 6 too. And I can do all kind of imaginary stuff with that red star.
- yesenadam 5y ago
  There seems confusion caused here and in those reddit comments, mostly from two senses of the word "see". The reddit instructions say > Close your eyes and imagine a red star. Which image do you see? I see 2, but most people see 5 or 6. It seems some people are (a) reporting what they actually see with their eyes closed, i.e. mostly nothing, a 1. Others are (b) imagining a star and reporting what that looks like in their mind's eye. I didn't think that aphantasia meant the (a)-type literal seeing, so I just read up on it again, and the descriptions seem to refer to (b)-type imagining/visualization, like imagining a giraffe then being able to describe what you see in your imagination. It doesn't mean you can actually see it, with open or closed eyes. It seems this test convinced a lot of people they have aphantasia, as it seems most people are a 1. And I suspect most of those who say 6 are talking about what they imagine, not what they physically see. I'm a 1 in sense (a), but in sense (b) a 6, well, I can imagine any kind of red star, like most people, I believe.
  - semperdark 5y ago
    Some of the comments report training themselves to produce closed-eye visuals, which I could believe with enough practice. I don't think that has anything to do with aphantasia, though, and I'm in the same box you are.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    That was my initial suspicion as well, but I've addressed this distinction with a few people, and come to believe there's a little confusion. I am 2-3 on (a) and (b). My wife is 6 on (a) and (b). She reports that she does actually see stuff as if it was there. Conversely, I only barely see the things, and at the same time, I can barely "imagine" them in the sense of (b). E.g. my process of "imagining a star and reporting what that looks like" consists of keeping the words, the tokens "red star", repeated by my inner voice on a loop, and then exploring the graph of associations. It's a non-visual process. I don't "see" it, but I can tell you all about it because I know how stars look like and what properties they have.
LordGrey 5y ago
Like all things, there is apparently a whole spectrum of visualization: Aphantasia (the black wall) and Hyperphantasia (AR-like superimposition of images upon reality). What I find interesting is that every single one of us is somewhere on that scale, and we don't quite understand the perspective of someone who is on a different place on the scale. Your own question highlights that ("Is it actually possible to see anything else?"). We are all trained from birth to deal with our senses and mental capabilities as they come, barring an injury. What each of us perceives is the de-facto normal. Learning that others don't have senses just like ours is something of an eye-opener.
- mrkstu 5y ago
  Like others have mentioned, dream state lets me get past the otherwise ‘black wall’ state, so I can relate to the other, just frustrating that I can’t access it at will.
ane 5y ago
You don't "see" it but your brain is looking at something. It's like jumping into a 3D universe in your head.
- skydhash 5y ago
  Reading a book for me is basically the same as watching a movie. Every scene plays in 3D in my head. Every single scene. Which is why I don't read horror stuff. Too scary.
klipt 5y ago
If you read to yourself, do you hear the words read by an "internal voice"? Which you know is different from real, "external" sounds, but you're still processing as audio internally? If so, you're imaging the sense of sound. Visualization is just doing the same thing with sight. You can still tell that "internal sight" is different from real "external" sight. Also I believe visualization is a skill that can be improved with practice. It's just a form of 2D working memory and it's known that working memory can be improved with practice.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  I can imagine a sound that I’m familiar with. But for images i can think about a form of an object, or imagine rotating it, but it is nothing like seeing. Oh well.
  - klipt 5y ago
    > But for images i can think about a form of an object, or imagine rotating it, but it is nothing like seeing. I expect if you practiced that frequently, and gradually (over days or weeks) tried to add more details or colors etc you would find it improves over time. But whether that's actually a worthwhile investment of time is another question :-)

6510 5y ago

We can still edit their memory palace and have fun like that. Put kerosene on the porch and set fire to it. Make the Donald the doorman wearing a mankini etc

aomml 5y ago

Aphantasia alone won't stop you from using memory palaces. If you can remember what you did this morning and where you did those things, you can use a memory palace. It's more about locations and events than visualizing pictures. There are some discussions and examples here: https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Aphantasia_and_Memory https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Aphantasia_and_Memory https://forum.artofmemory.com/tag/aphantasia https://forum.artofmemory.com/tag/aphantasia

LordGrey 5y ago
Thank you for the link. I have tried to use memory palaces. The result is that now I have to remember two things rather than one (the memory palace location and the thing I'm trying to remember). To be fair, I also seem to have Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM) and that will impact personal memory recovery quite a bit. SDAM is common in conjunction with Aphantasia, and perhaps the two combined are conspiring against me in this instance.
- mdswanson 5y ago
  Same with me. Full aphantasia and SDAM.

tmabraham 5y ago

I think I might have aphantasia, but a while back I learned successfully learned how to use a memory palace...