5 ms·

To some degree, mind's eye clarity is an illusion, with many overestimating the fidelity of their mental imagery. One of the better, more recent examples is the

by mkfs 1y ago

To some degree, mind's eye clarity is an illusion, with many overestimating the fidelity of their mental imagery. One of the better, more recent examples is the "draw a bicycle" experiment: https://road.cc/content/blog/90885-science-cycology-can-you-draw-bicycle https://road.cc/content/blog/90885-science-cycology-can-you-... Granted, many can't draw at all, but people's inability to reproduce from memory an object of some complexity that they see (and likewise, use) every day is telling. Also the well-documented inaccuracy of eye-witness testimony.

Affric 1y ago
So I read your comment before following the link and drew a bicycle perfectly. I find it absolutely inconceivable that someone could be unable to draw a bicycle in Liverpool or a similar city. I am not sure this is related to what OP is talking about.
- retsibsi 1y ago
  I've seen a lot of bikes (and ridden thousands of kilometres), but when I had reason to draw a bike I felt the need to look up some photos to refresh my memory. I'm pretty sure I would have made some basic structural mistakes without that visual reference. If you find this inconceivable, IMO you're assuming other people's minds work more similarly to yours than they actually do! In my case (not aphantasic, but I think my visual imagination is significantly weaker than average), the information just didn't seem to be filed in full detail. The image was weak, as are most of my mental images, and I guess I had never paid that much attention to the concept (i.e. how the parts of the bike fit together as a whole; when I had had to pay attention, it had been to specific things like how the brakes work, how to reattach the chain, etc.), so it was all a bit of a muddle.
  - jiggawatts 1y ago
    Did you see the pictures in the link? The chain was going between the front and back wheel! The pedals were where the seat goes! Basically, a bunch of nonsense. There are chat-bots now that can do better. I couldn't draw a detailed 3D technical drawing of a derailleur, but I can draw a sketch of a bicycle without needing a photo reference!
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
roganartu 1y ago
I don’t think this really has much to do with fidelity/clarity, so much as accuracy. One could have an extremely high fidelity visual of a bike that is incorrect and you wouldn’t say they had aphantasia as a result. I have aphantasia, I have no voluntary visual component to my mind as far as I can tell. I also have quite a good memory. If I were to draw a bike from memory I suspect I would make similar mistakes as those. One thing I have noticed in the threads that come up about aphantasia is comments either directly or indirectly calling into question its validity. I want to share a test I got from another HN comment, so I won’t take credit, that I have found to be the easiest way to explain to people how completely absent the visual component is for me. Close your eyes and imagine a ball bouncing across a table. Imagine the sound it makes as it goes. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. What colour is it? Most people I ask answer this question without hesitation. It’s easy, because they were just looking at it, maybe still are. I have asked this question of various friends tens of times, and I still don’t know what colour the ball is for me because it doesn’t exist. I know what a bouncing ball looks like, I know the sound it makes. I know what colour it could be. But I’ve never seen it. That is aphantasia. It’s not foggy, or blurry, or “low fidelity”, it’s just nothingness.
- harrisi 1y ago
  I think I have aphantasia, and there's two interesting things about this to me. One, I couldn't tell you what sound a ball makes when it bounces on a table. I've never thought about absence of other senses but, thinking about it a bit, I can't really think of what a glass feels like or a fire smells like either. I have descriptions for all of them, like a glass is hard or a fire smells like.. smoke? Not really the best description. But in all of these cases, I instantly know I'm touching a glass or smelling a fire when it happens. Two, I only thought of the ball in terms of the parabola it makes. When I read the color question, I can assign a color to it, but nothing in my "imagination" changes. There's just another word, blue or whatever, associated with it. Thanks for making me think!
  - 1d22a 1y ago
    I also have aphantasia, and find it really interesting to hear about people thinking of things in a similar way to me! Thinking about the ball in terms of the parabola it makes it exactly what I do too. Similarly, the ball doesn't exist as a physical "ball", but rather the knowledge of the concept of a sphere (which doesn't then have size or colour). The table, not a physical table, but the concept of a plane (with no thickness, size, colour (or legs)) - just the 'concept' of the important properties. Despite aphantasia I have always been able to conceptualise spatial relationships, but it feels much less like trying to visualise it, and much more like "understanding" the fundamental properties connecting each thing.
constantcrying 1y ago
This seems like people who aren't thinking about the problem at all and don't even think about the mechanical problem. I have no doubt that many of my recollections are bad, but I can imagine essentially every detail of a bicycle, all the mechanical components and how they interact.
- jaggederest 1y ago
  > I can imagine essentially every detail of a bicycle, all the mechanical components and how they interact. As I understand it, this is extremely uncommon, perhaps you might be categorized as hyperphantasia. How's your memory? They're commonly linked attributes, as per the article, some people with hyperphantasia have hsam - highly superior autobiographical memory, apparently from being able to conjure such accurate mental images.
  - criddell 1y ago
    I suspect if you ask the person who did a good job drawing a bicycle to label the parts, they would do well at that too. I could do a decent job a drawing a bicycle and know the names of the parts because I’ve done a lot of the maintenance on my bike so I’m pretty familiar with it mechanically.
    - smeej 1y ago
      Perhaps, but I have hyperphantasia and could easily assemble/visualize a bike in my head without a clue what many of the parts are called. I know the big ones like "handlebars" or "pedals," but I haven't spent more than a few hours on bikes since childhood because of a deformity in my neck that makes my hands go numb in a riding position. In some cases, it very well may be familiarity, but for some of us, it's just memory and visualization.
      - jaggederest 1y ago
        Yeah, that's where I'm at - I could take apart a bike mentally but beyond knowing "those are brakes", "that is frame", "those are gears", I have no specific bicycle knowledge.
dmos62 1y ago
You'd be surprised how developed these skills are in people that are in visual arts.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Memory uses lossy compression where sometimes the compression is terribly inaccurate or leaves nothing at all. C'est la vie.
jiggawatts 1y ago
How could people possibly be this bad at drawing a bicycle!? Was this study done on aboriginals living in a rainforest that have never gone to a paved part of the world where people use bicycles? Sure, I'd get a bit flustered if asked to draw a modern mountain bike with rear suspension. Err... there's a spring back there... somewhere? But an ordinary road bike? How could you get that wrong?
smeej 1y ago
I have hyperphantasia, and only realized within the last decade or so that most people are not walking around with a detailed virtual overlay on the whole world. This bicycle example really helps me appreciate the difference between how things are in my mind compared to most people's, and I appreciate your sharing it!
kordlessagain 1y ago
I must respectfully challenge this interpretation on phenomenological grounds. To presume knowledge of another's mind's eye is to commit a fundamental epistemic error. Having conducted extensive interviews with hundreds of subjects, I've discovered that visualization manifests along a vast spectrum of human experience, each with its own unique phenomenology and nomenclature. For some, the mind's eye is void; for others, it blazes with such intensity that it eclipses physical sight itself. The bicycle-drawing analogy fundamentally misconstrues the relationship between mental representation and motor expression. These are orthogonal cognitive faculties—one need not be a sculptor to possess perfect proprioceptive knowledge of one's own face. The eyewitness testimony example actually undermines the original argument. The critical factor isn't visual recall but temporal-causal sequencing—the who, what, and when of events. My research suggests that aphantasics demonstrate superior accuracy in reconstructing factual sequences, unencumbered by the distortions of visual reconstruction. Indeed, one might argue that the ideal witness would be someone who processes experience without the intermediary of visualization. This points to a deeper truth about cognitive diversity: what some dismiss as deficit may in fact represent an alternative—and in certain contexts, superior—mode of engaging with reality. The visualizer's mind performs an act of creation with each recall, reconstructing and thereby potentially corrupting the original experience. The aphantasic mind, conversely, may preserve information in a more pristine, unrendered state—accessing facts without the degradation inherent in repeated mental imaging. This is not merely a neurological curiosity but a profound philosophical distinction: between those who remember through representation and those who remember through direct apprehension. Each mode carries its own epistemic advantages, and our insistence on privileging the visual may blind us to entirely different ways of knowing.
wat10000 1y ago
Those seem like totally different things. If someone can visualize things in perfect detail, why would that necessarily mean they can remember the configuration of a bicycle?

by mkfs 1y ago

Affric 1y ago

So I read your comment before following the link and drew a bicycle perfectly. I find it absolutely inconceivable that someone could be unable to draw a bicycle in Liverpool or a similar city. I am not sure this is related to what OP is talking about.

retsibsi 1y ago
I've seen a lot of bikes (and ridden thousands of kilometres), but when I had reason to draw a bike I felt the need to look up some photos to refresh my memory. I'm pretty sure I would have made some basic structural mistakes without that visual reference. If you find this inconceivable, IMO you're assuming other people's minds work more similarly to yours than they actually do! In my case (not aphantasic, but I think my visual imagination is significantly weaker than average), the information just didn't seem to be filed in full detail. The image was weak, as are most of my mental images, and I guess I had never paid that much attention to the concept (i.e. how the parts of the bike fit together as a whole; when I had had to pay attention, it had been to specific things like how the brakes work, how to reattach the chain, etc.), so it was all a bit of a muddle.
- jiggawatts 1y ago
  Did you see the pictures in the link? The chain was going between the front and back wheel! The pedals were where the seat goes! Basically, a bunch of nonsense. There are chat-bots now that can do better. I couldn't draw a detailed 3D technical drawing of a derailleur, but I can draw a sketch of a bicycle without needing a photo reference!
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

roganartu 1y ago

I don’t think this really has much to do with fidelity/clarity, so much as accuracy. One could have an extremely high fidelity visual of a bike that is incorrect and you wouldn’t say they had aphantasia as a result. I have aphantasia, I have no voluntary visual component to my mind as far as I can tell. I also have quite a good memory. If I were to draw a bike from memory I suspect I would make similar mistakes as those. One thing I have noticed in the threads that come up about aphantasia is comments either directly or indirectly calling into question its validity. I want to share a test I got from another HN comment, so I won’t take credit, that I have found to be the easiest way to explain to people how completely absent the visual component is for me. Close your eyes and imagine a ball bouncing across a table. Imagine the sound it makes as it goes. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. What colour is it? Most people I ask answer this question without hesitation. It’s easy, because they were just looking at it, maybe still are. I have asked this question of various friends tens of times, and I still don’t know what colour the ball is for me because it doesn’t exist. I know what a bouncing ball looks like, I know the sound it makes. I know what colour it could be. But I’ve never seen it. That is aphantasia. It’s not foggy, or blurry, or “low fidelity”, it’s just nothingness.

harrisi 1y ago
I think I have aphantasia, and there's two interesting things about this to me. One, I couldn't tell you what sound a ball makes when it bounces on a table. I've never thought about absence of other senses but, thinking about it a bit, I can't really think of what a glass feels like or a fire smells like either. I have descriptions for all of them, like a glass is hard or a fire smells like.. smoke? Not really the best description. But in all of these cases, I instantly know I'm touching a glass or smelling a fire when it happens. Two, I only thought of the ball in terms of the parabola it makes. When I read the color question, I can assign a color to it, but nothing in my "imagination" changes. There's just another word, blue or whatever, associated with it. Thanks for making me think!
- 1d22a 1y ago
  I also have aphantasia, and find it really interesting to hear about people thinking of things in a similar way to me! Thinking about the ball in terms of the parabola it makes it exactly what I do too. Similarly, the ball doesn't exist as a physical "ball", but rather the knowledge of the concept of a sphere (which doesn't then have size or colour). The table, not a physical table, but the concept of a plane (with no thickness, size, colour (or legs)) - just the 'concept' of the important properties. Despite aphantasia I have always been able to conceptualise spatial relationships, but it feels much less like trying to visualise it, and much more like "understanding" the fundamental properties connecting each thing.

constantcrying 1y ago

This seems like people who aren't thinking about the problem at all and don't even think about the mechanical problem. I have no doubt that many of my recollections are bad, but I can imagine essentially every detail of a bicycle, all the mechanical components and how they interact.

jaggederest 1y ago
> I can imagine essentially every detail of a bicycle, all the mechanical components and how they interact. As I understand it, this is extremely uncommon, perhaps you might be categorized as hyperphantasia. How's your memory? They're commonly linked attributes, as per the article, some people with hyperphantasia have hsam - highly superior autobiographical memory, apparently from being able to conjure such accurate mental images.
- criddell 1y ago
  I suspect if you ask the person who did a good job drawing a bicycle to label the parts, they would do well at that too. I could do a decent job a drawing a bicycle and know the names of the parts because I’ve done a lot of the maintenance on my bike so I’m pretty familiar with it mechanically.
  - smeej 1y ago
    Perhaps, but I have hyperphantasia and could easily assemble/visualize a bike in my head without a clue what many of the parts are called. I know the big ones like "handlebars" or "pedals," but I haven't spent more than a few hours on bikes since childhood because of a deformity in my neck that makes my hands go numb in a riding position. In some cases, it very well may be familiarity, but for some of us, it's just memory and visualization.
    - jaggederest 1y ago
      Yeah, that's where I'm at - I could take apart a bike mentally but beyond knowing "those are brakes", "that is frame", "those are gears", I have no specific bicycle knowledge.

dmos62 1y ago

You'd be surprised how developed these skills are in people that are in visual arts.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Memory uses lossy compression where sometimes the compression is terribly inaccurate or leaves nothing at all. C'est la vie.

jiggawatts 1y ago

How could people possibly be this bad at drawing a bicycle!? Was this study done on aboriginals living in a rainforest that have never gone to a paved part of the world where people use bicycles? Sure, I'd get a bit flustered if asked to draw a modern mountain bike with rear suspension. Err... there's a spring back there... somewhere? But an ordinary road bike? How could you get that wrong?

smeej 1y ago

I have hyperphantasia, and only realized within the last decade or so that most people are not walking around with a detailed virtual overlay on the whole world. This bicycle example really helps me appreciate the difference between how things are in my mind compared to most people's, and I appreciate your sharing it!

kordlessagain 1y ago

I must respectfully challenge this interpretation on phenomenological grounds. To presume knowledge of another's mind's eye is to commit a fundamental epistemic error. Having conducted extensive interviews with hundreds of subjects, I've discovered that visualization manifests along a vast spectrum of human experience, each with its own unique phenomenology and nomenclature. For some, the mind's eye is void; for others, it blazes with such intensity that it eclipses physical sight itself. The bicycle-drawing analogy fundamentally misconstrues the relationship between mental representation and motor expression. These are orthogonal cognitive faculties—one need not be a sculptor to possess perfect proprioceptive knowledge of one's own face. The eyewitness testimony example actually undermines the original argument. The critical factor isn't visual recall but temporal-causal sequencing—the who, what, and when of events. My research suggests that aphantasics demonstrate superior accuracy in reconstructing factual sequences, unencumbered by the distortions of visual reconstruction. Indeed, one might argue that the ideal witness would be someone who processes experience without the intermediary of visualization. This points to a deeper truth about cognitive diversity: what some dismiss as deficit may in fact represent an alternative—and in certain contexts, superior—mode of engaging with reality. The visualizer's mind performs an act of creation with each recall, reconstructing and thereby potentially corrupting the original experience. The aphantasic mind, conversely, may preserve information in a more pristine, unrendered state—accessing facts without the degradation inherent in repeated mental imaging. This is not merely a neurological curiosity but a profound philosophical distinction: between those who remember through representation and those who remember through direct apprehension. Each mode carries its own epistemic advantages, and our insistence on privileging the visual may blind us to entirely different ways of knowing.

wat10000 1y ago

Those seem like totally different things. If someone can visualize things in perfect detail, why would that necessarily mean they can remember the configuration of a bicycle?