Unless you're a bike mechanic, or unusually attentive, you probably don't really know what a bike looks like or how it works. You have some of the basic ideas but not enough to wire it together. So, when people draw a bicycle from memory what they draw doesn't really make sense from a mechanical perspective. The bikes they draw couldn't work. It's not about being good or bad at drawing, it's a question of "are you poorly drawing a workable bike, or are you poorly drawing a nonsense contraption?"
If you could visualize a bike then you'd be drawing a poorly drawn bike that was fundamentally correct. As you cannot you just draw the same abstractions that I might. e.g. I know there are handlebars, pedals, wheels, connected together by metal poles. The fact that your drawing would be very different if you had a photo of the bike in front of you when you were drawing, no matter the objective quality, tells me that you probably don't have a picture of the bike available to you in your mind.
Regarding your one eyed friend, the solution is pretty simple. Demonstrate what you can do with binocular vision that he cannot with ocular vision. I assume you could estimate distances better, throw more accurately, similarly describe three-d visuals as someone else, etc. If you couldn't actually do anything to differentiate your binocular vision from your friend's vision then I'd say he has a point.
Same argument applies to aphantasia. If phantasia people really do have a mind's eye, I'd expect them to have some ability that aphantasia people lack. As is, I doubt that it's a real phenomenon.
1 - https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on...
I do read books, and, if visualizers were real, I'd expect that my enjoyment of books would be naturally greater. The narrative format of a book is similar to how I think and perceive of reality - as words. Books are more like a native format for thoughts and experiences than I'd expect them to be for visual minds.
I don't think I ever said I can't imagine what it would be like to have visuals in my mental experience. I'm familiar with images and vision and expect it would be like being able to "see" things without seeing them or calling images up on a screen. That people who claim to be able to visualize don't seem to have that ability makes me doubt their claims. (see: bicycle example)
I do have an imagination too and agree it is a real and powerful ability. I just doubt that other people actually have visual imagery in their imaginations.
What? This must be satire
> The narrative format of a book is similar to how I think and perceive of reality - as words.
What else could a book be but words?
> Books are more like a native format for thoughts and experiences than I'd expect them to be for visual minds.
You’ve read every book? And you claim to know what happens in my mind when I read?
Also — have you ever noticed that literature often uses a lot of similes? You’ve never wondered what that’s about?
Ok, you’re trolling.
This contains the presupposition that the ability to visualize a bike draws on a precise memory of what that something actually looks like, rather than is a construction from a heavily compressed representation that may or may not include the information necessary to reproduce something accurate.
I don't think it's a valid assumption at all.
Even if the information is there, it presumes that the visualisation functions like displaying a photo rather than symbolically reconstructing an image the way you might e.g. draw it, equally limited by skill as your ability to draw.
From the descriptions here, I'm not convinced it's a valid presumption to think it's like a photo for most people vs. "drawing" an image either.
Edit: Again, I'm not saying that you've missed out on anything in your life. The point is just that this is something people really do experience.