8 ms·

> 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 indi

> 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. I have it, and I struggle to understand your skepticism. What’s the ego here? I’m proud of not being able to do something? My assumption is that the visual processing layer is still used, I just don’t get to experience that part, so I’m interacting at the lower layer. Kind of the like the “code” in the matrix. You see the woman in the red dress, I see the code. We can still work with the substrate effectively, just in different ways. One thing that does suck is that it seems to be associated with lack of episodic memory. I lack all episodic memory, other than facts about things that have happened. I also don’t have the ability to imagine myself in the future (this is different to not having an imagination, I imagine plenty, just not visually). It makes me a little sad sometimes to think that when I’m old, I won’t have memories like others do, and I do think the lack of episodic style imagination has made it harder to make intentional changes to my life for the better. On the other hand, I think it’s been a great benefit for abstract reasoning. As all my reasoning is necessarily non-visual, problems that don’t naturally have a visual representation are no harder for me. I think it’s useful as a programmer, although I have learned how to draw representations as it’s of benefit for communication. Swings and roundabouts!

theobromananda 3y ago
I do not get the ego angle, but I am also skeptic of aphantasia. My own experience could be described by either 1 ("no image") or 5 ("perfectly vivid") in any questionaire concerning it - when I imagine anything, there is no image at all, yet I know I "see" something. E.g. I can think of a barn, and there is the mental impression of the shape, the color and so on, yet nothing at all is seen. I believe most of the difference is, as always, semantics: What does "seeing" an image mean internally? Some people who believe that they have aphantasia believe that there should be an image in front of their eyes when they close it - that is nonsense. It does not help that others who can imagine describe imagination in the same terms. When I think of an abstract idea, the sense of imagination is exactly the same as if I was imagining a picture: there is an impression, but it is not one of the sense but one of mind. The difference can be clearly seen with the use of psychedelics that do create real inner seeing: tryptamines like LSD only strengthen the internal knowing of mental imaginery (plus of course visual artifacts, warping etc. in the actual visual field), yet the combination of LSD and ketamine creates the famous "free-wheeling hallucinations" in which you enter a perfectly lucid photorealistic 3D dream which you can shape in any way you desire. Tropane alkaloids create real hallucinations which you experience instead of reality, but I have no experience with this. Classical psychedelics do not create hallucinations but only mental imaginery and visual morphing.
- interroboink 3y ago
  I think another person in this thread pointed out a good example — reading a book, then being disappointed when seeing the movie because the characters didn't look onscreen how they imagined them when reading. Not w/regard to the textual descriptions, but w/regard to the other visual bits that their mind filled in. This is a widespread phenomenon; no shortage of examples. It has happened to me, too. There are some people in this thread who claim they haven't experienced that, and had a hard time understanding what that would even mean. These seem like pretty different mental/visual experiences, so it seems reasonable to have a word to describe it. I agree it's hard to measure such internal things exactly, and it's full of self-reporting problems, but the core concept doesn't seem like purely a semantics issue. ---- Aside: I once had a conversation about thinking, and my friends were surprised at the idea of thinking without using words. But that is very much my experience! It is something I semi-trained myself to do (I felt that translating into words slowed me down), but I think it was a natural tendency, too. But it can be likewise difficult to convince someone it's a real thing without resorting to brain scans (:
smokel 3y ago
Thank you for your response, it is nice to hear from someone who considers themselves to have aphantasia. With "ego" I meant to refer to people boasting about their abilities to visualize everything to the greatest amount of detail in their heads, which to me seems likely untrue except for very rare cases. I think reported phantasia (as opposed to aphantasia, and if there is such a word) is in a way similar to clairvoyancy or having a sixth sense. Some people report having such a gift, but it is very hard to test if that really exists, and up to what level. The end result may be that a lot of people consider themselves aphantasic, because they lack an internal Unity engine. As a simple proof that visual phantasy has its limits, consider artists who paint fantasy with oil paint and put in lighting and shadows. This is typically either very bad, or based on photographic reference images. Artists who are, by exception, fairly good at this, require insane amounts of training. There are always strange exceptions, but these seem to be one in a million. (Stephen Wiltshire and Kim Jung Gi come to mind, but even they do not perform accurate shading). Obviously all misunderstanding is probably based on me not knowing a clear definition for aphantasia, and I should read more about it. Does it mean that a person is unable, even with a lot of training, to form any visual images in their heads? This would seem either unlikely, or related to memory problems, such as you describe. In the latter case, is aphantasia simply a symptom or result of the memory problem, or is it a phenomenon by itself? Again, I am skeptical, I am not denying that it exists (but perhaps not as much as self-reported on HN and Reddit). And I most certainly would not want to hurt anyone's feelings if they suffer from it! My apologies if that is the case, and please point out if I'm continuing to do so. (For reference: I am a trained visual artist and mathematician -- I can visualize and draw pretty decent images, and read and write code. I know there's a difference in working with these, but I doubt it's as big as some people make me want to believe.)
- lll-o-lll 3y ago
  I don’t think many programmers have this issue, I haven’t met another in real life. I certainly don’t think it’s an advantage for software development in general, many of the best developers I’ve worked with over the years have been extremely visual in their thinking (one guy would close his eyes whenever you were describing how something should work so that he could translate to visual, another would only describe things with whiteboard marker in hand, drawing pictures as he went). In fact, I’m very grateful for having been taught by them to design visually early on in my career. I’m mid 40s, and a core part of the value I deliver in my current role is drawing pictures. I realised my brain worked differently when I was about 21 and went to see a psychologist. He asked me to close my eyes and picture my mothers face. I couldn’t do it, and he then asked me to picture some other things and I couldn’t do any of it. There was no name for this condition back then, and both he and I were surprised. I was surprised he was asking me to do things that were obviously impossible, and he was surprised I couldn’t do something that everyone can obviously do. Since then I’ve talked to many people about the “minds eye” and how they perceive things. I’ve never met another like me, but there seems to be a large degree of variance in how detailed or vivid this mental imagery is for individuals. I married very young (25), and my wife is the other extreme. It turned out that she has ASD, and thinks mostly in pictures. She always had auditory processing delay, and part of the reason for that is that words all create images in her head. The delay is partly because there is an automatic translation between words to images going on. She can see images in her head with incredible vividness and detail, and can dial up the detail as needed. She also can’t do algebra to save her life; if she can’t picture it she can’t think about it. We watched a talk from Temple Grandin a few years ago (an autistic PHD), and she described a very similar experience. I really do think there is wide variance in how brains work. The lack of auto-biographical memory is something that seems to be commonly associated with my condition, and this part is clearly mostly downside. I still have semantic memory, so I can remember all the facts about things that have happened. They just don’t have visual or emotional content. But semantic memory needs to be consciously created, by which I mean that I have to be trying to remember as I go if anything is to be committed to long term memory. So most of what has happened in my life is irretrievably lost to me. I’m fortunate that I married young, because my wife remembers everything in vivid detail, and I love to hear the stories about things we’ve done together. Answering some of your questions: > Does it mean that a person is unable, even with a lot of training, to form any visual images in their heads? I have tried the training designed to help with forming mental imagery. This involves doing things like looking at something bright and then closing your eyes so that you have the “after image” and then trying to keep it around. So far I haven’t had any luck, but I do hope that I might still have success one day. I’ve read of other people with my condition being able to learn mental imagery this way, so it must work for some people at least. > This would seem either unlikely, or related to memory problems, such as you describe. I’m not sure why you think this is unlikely, to me this is obviously as normal as can be. As I said before, there is a clear association with the lack of auto-biographical memory based on what I read online. It could be some form of brain-damage I experience, but I don’t think this is the case. I think there is just a huge amount of variation in how peoples minds work!

theobromananda 3y ago

I do not get the ego angle, but I am also skeptic of aphantasia. My own experience could be described by either 1 ("no image") or 5 ("perfectly vivid") in any questionaire concerning it - when I imagine anything, there is no image at all, yet I know I "see" something. E.g. I can think of a barn, and there is the mental impression of the shape, the color and so on, yet nothing at all is seen. I believe most of the difference is, as always, semantics: What does "seeing" an image mean internally? Some people who believe that they have aphantasia believe that there should be an image in front of their eyes when they close it - that is nonsense. It does not help that others who can imagine describe imagination in the same terms. When I think of an abstract idea, the sense of imagination is exactly the same as if I was imagining a picture: there is an impression, but it is not one of the sense but one of mind. The difference can be clearly seen with the use of psychedelics that do create real inner seeing: tryptamines like LSD only strengthen the internal knowing of mental imaginery (plus of course visual artifacts, warping etc. in the actual visual field), yet the combination of LSD and ketamine creates the famous "free-wheeling hallucinations" in which you enter a perfectly lucid photorealistic 3D dream which you can shape in any way you desire. Tropane alkaloids create real hallucinations which you experience instead of reality, but I have no experience with this. Classical psychedelics do not create hallucinations but only mental imaginery and visual morphing.

interroboink 3y ago
I think another person in this thread pointed out a good example — reading a book, then being disappointed when seeing the movie because the characters didn't look onscreen how they imagined them when reading. Not w/regard to the textual descriptions, but w/regard to the other visual bits that their mind filled in. This is a widespread phenomenon; no shortage of examples. It has happened to me, too. There are some people in this thread who claim they haven't experienced that, and had a hard time understanding what that would even mean. These seem like pretty different mental/visual experiences, so it seems reasonable to have a word to describe it. I agree it's hard to measure such internal things exactly, and it's full of self-reporting problems, but the core concept doesn't seem like purely a semantics issue. ---- Aside: I once had a conversation about thinking, and my friends were surprised at the idea of thinking without using words. But that is very much my experience! It is something I semi-trained myself to do (I felt that translating into words slowed me down), but I think it was a natural tendency, too. But it can be likewise difficult to convince someone it's a real thing without resorting to brain scans (:

smokel 3y ago

Thank you for your response, it is nice to hear from someone who considers themselves to have aphantasia. With "ego" I meant to refer to people boasting about their abilities to visualize everything to the greatest amount of detail in their heads, which to me seems likely untrue except for very rare cases. I think reported phantasia (as opposed to aphantasia, and if there is such a word) is in a way similar to clairvoyancy or having a sixth sense. Some people report having such a gift, but it is very hard to test if that really exists, and up to what level. The end result may be that a lot of people consider themselves aphantasic, because they lack an internal Unity engine. As a simple proof that visual phantasy has its limits, consider artists who paint fantasy with oil paint and put in lighting and shadows. This is typically either very bad, or based on photographic reference images. Artists who are, by exception, fairly good at this, require insane amounts of training. There are always strange exceptions, but these seem to be one in a million. (Stephen Wiltshire and Kim Jung Gi come to mind, but even they do not perform accurate shading). Obviously all misunderstanding is probably based on me not knowing a clear definition for aphantasia, and I should read more about it. Does it mean that a person is unable, even with a lot of training, to form any visual images in their heads? This would seem either unlikely, or related to memory problems, such as you describe. In the latter case, is aphantasia simply a symptom or result of the memory problem, or is it a phenomenon by itself? Again, I am skeptical, I am not denying that it exists (but perhaps not as much as self-reported on HN and Reddit). And I most certainly would not want to hurt anyone's feelings if they suffer from it! My apologies if that is the case, and please point out if I'm continuing to do so. (For reference: I am a trained visual artist and mathematician -- I can visualize and draw pretty decent images, and read and write code. I know there's a difference in working with these, but I doubt it's as big as some people make me want to believe.)

lll-o-lll 3y ago
I don’t think many programmers have this issue, I haven’t met another in real life. I certainly don’t think it’s an advantage for software development in general, many of the best developers I’ve worked with over the years have been extremely visual in their thinking (one guy would close his eyes whenever you were describing how something should work so that he could translate to visual, another would only describe things with whiteboard marker in hand, drawing pictures as he went). In fact, I’m very grateful for having been taught by them to design visually early on in my career. I’m mid 40s, and a core part of the value I deliver in my current role is drawing pictures. I realised my brain worked differently when I was about 21 and went to see a psychologist. He asked me to close my eyes and picture my mothers face. I couldn’t do it, and he then asked me to picture some other things and I couldn’t do any of it. There was no name for this condition back then, and both he and I were surprised. I was surprised he was asking me to do things that were obviously impossible, and he was surprised I couldn’t do something that everyone can obviously do. Since then I’ve talked to many people about the “minds eye” and how they perceive things. I’ve never met another like me, but there seems to be a large degree of variance in how detailed or vivid this mental imagery is for individuals. I married very young (25), and my wife is the other extreme. It turned out that she has ASD, and thinks mostly in pictures. She always had auditory processing delay, and part of the reason for that is that words all create images in her head. The delay is partly because there is an automatic translation between words to images going on. She can see images in her head with incredible vividness and detail, and can dial up the detail as needed. She also can’t do algebra to save her life; if she can’t picture it she can’t think about it. We watched a talk from Temple Grandin a few years ago (an autistic PHD), and she described a very similar experience. I really do think there is wide variance in how brains work. The lack of auto-biographical memory is something that seems to be commonly associated with my condition, and this part is clearly mostly downside. I still have semantic memory, so I can remember all the facts about things that have happened. They just don’t have visual or emotional content. But semantic memory needs to be consciously created, by which I mean that I have to be trying to remember as I go if anything is to be committed to long term memory. So most of what has happened in my life is irretrievably lost to me. I’m fortunate that I married young, because my wife remembers everything in vivid detail, and I love to hear the stories about things we’ve done together. Answering some of your questions: > Does it mean that a person is unable, even with a lot of training, to form any visual images in their heads? I have tried the training designed to help with forming mental imagery. This involves doing things like looking at something bright and then closing your eyes so that you have the “after image” and then trying to keep it around. So far I haven’t had any luck, but I do hope that I might still have success one day. I’ve read of other people with my condition being able to learn mental imagery this way, so it must work for some people at least. > This would seem either unlikely, or related to memory problems, such as you describe. I’m not sure why you think this is unlikely, to me this is obviously as normal as can be. As I said before, there is a clear association with the lack of auto-biographical memory based on what I read online. It could be some form of brain-damage I experience, but I don’t think this is the case. I think there is just a huge amount of variation in how peoples minds work!