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This brings to mind the whole Aphantasia¹ concept (briefly mentioned in TFA), where some people don't see images in their mind. It always amazes me how people's

This brings to mind the whole Aphantasia¹ concept (briefly mentioned in TFA), where some people don't see images in their mind. It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different. Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to be born blind, but being sighted and still not being able to create mental imagery seems almost stranger. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

jumploops 3y ago
I have aphantasia and didn’t realize it until adulthood. Both my brother and I have it (or lack it), though neither of our parents have aphantasia. When people spoke of “daydreaming” I always assumed it was just a metaphor for being deep in thought, as it would be clearly impossible for people to visualize things without dreaming or hallucinating… boy was I wrong! Apparently some folk can even look at a wall and imagine a scene playing out like a movie. Blows my mind every time I think about it!
- nocoiner 3y ago
  I am fairly sure I don’t have aphantasia, but for me there’s no visual component to daydreaming - it’s purely just zoning out and later realizing I’d lost track of time. It’s so interesting to hear about how other people’s minds work totally differently from that.
- smokel 3y ago
  Don't believe everything people say. It is very hard for people to report their inner processes correctly.
  - jumploops 3y ago
    I completely agree — all of our minds work slightly differently and thus using language to describe one’s internal loop is necessarily fraught with translation error. With that said, this report came from a close relative who had no idea that aphantasia was a thing. We started with the experiment: “imagine a barn, what color is it and how many windows does it have?” and then proceeded to dive into the limits of their capabilities (e.g. detail is often absent or brushed over, while some things are quite vivid like people’s faces). Her report was quite different from others I’ve spoken with, so it certainly seems like there’s a spectrum to the experience of phantasia.
mathewsanders 3y ago
The idea that people’s minds can be so different is something I didn’t realize until a couple of years ago and has been a lightening bolt moment for me in better understanding myself and others! I believe I have aphantasia, and the idea of being able to visualize things on demand seem so strange to me that it’s hard for me to even imagine (isn’t it distracting?). When I heard things like “count sheep to fall asleep” or “imagine yourself on a beach” to relax, I had assumed this was a figure of speech, but apparently people are doing this literally! I’ve spent some time trying to practice visualizing things mentally and sometimes if I relax and try not to think about it I’ll get a glimpse of something (last time I tried I got something like looking at a forest from the sky) but the moment I try and focus it disappears in a snap, so I feel like it’s closer to dreaming than visualizing something mentally. Related to this, I have plenty of audible conversations in my mind (either with myself or other people) and I’ll often have a song playing in the background of my mind (although music seems to be limited to just remembering things I’ve already heard) apparently some people can’t imagine sounds or voices which also seems equally bizarre to me.
- interroboink 3y ago
  And on the other hand, sometimes completely different people have uncanny similarities in their mental nooks and crannies — such as your mental audio track; same thing here (: I'm reminded of this old thread, about kids on road trips imagining some little figure running/driving alongside, leaping over obstacles (I definitely did the same): https://old.reddit.com/r/DoesAnybodyElse/comments/2te8jz/dae_as_a_kid_on_car_trips_imagine_a_man_jumping/ https://old.reddit.com/r/DoesAnybodyElse/comments/2te8jz/dae... I'm sure there are more like that which people just haven't thought to mention to one another.
- Teever 3y ago
  I had a similar lightening bolt moment a couple of years ago while pondering differences in intelligence, capability, and sanity when I realized that just like our faces have subtle differences in things like feature size, symmetry, proportionality, tissue texture, colour, like, all physical characteristics that go into facial beauty that the exact same thing is going on just a few inches away underneath the surface in our brain. Those same subtle differences in physical structures are responsible for so much of the variation in human personality/intelligence that we experience, and yet we perceive it totally different than physical beauty because we can't physically see it. A big part of dating is about sussing out whether or not someone has a sexy medulla oblongata, or a girthy corpus callosum.
joedevon 3y ago
I've been scared to take the VVIQ test because I guess, in the back of my mind, I feared, or kinda knew...that I have aphantasia. Even spoke about aphantasia at an accessibility talk a couple days ago. I finally pushed myself and took the test tonight. Of the 5 choices: 1. No image at all, I only “know” I am thinking of the object 2. Dim and vague image 3. Moderately realistic and vivid 4. Realistic and reasonably vivid 5. Perfectly realistic, as vivid as real seeing I am either a 1 or 2 across the board. I can't decide which. But absolutely never a 3. And this is making me a bit wistful. Particularly because I can't remember my Dad's face. His scent. My Mom. Mom's been gone 3 years. Dad left us in 2013. I'm so jealous of people who have vivid memories of loved ones who are gone. Been looking at subreddit /aphantasia a bit too tonight, and blown away that people actually see sheep when counting sheep. Or that reading a book means literally seeing the action. WTH? I still don't get it. That can't be real. Whew what a night.
- bobsmooth 3y ago
  > I'm so jealous of people who have vivid memories of loved ones who are gone. The same way a song can get stick in your head an image can get stuck in your head. I'd rather be able to visualize than not but it comes with negatives.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > I finally pushed myself and took the test tonight. What test is this? An online one? > Or that reading a book means literally seeing the action. WTH? I still don't get it. That can't be real. I assure you it is real, and why I prefer reading fiction to watching the same story as a movie. I find that with scifi especially, the book tends to be much more visually satisfying than the movie.
  - racingmars 3y ago
    > What test is this? An online one? https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ Personally, I don't find the test particularly enlightening... it's a test to assess how vivid your mental visualizations are, but it does so by just asking how vivid your mental visualizations are. I can't tell how it's any different from an IQ test that just asks you "what do you think your IQ is?" But I also believe I have aphantasia, so it's blindingly (hah...pun not intended) obvious to me that I don't visualize anything mentally. Any result of the test was a forgone conclusion for me. Maybe if you do visualize things to some degree it's helpful to tease out various aspects of the vividness of your visualizations. I don't know, it's not something I can relate to.
goodbyesf 3y ago
> It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different. Not just between different people. What about a single individual. Is a single individual's mind the same over time? Is your mind the same now as it was yesterday? Is it the same before your nap and after you awake? Everyone is separated from each other by their own personal subjective reality. But does that also apply to the individual?
smokel 3y ago
I am very skeptical about the concept of aphantasia. For one, I think that visual phantasy can be trained, or at least developed. Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way. As an example, many people believed for some time that dreams were in black and white, which is obviously not true for everyone. However, this does not imply that dreams are in color. It seems more likely that dreams and their visual response are separate processes. It may well be that some people actually have some form of aphantasia, but all the self reporting of amazing visual powers or the lack thereof seems more indicative of peoples' egos than the actual differences in what they are capable of. Happy to learn that I am wrong here!
- racingmars 3y ago
  > I am very skeptical about the concept of aphantasia. > Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way. I agree that discussing our mental/inner processes is difficult due to a lack of a common frame of reference on which to base descriptions. (I'm reminded of McCoy and Spock's conversation in Star Trek IV... "Are you telling me I'd have to die to discuss your experience of death with you?") I (approx. 40 years old) became aware of the concept of aphantasia about three years ago. I immediately identified with it... or rather, I immediately found it mind-boggling that other people claim to experience anything close to "seeing" something by closing their eyes and thinking about it. That's such a foreign concept to me I had always assumed people's descriptions of visualizing things in their mind, daydreaming, etc were extremely metaphorical, not describing a process that is anything like "seeing" something. I have talked to many friends at length about how they describe their "mind's eye" after realizing I was probably different. And even how it extends, in the case of some of my friends with particularly visual mind's eyes, to the "mind's ears" and "mind's nose" in music and scent recall. Based on my friends' descriptions to me of how they try to describe how they experience mental visualization, it's clear the capability is a spectrum... some describe it as blurry gray image of what they're thinking about, some describe it as being a picture as real as a photograph that they can literally see and smell. I agree with you that it's hard to tell how reliable the descriptions are relative to each other, but I can tell you this: hearing all of themselves describe it, even down at the "it's just a blurry gray 'image' in my mind" end of the spectrum, none of them sounded familiar to me or like any kind of "visualization" I've ever experienced while awake (specifically: none at all). If it were simply a matter of being able to accurately report objectively on our inner processes in a useful way, I feel like there wouldn't be such a clear divide between the way a minority of people (allegedly with aphantasia) describe it and the way the majority of people describe it. Whether it's aphantasia or not, it's clear to me at this point that there is definitely a "group A" and "group B" in terms of how people describe their "mind's eye" when asked. Related, I also have a friend who says she has no internal monologue, another phenomenon I've read about. She thinks entirely visually. Not having an inner monologue is such an incomprehensible concept to me; literally the only way I can think is with my inner monologue. Brains are weird.
LoganDark 3y ago
> It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different. we encountered this when we learned about the difference between autistic and non-autistic minds. one of the reasons why autistics behave the way they do is because the connection structure in their brain is different enough that they literally, actually, do not experience "thought" in the same way that neurotypical people do. the same is true in reverse - for autistics, neurotypical people experience thought in such a fundamentally different manner that it's basically impossible for one to imagine what metacognition might feel like from within a non-autistic brain. it's just not something you can really fathom at all source: we are the autistic, hehe

jumploops 3y ago

I have aphantasia and didn’t realize it until adulthood. Both my brother and I have it (or lack it), though neither of our parents have aphantasia. When people spoke of “daydreaming” I always assumed it was just a metaphor for being deep in thought, as it would be clearly impossible for people to visualize things without dreaming or hallucinating… boy was I wrong! Apparently some folk can even look at a wall and imagine a scene playing out like a movie. Blows my mind every time I think about it!

nocoiner 3y ago
I am fairly sure I don’t have aphantasia, but for me there’s no visual component to daydreaming - it’s purely just zoning out and later realizing I’d lost track of time. It’s so interesting to hear about how other people’s minds work totally differently from that.
smokel 3y ago
Don't believe everything people say. It is very hard for people to report their inner processes correctly.
- jumploops 3y ago
  I completely agree — all of our minds work slightly differently and thus using language to describe one’s internal loop is necessarily fraught with translation error. With that said, this report came from a close relative who had no idea that aphantasia was a thing. We started with the experiment: “imagine a barn, what color is it and how many windows does it have?” and then proceeded to dive into the limits of their capabilities (e.g. detail is often absent or brushed over, while some things are quite vivid like people’s faces). Her report was quite different from others I’ve spoken with, so it certainly seems like there’s a spectrum to the experience of phantasia.

mathewsanders 3y ago

The idea that people’s minds can be so different is something I didn’t realize until a couple of years ago and has been a lightening bolt moment for me in better understanding myself and others! I believe I have aphantasia, and the idea of being able to visualize things on demand seem so strange to me that it’s hard for me to even imagine (isn’t it distracting?). When I heard things like “count sheep to fall asleep” or “imagine yourself on a beach” to relax, I had assumed this was a figure of speech, but apparently people are doing this literally! I’ve spent some time trying to practice visualizing things mentally and sometimes if I relax and try not to think about it I’ll get a glimpse of something (last time I tried I got something like looking at a forest from the sky) but the moment I try and focus it disappears in a snap, so I feel like it’s closer to dreaming than visualizing something mentally. Related to this, I have plenty of audible conversations in my mind (either with myself or other people) and I’ll often have a song playing in the background of my mind (although music seems to be limited to just remembering things I’ve already heard) apparently some people can’t imagine sounds or voices which also seems equally bizarre to me.

interroboink 3y ago
And on the other hand, sometimes completely different people have uncanny similarities in their mental nooks and crannies — such as your mental audio track; same thing here (: I'm reminded of this old thread, about kids on road trips imagining some little figure running/driving alongside, leaping over obstacles (I definitely did the same): https://old.reddit.com/r/DoesAnybodyElse/comments/2te8jz/dae_as_a_kid_on_car_trips_imagine_a_man_jumping/ https://old.reddit.com/r/DoesAnybodyElse/comments/2te8jz/dae... I'm sure there are more like that which people just haven't thought to mention to one another.
Teever 3y ago
I had a similar lightening bolt moment a couple of years ago while pondering differences in intelligence, capability, and sanity when I realized that just like our faces have subtle differences in things like feature size, symmetry, proportionality, tissue texture, colour, like, all physical characteristics that go into facial beauty that the exact same thing is going on just a few inches away underneath the surface in our brain. Those same subtle differences in physical structures are responsible for so much of the variation in human personality/intelligence that we experience, and yet we perceive it totally different than physical beauty because we can't physically see it. A big part of dating is about sussing out whether or not someone has a sexy medulla oblongata, or a girthy corpus callosum.

joedevon 3y ago

I've been scared to take the VVIQ test because I guess, in the back of my mind, I feared, or kinda knew...that I have aphantasia. Even spoke about aphantasia at an accessibility talk a couple days ago. I finally pushed myself and took the test tonight. Of the 5 choices: 1. No image at all, I only “know” I am thinking of the object 2. Dim and vague image 3. Moderately realistic and vivid 4. Realistic and reasonably vivid 5. Perfectly realistic, as vivid as real seeing I am either a 1 or 2 across the board. I can't decide which. But absolutely never a 3. And this is making me a bit wistful. Particularly because I can't remember my Dad's face. His scent. My Mom. Mom's been gone 3 years. Dad left us in 2013. I'm so jealous of people who have vivid memories of loved ones who are gone. Been looking at subreddit /aphantasia a bit too tonight, and blown away that people actually see sheep when counting sheep. Or that reading a book means literally seeing the action. WTH? I still don't get it. That can't be real. Whew what a night.

bobsmooth 3y ago
> I'm so jealous of people who have vivid memories of loved ones who are gone. The same way a song can get stick in your head an image can get stuck in your head. I'd rather be able to visualize than not but it comes with negatives.
lelanthran 3y ago
> I finally pushed myself and took the test tonight. What test is this? An online one? > Or that reading a book means literally seeing the action. WTH? I still don't get it. That can't be real. I assure you it is real, and why I prefer reading fiction to watching the same story as a movie. I find that with scifi especially, the book tends to be much more visually satisfying than the movie.
- racingmars 3y ago
  > What test is this? An online one? https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ Personally, I don't find the test particularly enlightening... it's a test to assess how vivid your mental visualizations are, but it does so by just asking how vivid your mental visualizations are. I can't tell how it's any different from an IQ test that just asks you "what do you think your IQ is?" But I also believe I have aphantasia, so it's blindingly (hah...pun not intended) obvious to me that I don't visualize anything mentally. Any result of the test was a forgone conclusion for me. Maybe if you do visualize things to some degree it's helpful to tease out various aspects of the vividness of your visualizations. I don't know, it's not something I can relate to.

goodbyesf 3y ago

> It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different. Not just between different people. What about a single individual. Is a single individual's mind the same over time? Is your mind the same now as it was yesterday? Is it the same before your nap and after you awake? Everyone is separated from each other by their own personal subjective reality. But does that also apply to the individual?

smokel 3y ago

I am very skeptical about the concept of aphantasia. For one, I think that visual phantasy can be trained, or at least developed. Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way. As an example, many people believed for some time that dreams were in black and white, which is obviously not true for everyone. However, this does not imply that dreams are in color. It seems more likely that dreams and their visual response are separate processes. It may well be that some people actually have some form of aphantasia, but all the self reporting of amazing visual powers or the lack thereof seems more indicative of peoples' egos than the actual differences in what they are capable of. Happy to learn that I am wrong here!

racingmars 3y ago
> I am very skeptical about the concept of aphantasia. > Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way. I agree that discussing our mental/inner processes is difficult due to a lack of a common frame of reference on which to base descriptions. (I'm reminded of McCoy and Spock's conversation in Star Trek IV... "Are you telling me I'd have to die to discuss your experience of death with you?") I (approx. 40 years old) became aware of the concept of aphantasia about three years ago. I immediately identified with it... or rather, I immediately found it mind-boggling that other people claim to experience anything close to "seeing" something by closing their eyes and thinking about it. That's such a foreign concept to me I had always assumed people's descriptions of visualizing things in their mind, daydreaming, etc were extremely metaphorical, not describing a process that is anything like "seeing" something. I have talked to many friends at length about how they describe their "mind's eye" after realizing I was probably different. And even how it extends, in the case of some of my friends with particularly visual mind's eyes, to the "mind's ears" and "mind's nose" in music and scent recall. Based on my friends' descriptions to me of how they try to describe how they experience mental visualization, it's clear the capability is a spectrum... some describe it as blurry gray image of what they're thinking about, some describe it as being a picture as real as a photograph that they can literally see and smell. I agree with you that it's hard to tell how reliable the descriptions are relative to each other, but I can tell you this: hearing all of themselves describe it, even down at the "it's just a blurry gray 'image' in my mind" end of the spectrum, none of them sounded familiar to me or like any kind of "visualization" I've ever experienced while awake (specifically: none at all). If it were simply a matter of being able to accurately report objectively on our inner processes in a useful way, I feel like there wouldn't be such a clear divide between the way a minority of people (allegedly with aphantasia) describe it and the way the majority of people describe it. Whether it's aphantasia or not, it's clear to me at this point that there is definitely a "group A" and "group B" in terms of how people describe their "mind's eye" when asked. Related, I also have a friend who says she has no internal monologue, another phenomenon I've read about. She thinks entirely visually. Not having an inner monologue is such an incomprehensible concept to me; literally the only way I can think is with my inner monologue. Brains are weird.

LoganDark 3y ago

> It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different. we encountered this when we learned about the difference between autistic and non-autistic minds. one of the reasons why autistics behave the way they do is because the connection structure in their brain is different enough that they literally, actually, do not experience "thought" in the same way that neurotypical people do. the same is true in reverse - for autistics, neurotypical people experience thought in such a fundamentally different manner that it's basically impossible for one to imagine what metacognition might feel like from within a non-autistic brain. it's just not something you can really fathom at all source: we are the autistic, hehe