Ask HN: Can you picture things in your mind? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can you picture things in your mind?

6 pointstrompetenaccoun8 comments

For example if you were asked to visualize a dog, would you see it and could you describe how it looks like?

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Previous aphantasia discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792 (75 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 (204 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18799550 (100 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19618927 (424 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20267445 (73 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22800815 (103 comments)

Fascinating question!

If you asked me, I would ask what sort of dog? or which dog? If you said, "it doesn't matter", then I just get some random dog. It's a bit like a slideshow of dogs. If you asked me to describe it, then it would be some fantasy dog or I might zoom in on a dog that I actually know.

I have bits of what could be called photographic memory. In school I would "snap" pages of notes and then in the exam recall the page and "read" it for the information required. I never actually tested it to see how many pages I could save and recall like that. Probably less than a roll of film.

Will look at @r721's links. Very interested.

Sort of? I mean, if you asked me to visualize, say, a Dalmatian, I can definitely say that I can summon up an image of a medium sized dog with a mostly white coat with black spots. I can even rotate it and look at it from different angles, etc. But the issue is the detail / specificity. Could I count the number of spots on the dog, or tell you definitely if he has a spot at the tip of his right ear? No, definitely not.

So yeah, there's an image of some sort there, but it's certainly nothing like a high-res photograph or anything.

Yes. I've always been able to see "pictures" in my mind for memories or otherwise. It is a talent that comes in very handy for navigation, in that I can "see" (as it were) a map and plot a route just from the mental visual imagery.

I couldn't see it. I could describe a dog.

No. I've often discussed this with friends. I seem to be completely "mind-blind", i.e., I don't see mental pictures. If I concentrate, I can cause something to appear in my mind that I know is supposed to be a visual impression of, e.g., a dog, for the briefest possible instant, but I can't just look at it.

Even things that are highly visual, like Chinese characters that I can write from memory, I don't copy them from mental pictures.

On the other hand, when I listen to music, I easily pick apart all the different elements and know their textures, kind of like flying and knowing what the terrain is via radar. It's still not visual, it's just knowing.

How many of your friends are the same way? According to studies the prevalence of aphantasia is in the range of 1-5% of the general population. Yet whenever I see the topic discussed on social media it seems to be a lot more common, more in the 10-15% range from what I've seen. Already the two only replies so far are both by people without the ability to visualize.

I'm really curious how common it actually is, because that's quite the discrepancy.

I think my friends can see pictures in their minds. Maybe the discrepancy is due to ambiguity about what is meant by "visualize". I can think... something is clearly happening, but it just doesn't seem to be happening via pictures. I often feel as if I get some information, and then just send an intention for a problem to be solved, and then later the answer comes back, but I'm not aware of the process by which the answer was found.

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