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Comment by voxl | Hacker News Reader

I think I have very good visualization skills. To the point where I can solve three dimensional geometry problems in my head with nothing external. However, I never "see" anything with my two eyes in the way I can see an afterglow of a candle or a window, as described in the video.

I see with a "third-eye" or a "minds-eye." Never with me real two eyes. This means I can visualize at any point, eyes closed or open. I can transpose an additional image on the scenery around me, and in fact I did that very often in school, playing games on walls in my head. Anything to avoid the lesson.

But, is that seeing images in your head, or isn't it? Must you see the image as you would see the afterglow of a window? I've never been able to tease out what people really mean when they say they can visualize.

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That's how I experience mental visualization as well. It's as if there is one framebuffer in front of my head (what I see in the real world, or inside my eyelids when my eyes are closed), and a separate imaginary framebuffer that feels like it's located above and behind my head. Is yours also located behind your head?

An interesting effect of some psychedelics is that they can cause my front framebuffer and back framebuffer to merge into one framebuffer. It's quite a strange experience. I wonder if anyone else has experienced this as well!

So you can make really good drawings of the things? Like imagine a castle and draw it on a sheet of paper without any other references? I am very skeptical.

You’re practically describing Kim Jung Gi: https://youtu.be/MGbvhyTZXfs

Yes, its called a photographic memory and only very few people have it. It cannot be trained.

No because I don't know how to draw. But I can program in my head and reproduce on a page.

Do you visually see the code in your mind? Do you remember it visually? Hoe does that even make sense?

I program in my head, and yes, I often do see the code in my head. In some sense, it's like a spatial experience, where each file is a different "room", and those rooms have contents of the code.

When I imagine programming something, I make mental plans of what code goes in specific rooms (Files, or directories), and what that code will roughly look like - At first a rough shape, of a class with particular methods, and over time that resolves into more and more detail such as what the methods will do and how they will interact with other parts.

My memory is really bad though, so if I try to come back to this a week later I will have forgotten the whole thing unless I make very detailed notes.

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