"Psychologists now recognize three basic types of visual thinkers. To determine what kind of visual thinker you are try imagining a triangle. Do whatever it takes to image that shape in your mind, How did you do it?
Some people cannot "see" a triangle in their minds until they draw it on a piece of paper or trace its outline on a table with the and of their finger.
Some people need to close their eyes, apparently because seeing interferes with their visual imagination. When their eyes are closed, however, they can "project" the triangle on the inside of their eyelids. Did your eyeballs move as you drew the triangle?
Some rare individuals can bring up the image of the triangle with their eyes open, superimposing the triangle on whatever they are looking at. A subset of this latter group can make the triangle change size, color, and perspective; they can make it twirl, jump, and pass through other figures. Steinmetz and Tesla clearly fell into this last category."
Elmer Sperry was notoriously good at mental visualization, to the point that he could supposedly just draw the projected outline of his mental images onto paper.
A lot of figurative art in previous centuries was also based on drawing bodies from memory. I think you can infer that some painters could really conjure an image (the configuration of a body) in their mind before drawing it, just like Sperry. But the feedback loop approach is equally valid!
Here's the book that the quote is apparently from: https://books.google.com/books?id=dZyPAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA52&ots=...
Math, CS, physics and engineering tend to attract people with visual/spatial aptitude. This may be because sighted people first encounter the subject matter of those disciplines through their visual perception. Whatever the explanation is, HN readers are likely to be an atypical population.
My interpretation of the "superimposed" comment is that we are not talking about images appearing as if literally overlaid on what we are seeing. What people experience is that an object that they are visualizing seems to be spatially located in the same place as their visual field—hence Elmer Sperry's comment that he could just "draw around it". Would you agree that your visual imagination and your visual field occupy the same space "in front of" your head?
If it's any help, what I'm trying to say about the relationship between real and imaginary is close to the mathematical idea of a covering space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covering_space
Isn't that what the "mind's eye" is?
I can look at a sheet of paper and imagine something on it, and then draw that (if it's simple enough), but my ability to visualise something precisely enough to draw it rapidly degrades as the image gets more complex.
On the other hand, if I'm not intentionally projecting the image onto something, my visual imagination doesn't occupy the same space as my visual field at all. If anything it's "above" or maybe "inside" my head. I can then visualise an almost arbitrarily complex image, but if I try to focus on the details they shift: I'm "seeing" the whole but not the parts.
Your experience sounds similar to mine, but I feel like there's two distinct levels to the mind's eye.
There's the level you describe, where it doesn't feel like you're seeing through your real eyes but I find it's also possible to have images that feel very much like they're coming in through your eyes – almost as if there's a tap on the optic nerve.
For me these images are for the most part only visible with my eyes closed and most visible when falling asleep. I also cannot precisely control them in the same way I can instantly imagine a shape, instead I have to influence them indirectly bit by bit with lots of effort (but I usually get there – I'm practising to see if it can become easier). These images can be much more vivid, they're usually in full color and animated, but with a small field of view. It looks a bit like having a small CRT-style color TV at the center of my vision and it feels like watching a dream while you're awake.
To go into more detail on the process: when I close my eyes I don't see black but a sort of vague mix of colored blobs, a little bit like this but darker [0]. As I start to think, I pick out patterns in the blobs that look like the thing I'm trying to imaging, until eventually they sort of become full images that evolve on their own. They become vivid enough that I feel like the muscles in my eyes are straining to try to focus on them. It's not that dissimilar to those deep-dream images (but much less creepy!).
Is this something that happens for you too?
[0] https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/colored-no...
> These images can be much more vivid, they're usually in full color and animated, but with a small field of view. It looks a bit like having a small CRT-style color TV at the center of my vision and it feels like watching a dream while you're awake.
This almost exactly. I have experienced this a handful of times on waking. A stream of photoreal content, in a small round field of view in the center of my vision. The images often have fewer colors than real life, and some kind of artifact not unlike "scanlines" from a CRT. So far, they're also distinctly 2D. It's like watching broadcast from the part of my brain that's still dreaming, through my eyes. It's what I expect retinal projection looks like.
As opposed to the "back buffer" of normal visualization or daydreaming, there are separate "front buffer" phenomenon that are as close to hallucinations as I've ever experienced. If they happened at any time other than waking or falling asleep, I would drive myself straight to the ER.
I always thought everyone could do this. It makes me realize how far we are from grasping the true depth our brain abilities.
This is also why creating a true is very far. We must first understand, then replicate.
Am I supposed to literally see a triangle? I can't do that. As far as I can tell, I'm "imagining it." The triangle doesn't interfere with anything I see, it's not really anchored to anything visual, and, while I can alter it, the triangle is not specific. It's a fairly ephemeral imagination or idea that I can conjure up. Most importantly, I'm not "seeing it," I'm "picturing it" or "imagining it"
I can draw a world map from memory with well above average accuracy, but I can't picture it even if I mentally trace the outline I would put on paper.
Beyond the people with extraordinary natural ability, perhaps the rest of us just need to be taught what others can easily intuit?
I work with adults doing art work quite a lot. They are often upset that they can't just do it, they've not tried before, or last tried decades ago, but some how expect to just rock up and be great at creating something "artistic" without doing any practice or learning towards it.
I'm one of the "omg I might be aphantasic" set here today, but I've never really tried picturing things in that way I don't think, so perhaps I can but just haven't learnt to.