Comment by markx2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by markx2 | Hacker News Reader

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Some months, maybe a couple of years ago I realised that I have no "mind's eye". For example I know I have grandchildren but I cannot visualise them. I cannot visualise a neighbour, or food, or a location. That this happens is odd but I can live with it.

More recently I was thinking about gaming, and more specifically Prison Architect, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, City Skylines (all of which I own but get nowhere with) and other games where you play, you fail, you plan, you repeat. Even Minecraft.

Someone else - I presume - plays, fails, learns, repeats and so gain a step toward mastery of the game. (I accept from reading that mastery of DF isn't happening soon). I presume that players visualise mistakes and visualise workrounds. I cannot do that, I do not know how.

I have thousands of hours in gaming but I cannot recall them visually, so I respond in-game to what is happening in-game. That may not make sense. There will be some learning but in a non-visual way.

Is this aphantasia? I have no idea and I'm not about to be diagnosed.

I do have vivid and lucid dreaming but ask me to close my eyes and visualise an apple and nope, doesn't happen.

One way that scientists test is to use modality agnostic language. For example something like "imagine going to a store to shop for a new sofa. You find one and imagine where it would go in your room."

Then you change or introduce things "make the sofa 50% smaller" then a bit more "change the colour of it to deep yellow" etc

Or imagine getting on a bus and their is only one seat left.

Using Prison Architect as an example, when playing can you 'remember' the dimensions of the different rooms you've built? Or would you have to zoom out to plan an extension of your prison? It definitely sounds like aphantasia.

I would have to zoom out / pan around. I am unable to have any sort of vision of what I want/need.

Not exactly the same but recently I realised that I can visualize the face of most of the people I know, my parents, my family, my friends, however I'm unable to visualize my own face

I am definitely not a doctor. However, I have a friend diagnosed with aphantasia and this is almost exactly how she described it to me.

Can you draw things without a reference? What happens if you try to play pictionary?

I'm aphantasic but I've drawn my whole life. In Pictionary I show off and draw exactly the thing being described, meanwhile others struggle with their stick figures. It's hilarious.

So on the one hand I can draw an excellent random generic man or a generic face. If you pose for me I'll do an uncanny portrait. But I can't draw my wife of 30 years -- I can't even see her in my mind. I can't draw an actor I've seen 200 times unless I were to sit with photographs and ingrain their face by deliberate practice

If I cannot see - with my eyes there and then - a scribble happens.

To sort of expand: I'm old enough that a diagnosis makes zero difference. But it does explain so much.

When misophonia became a thing it explained so much of my reactions to certain noises, that I was not alone.

Just knowing that others are experiencing the same removes some of that aloneness.

> ask me to close my eyes and visualise an apple and nope, doesn't happen.

That's definitely aphantasia as I understand (and suffer from) it.

I've never really considered the "visual learning from failure" aspect of it. I know that in, e.g., Minecraft, I have tremendous trouble with building things because I can't visualise them beforehand and thus things get hodgepodged into these hideous homunculi of buildings or redstone contraptions.

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