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Where would one see things other than in their mind? The visual field isn't an accurate representation of reality. It's constructed by the brain. I don't think

Where would one see things other than in their mind? The visual field isn't an accurate representation of reality. It's constructed by the brain. I don't think the fact that I can't accurately draw a helicopter from an internal visualization indicates I'm not actually visualizing one. I couldn't draw a helicopter accurately even with one sitting in front of me.

ALittleLight 5y ago
But your drawing of a helicopter would be better if you were looking at one. That's what I'm trying to get at - you aren't looking at a helicopter if you don't have a picture in front of you, otherwise your drawing wouldn't get better. Are you visualizing a weird looking helicopter or do you think you're visualizing while actually not?
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  Being able to visualize doesn't mean being able to visualize everything you've ever seen perfectly. I have friends who work on helicopters (technical work behind the scenes, engineering stuffs), some who could draw a detailed helicopter (happen to be excellent at technical drawing) and some who couldn't (like me, lousy artists). And if you're not familiar with the object, it will be even harder to draw it accurately (even if you are a good artist).
- phonypc 5y ago
  No, my drawing would be quite awful either way. With a picture for reference, it might be more "accurate" in the sense of discrete details, like say it has two blades while my imagined one had four, but I wouldn't be any better at drawing the relative dimensions or shape. In this scenario, I happened to visualize (rather accurately, after checking) an AH-64. Not some abstract helicopter concept.
- cjameskeller 5y ago
  I'm someone who can copy a picture or scene in front of me to near photo-realism level of detail, but usually makes cartoon-like pictures without a reference. I can visualize 3-D Tetris blocks in my head and rotate them at will, and read off information (like, if letters were assigned to the faces of the blocks, I could spin the whole chunk around and read off according to instructions). I think the main difference here is due to two factors: 1. Time investment, and behind that, 2. Contextual demands. With a reference, one may feel more _expected_ to produce a high-fidelity drawing, and take the appropriate time. But if someone simply asks, "Draw a horse", I would usually try to make a basic outline, and not worry too much about the details. The difference between a photo-realistic drawing, and one that is like a child's, is tens of hours of focused work, because reality is very easy to picture for many people, but reproducing that level of detail requires a lot of pencil-strokes.
khazhoux 5y ago
It's a question of whether you're "seeing" a helicopter, or just a semi-conceptual representation of one. E.g., I can hear music pretty much perfectly in my head. I can stop it, rewind it, separate the parts... and I can transcribe it into my music software, with pretty reasonable accuracy. That's the aural equivalent of drawing an accurate helicopter from memory.
- beckman466 5y ago
  > I can hear music pretty much perfectly in my head. I can stop it, rewind it, separate the parts... and I can transcribe it into my music software do you see the notes of the music in your head, as music plays? so it’s like memorizing lines from a story or play?
  - khazhoux 5y ago
    No, nothing visual about it. I can just hear it internally, and command the playback (start over, ever). It's not 100% perfect recall, though, I should note. Parts will be blurry, especially if it's only a song I ever heard a couple of times years ago. But the key thing is that I'm not hearing a conceptualized representation of the music, but the original audio (though somewhat compressed). So it's not that I'm just hearing/remembering a chord progression -- I can recall the original sound source, effortlessly. I don't think this is super rare, btw.
michrassena 5y ago
I would describe myself as having aphantasia. Anything I can visualize is basically black on black in the fog. It certainly seems to me that in describing visualizing a helicopter, you're really seeing your mental model of one. And when people describe the rare phenomenon of eidetic memory, it's more as if they're able to review the actual image in all its detail. This is pure speculation, but it seems to me that people's mental models succumb to a sort of cartographic compression. Your mind doesn't remember detail which seem unimportant at the time, which makes them impossible to draw later. If your visualization was complete, certainly you could draw the parts, even if you couldn't draw them accurately.
- joshspankit 5y ago
  It sounds like you do have aphantasia yes. I am a part of a large fb group that was formed when the 2015 study was released and we all discovered it. Here’s something you may find interesting: people seem to have a variety of combinations of “mind’s senses” as well as typically a single sense that their mind functions in normally. Some examples to hopefully illustrate what I mean: - Seeing clear pictures in their mind’s eye, and processing things visually - Having colours and blur in their mind’s eye, almost like it needs glasses, and processing things visually - Having compete blackness in their mind’s eye and processing things through a “mind’s ear” (for example: by having a complex inner monologue/dialog) - Bonus: there’s even a difference in inner monologues. Some have a distinct voice, some have an absolutely flat monotone voice, some have a voice that blabs about everything going on combined with memories and perceptions, some have a voice that is only stating literal observations... I find it fascinating how different we all are. I don’t think I know of anyone who processed everything through a “mind’s nose”, but we have definitely had discussions about the different ways people’s “noses” work. Kinaesthetic senses (“mind’s hand”/“mind’s sense of physical space”) seems to be a rare one, even among aphants, and that’s what I have: my brain processes things by “touch”. Memories are recalled much like fumbling for threads in a black room. If I can find the right thread (rare: I have a terrible memory), and if I can follow it patiently enough, then I find that everything is connected on the other side. (Who is X?.... [some small detail of their shirt is found on the edge of my awareness]... Aha! I met X at Y, and this is what the day was like, and there was something about a burrito, and some time later we went for great Mexican food). It took a while before I could properly learn complex topics as I had to translate them all to a sort of mental “muscle memory”. I couldn’t tell you what the name of something is, but I can tell you the mechanics of how it works. So yes, I think you’re entirely on to something with the cartographic compression of a mental model, but that does not seem to be the majority of people. On the contrary it seems that we’re in the minority. You’d think that this kind of topic is impossible to understand properly because of how poorly most people know themselves but I have seen the initial discussions first-hand and if you saw what I saw you would know that those people were not faking but were instead self aware enough and open enough to reveal some hidden truths about human beings in general.

ALittleLight 5y ago

But your drawing of a helicopter would be better if you were looking at one. That's what I'm trying to get at - you aren't looking at a helicopter if you don't have a picture in front of you, otherwise your drawing wouldn't get better. Are you visualizing a weird looking helicopter or do you think you're visualizing while actually not?

Jtsummers 5y ago
Being able to visualize doesn't mean being able to visualize everything you've ever seen perfectly. I have friends who work on helicopters (technical work behind the scenes, engineering stuffs), some who could draw a detailed helicopter (happen to be excellent at technical drawing) and some who couldn't (like me, lousy artists). And if you're not familiar with the object, it will be even harder to draw it accurately (even if you are a good artist).
phonypc 5y ago
No, my drawing would be quite awful either way. With a picture for reference, it might be more "accurate" in the sense of discrete details, like say it has two blades while my imagined one had four, but I wouldn't be any better at drawing the relative dimensions or shape. In this scenario, I happened to visualize (rather accurately, after checking) an AH-64. Not some abstract helicopter concept.
cjameskeller 5y ago
I'm someone who can copy a picture or scene in front of me to near photo-realism level of detail, but usually makes cartoon-like pictures without a reference. I can visualize 3-D Tetris blocks in my head and rotate them at will, and read off information (like, if letters were assigned to the faces of the blocks, I could spin the whole chunk around and read off according to instructions). I think the main difference here is due to two factors: 1. Time investment, and behind that, 2. Contextual demands. With a reference, one may feel more _expected_ to produce a high-fidelity drawing, and take the appropriate time. But if someone simply asks, "Draw a horse", I would usually try to make a basic outline, and not worry too much about the details. The difference between a photo-realistic drawing, and one that is like a child's, is tens of hours of focused work, because reality is very easy to picture for many people, but reproducing that level of detail requires a lot of pencil-strokes.

khazhoux 5y ago

It's a question of whether you're "seeing" a helicopter, or just a semi-conceptual representation of one. E.g., I can hear music pretty much perfectly in my head. I can stop it, rewind it, separate the parts... and I can transcribe it into my music software, with pretty reasonable accuracy. That's the aural equivalent of drawing an accurate helicopter from memory.

beckman466 5y ago
> I can hear music pretty much perfectly in my head. I can stop it, rewind it, separate the parts... and I can transcribe it into my music software do you see the notes of the music in your head, as music plays? so it’s like memorizing lines from a story or play?
- khazhoux 5y ago
  No, nothing visual about it. I can just hear it internally, and command the playback (start over, ever). It's not 100% perfect recall, though, I should note. Parts will be blurry, especially if it's only a song I ever heard a couple of times years ago. But the key thing is that I'm not hearing a conceptualized representation of the music, but the original audio (though somewhat compressed). So it's not that I'm just hearing/remembering a chord progression -- I can recall the original sound source, effortlessly. I don't think this is super rare, btw.

michrassena 5y ago

I would describe myself as having aphantasia. Anything I can visualize is basically black on black in the fog. It certainly seems to me that in describing visualizing a helicopter, you're really seeing your mental model of one. And when people describe the rare phenomenon of eidetic memory, it's more as if they're able to review the actual image in all its detail. This is pure speculation, but it seems to me that people's mental models succumb to a sort of cartographic compression. Your mind doesn't remember detail which seem unimportant at the time, which makes them impossible to draw later. If your visualization was complete, certainly you could draw the parts, even if you couldn't draw them accurately.

joshspankit 5y ago
It sounds like you do have aphantasia yes. I am a part of a large fb group that was formed when the 2015 study was released and we all discovered it. Here’s something you may find interesting: people seem to have a variety of combinations of “mind’s senses” as well as typically a single sense that their mind functions in normally. Some examples to hopefully illustrate what I mean: - Seeing clear pictures in their mind’s eye, and processing things visually - Having colours and blur in their mind’s eye, almost like it needs glasses, and processing things visually - Having compete blackness in their mind’s eye and processing things through a “mind’s ear” (for example: by having a complex inner monologue/dialog) - Bonus: there’s even a difference in inner monologues. Some have a distinct voice, some have an absolutely flat monotone voice, some have a voice that blabs about everything going on combined with memories and perceptions, some have a voice that is only stating literal observations... I find it fascinating how different we all are. I don’t think I know of anyone who processed everything through a “mind’s nose”, but we have definitely had discussions about the different ways people’s “noses” work. Kinaesthetic senses (“mind’s hand”/“mind’s sense of physical space”) seems to be a rare one, even among aphants, and that’s what I have: my brain processes things by “touch”. Memories are recalled much like fumbling for threads in a black room. If I can find the right thread (rare: I have a terrible memory), and if I can follow it patiently enough, then I find that everything is connected on the other side. (Who is X?.... [some small detail of their shirt is found on the edge of my awareness]... Aha! I met X at Y, and this is what the day was like, and there was something about a burrito, and some time later we went for great Mexican food). It took a while before I could properly learn complex topics as I had to translate them all to a sort of mental “muscle memory”. I couldn’t tell you what the name of something is, but I can tell you the mechanics of how it works. So yes, I think you’re entirely on to something with the cartographic compression of a mental model, but that does not seem to be the majority of people. On the contrary it seems that we’re in the minority. You’d think that this kind of topic is impossible to understand properly because of how poorly most people know themselves but I have seen the initial discussions first-hand and if you saw what I saw you would know that those people were not faking but were instead self aware enough and open enough to reveal some hidden truths about human beings in general.