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Comment by rappatic | Hacker News Reader

I agree. The afterimage test was a major red flag for me. To see something in your “mind’s eye” has nothing to do with physical vision, yet the afterimage works by exhausting some of the eye’s physical cones. It’s a confusing non sequitur and totally unrelated to the subject at hand. I have always suspected that people with “aphantasia” simply misunderstand the idea of a “mind’s eye,” believing that others can somehow superimpose something onto their actual field of vision at will. Of course, this is not possible.

Edit: it’s also telling that this website sells an “Aphantasia Membership” for a monthly fee.

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> To see something in your “mind’s eye” has nothing to do with physical vision, yet the afterimage works by exhausting some of the eye’s physical cones. It’s a confusing non sequitur and totally unrelated to the subject at hand.

Which they go to the correct length to explain in the link associated with that demonstration. I found that exercise quite apt. They aren't saying "This is what non-aphants see" but rather "This is an approximation of what someone who can see images in their mind sees using a separate process so that you get an idea".

For me, the afterimage effect really DOES look similar to aspects of my own internal image perception (colors that are sort of there, but not quite; hazy quality; transparency).

If you can merge them, that's the key to a few things.

Maybe you're right, but there are people on this thread claiming that they can actually see things in their field of vision, not "akin to seeing things" but see-see them. I can't do this and I don't think I have aphantasia; I am interested in people who say that they can do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469365

Do the apple test (closed eye imagination and then pick the most-similar image on the scale). It's a validated test. And yes, apparently some people actually see an apple (not me, as a total aphantasic). Whether that means in their eyes or in their brain is pretty irrelevant. The people who claim to see an apple have physically observable differences in reactions to other mental imagery tests.

I am on the other end, high five inverse brother. When I see an apple in my mind, I can take it, rotate it, pull the stem off, look at the blossom scar on the bottom, cut it open, count the seeds, and peel the skin off, crush it into a cup and have juice. I can see the blemishes, if there are any, which side faced the sun, and how shaded it was, and I can tell you what the worm had for breakfast (it was apple. that part isn't fancy)

It uses the visual center of my brain (fMRI would show it according to the literature), but it doesn't use my eyes. I do, however, tend to pay much less attention to what I'm seeing when I'm visualizing intensely, so there's some competitive inhibition.

I used to be very frustrated with people who just couldn't see how the furniture in a room could be rearranged, or the color a wall could be, or where the bolt is on the underside of the engine now that we've installed it. Typical mind fallacy, that was me.

Yeah that's totally insane to me.

Interestingly, a lot of aphantasics are pretty good at spatial reasoning. It seems surprisingly non-visual.

In retrospect, the earliest sign that my cognition was different was in being asked to recall some event. I can virtually never remember being at a moment in the past. People ask me if I remembered doing some very-important-thing and the honest answer is consistently: No, but I remember the fact that it happened and the fact that I was there.

But there's literally no first-personness to any of my memories.

Completely opposite on that front, here, as well. I can't even really associate, I have visual memory all the way back to my earliest childhood memories (specifically, 3-4 years old, stepping on the track of a sliding door in San Diego, I believe, it hurt, I wanted to go see the pool outside), and my memory is so visual that sometimes I can see people's face, and what they were wearing and where we were standing, in the conversations we had but not necessarily hear what they're saying. I also have some semantic memory, something like "we talked about x for a while, and then I think we did y", but it's much hazier.

Honestly I love the fact that humans are so cognitively diverse and that we all can share our experiences.

After reading your comment I went to see the test. The scale shows the same picture in four different opacities, which isn't useful. The textual descriptions were more useful.

> I have always suspected that people with “aphantasia” simply misunderstand the idea of a “mind’s eye,” believing that others can somehow visualize something in their actual field of vision at will.

Many people can do precisely this, though the projected image is not usually 100% clear in some form, i.e. it may have a translucence or impermanence, and it can indeed take some practice to develop this skill. But it isn't uncommon at all, and comes up regularly in some spiritual and meditation practices.

Tell me you can still tell it's two separate layers though. You aren't actually getting visual feedback, you are combining the actual visual feedback from your eyeballs with the pseudo-visual feedback from your imagination.

I would say when I do this, it's more like underlaying my imagination with reality, than overlaying reality with imagination - the combination is still clearly imaginative. Right? (I think I'm a 3 or a fraction higher, on the apple test scale)

I can almost always tell the projection and reality are different, but in some very rare and extreme cases (psychedelics, sleep deprivation, extremely protracted and deliberate meditative focus / practice, or e.g. in situations where the projection is properly aligned with the actual stimuli, like seeing a face in the clouds, or in vivid / lucid dreams), the differences can be so small that what allows you to distinguish the two can simply be knowledge of the will / effort involved or e.g. knowledge from laws of physics that what is visualized cannot be present, or, in the case of dreams, an inconsistency with autobiographical memory.

Otherwise, yes, in almost all other cases, I suspect our experiences aren't that much different.

For me, when I'm really concentrating, the imagined becomes more dominant.

I like to do mechanical/visual designs in my head, intentionally avoiding whiteboards and whatnot, so I don't lose the ability! When I do this, I've had people come up to me and wave their hands right in my face to get my attention, because I don't see them. I "spaced out" alll the time as a kid.

Those people here (not you) telling all of us what is and what is not possible have their view based on how they see things. That's it. I hear they don't see things in mind, visually like a phone or a screen. Or do overlays. I remember finding out and being incredulous about whether others did something I don't.

My mother can take herself anywhere in the world she has been. However, she doesn't render people. This is full immersive. She said I disappear when she's doing it, if sitting there with her. This is simply daydreaming, a well explored topic.

All one has to do is read up on the idea. Anyone arguing against "seeing in mind" likely doesn't and will have some degree of difficulty understanding they are that way. I did. You may as well, or not.

In closing, what exactly is the Mind's Eye. History tells us a lot about what people describe it doing, when it works or is not blown out.

> I have always suspected that people with “aphantasia” simply misunderstand the idea of a “mind’s eye,” believing that others can somehow superimpose something onto their actual field of vision at will. Of course, this is not possible.

If "at will" is the hinging point then maybe not because the scenario to trigger the behaviour isn't clear to me still, but this is definitely possible.

I have had the superimposed belief-image confuse my spatial brain until I moved my point of view (in which the real world obviously reorients while the brain conjured image doesn't) to clear it before. This happened far more when I was younger than now as an adult, but it very much still happens.

The very last time I recall this happening was at my former home during a strenuous house move. I was on my back for a breather between boxes and a delay getting the car around gave me some time for my mind to wander, which it did on that occasion to thoughts about how very old buildings with column supports used to look. By the time I needed to move the next box I had to shake my head to de-conjure the little stone plinths that had appeared in my vision from my imagination trip.

It is a red flag to me too.

If you have working vision, the brain is doing a ton of post-processing that you're unaware of. The eyes are part of the brain, after all. Closing them with your eyelids doesn't magically turn off those post-processing circuits that do most of the heavy lifting.

There is a full visual memory, just not any sense of an image or sound nor smell in my case. I am very sure there is a difference after interrrogating multiple people about it.

> Of course, this is not possible.

I keep hearing conflicting answers on this and its a debate I've had with several people.

I have aphantasia based on the description here because I don't see jack.

Some people I talk to though say that they can visualize at the same fidelity as they dream at.

When I dream, I do "see" things in a way that is much more "real" than when I "imagine" them - to the point where I would basically describe it as effectively identical to seeing them.

So now I'm confused about if these few people are the exceptions or the norm, and to what extent I'm lacking something that some others have.

I think when I dream it feels real, but upon closer analysis, it's about as unstable as when I imagine things. It's just overlaid with the additional semantic vector of "yes this is the real world and everything is normal" or something.

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