5 ms·

Aphantasiac here. Not quite pure aphantasiac, as I do on rare occasions experience momentary flashes of mental imagery, but it's so rare that it never occurred

Aphantasiac here. Not quite pure aphantasiac, as I do on rare occasions experience momentary flashes of mental imagery, but it's so rare that it never occurred to me anyone could actually do anything useful with mental images. Once the penny finally dropped it was mind-melting. It's been three or four years now since I realized my experience is unusual, and I'm _still_ discovering ways it impacts how I experience life differently than most. A memorable moment was telling a friend who already knew I was aphantasiac that I struggle with mental arithmetic, and being completely lost when he replied, "oh, right, because you can't make the numbers dance in your head." I said, "what?" After a minute of confusion, he was finally able to get across that when he does mental math, he actually writes the problem in his mind's eye and does it on virtual paper. I think that was the day I first realized that it really is a handicap in many ways. OTOH, an upside is that I've never had to wish for "brain bleach". I didn't understand that phrase at all until the past year or three. I occasionally think that aphantasiacs should be preferentially chosen for high-trauma-exposure jobs, like EMT - we simply can't retain those horrible moments. I'm not on HN super-regularly, but I'd be happy to take a few minutes to answer questions the next time I check in.

FPGAhacker 5y ago
I’m not doubting your friend, but that kind of mental visualization ability (doing arithmetic on visualized paper) has to be extremely rare. That is savant level capability. I would say that ability depends much more on short term memory capacity than anything else. I think the visualization aspect is incidental.
- godDLL 5y ago
  A few years back I couldn't visualize a point. Recently I learned to read words backwards in my mind. It's a skill.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  I visualize mental math but anything more than 2 digits by 2 digits is hard to keep track of. Short term memory is very much the limiting factor.
- aappleby 5y ago
  Surely it isn't that rare? I can track about 8 digits total while doing mental mul/div, and I don't think of that as anything special.
  - FPGAhacker 5y ago
    So you could multiply or divide two four digit numbers by visualizing them? To me that is pretty incredible!
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      How do you figure? Just the two inputs would take up all 8 digits, but you need to keep track of a bunch of intermediate results too.
      - aappleby 5y ago
        Yeah 4x4 would be a bit much, 3x3 is doable, 3x2 is easy.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    I’m probably just an idiot, but I am absolutely terrible and anything that requires me to retain information in my head for a calculation.
- light_hue_1 5y ago
  > but that kind of mental visualization ability (doing arithmetic on visualized paper) has to be extremely rare. That is savant level capability No way. I would say most of the math students I've taught at the university level could do it to some extent. It's not all that helpful. The problem is that your visual scratch pad is quite limited. If you're forced to always rely on it you won't get far without having to unlearn bad habits. This happens to people with amazing memories too. I can't name a single colleague at my top 10 university that has an eidetic memory. The people I've met with amazing memories have systematically had a lot of issues because of their memory. It's too easy to rely on remembering things and then you never build good heuristics and don't generalize well.
  - robbiep 5y ago
    It is pretty handy in a related concept - rotating stereoisomers in organic chemistry
- ok_dad 5y ago
  I can definitely see things in great detail in my mind, I don't feel like it's too hard, is it really that uncommon? My wife always loses things, and when she is looking I just virtually walk around my house to figure out where it is. I'm not sure I see every detail, but I see most of the home. Same for if I am talking about where something is for driving, I just virtually drive there in my head and explain the major turns to them as I go. I can also picture math and programming in my head; the former usually as geometric shapes forming to solve a problem and the latter as flow charts. I'm not the smartest person, so I'm pretty sure it's just practice that allows me to do this, as I've always been a sort of loner and had to picture books and worlds in my head to entertain myself.
khazhoux 5y ago
I'm similar. For me, I can get a "flash", but it immediately morphs into another shapeless shape.. constantly morphs, in fact. Try this neat trick I just discovered: Try to visualize colors. Close your eyes, and just try to picture a red, then a green, then a blue. I never realized I could do this, and it actually requires a good bit of concentration. But it's super satisfying, especially given my aphantasia. I really can "see" the color like it's right there. How's your "inner ear"? Can you hear music perfectly? I can.
- JshWright 5y ago
  This was one of the things that convinced me aphantasia is real (and that it's how my brain works). I was concentrating very hard, trying to visualize _anything_ and suddenly managed to imagine a green blob. I can occasionally visualize purple as well. It's so incredibly vivid though... It makes me genuinely sad to realize most people can do that (and so much more) at will. I don't "hear" any more than I "see" in my brain.
  - shaunxcode 5y ago
    I definitely have aphantasia - it makes meditating both easier and more difficult. I don’t get to traverse beautifully intricate mandalas but I can very easily engage in focused metta without distraction. On occasion I will see a blue light that fades in and out.
  - bobsmooth 5y ago
    Keep practising. Try imagining the blob turning into simple shapes. Try to imagine what the blob would look like from the other side.
    - JshWright 5y ago
      I have, trust me. Most nights lying in bed I'll spend at least a little time doing exactly that, with little change (that's how I figured out I could make it purple though)
JshWright 5y ago
Paramedic with aphantasia here. You're spot on that it's a huge blessing in that regard (I don't think there's any particular selection pressure for it in EMS though, I've yet to come across anyone else in the field) What was the point at which it "clicked" for you? For me it was an AskReddit thread a few years back with a prompt of "When you hear a 'three X walk into a bar' joke, what does the bar look like?" It had just never occurred to me that people can actually visualize a bar when they hear that joke.
- NateEag 5y ago
  It clicked for me when I read Blake Ross's article on his own discovery of aphantasia: https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A2862324277332876%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F&refsrc=deprecated&_rdr https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A... I read that and went "huh. I guess I'm weirder than I thought."
- khazhoux 5y ago
  Do you read fiction? I stopped when I realized I simply didn’t enjoy it, and I think that’s because I don’t see the scenes.
  - JshWright 5y ago
    I listen to fiction audiobooks (I love reading physical non-fiction books, but can't do that for fiction). I can certainly still enjoy the plot of a fiction story, but yeah, the fact that my experience of stories told through text/audio is apparently really limited is sad...
  - NateEag 5y ago
    I do. I love reading fiction and got through thousands of fiction books in my teens. My experience of it is quite different from most, as I have come to understand. I never understood what people meant when they said "That character in the movie didn't look at all like I imagined him." I always thought they just meant "I don't think the movie makers came up with a good version." I did try my hand at writing fiction once, and I was boggled at how hard it was to do something like write a military skirmish. I was sketching maps and trying to work out topography and all kinds of details. Now that I know people can visualize the scene then describe it, well... my difficulties make a lot more sense.
Teever 5y ago
Have you ever tried doing CAD work and if so, are you any good at it? What is that process like? I've dabbled a bit with that kind of work and I find my mind's eye to be critical for it and I would have no idea how to undertake it if I couldn't visualize something.
- NateEag 5y ago
  I've never done CAD, but I did try 3D modeling and animation in my teens. I was not any good at it. I did slowly improve, but never got to where I could make anything genuinely visually compelling. I got to be okay at working in traditional 2D media, as long as I was working from a reference photo.
idontwantthis 5y ago
Facebook needs to recruit aphantasics for moderators! I wonder if they could even find potentials with all of their data.
Kye 5y ago
I've recently realized that the difference between facts I remember like some numbers and names, and things I don't remember, is that I recall them as an extremely rough image of text. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I just can't. This stands out when putting in verification codes: sometimes I can hold the whole thing in my head as an image sort of like when you look at a bright object and it gets stuck in your vision where the receptors are overloaded. Sometimes I have to keep referring back every 1-3 characters. Oddly, I can visualize things very well in specific circumstances. For example: if I spend a lot of time playing a new game, I can recall images from it and manipulate them with ease. There are times where I listen to podcasts while playing a game and images from the game pop up when I recall anything related to what was in the podcast.
scruple 5y ago
> OTOH, an upside is that I've never had to wish for "brain bleach". I didn't understand that phrase at all until the past year or three. I occasionally think that aphantasiacs should be preferentially chosen for high-trauma-exposure jobs, like EMT - we simply can't retain those horrible moments. I'm also an aphantasiac, as it were, and I've got some considerable trauma behind me that doesn't phase me the way that people who learn of it think that it ought to. I've never seen that expressed before but I understand what you mean. Thanks for sharing.
M5x7wI3CmbEem10 5y ago
may I ask if you’re circumcised? I’ve read some literature on aphantasia and it may stem from early childhood trauma
- NateEag 5y ago
  I am. I'd not heard of an early childhood trauma angle before. Thanks for mentioning it.
ok_dad 5y ago
I still see my father in law and my step father dying (separately) very clearly, and wish I couldn't. I can see the life draining from my stepfathers half open eyes and his face as the nurse, thankfully, "made him more comfortable" [0] as he was taken off the ventilator. I can also see my father in law's blood drain from his swollen face as the heart-lung machine was disconnected. It's horrible. [0]: I suspect that's just code for pumping him with an overdose of opiates so he would die quicker and with less spasms and no pain, but I can't be sure. I kind of think it's an open secret in medicine that they do this, though not sure, and I appreciate her service in helping us all be more comfortable in that room with her action that day.
thisisonthetest 5y ago
> make the numbers dance in your head That is the best description of mental arithmetic I’ve heard, I love it. Thinking about it, I guess I solve problems by moving numbers into certain positions relative to each other based on the operations then watch them split apart/combine, grow/shrink, etc. I always assumed it was a weakness in my math skills but the dance metaphor is a profound reframing, thanks!

FPGAhacker 5y ago

I’m not doubting your friend, but that kind of mental visualization ability (doing arithmetic on visualized paper) has to be extremely rare. That is savant level capability. I would say that ability depends much more on short term memory capacity than anything else. I think the visualization aspect is incidental.

godDLL 5y ago
A few years back I couldn't visualize a point. Recently I learned to read words backwards in my mind. It's a skill.
bobsmooth 5y ago
I visualize mental math but anything more than 2 digits by 2 digits is hard to keep track of. Short term memory is very much the limiting factor.
aappleby 5y ago
Surely it isn't that rare? I can track about 8 digits total while doing mental mul/div, and I don't think of that as anything special.
- FPGAhacker 5y ago
  So you could multiply or divide two four digit numbers by visualizing them? To me that is pretty incredible!
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    How do you figure? Just the two inputs would take up all 8 digits, but you need to keep track of a bunch of intermediate results too.
    - aappleby 5y ago
      Yeah 4x4 would be a bit much, 3x3 is doable, 3x2 is easy.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- the_only_law 5y ago
  I’m probably just an idiot, but I am absolutely terrible and anything that requires me to retain information in my head for a calculation.
light_hue_1 5y ago
> but that kind of mental visualization ability (doing arithmetic on visualized paper) has to be extremely rare. That is savant level capability No way. I would say most of the math students I've taught at the university level could do it to some extent. It's not all that helpful. The problem is that your visual scratch pad is quite limited. If you're forced to always rely on it you won't get far without having to unlearn bad habits. This happens to people with amazing memories too. I can't name a single colleague at my top 10 university that has an eidetic memory. The people I've met with amazing memories have systematically had a lot of issues because of their memory. It's too easy to rely on remembering things and then you never build good heuristics and don't generalize well.
- robbiep 5y ago
  It is pretty handy in a related concept - rotating stereoisomers in organic chemistry
ok_dad 5y ago
I can definitely see things in great detail in my mind, I don't feel like it's too hard, is it really that uncommon? My wife always loses things, and when she is looking I just virtually walk around my house to figure out where it is. I'm not sure I see every detail, but I see most of the home. Same for if I am talking about where something is for driving, I just virtually drive there in my head and explain the major turns to them as I go. I can also picture math and programming in my head; the former usually as geometric shapes forming to solve a problem and the latter as flow charts. I'm not the smartest person, so I'm pretty sure it's just practice that allows me to do this, as I've always been a sort of loner and had to picture books and worlds in my head to entertain myself.

khazhoux 5y ago

I'm similar. For me, I can get a "flash", but it immediately morphs into another shapeless shape.. constantly morphs, in fact. Try this neat trick I just discovered: Try to visualize colors. Close your eyes, and just try to picture a red, then a green, then a blue. I never realized I could do this, and it actually requires a good bit of concentration. But it's super satisfying, especially given my aphantasia. I really can "see" the color like it's right there. How's your "inner ear"? Can you hear music perfectly? I can.

JshWright 5y ago
This was one of the things that convinced me aphantasia is real (and that it's how my brain works). I was concentrating very hard, trying to visualize _anything_ and suddenly managed to imagine a green blob. I can occasionally visualize purple as well. It's so incredibly vivid though... It makes me genuinely sad to realize most people can do that (and so much more) at will. I don't "hear" any more than I "see" in my brain.
- shaunxcode 5y ago
  I definitely have aphantasia - it makes meditating both easier and more difficult. I don’t get to traverse beautifully intricate mandalas but I can very easily engage in focused metta without distraction. On occasion I will see a blue light that fades in and out.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  Keep practising. Try imagining the blob turning into simple shapes. Try to imagine what the blob would look like from the other side.
  - JshWright 5y ago
    I have, trust me. Most nights lying in bed I'll spend at least a little time doing exactly that, with little change (that's how I figured out I could make it purple though)

JshWright 5y ago

Paramedic with aphantasia here. You're spot on that it's a huge blessing in that regard (I don't think there's any particular selection pressure for it in EMS though, I've yet to come across anyone else in the field) What was the point at which it "clicked" for you? For me it was an AskReddit thread a few years back with a prompt of "When you hear a 'three X walk into a bar' joke, what does the bar look like?" It had just never occurred to me that people can actually visualize a bar when they hear that joke.

NateEag 5y ago
It clicked for me when I read Blake Ross's article on his own discovery of aphantasia: https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A2862324277332876%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F&refsrc=deprecated&_rdr https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A... I read that and went "huh. I guess I'm weirder than I thought."
khazhoux 5y ago
Do you read fiction? I stopped when I realized I simply didn’t enjoy it, and I think that’s because I don’t see the scenes.
- JshWright 5y ago
  I listen to fiction audiobooks (I love reading physical non-fiction books, but can't do that for fiction). I can certainly still enjoy the plot of a fiction story, but yeah, the fact that my experience of stories told through text/audio is apparently really limited is sad...
- NateEag 5y ago
  I do. I love reading fiction and got through thousands of fiction books in my teens. My experience of it is quite different from most, as I have come to understand. I never understood what people meant when they said "That character in the movie didn't look at all like I imagined him." I always thought they just meant "I don't think the movie makers came up with a good version." I did try my hand at writing fiction once, and I was boggled at how hard it was to do something like write a military skirmish. I was sketching maps and trying to work out topography and all kinds of details. Now that I know people can visualize the scene then describe it, well... my difficulties make a lot more sense.

Teever 5y ago

Have you ever tried doing CAD work and if so, are you any good at it? What is that process like? I've dabbled a bit with that kind of work and I find my mind's eye to be critical for it and I would have no idea how to undertake it if I couldn't visualize something.

NateEag 5y ago
I've never done CAD, but I did try 3D modeling and animation in my teens. I was not any good at it. I did slowly improve, but never got to where I could make anything genuinely visually compelling. I got to be okay at working in traditional 2D media, as long as I was working from a reference photo.

idontwantthis 5y ago

Facebook needs to recruit aphantasics for moderators! I wonder if they could even find potentials with all of their data.

Kye 5y ago

I've recently realized that the difference between facts I remember like some numbers and names, and things I don't remember, is that I recall them as an extremely rough image of text. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I just can't. This stands out when putting in verification codes: sometimes I can hold the whole thing in my head as an image sort of like when you look at a bright object and it gets stuck in your vision where the receptors are overloaded. Sometimes I have to keep referring back every 1-3 characters. Oddly, I can visualize things very well in specific circumstances. For example: if I spend a lot of time playing a new game, I can recall images from it and manipulate them with ease. There are times where I listen to podcasts while playing a game and images from the game pop up when I recall anything related to what was in the podcast.

scruple 5y ago

> OTOH, an upside is that I've never had to wish for "brain bleach". I didn't understand that phrase at all until the past year or three. I occasionally think that aphantasiacs should be preferentially chosen for high-trauma-exposure jobs, like EMT - we simply can't retain those horrible moments. I'm also an aphantasiac, as it were, and I've got some considerable trauma behind me that doesn't phase me the way that people who learn of it think that it ought to. I've never seen that expressed before but I understand what you mean. Thanks for sharing.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 5y ago

may I ask if you’re circumcised? I’ve read some literature on aphantasia and it may stem from early childhood trauma

NateEag 5y ago
I am. I'd not heard of an early childhood trauma angle before. Thanks for mentioning it.

ok_dad 5y ago

I still see my father in law and my step father dying (separately) very clearly, and wish I couldn't. I can see the life draining from my stepfathers half open eyes and his face as the nurse, thankfully, "made him more comfortable" [0] as he was taken off the ventilator. I can also see my father in law's blood drain from his swollen face as the heart-lung machine was disconnected. It's horrible. [0]: I suspect that's just code for pumping him with an overdose of opiates so he would die quicker and with less spasms and no pain, but I can't be sure. I kind of think it's an open secret in medicine that they do this, though not sure, and I appreciate her service in helping us all be more comfortable in that room with her action that day.

thisisonthetest 5y ago

> make the numbers dance in your head That is the best description of mental arithmetic I’ve heard, I love it. Thinking about it, I guess I solve problems by moving numbers into certain positions relative to each other based on the operations then watch them split apart/combine, grow/shrink, etc. I always assumed it was a weakness in my math skills but the dance metaphor is a profound reframing, thanks!