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Comment by apt-apt-apt-apt | Hacker News Reader

What is aphantasia, specifically?

I don't consider myself to have aphantasia. If I close my eyes and try to 'see' with my eyes the letter 'm' or an apple, all I see is the back of my eyelids– pitch black.

If I then try to 'see' with my mind the letter 'm', I can imagine the shape and drawing the shape, but it never appears in a physically visual manner. I can trace its lines with my eyeballs, but try as I may to hallucinate an image, it's still only pitch black always. The closest I come to seeing it is being very confident that I know exactly what 'm' looks like, and that I could take that mental model and draw it exactly on paper immediately.

Do some people have such a clear and strong mental image that they can effectively inspect, zoom in and manipulate a mental image as well as a real visual image, and that's considered not-aphantasia?

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> Do some people have such a clear and strong mental image that they can effectively inspect, zoom in and manipulate a mental image as well as a real visual image

yes, 100%, and more than that. Even with eyes open I can overlay a completely different environment and stop "seeing" the real world. When I close my eyes I find it difficult to really see blackness. Example: when running laps, I count laps by seeing a giant number fixed in the sky over the lap marker, each number a different material (flaming, made of ice, a trimmed hedge, etc).

Why do the numbers have to be made of fire and ice and topiary?

It helps distinguish them. Seeing all numbers as e.g. black vinyl makes them blend together in my memory.

Visualizing something lets you leverage visual and spatial memory, but even then: if I were really running past N real giant numbers which all looked identical, I'd lose track just the same. Distinguishing them visually makes them all unique and memorable. The color infuses the entire track and the sky, actually, so it requires little focus, because it's right there in the background.

Basically like the memory palace from Moonwalking with Einstein, but less work, because they don't have to be consistent over time.

(thanks for "topiary" :) beautiful word)

It’s time to update your self concept. The Wikipedia article is pretty good on it and the apple scale is illustrative of the spectrum.

It's unconvincing. They sort people into categories by a questionnaire, and then find they perform differently on tests that have something to do with vision or imagination. That's it, that's all they've come up with.

Idk, I just read the Blake Ross' (of Firefox) article [1] on having aphantasia, and identify less, rather than more, with how he describes it:

"1. Can you picture my face? >No. But it’s not personal. 2. So you don’t know what I look like? >I know facts ... If you have radiant blue eyes, I may have stored that information. ... I’m unable to project it visually in my mind because there’s no screen. 4. How about picturing something simpler, like a red triangle, or the table right in front of you? >I can’t even understand the question. I can think about the idea of a red triangle. But it’s blackness behind my eyes. Blackness next to my ears. Blackness in every nook and kindle of my brain. 5. You’re just assuming that others can actually SEE things with their eyes. NOBODY can do that, you hypochondriac. I get it. It’s a “mind’s eye.” I don’t have it."

[1] https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A...

How are you with reading fiction? Easy or a struggle?

It's easy, the experience isn't very visual though. More about the plot and emotions I'd say.

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