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The question about visualising three dimensional objects is fascinating to me. Because my answer has changed radically in the last five or so years, and I'm not

by ecjhdnc2025 2y ago

The question about visualising three dimensional objects is fascinating to me. Because my answer has changed radically in the last five or so years, and I'm not a young person! I used to consider myself 3D-impaired -- unable to maintain and rotate a 3D image in my head, which also made 3D software frustrating. (I also have, it turns out, some binocular vision issues and some other mild cognition weirdness). But a few years back I started on a hobby project, and I started to assemble my own DIY kit (because the commercial stuff is too expensive). To do that I had a lot of mental puzzles to try to solve. Then I decided the best way forward was a 3D printer so I tried to find 3D tools that would work for me on even a basic level -- OpenSCAD, CadQuery, FreeCAD etc.; as many different ways to approach the problem as would shed light on ways to think about it. I'm no longer really an OpenSCAD person but once my first successful models came out of my printer, my brain was changed forever, and now I visualise mechanisms in my head. (One of the most powerful things I have learned about how to imagine any man-made, real world object, is to imagine the tools making it.)

haswell 2y ago
As someone with Aphantasia, this is fascinating to me. There have been other aphantasics who report gaining the ability to visualize after mental exercises, and what you’re describing sounds somewhat similar. No luck for me yet, but I’m really interested in the idea that I could actually learn these skills…
- dinkleberg 2y ago
  This is such an interesting topic. I believe I also have aphantasia and I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary doesn't seem to exist (or I'm ignorant of it). I have no "mind's eye" and can't produce an image in my head. But confusingly, I am quite good at the mental 3D manipulation. I can spin the cow in my head and describe its orientation, but I don't actually see the cow, I just know it. I suppose my brain just has a different way of approaching this problem than visually. This is where the language is tough. I'm not visualizing or imagining as those words describe the act of using a mental image. I'm perceiving the cow? It is hard to communicate.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    Now that is fascinating. It's like you have blindsight for your mind's eye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight
  - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
    > I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary doesn't seem to exist (or I'm ignorant of it). Right. This is enormously challenging in itself. And I think because nobody talks about it, it's possible, or maybe the default, to assume that you're simply broken in an obvious, universal way, and not that there might be variation or even routes to change your outcomes with metacognition or thought experiments. What often comes up is stuff like "oh I thought 'the mind's eye' was just a figure of speech, I had no idea people meant it in a meaningful sense"
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    You're deriving the cow. You don't see the cow, but you know things logically about the cow, and you can describe it just as well as would someone who does see it. But you are not, and don't need to be, actually seeing the cow.
    - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
      The weird thing obviously is that next to nobody with a mind's eye is actually seeing the cow. A tiny tiny fraction of people talk about their mind's eye being part of their visual field, to the point that they can sort of functionally see -- hallucinate -- an imaginary object on a table like AR. Another small number of people talk about imagining complete objects out of nowhere that they then have to analyse to describe; the imaginary thing has complete shape before its shape is described. Most children can sort of whimsically play the imaginary-drinking tea game, imagining the shape of the teacups, imagining spilling tea or milk, but the mental images might not have attributes like colour or weight until they are specifically assigned to the visualisation. Like: what colour are the teacups? They don't have colour until you pick one, and then they do. Is it a heavy cup? It's not, but I do have a saucer. The more you add to the visualisation, the less translucent/ghostly/formless/conceptual it is. The fascinating thing about broad aphantasia is that it appears to be way beyond even that; it's like things only happen conceptually, yet they still happen. Like the sibling comment from andrewflnr perceptively said: as if it's a conceptual blind-sight. And when you consider our evolutionary pathway, perhaps it actually is the same phenomenon: a part of the brain successfully doing part of the task, without the support of the visualiser.
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  OK so -- on this score. I have, I believe, a kind of partial aphantasia. Though maybe it's normal and people just don't really see the distinction? I used to think -- until maybe ten years ago -- that I could not imagine the faces of friends and loved ones. That is, if I try to visualise a person's face, I get an incomplete glimpse in my mind that dissolves away within an instant. (People in my dreams do not really have detailed faces, if I can ever really look at their faces at all; it's like I don't make eye contact. Though they are not face-less horrors.) This has been distressing, particularly when my mum died. But then I discovered two really interesting things: 1) I can sometimes imagine a "still" face if I visualise a photograph of that person (maybe only slightly more if I took it) 2) I can bring someone's face to mind much more successfully if I associate it with an emotion or an action, and once I've done that, as long as I keep them in motion I can visualise a lot more for longer. A quarter of a century after she died, if I want to remember my mum, it's a real challenge. She hated being in photos so there aren't many. But it's possible to start by imagining her angry (sorry mum) or the annoyed look on her face when she was trying to solve a puzzle game on the computer. Then I might be able to keep her face in my mind for long enough. My dad passed away a couple of years back and for this loss I was ready; I have some photos, but more importantly I had spent the previous years learning his face experiencing different emotions. My favourite route to imagining my Dad's face is to imagine a situation where he might show puzzled, half-smiling amusement or fascination when presented with something he didn't understand or didn't work quite the way he expected. I will be able to recall his face in motion, just as my face starts to leak around the eye sockets :-/ So on the one hand: even now I can't visualise still faces at all! I struggle to describe faces of people I don't really know well. As soon as a face is still, it goes. On the other hand, I have taught myself a visualisation process that can conjure up meaningful animated recollections that are filled with emotion. I have to do it deliberately, but it's lovely to do. One final quirk: despite all this, I appear to potentially be a super-recogniser. I can't visualise a still face, but I do not "forget a face"; I can tell you with eerie accuracy whether I've seen someone before and where. And I do rather well with the "which of these faces did you see in this clip" type test, and very well at the tests like "which of these faces is this face from another angle".
  - haswell 2y ago
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  It might be that what I am describing falls short of aphantasia (though my difficulties recalling motionless faces do suggest it). I sometimes wonder if what it actually is, is a kind of fundamentally unexplored thought or experience. There's a bunch of other examples. Like... I can't _really_ tell my left from my right on an instinctive level, though I believe this to be inherited because I have relatives who can't. Ask me directions in a hurry and I'll get them wrong even when I am sure they are right. I don't really have a "left" and a "right"; I have two sides that don't feel that different. So I also can't really use mirrors well. I have surprisingly quick and accurate reflexes for catching falling things but I can't catch a ball thrown to me. The question about all of these things is: are they just things I have never found the right way to deliberately work through into a conscious process? Are they things I can't do now because I didn't learn when my brain was fresh?
emiliobool 2y ago
This is very interesting, when I was a kid I didn’t think with words but with “abstract” ideas. When I realized every other kid used language for thinking I tried to do it myself and not only I was able to do it, but it never stopped after that. Now I probably think 90% with language, but I’ve been trying to practice other forms of thought recently.
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  One of the most challenging things I find in life is explaining to a non-programmer how I visualise code. Because I don't really know how I do it; it is simultaneously grammatical and architectural, and a lot of the processes that guide me are really emotional or almost visceral. Code sometimes does not feel right.

haswell 2y ago

As someone with Aphantasia, this is fascinating to me. There have been other aphantasics who report gaining the ability to visualize after mental exercises, and what you’re describing sounds somewhat similar. No luck for me yet, but I’m really interested in the idea that I could actually learn these skills…

dinkleberg 2y ago
This is such an interesting topic. I believe I also have aphantasia and I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary doesn't seem to exist (or I'm ignorant of it). I have no "mind's eye" and can't produce an image in my head. But confusingly, I am quite good at the mental 3D manipulation. I can spin the cow in my head and describe its orientation, but I don't actually see the cow, I just know it. I suppose my brain just has a different way of approaching this problem than visually. This is where the language is tough. I'm not visualizing or imagining as those words describe the act of using a mental image. I'm perceiving the cow? It is hard to communicate.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  Now that is fascinating. It's like you have blindsight for your mind's eye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  > I find that communicating about the topic is rather challenging as the right vocabulary doesn't seem to exist (or I'm ignorant of it). Right. This is enormously challenging in itself. And I think because nobody talks about it, it's possible, or maybe the default, to assume that you're simply broken in an obvious, universal way, and not that there might be variation or even routes to change your outcomes with metacognition or thought experiments. What often comes up is stuff like "oh I thought 'the mind's eye' was just a figure of speech, I had no idea people meant it in a meaningful sense"
- LoganDark 2y ago
  You're deriving the cow. You don't see the cow, but you know things logically about the cow, and you can describe it just as well as would someone who does see it. But you are not, and don't need to be, actually seeing the cow.
  - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
    The weird thing obviously is that next to nobody with a mind's eye is actually seeing the cow. A tiny tiny fraction of people talk about their mind's eye being part of their visual field, to the point that they can sort of functionally see -- hallucinate -- an imaginary object on a table like AR. Another small number of people talk about imagining complete objects out of nowhere that they then have to analyse to describe; the imaginary thing has complete shape before its shape is described. Most children can sort of whimsically play the imaginary-drinking tea game, imagining the shape of the teacups, imagining spilling tea or milk, but the mental images might not have attributes like colour or weight until they are specifically assigned to the visualisation. Like: what colour are the teacups? They don't have colour until you pick one, and then they do. Is it a heavy cup? It's not, but I do have a saucer. The more you add to the visualisation, the less translucent/ghostly/formless/conceptual it is. The fascinating thing about broad aphantasia is that it appears to be way beyond even that; it's like things only happen conceptually, yet they still happen. Like the sibling comment from andrewflnr perceptively said: as if it's a conceptual blind-sight. And when you consider our evolutionary pathway, perhaps it actually is the same phenomenon: a part of the brain successfully doing part of the task, without the support of the visualiser.
ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
OK so -- on this score. I have, I believe, a kind of partial aphantasia. Though maybe it's normal and people just don't really see the distinction? I used to think -- until maybe ten years ago -- that I could not imagine the faces of friends and loved ones. That is, if I try to visualise a person's face, I get an incomplete glimpse in my mind that dissolves away within an instant. (People in my dreams do not really have detailed faces, if I can ever really look at their faces at all; it's like I don't make eye contact. Though they are not face-less horrors.) This has been distressing, particularly when my mum died. But then I discovered two really interesting things: 1) I can sometimes imagine a "still" face if I visualise a photograph of that person (maybe only slightly more if I took it) 2) I can bring someone's face to mind much more successfully if I associate it with an emotion or an action, and once I've done that, as long as I keep them in motion I can visualise a lot more for longer. A quarter of a century after she died, if I want to remember my mum, it's a real challenge. She hated being in photos so there aren't many. But it's possible to start by imagining her angry (sorry mum) or the annoyed look on her face when she was trying to solve a puzzle game on the computer. Then I might be able to keep her face in my mind for long enough. My dad passed away a couple of years back and for this loss I was ready; I have some photos, but more importantly I had spent the previous years learning his face experiencing different emotions. My favourite route to imagining my Dad's face is to imagine a situation where he might show puzzled, half-smiling amusement or fascination when presented with something he didn't understand or didn't work quite the way he expected. I will be able to recall his face in motion, just as my face starts to leak around the eye sockets :-/ So on the one hand: even now I can't visualise still faces at all! I struggle to describe faces of people I don't really know well. As soon as a face is still, it goes. On the other hand, I have taught myself a visualisation process that can conjure up meaningful animated recollections that are filled with emotion. I have to do it deliberately, but it's lovely to do. One final quirk: despite all this, I appear to potentially be a super-recogniser. I can't visualise a still face, but I do not "forget a face"; I can tell you with eerie accuracy whether I've seen someone before and where. And I do rather well with the "which of these faces did you see in this clip" type test, and very well at the tests like "which of these faces is this face from another angle".
- haswell 2y ago
ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
It might be that what I am describing falls short of aphantasia (though my difficulties recalling motionless faces do suggest it). I sometimes wonder if what it actually is, is a kind of fundamentally unexplored thought or experience. There's a bunch of other examples. Like... I can't _really_ tell my left from my right on an instinctive level, though I believe this to be inherited because I have relatives who can't. Ask me directions in a hurry and I'll get them wrong even when I am sure they are right. I don't really have a "left" and a "right"; I have two sides that don't feel that different. So I also can't really use mirrors well. I have surprisingly quick and accurate reflexes for catching falling things but I can't catch a ball thrown to me. The question about all of these things is: are they just things I have never found the right way to deliberately work through into a conscious process? Are they things I can't do now because I didn't learn when my brain was fresh?

emiliobool 2y ago

This is very interesting, when I was a kid I didn’t think with words but with “abstract” ideas. When I realized every other kid used language for thinking I tried to do it myself and not only I was able to do it, but it never stopped after that. Now I probably think 90% with language, but I’ve been trying to practice other forms of thought recently.

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
One of the most challenging things I find in life is explaining to a non-programmer how I visualise code. Because I don't really know how I do it; it is simultaneously grammatical and architectural, and a lot of the processes that guide me are really emotional or almost visceral. Code sometimes does not feel right.