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Comment by floitsch | Hacker News Reader

I have aphantasia, and I don't feel handicapped at all. The only thing where I really notice differences is when trying to describe people. Since I can't visualize them in my head, I can only describe "known facts", like "they have brown hair". I would make a lousy crime witness...

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This was my biggest puzzle as a child: how do all those people in crime shows describe suspects? And was it just made up?

The other ones for me:

- "go to your happy place", or "imagine you are on an island..."

- counting sheep to fall asleep. I just couldn't visualize them.

I still counted them, it just didn’t make sense. It was more a spreadsheet - spreadsheep? - than visualizing real sheep.

And it didn’t help me fall asleep at all.

I had to laugh so much because of spreadsheep. Thank you.

When I tried counting sheep it was very hard work: like stop motion animation. First picture a sheep, move it one frame, then re-draw everything including the fence that vanished every frame. It could easily take many minutes to move on sheep over a fence and exhaust me.

Same here. The scene where the witness describes the criminal's face in detail while the sketch artist can render a perfect drawing - I assumed that was pure Hollywood fantasy. Then I met people who could effortlessly recall/draw to that level and realized that wow it's real, but not for me.

I thought it was all metaphorical or for dramatic effect.

If I think of basically anything technical I get an image in my head. Any algorithm I write first exists in my head as a visualization of what I want to do. If I can't visualize what is going on I can't understand it and am in a state of confusion.

I might not have complete aphantasia, when trying to imagine an apple I struggle to imagine it beyond a circular form with a rod pertruding from an indent at the top. No color, no texture. As soon as I try to add more detail the previously imagined details dissapear and I have to circle back and reimagine them. Like having a very limited amount of draw calls every frame.

But I don't feel like I am impacted in imagining simple algorithms. I also construct them of very simple forms and rearrange them in my mind. I also feel like it is a lot easier for me to imagine things „automatically“ due to it being memories or being a byproduct of thinking about something. But my mind struggles constructing these images at will.

Also taking a pen and drawing these things up can replace some of the missing imaginary power :)

> As soon as I try to add more detail the previously imagined details dissapear and I have to circle back and reimagine them. Like having a very limited amount of draw calls every frame.

This matches my experience - I think of it a bit like a really slow CRT, the phosphorescence fading before the image can be composed.

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