Hacker News Reader

> I suspect nobody really sees something visually when thinking/imagining something,

I suspect that you may have some degree of aphantasia.

Visualizing something encumbers the same visual processing as sight does. Personally I have a hard time visualizing something and looking at something at the same time. I can only pay close attention to inside or outside, not both simultaneously. (Casual attention, like half-listening, is possible otherwise I'd be a terrible driver.)

To think of it another way: when you say "I've yet to meet someone who actually sees the tree with the same visual clarity as if looking at an actual tree," maybe you should ask some more. I can look at things, close my eyes, and continue studying them up to the limits of my memory and original attention.

Aphantasia seems to come in degrees, not a binary "have it"/"don't have it."

Perhaps... what I mean is this: close your eyes and visualize a tree. Do you literally see the tree in the darkness of your closed eyelids in front of you, visually? Even just vaguely? If not, then imho that's not really visual. I "see" the tree, but it's a different kind of seeing. Perhaps that's a degree of aphantasia, but how would I know? ;)

I do, but I haven't practised the skill much lately so it's not as vivid as it used to be.

It's more like a second virtual desktop than superimposed; it takes up the same coordinates, but there's a clear distinction between "real" and "imagined" objects (unless I'm particularly tired, but that's closer to "hallucinating" than "visualising").

I used to be able to visualise things in positions relative to real objects, but at the moment I can only manage floating in the air, such that focusing on the position of imagined objects de-focuses the background, either relative to my field of view (so it moves when I move my head) or in a defined position in space (so it doesn't move when I move my head – though obviously this is limited by my ability to instinctively judge positions and distances, so it often doesn't quite work right when things are moving in complex ways, or I'm moving fast).

That's blowing my mind right now. First I thought people who can visualize to the point of actually seeing what they visualize were pretty rare. For me what I visualize takes place in a mental space: it's a clear mental image, not a literal visual image.

Have you always been able to do this, because you mention practising this skill? Also, does this only happen after focussing on something, or does it happen spontaneously when thinking? I imagine it would be pretty distracting if someone says for example, "don't think of scary thing X", and then the scary thing manifests visually for you because you are thinking about it.

> I imagine it would be pretty distracting if someone says for example, "don't think of scary thing X", and then the scary thing manifests visually for you because you are thinking about it.

That sounds about right. For me, "don't think of a pink elephant" results in the image of a pink elephant, though if I'm not concentrating on its location it's just… somewhere.

> Have you always been able to do this, because you mention practising this skill?

I think I've always been able to do it – but I haven't been doing it as much since I stopped playing with toys, going outside and generally doing activities where such a thing would be useful, so it's less instinctive.

Uh yeah, same here. Like, I can remember what my daughter looks like as she sleeps in her crib, but visually what I see (with my eyes closed) is just blackness. I've always thought of it as something akin to a prerendering buffer or virtual display context in my mind. What the parent poster is saying makes me think that for them its more like experiencing an actual display, which seems like it would get really confusing layered onto the visual input from their eyes.

The only time I've ever experienced anything like that I was trying psychedelic mushrooms for the one (and so far, only) time, and so it was literally a hallucination.

That's an excellent analogy! The mental space is exactly like a prerendering buffer. When asleep and dreaming, there is no overriding visual input, so the stuff in the mental space gets rendered. And I guess some people can access this even when sensory input is present. That must be wild.

I had many conversations in the weeks following my original discovery, and this comment thread reflects them perfectly.

Me: There's no way everyone actually sees things and I made it 30 years without knowing.

Everyone else: Yeah I see things.

Me: but, like really see or just remember features?

Everyone else: <some variation of quality, but it was always described visually and everyone agreed it was basically like seeing>

I put "see" in quotes in my original comment simply because that is how everyone I spoke to described it; that it's clearly not physical vision, but it's also clearly a visual experience. I have absolutely zero visual experience when I close my eyes, and I never have, it is simply emptiness.

You seem to describe dreaming as if you experience that visually too, while not being able to do it while awake. It's worth noting that this is not uncommon for people with aphantasia, which is why it is the inability to _voluntarily_ invoke your minds eye. Many people can still dream visually, however I do not. I go to sleep and then simply wakeup with nothing but emptiness in between (not an experience of emptiness as time passes, but more like a time skip).

Yep, imagining/visualizing something goes without an actual visual experience for me. I've always assumed the same thing applies to most people, but I guess I do have some degree of aphantasia.

I can imagine something, but it's like rendering a layer with the opacity brought all the way down to 0, but my "mental computer" knows it's there and can tell its shape, color, all its features & details in 3D space... without seeing the actual visual image.

Dreaming on the other hand is usually multi-sensory and especially visual for me. Much like being awake or in a VR environment, but with internally generated input.

Have you spend time really consciously investigating your sleep? To the point of interrupting it with alarms etc..? I'm someone who's very interested in my dreams: for years, every night before sleep I wonder what I will dream, sometimes I get lucid during the dream, and when I awake my first instinct is to recall my dreams. I think this is why I dream so much. I wonder if the same thing applies to visualization and whether or not aphantasia is "curable" through consciously exercising visualization.

When I visualize some thing I don't literally see it in my field of view but I can still 'see' it. It's similar to audition(hearing in your mind). Read something out loud in your mind or play a song in your head. Its the same thing you don't literally hear it but you do 'hear' it.

Yes but that was my point: I suspect (I can't be sure of course) that this is a limit of the English language. We call it "seeing", but it's not. If it would be real seeing, you would visually see the thing you are visualizing in your field of view, as if it were literally there (like in a dream).

Hehe, perhaps no and this is the moment when you figure out that you have mild aphantasia. When people say they "count sheep jumping over a fence" it's not a metaphor.

That's kind of what I've been trying to figure out: when people say they count sheep, do they close their eyes and literally see sheep jumping over a fence as if watching a movie or wearing a VR headset? Even in low resolution... That would be pretty impressive... why would we still need movies and games then? ;)

Of course I can imagine sheep jumping over a fence, even in vivid detail, but this imagining is not really seeing visually like in real life, not even like in a dream. As I said, I would describe seeing things that aren't there (with closed eyelids or not) as hallucinating. Perhaps not being able to do that at will is aphantasia, I don't know, but it would blow my mind if it were

Generally when I’m idly visualising something it is ‘in my mind’s eye’ as you put it. But if I’m really focused and close my eyes then everything else seems to disappear and I’m ‘really’ seeing it, not on the inside of my eyelids but it encompasses my entire visual perception if that makes sense

More rarely I also get it with sounds and then it definitely does feel that the sound is originating externally to my mind

You’re right that these experiences are more like hallucinations but I think they are points on a spectrum rather than separate things