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Comment by supermatt | Hacker News Reader

I saw a video on youtube of someone claiming to have aphantasia, but to me it just seemed that they were misinterpreting what others would "see" when they visualise something.

When asked to "picture" something, for some reason they assumed people would actually see a faint version of it in their visual field - and because they couldnt "see" it, they believed they had aphantasia.

e.g. when asked to visualize a clown sitting in a chair in front of them, they expected people to actually (however faintly) see a clown in a chair in front of them. To me that is hallucination, not visualization.

Of course, it could be ME misinterpreting it, and people do actually "see" things they visualize, and I have aphantasia.... How would I know? What is the experience for you? (if you dont mind me asking)

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Since I had discovered I have this condition (about 9 years ago), I spent a lot of time interrogating many people about how _they_ 'see' things, and it is definitely a spectrum, though I'm very close to one end of it.

For example, a simple "Close your eyes and imagine a cat. [pause] What color is it? What's it doing?" question results in:

Most people: Orange. A bit scruffy. It's playing with a ball of yarn beneath a chair. I can clearly see it jumping around.

Fewer, but still common: It's orange. It's just suspended in nothingness in a fixed position.

Me: What do you mean color? You didn't tell me I need to give it a color!

Imagining something just summons the concept of that thing to your mind. You can attach properties to the cat and you can analyze it, but unless a given property has been attached in particular, it's simply null.

On the other hand, the people at the far end of the visual spectrum draw a complete blank when you say "Imagine an un-cat leaping over the chair".

OK - I think I understand what you are saying. I would have the same problem as yourself with that visualization.

I also have an extremely poor memory. For me, the (very few) memories I have are like a very blurry monochrome photo. I have always believed this is anxiety related (I have chronic anxiety and ADHD).

FYI, I have just done this cat question on my partner, her cat was grey and was sleeping... I asked her if that cat had a colour before I asked her what colour it was, and she said it did. For me, that cat would have no colour. Its possible I would then add a colour when asked the colour.

The most spectacular thing about this is that no matter how people visualize things, everyone always assumes the rest of are the same. So for me it was completely mind blowing that others can truly _see_ things, while for them they couldn't understand that I couldn't. It's just not the kind of thing you discuss with people often, so we just instinctively generalize from one example. Typical mind fallacy.

I've since heard of a second instance of the generalization phenomena - Some people wipe their butt while still sitting, some stand up. Unscientific polling showed that the split is roughly 50/50 in a population. But no one had any idea of the other groups existence at all.

Surely there must still be a squat involved for the stand-up wipers, otherwise their butt cheeks would be compressed together. Or maybe they have different shaped butts? How would we know!?! Maybe its to do with the butt/seat ratio?

Im not sure if I could fit my hand in the hole the same time as sitting down. Definitely a squat guy, or generally a one cheek pivot, as im pretty lazy :D

I'm highly suspicious of that 50/50 split.

Every time I see that stated, I only ever see sitters being surprised that standers exist, not the other way around.

They might exist, but either they're are much smaller minority, or it has a strange correlation with how they use the internet.

It does seem obviously to be a spectrum. I only realised that I have some degree of aphantasia when I read an article on it.

I think there's also an element of things being "faint" in your mind's eye. For example, there's a McDonald's and horse racetrack that I drive by every day on my way to work. I can sort of visualise some constituent parts, but there are no details and there's no overall picture.

I also don't know how much of the visualisation is just me recalling (in abstract) what is there, since I am very familiar with it.

> Me: What do you mean color? You didn't tell me I need to give it a color!

That would mean you don't have the condition right ?

I can visualize a ball, but I only make it a tennis ball after I'm asked to do it. Similarly, my car doesn't have a color until it must. I can make the scene really robust as I build on it, but won't unless I need to. Almost like a 3D graphic renderer.

IMO, that's probably a more conceptual way of looking at it. You are able to decouple your concept of a cat from the color and tendencies, and can build it up from more basic primitives than others can.

> "Imagine an un-cat leaping over the chair"

Can you elaborate on what you see here ? Sounds really interesting.

I did more of a "scene + cat-ness everywhere (deep dream style) - cat in the particular position". So the background had cat hair all over it, and then a cat shaped grey/transparent contour jumped on top of the table.

For the record, I can do all of those. When asked to visualize something, I see it in my mind, as if a memory. Very detailed, full color, sometimes moving, sometimes static.

But IF asked to visualize something floating in front of me, I can do that too. It cannot ever be mistaken for the real thing, it's not a ghostly image or a hallucination, but I can sort of pretend something imaginary is sitting next to me and I can, through voluntary effort, "see" it.

Whenever I want to draw something -- or build a scale model -- I always try to visualize the end result first.

I can visualize things in front of me. A hallucination would be a visualization that I can touch. I cannot touch my visualizations.

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