It was a revelation when I found out that most people can actually see things visually in their minds eye.
A friend of mine can actually place imagined objects into their field of view, like AR.
I think it’s more likely that others describe this abstract visualization as “seeing” although they don’t really see it, as opposed to them really seeing it as if it were real. As you say, it’s difficult to describe. It’s like a memory of having seen something, and people might describe that as really seeing (because it’s like a memory of really seeing), but in fact it’s not.
It’s like hearing a song or other piece of music in your head that you know well, and you can hum or sing along it, but it’s not like you’re actually hearing it.
Like you describe I can visualize a lot of things, with fidelity, but it's still in my mind's eye (that is, a 'sense' rather than a physically represented image that's as apparent as other IRL objects). I can also hone in on details with my eyes open while doing other things. However I can't trace such things merely from this sense since they're not actually there for me. I can however leverage my draftsmanship skills to be able to focus on the mental visualization/sense and progressively draw from memory and for various familiar things visualize them on the paper but not as an optical manifestation.
I can't conjure up smell/taste experiences the same way, but I do have a sort of hollow visualization ability.
Edit: I read a few more comments, and it seems I'm not alone! Now I wonder whether this is common in the general population or just HN.
My impression is that individual differences lie much less in the actual mental abilities than in how people interpret and describe those abilities.
I used this often to recall if I did tasks. Just yesterday I forgot if I had washed my body when showering because I was thinking about something technical. I had to pause and thing, and I recalled seeing putting the soap in my hand. Not just some vague thing, more like a movie. Still no recollection of doing the motion though.
However when reading books or hearing tales, I've always struggled with the authors description of a place. Like I'll pick up on some early key words, and then construct the scene or location in my mind. Further description by the author hardly matters.
The weird part is I can get a really strong sense of being there, yet at the same time not really seeing it. It's really weird and the best I can describe it is that it feels like seeing or visualizing something. If there's an office with a red door, I know it's there, I can feel it's part of the location and it feels immersive, but I don't actually see or visualize a red door.
I think I'm the same. It's as if I can imagine a geometry, but it doesn't have any texture or colour. It's not black, not grey, not brown... It's a shape in its pure form, maybe like a wireframe, without a physical manifestation.
However, I can imagine music and actually hear it. I had this a couple of times where I "replay" a song in a foreign language I've heard a long time ago, and this time I can parse out more lyrics than before. All inside my head.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#/media/File:Utah_t... Play with the Utah teapot and then try to do the same thing mentally. Like imagine where the shadows are supposed to go and then see if you are right.
For colors imagine something corny like like a laser scan passing over, and then try to imagine different colors or laser.
But a geometry, or set of relations between objects (whether that's connections or just relative positioning, like a map) is pretty easy, and I can move around, rotate and focus on the geometry with less effort than it takes to imagine, say, an apple.
But familiar music can be played back in my head with only a little effort, or a slight reminder. Not just the lyrics, or the melody, but the full audio as I heard it, missing only background parts that my mind didn't "catch". Rarely (a couple times a year), I'll get a partial song "stuck" and won't be able to get it out of my head until I track it down and listen to it until the end. I can't "invent" a tune though, just replay ones I've heard several times.
I also feel like songs I replay in my head (which I do constantly, and without a choice in the song) have very high fidelity.
Once I was on an exam and I could not understand my own writing in the page I was remembering because I had written it too small on the corner. It was frustrating to not be able to answer the question. Afterwards, when I went to my real notes and I struggled to understand what was written there. I was happy that my memory image was accurate although frustrated for not managing the space in the page properly.
I thought everyone could remember things in this way.
Sometimes I have to write things down to see them and remember them, because mental speeches are harder (and less efficient) for me to remember.
I guess there are many ways to learn and remember stuff we just have to find the one that works better for us.
Being a teacher should require knowing about all this learning diversity I guess.
With digital this seems to not be active and instead I have to guess the likely words and jump around the search results.
Also I will project words in my mind to inspect them visually to see how to spell them, and if they look ok. And when studying I recall pages of books with the info in the place where it is printed, much like zeehio describes. This is super helpful when memorizing entire books ie when I studied biology.
But from this thread I still get the idea there are people that really really see things, whereas for me it stops at “visualizing”. Which does help when composing a picture but perhaps there is more? I think I’ll try this exercise.
One weird thing I often did (or try to do, doesn’t always work) as a kid is stare into the blackness of my closed eyes until I sort of got convinced there was a massive boulder looming over me. It would feel quite real and I’d really feel the massiveness and it would make me feel very small and even make me feel adrift. Strange, this thread actually made me remember, didn’t really do that for a long time now.
When I meditate, one of the practices is to label thoughts as they arise. When you do this, you realize that a huge amount of thoughts pass by subconsciously. You notice them more and more as you label them, but it feels like a deep rabbit hole of thought that I haven't gotten to the bottom of yet.
edit: just looked at the article and realized that the technique is essentially thought labeling. This is one of the most common practices in Buddhist meditation.
But yes, wth is that thing?
I'm so jealous.
I wonder if that's something that can be trained, just like 'fixing' aphantasia can be trained [1]:
- Sit in front of a table, with a large vase of flowers on it.
- Remove the vase and put it behind you.
- Looking at the now empty table, try to remember the look of the vase on it.
This is how it 'feels' being able to put imagined objects into your FOV. You don't get to actually see it, but you can imagine what it's like to do it.
[1] https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photogra...
1 - Wash
2 - Rinse
3 - Repeat
Yes, I can imagine everything about what it would be like to see it. But I cannot actually see it.