Hacker News Reader

Comment by ergonaught | Hacker News Reader

fMRI can probably spot it for people like myself who are fully aphantasic.

But:

1. "Imagine a table. There is a ball on the table. The ball rolls off the table onto the floor."

2. "From memory, what color was the ball? The table? The floor? What did you see under the table?"

Neither I nor any other, uh, aphants, that I have known have answers to those questions. Imagination still works, and answers to those questions can be produced interactively if handled appropriately, but, ex: we weren't imagining colors and we didn't see anything at all much less "under the table".

Alternative:

1. "What do you think people do, specifically, when they "count sheep" to go to sleep?"

Our answers to that should just be hilarious for you. Hi-larious.

Understand that we thought you folks "visualizing in your minds eye" were speaking metaphorically. Entirely metaphorically.

View on HN

"mind's eye" is a metaphor. You, like everyone else, have two eyes, in the front of your face. There isn't an extra one embedded in anyone's brain.

The pineal gland in the brain has sometimes been termed the "third eye":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland#Society_and_cultu...

I'm not sure what you think you've gained or stated with this remark.

"Mind's eye" and "visualization" refer to actual experiences. Those of us with aphantasia (no exceptions that I've encountered so far) did not realize these words referred to actual experiences.

Define "actual experiences". Normal people can not imagine an object like a red apple and actually see it, same as if one existed right in front of them. They can "visualize" it (just like you, it sounds), as in they can think of what it looks like, they would recognize one, they can even imagine broader scenes involving this apple (like an entire grocery aisle) but there is no "actual experience." You couldn't walk straight otherwise, you'd constantly be dodging imaginary objects that you'd be seeing.

> Define "actual experiences".

People without aphantasia literally count sheep to go to sleep.

No, they literally do not. "Counting sheep" is a mental exercise. Or do you think people invite actual sheep into their bedrooms?

The generous interpretation of everything you've written so far is that you have aphantasia and don't realize it, and when it finally registers you'll feel like a real ass about these comments.

There are less generous interpretations.

Just to understand the baseline you're working form, what data are you drawing on when stating what's "normal"? It has appeared to me throughout this conversation that you are starting from the assumption that your internal experience (at least, with regard to mental imagery) is consistent with the majority and making assertions about the majority based on that.

If you are actually drawing on a larger amount of data, specifically pertaining to the mechanisms of people's internal experiences, that'd be useful to know. If you are not, I'd gently suggest that you're working from a flawed statistical assumption, and that looking at the numerous interactions in this thread where people describe materially different internal experiences ("I can only recall tastes in terms of descriptors" - "I can experience a taste by imagining it"[0]) may be more informative without presuming universal consistency.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40764813

Reply on news.ycombinator.com