4 ms·

I am an aphant, I can not imagine anything. While I can appreciate to have a good income and always had good paying jobs, I was never really interested in maki

I am an aphant, I can not imagine anything. While I can appreciate to have a good income and always had good paying jobs, I was never really interested in making a career and becoming filthy rich. Possibly because I can not imagine myself in this situation. On the other hand I was always better then others on making long term strategic plans. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

alar44 4y ago
I'm so sick of hearing this. You can imagine things. That's not even what Aphantasia is.
- mathstuf 4y ago
  Sure. I have aphantasia too. I cannot, for the life of me, picture or accurately describe my mother's, wife's, or child's face from memory. They're as abstract as a random actor's face to me in those ways. I know details about them, but it's like remembering a list of items, not describing a picture I'm looking at. I can recognize them faster than others, but good luck getting a police sketch of them from me. What I do have are notions and feelings about things when I think about them. If you ask me my favorite foods, I have to sit and remember how I feel about various foods like some kind of rolodex (though over time I'll remember the items from repetition, any such rankings are like this). I don't know how to compare the "vividness" of such things beyond notions of "that seems familiar" or "I don't remember ever encountering that", so this article doesn't really feel like it's about me at all. Of course, I'm also one of the most patient people around, so maybe it's just that the difference between "2x later" and "1x now" is close enough for me to wait in more instances than most since they're both just evocations of feelings and notions rather than things I can literally visualize and compare like some mental "spot the differences" puzzle.
- partomniscient 4y ago
  Why are you sick of it? Some people can't 'imagine' at all. The clue is in the name. Just because you can conceptualise without images doesn't mean you can imagine. Imagination without images is not imagination by definition. Its totally what aphantasia is. There's no picture, there's just an abstracted idea.
phao 4y ago
I've just spent the last 30min-1h looking this up. I think I might have a form of this... Mostly, I can't really picture stuff. I thought that was just everyone. Gotta find out more about this!
Viliam1234 4y ago
Before this starts a huge debate about what is possible and what is not for humans, I would like to link this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-e...

alar44 4y ago

I'm so sick of hearing this. You can imagine things. That's not even what Aphantasia is.

mathstuf 4y ago
Sure. I have aphantasia too. I cannot, for the life of me, picture or accurately describe my mother's, wife's, or child's face from memory. They're as abstract as a random actor's face to me in those ways. I know details about them, but it's like remembering a list of items, not describing a picture I'm looking at. I can recognize them faster than others, but good luck getting a police sketch of them from me. What I do have are notions and feelings about things when I think about them. If you ask me my favorite foods, I have to sit and remember how I feel about various foods like some kind of rolodex (though over time I'll remember the items from repetition, any such rankings are like this). I don't know how to compare the "vividness" of such things beyond notions of "that seems familiar" or "I don't remember ever encountering that", so this article doesn't really feel like it's about me at all. Of course, I'm also one of the most patient people around, so maybe it's just that the difference between "2x later" and "1x now" is close enough for me to wait in more instances than most since they're both just evocations of feelings and notions rather than things I can literally visualize and compare like some mental "spot the differences" puzzle.
partomniscient 4y ago
Why are you sick of it? Some people can't 'imagine' at all. The clue is in the name. Just because you can conceptualise without images doesn't mean you can imagine. Imagination without images is not imagination by definition. Its totally what aphantasia is. There's no picture, there's just an abstracted idea.

phao 4y ago

I've just spent the last 30min-1h looking this up. I think I might have a form of this... Mostly, I can't really picture stuff. I thought that was just everyone. Gotta find out more about this!

Viliam1234 4y ago

Before this starts a huge debate about what is possible and what is not for humans, I would like to link this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-e...