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Comment by JshWright | Hacker News Reader

I often feel this way (as someone who has aphantasia). I tend to believe that I'm just describing the same thing in a different way.

Then I read a Reddit thread like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b8eojm/when_some...

It's totally foreign to me to think about "picturing" something in that detail. I can describe the physical attributes of an object if I think about it, and most of the time I just equate that to "visualizing" or "picturing" it. The thing that stands out to me in that Reddit thread (and other descriptions of how "normal" people visualize things) is that there is extra context. That's not something I understand at all, and so I'm convinced there is actually a fundamental difference.

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There is a fundamental difference. If I had a pair of VR goggles with me at all times that could play back short recordings of my life and if those VR goggles could also create helpful visuals that go along with my thoughts (sort of like a power point presentation with infographics and clipart), then it would be something like what I see when I "picture it". For a moment, I put on the "VR goggles" and the outside world is blocked out while I see an inner world.

If I write fiction I start to create the scenes and people in my mind as if I'm staging a play or building a level in a 3d engine. The words I write down are then a description of what I'm seeing, as if I'm writing a review of the play I just staged.

A further interesting line of thought: Can you re-hear sounds from memory? Can you re-feel touch? Re-smell? Re-taste? Can you re-experience emotions? With a bit of focus I can do all of those things, though it helps if the original memory is strong. My "inner ear" is especially strong, maybe even stronger than my "inner eye."

Man... that sounds awesome... Your description is actually the first time I've been sad about what I'm missing.

I definitely can't re-feel, re-smell, or re-taste. That's not the least bit ambiguous in my brain, I just have no idea what that even means. Re-hearing? I'm not sure... I can think "words", but there's nothing especially "audible" about it.

My imagined hearing is bordering on hallucination, and by that I mean an imagined "un-real" experience that is so present and detailed that it can be hard to distinguish it from actual sound. I can distinguish it, but it's right on the line.

If I want to hear a guitar I'll hear it with all the clarity of a real guitar. I hear the echo of the vibration. The sound of phantom fingers moving along the frets. Tiny metallic sounds as dry calluses squeak across the strings. And my chest will swell in excitement at the rich sound that I heard but didn't hear.

To test this I played the first ~30 seconds of The General by Dispatch in my head, then compared it to a Youtube video. I haven't heard the song for about a month, but I'd say my memory of it was about 95% correct with only a few notes out of place and a small number of missing/added aural details. In fact the sound memory was even more emotionally intense than the recording, like the difference between hearing a song live vs. a recording.

I can only imagine how crazy this must sound from your perspective. I am a productive member of society and not some kind of crystal spiritualist.

> I can only imagine how crazy this must sound from your perspective.

Nah, just sounds like a thing I would love to be able to do.

When people talk about an "inner voice". Like when you did something bad and you berate yourself mentally for it. Don't you hear a voice? Or when thinking about an imaginary argument with someone? Don't you do that?

No, that sounds totally bizarre to me. I certainly can think "words", but there is no voice associated with them.

Wow, so cool, but so confusing. I can't figure how that would work. But I also can't figure how people can think of a cube by its properties instead of seeing it. This gives me lots of food for thought. I will probably try shutting up the inner voice and projector later to try to understand it better.

I can absolutely replay music in my mind at will. I often will wake up with a song "stuck" in my head. But, I cannot visualize things. I cannot re-hear the voice of loved ones. I have absolutely no idea what it means to be able to re-feel/smell/taste. That is well and truly beyond my ability to comprehend.

I can definitely hear songs in my head. I can go one step further, I can "visualize" how to play the melody of the song I'm hearing on a guitar neck. The rest of my "visualization" skills are very poor, though. People here describe the ability to superimpose things on their field of view, for me it's nothing like that. For me, it's more like having a separate, super low resolution renderbuffer with a blur shader on it. I don't visualize things in the same scene as I see. I can definitely feel the scratchy tongue of my cat on the back of my hand, though :)

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