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Interesting, thank you. I've found some subreddits while trying to undrestand this and it's amazing what some people experience and how different it is for ever

Interesting, thank you. I've found some subreddits while trying to undrestand this and it's amazing what some people experience and how different it is for everyone. There is a person on r/hyperphantasia who says that they can look at a ruler, take that image and overlay it on something else to measure. Wild.

red1reaper 3y ago
Wait... Isn't that normal? I mean, doing that kind of stuff is kind of mentally taxing as it requires quite the amount of focus but excluding people with aphantasia and the like, isn't it normal just to be able to imagine sensory stimuli and overlay it with any of your senses? I mean, the inner dialogue is just doing this with auditory stimuli and even empathy is just an extension of that, were you overlay your perception of the physical or mental pain of other with your own to feel what it's like? It also is not that rare to remember tastes or smells and feel like you are feeling them even if a bit faint. So overlaying stuff in your vision is just an application of this with the eyes, i mean even if we say that we imagine stuff in our heads, we just imagine it positioned in space above our heads were we don't see with our normal eyes so they do not overlap and is less taxing, but moving it to your field of vision is not that rare right? just takes focus to keep it clear enough to be useful like a ruler would. I mean, the whole phrase "imagine everyone else is nude" that is given to people that are going to do something with a public to reduce their awkwardness is based on this, you overlay your imagination of everyone nude with your vision.
- neoberg 3y ago
  I don't know what's normal anymore but most of your examples are not normal for me :D > I mean, the whole phrase "imagine everyone else is nude" that is given to people that are going to do something with a public to reduce their awkwardness is based on this, you overlay your imagination of everyone nude with your vision. Do you imagine this visually? Like, do you mentally see them nude? I just imagine the idea of it without any visuals accompanying.
  - red1reaper 3y ago
    Yep, I mean, is a bit tricky, like an optical illusion that requires you to focus in the center, but if i focus enough, I can, imagining a whole person with all their details and overlaying it with my POV is quite hard and usually requires way too much focus, but just overlaying the image of a person over the same person in front of you is easy, specially if you are just changing the body and hands and face are already visible, thus not needing change. Is a bit weird to explain, is not like an allucination in the sense that it literally replaces your normal vision, is like overlaying another vision on top of your vision, it requires focus and you can tell the imaginary overlay is distinct from your actual visual stimuli but like with some optical illusions you can force your brain to just accept it and you see people nude, even if the nude models are not very detailed. The easiest stuff to overlay are ruler thingies tho, for example to extime distance you imagine a line similar to the letter "I" with a base on top and at the bottom of your reference and then you can copy paste a bunch of times and count them it to measure stuff roughly. That is the most common day to day use for overlay imagination I use, the imagining people nude is not exactly a everyday stuff. When I was a kiddo I used to use this to play with things that are not toys as if they were, for example I could pick up a 2L bottle, overlay the image of a rocket and play with it, same with a lot of other stuff that had somewhat similar shapes to things interesting for a kid, I still can do it, sometimes do in the bathroom while taking a very long shit. For me this is normal and I tough most people were like that, like... the phrase about imagining people being nude is there for a reason... and kids do play with random stuff as if they were other things, people look at stuff and use it as a reference to visually measure stuff even if it is rough. I mean, there is not that much difference between imagining inside the black void and outside, you are just moving it, the only thing is that outside it is fighting with your actual visual stimuly for attention so it requires a bit of extra focus or to anchor it to something similar, you know the visual illusion were there are pink spots but when you look at the center a green spot appear and eats all the pink spots until it is blank but the moment you ever so slightly unfocus from the center the pink appear again, it feels like that, the illusion is named "Lilac chaser" for reference, it feels kinda like that in the sense that if you lose focus, the effect disappears but if you focus yo can keep it? IDK, as I said, I thought this was normal, so it is quite hard to explain? is not like imagining stuff in the black void, there one can easy mount a movie if they want, a crappy movie usually, but its possible, outside not so much, but it is still possible to imagine stuff there, just harder.
justanotherjoe 3y ago
i mean, it's not that amazing when you think about it. If i have a ruler laying on the table and a computer screen on that same table, yeah, it's not hard to measure the width of the screen without moving the ruler.
- neoberg 3y ago
  The way they described it was more akin to mentally "grabbing" it. Like they would be able to place imaginary things they grabbed from somewhere else in a real physical space accurately.

red1reaper 3y ago

Wait... Isn't that normal? I mean, doing that kind of stuff is kind of mentally taxing as it requires quite the amount of focus but excluding people with aphantasia and the like, isn't it normal just to be able to imagine sensory stimuli and overlay it with any of your senses? I mean, the inner dialogue is just doing this with auditory stimuli and even empathy is just an extension of that, were you overlay your perception of the physical or mental pain of other with your own to feel what it's like? It also is not that rare to remember tastes or smells and feel like you are feeling them even if a bit faint. So overlaying stuff in your vision is just an application of this with the eyes, i mean even if we say that we imagine stuff in our heads, we just imagine it positioned in space above our heads were we don't see with our normal eyes so they do not overlap and is less taxing, but moving it to your field of vision is not that rare right? just takes focus to keep it clear enough to be useful like a ruler would. I mean, the whole phrase "imagine everyone else is nude" that is given to people that are going to do something with a public to reduce their awkwardness is based on this, you overlay your imagination of everyone nude with your vision.

neoberg 3y ago
I don't know what's normal anymore but most of your examples are not normal for me :D > I mean, the whole phrase "imagine everyone else is nude" that is given to people that are going to do something with a public to reduce their awkwardness is based on this, you overlay your imagination of everyone nude with your vision. Do you imagine this visually? Like, do you mentally see them nude? I just imagine the idea of it without any visuals accompanying.
- red1reaper 3y ago
  Yep, I mean, is a bit tricky, like an optical illusion that requires you to focus in the center, but if i focus enough, I can, imagining a whole person with all their details and overlaying it with my POV is quite hard and usually requires way too much focus, but just overlaying the image of a person over the same person in front of you is easy, specially if you are just changing the body and hands and face are already visible, thus not needing change. Is a bit weird to explain, is not like an allucination in the sense that it literally replaces your normal vision, is like overlaying another vision on top of your vision, it requires focus and you can tell the imaginary overlay is distinct from your actual visual stimuli but like with some optical illusions you can force your brain to just accept it and you see people nude, even if the nude models are not very detailed. The easiest stuff to overlay are ruler thingies tho, for example to extime distance you imagine a line similar to the letter "I" with a base on top and at the bottom of your reference and then you can copy paste a bunch of times and count them it to measure stuff roughly. That is the most common day to day use for overlay imagination I use, the imagining people nude is not exactly a everyday stuff. When I was a kiddo I used to use this to play with things that are not toys as if they were, for example I could pick up a 2L bottle, overlay the image of a rocket and play with it, same with a lot of other stuff that had somewhat similar shapes to things interesting for a kid, I still can do it, sometimes do in the bathroom while taking a very long shit. For me this is normal and I tough most people were like that, like... the phrase about imagining people being nude is there for a reason... and kids do play with random stuff as if they were other things, people look at stuff and use it as a reference to visually measure stuff even if it is rough. I mean, there is not that much difference between imagining inside the black void and outside, you are just moving it, the only thing is that outside it is fighting with your actual visual stimuly for attention so it requires a bit of extra focus or to anchor it to something similar, you know the visual illusion were there are pink spots but when you look at the center a green spot appear and eats all the pink spots until it is blank but the moment you ever so slightly unfocus from the center the pink appear again, it feels like that, the illusion is named "Lilac chaser" for reference, it feels kinda like that in the sense that if you lose focus, the effect disappears but if you focus yo can keep it? IDK, as I said, I thought this was normal, so it is quite hard to explain? is not like imagining stuff in the black void, there one can easy mount a movie if they want, a crappy movie usually, but its possible, outside not so much, but it is still possible to imagine stuff there, just harder.

justanotherjoe 3y ago

i mean, it's not that amazing when you think about it. If i have a ruler laying on the table and a computer screen on that same table, yeah, it's not hard to measure the width of the screen without moving the ruler.

neoberg 3y ago
The way they described it was more akin to mentally "grabbing" it. Like they would be able to place imaginary things they grabbed from somewhere else in a real physical space accurately.