11 ms·

I think you nailed the important distinction of instability of visualization. I think people that dont visualize much or at all get the wrong impression on the

I think you nailed the important distinction of instability of visualization. I think people that dont visualize much or at all get the wrong impression on the fidelity and stability of the ability to visualize.

haimez 5y ago
I’m unconvinced, but maybe because I’m “one of those people who can’t” (no, seriously). How would you describe the limits of what you can visualize? Especially with memory, there’s a clear tendency for people to inject details upon recall and as part of the process of communication.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  What are the limits of what you can dream about?
  - ravar 5y ago
    different person, also have aphantasia. My dreams are completely devoid of sensory content except sometimes the entire dream is music.
    - aix1 5y ago
      Your comment really caught my eye. Would you mind saying a few words about what a dream that's devoid of sensory content is like (i.e. what is it that remains that makes it a dream)?
    - jay3ss 5y ago
      > sometimes the entire dream is music What does this mean?
    - Groxx 5y ago
      I sound pretty far down a different path - my dreams are nearly always entirely audio-free in any form, but I can read just fine in them, which I've heard described as "impossible" many, many times.
  - scruple 5y ago
    I wouldn't know... I have aphantasia and sometimes I'm not even convinced that I even dream (I'm being facetious but at the same time I'm really not). Many others with aphantasia report similarly that they do not have recollections of their dreams. I think that I know that I dream, deep down, because of things that former roommates and my wife have told me, but... I am trusting them at their word. And I know they're not lying to me, because why would they, but... I don't know it myself because I haven't experienced it.
    - bobsmooth 5y ago
      Dreams are different from imagining things. When I dream, I'm seeing the dream out of my 'eyes', but its more floaty and out of body. But when I wake up, I'm remembering what I experienced and it's like a fuzzy movie playing in my head. Imagining things, I think, is very closely tied to remembering and manipulating visual input.
  - 314 5y ago
    I have aphantasia (when I'm awake) and visual imagery in my dreams that is sharper and more detailed than real life. I'm also able to lucidly dream although I try not to as it messes with my long term memory. I would say that we can dream about most things but there are a few obvious limits as there are types of thoughts that will make you wake up: * Reading is difficult and typically books in dreams don't have words in them. * "Pushing" (there is no good word for this) the direction of a dream in a particular way too hard will wake you up. It has to be done very gently. * Abstract reasoning / logic is difficult in dreams, it causes you to concentrate too hard and then you wake up. In general the limits are to do with the two dominant modes of thought: spontaneous unquestioning creation of ideas is very compatible with dreaming and you can float easily between multiple "perspectives" or versions without any problem. Analytical / questioning / critical thinking is incompatible with dreaming and causes you to wake up. Lucid dreaming is typically learning how to float in the sweet spot between the two modes.
    - FPGAhacker 5y ago
      > I have aphantasia (when I'm awake) and visual imagery in my dreams that is sharper and more detailed than real life. I'm not being snarky, but... how do you know? I mean, if you can't visualize when you are awake, how do you even know what you see/saw when you were dreaming?
      - mikelevins 5y ago
        I'm guessing they can remember having seen things in the dream in the same way that they can remember having seen things in waking life, but cannot voluntarily conjure arbitrary images while awake. I think the range of abilities and experiences around visualization, perceptual memory, and so forth, suggests that seeing and remembering are pretty complicated collections of multiple simultaneous processes that are a little differently expressed in different people, and that are not necessarily perfectly coordinated. More generally, I think we tend to think of ourselves as singular, but we have pretty good reasons to think that a person isn't actually a singular thing, but is instead a collection of many processes that are only more or less coordinated and cooperating.
- LogonType10 5y ago
  How are we to convince a blind man that we can see?
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    You could convince a blind man that you could see quite easily, by doing things that require vision and that blind people couldn't reproduce. Since the alleged visualizers don't seem to be able to do anything aphantasia-people can't - it makes me think visualization isn't real.
    - thewakalix 5y ago
      I remember hearing about a study on mental rotation. The time it takes most people to determine whether two shapes are identical (but rotated) is roughly proportional to the angle of rotation between those two shapes. That seems to be close to what you're asking for.
      - ALittleLight 5y ago
        Whenever I have to mentally rotate shapes (only on tests of mental rotation / IQ) I do it by just comparing the features of the original shape to each of the candidates and ruling out options. e.g. noticing that one option has too many vertices or not enough. It's tedious but pretty reliable. Your comment made me Google "aphantasia mental rotation" and the summary of the first result I got makes me think I'm probably right. As I read the summary, aphantasia people were slower but more accurate. In other words, the aphantasians know they don't have visual imagery and therefore do the slow but steady thing whereas the visualizers think they have visual imagery and are fast but wrong. Granted, I haven't read the paper, but at first glance I'm counting it as evidence for me. https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2700106 https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2700106
        vidarh 5y ago
        Or we've spent a whole lifetime training spatial recall, and so we can do that part better. I can spatially "manipulate" scenes I remember well with great precision, and I don't visualise anything. As such I don't think you can reasonably say anything at all about the ability to visualise based on this.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  The limits to what I can visualise? Well, I'd put it this way - there definitely are limits, but what they are is a matter of training. There are traditions of mental training that challenge the practitioner to visualise increasingly complex things, so I've run into them. A standard example of such visualisation is 'in bluish-white light on a dark background, imagine a line. from the same light, imagine drawing a circle using the line as a diameter. Now draw an equilateral triangle touching the boundary of the circle. Then a square around the triangle. Finally, draw another circle around the square, and hold the resulting image stable in your mind' (yes, this shape probably inspired Rowling's description of the deathly Hallows. It's a very old exercise). I can visualise the line and the first circle easily. I can add the triangle, but at this point it already takes some effort, I can't do it if I'm even a little distracted. Typically, adding the square makes me 'lose' an earlier detail, usually the line, from my visualization. That's probably not very informative to your question though, because visualization doesn't have the same sorts of rules around complexity a graphics screen does, the brain definitely uses some form of internal shorthand. I can picture a particular celebrity as easily as I can picture a circle, and picturing her holding an item from my grocery list in each hand is if anything somewhat easier than picturing two other elementary shapes connected to the circle. Maybe because humans are used to imagining other humans holding things, I'm not sure. In any case, there are definitely limits to what a person can visualize, and they're pretty modest for the untrained mind, but it's quite unlike a graphics program where one could simply count the number of pixels required. Not sure if that helps or not...
  - vidarh 5y ago
    > A standard example of such visualisation is 'in bluish-white light on a dark background, imagine a line. from the same light, imagine drawing a circle using the line as a diameter. Now draw an equilateral triangle touching the boundary of the circle. Then a square around the triangle. Finally, draw another circle around the square, and hold the resulting image stable in your mind' (yes, this shape probably inspired Rowling's description of the deathly Hallows. It's a very old exercise). I can't even visualise the dark background or the light.
    - 5y ago
- Auracle 5y ago
  When I try to visualize an apple, it’s amorphous. One minute it might be red, the next green, the next it’s a cartoon. I can’t “hold” the image in my head, and focusing on specific details is easier than the whole apple at once.
- Groxx 5y ago
  The instability and detail-injection has been a fairly big question-mark for me as well. I can completely believe people "see" things at will, and many I've run across claim it's "as real as real-life", but then they immediately fail to answer any simple questions about it. Like if the seat on their visualized bicycle is in front of or behind the rear wheel. Even ignoring if their answer makes physical sense, most of the time there's a significant pause while they try to decide, and something like half of the time they change their mind later. I suspect it's more like dreaming of a thing than a photograph-like construct, at least in a significant number of cases. It'd also explain why it seems so dream-like when you get into specifics, where the pieces may make sense but they do not even remotely add up to a coherent whole - context or something is lost each time it's visualized. The main important part is that it feels like seeing a thing, which is both 1) something not everyone can do/achieve, and 2) more than sufficient for individual use or broad concepts. And it can probably be trained to be more stable and detailed, and there are rare outliers where it's significantly better - there do seem to be people capable of maintaining a stable "thing" from inception through real-world construction.
hosh 5y ago
My visualization as a kid was more vivid than they are now. Lately, since I had been taking Lion’s Mane as a supplement, my visualizations and visual experience has been slowly regaining in clarity, stability, and fidelity.
- Auracle 5y ago
  I take Trazodone most nights to sleep, and there’s a period of a few minutes most nights where my visualization skills greatly increase.
penteract 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if people that do visualize (including myself) overestimate the fidelity and stability. If the same brain is responsible for constructing the image and finding flaws, it will contain the most obvious flaws you could conceivably miss.

haimez 5y ago

I’m unconvinced, but maybe because I’m “one of those people who can’t” (no, seriously). How would you describe the limits of what you can visualize? Especially with memory, there’s a clear tendency for people to inject details upon recall and as part of the process of communication.

bobsmooth 5y ago
What are the limits of what you can dream about?
- ravar 5y ago
  different person, also have aphantasia. My dreams are completely devoid of sensory content except sometimes the entire dream is music.
  - aix1 5y ago
    Your comment really caught my eye. Would you mind saying a few words about what a dream that's devoid of sensory content is like (i.e. what is it that remains that makes it a dream)?
  - jay3ss 5y ago
    > sometimes the entire dream is music What does this mean?
  - Groxx 5y ago
    I sound pretty far down a different path - my dreams are nearly always entirely audio-free in any form, but I can read just fine in them, which I've heard described as "impossible" many, many times.
- scruple 5y ago
  I wouldn't know... I have aphantasia and sometimes I'm not even convinced that I even dream (I'm being facetious but at the same time I'm really not). Many others with aphantasia report similarly that they do not have recollections of their dreams. I think that I know that I dream, deep down, because of things that former roommates and my wife have told me, but... I am trusting them at their word. And I know they're not lying to me, because why would they, but... I don't know it myself because I haven't experienced it.
  - bobsmooth 5y ago
    Dreams are different from imagining things. When I dream, I'm seeing the dream out of my 'eyes', but its more floaty and out of body. But when I wake up, I'm remembering what I experienced and it's like a fuzzy movie playing in my head. Imagining things, I think, is very closely tied to remembering and manipulating visual input.
- 314 5y ago
  I have aphantasia (when I'm awake) and visual imagery in my dreams that is sharper and more detailed than real life. I'm also able to lucidly dream although I try not to as it messes with my long term memory. I would say that we can dream about most things but there are a few obvious limits as there are types of thoughts that will make you wake up: * Reading is difficult and typically books in dreams don't have words in them. * "Pushing" (there is no good word for this) the direction of a dream in a particular way too hard will wake you up. It has to be done very gently. * Abstract reasoning / logic is difficult in dreams, it causes you to concentrate too hard and then you wake up. In general the limits are to do with the two dominant modes of thought: spontaneous unquestioning creation of ideas is very compatible with dreaming and you can float easily between multiple "perspectives" or versions without any problem. Analytical / questioning / critical thinking is incompatible with dreaming and causes you to wake up. Lucid dreaming is typically learning how to float in the sweet spot between the two modes.
  - FPGAhacker 5y ago
    > I have aphantasia (when I'm awake) and visual imagery in my dreams that is sharper and more detailed than real life. I'm not being snarky, but... how do you know? I mean, if you can't visualize when you are awake, how do you even know what you see/saw when you were dreaming?
    - mikelevins 5y ago
      I'm guessing they can remember having seen things in the dream in the same way that they can remember having seen things in waking life, but cannot voluntarily conjure arbitrary images while awake. I think the range of abilities and experiences around visualization, perceptual memory, and so forth, suggests that seeing and remembering are pretty complicated collections of multiple simultaneous processes that are a little differently expressed in different people, and that are not necessarily perfectly coordinated. More generally, I think we tend to think of ourselves as singular, but we have pretty good reasons to think that a person isn't actually a singular thing, but is instead a collection of many processes that are only more or less coordinated and cooperating.
LogonType10 5y ago
How are we to convince a blind man that we can see?
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  You could convince a blind man that you could see quite easily, by doing things that require vision and that blind people couldn't reproduce. Since the alleged visualizers don't seem to be able to do anything aphantasia-people can't - it makes me think visualization isn't real.
  - thewakalix 5y ago
    I remember hearing about a study on mental rotation. The time it takes most people to determine whether two shapes are identical (but rotated) is roughly proportional to the angle of rotation between those two shapes. That seems to be close to what you're asking for.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      Whenever I have to mentally rotate shapes (only on tests of mental rotation / IQ) I do it by just comparing the features of the original shape to each of the candidates and ruling out options. e.g. noticing that one option has too many vertices or not enough. It's tedious but pretty reliable. Your comment made me Google "aphantasia mental rotation" and the summary of the first result I got makes me think I'm probably right. As I read the summary, aphantasia people were slower but more accurate. In other words, the aphantasians know they don't have visual imagery and therefore do the slow but steady thing whereas the visualizers think they have visual imagery and are fast but wrong. Granted, I haven't read the paper, but at first glance I'm counting it as evidence for me. https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2700106 https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2700106
      - vidarh 5y ago
        Or we've spent a whole lifetime training spatial recall, and so we can do that part better. I can spatially "manipulate" scenes I remember well with great precision, and I don't visualise anything. As such I don't think you can reasonably say anything at all about the ability to visualise based on this.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
The limits to what I can visualise? Well, I'd put it this way - there definitely are limits, but what they are is a matter of training. There are traditions of mental training that challenge the practitioner to visualise increasingly complex things, so I've run into them. A standard example of such visualisation is 'in bluish-white light on a dark background, imagine a line. from the same light, imagine drawing a circle using the line as a diameter. Now draw an equilateral triangle touching the boundary of the circle. Then a square around the triangle. Finally, draw another circle around the square, and hold the resulting image stable in your mind' (yes, this shape probably inspired Rowling's description of the deathly Hallows. It's a very old exercise). I can visualise the line and the first circle easily. I can add the triangle, but at this point it already takes some effort, I can't do it if I'm even a little distracted. Typically, adding the square makes me 'lose' an earlier detail, usually the line, from my visualization. That's probably not very informative to your question though, because visualization doesn't have the same sorts of rules around complexity a graphics screen does, the brain definitely uses some form of internal shorthand. I can picture a particular celebrity as easily as I can picture a circle, and picturing her holding an item from my grocery list in each hand is if anything somewhat easier than picturing two other elementary shapes connected to the circle. Maybe because humans are used to imagining other humans holding things, I'm not sure. In any case, there are definitely limits to what a person can visualize, and they're pretty modest for the untrained mind, but it's quite unlike a graphics program where one could simply count the number of pixels required. Not sure if that helps or not...
- vidarh 5y ago
  > A standard example of such visualisation is 'in bluish-white light on a dark background, imagine a line. from the same light, imagine drawing a circle using the line as a diameter. Now draw an equilateral triangle touching the boundary of the circle. Then a square around the triangle. Finally, draw another circle around the square, and hold the resulting image stable in your mind' (yes, this shape probably inspired Rowling's description of the deathly Hallows. It's a very old exercise). I can't even visualise the dark background or the light.
  - 5y ago
Auracle 5y ago
When I try to visualize an apple, it’s amorphous. One minute it might be red, the next green, the next it’s a cartoon. I can’t “hold” the image in my head, and focusing on specific details is easier than the whole apple at once.
Groxx 5y ago
The instability and detail-injection has been a fairly big question-mark for me as well. I can completely believe people "see" things at will, and many I've run across claim it's "as real as real-life", but then they immediately fail to answer any simple questions about it. Like if the seat on their visualized bicycle is in front of or behind the rear wheel. Even ignoring if their answer makes physical sense, most of the time there's a significant pause while they try to decide, and something like half of the time they change their mind later. I suspect it's more like dreaming of a thing than a photograph-like construct, at least in a significant number of cases. It'd also explain why it seems so dream-like when you get into specifics, where the pieces may make sense but they do not even remotely add up to a coherent whole - context or something is lost each time it's visualized. The main important part is that it feels like seeing a thing, which is both 1) something not everyone can do/achieve, and 2) more than sufficient for individual use or broad concepts. And it can probably be trained to be more stable and detailed, and there are rare outliers where it's significantly better - there do seem to be people capable of maintaining a stable "thing" from inception through real-world construction.

hosh 5y ago

My visualization as a kid was more vivid than they are now. Lately, since I had been taking Lion’s Mane as a supplement, my visualizations and visual experience has been slowly regaining in clarity, stability, and fidelity.

Auracle 5y ago
I take Trazodone most nights to sleep, and there’s a period of a few minutes most nights where my visualization skills greatly increase.

penteract 5y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if people that do visualize (including myself) overestimate the fidelity and stability. If the same brain is responsible for constructing the image and finding flaws, it will contain the most obvious flaws you could conceivably miss.