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Comment by jpfromlondon | Hacker News Reader

You're absolutely right.

Nobody hallucinates or "sees" the object, it's like an object instantiation with default properties that you can name/describe, nothing more.

If you quiz someone long enough you can get them to acknowledge they don't see anything "in their head" whatever that means.

This nonsense makes me irrationally annoyed, I suspect because it's unfalsifiable attention seeking, some people I've met mention it every chance they get angling at it being some sort of disability. I get it, you don't see anything...I don't see anything either...nobody does.

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Can you explain why people who report aphantasia don't show physical responses (like sweat or pupil dilation) in response to imagined visual stimulus (like being described a scary scene), while people who report mental imagery do show these physical responses to the same stimulus?

I agree, of course nobody can actually do this (barring mind-altering drugs or brain trauma, and even then, not voluntarily). But there are people on this thread an on the attached survey (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49469365) who say that they can. Maybe it turns out that I have aphantasia after all and this is just an ability that I'm missing.

I am curious to see how many people say that they can do this to get some sort of baseline though.

If you accept that drugs/trauma can cause altered states then can't you also accept that some people have the altered state as their default?

Modern politeness encourages us to think of all humans as more or less the same, which I think causes a default minimization of difference mindset.

One thing that really blew my mind in my 20's was learning that asians have a different type of earwax -> usually white and dry instead of yellow and waxy. It really shocked me that I was never taught that in school, and if people are unaware of common physical differences I am sure we are largely unaware of common mental difference.

> If you accept that drugs/trauma can cause altered states then can't you also accept that some people have the altered state as their default?

Indeed, that acknowledgement by the GP undermines his entire argument:

> I see things with my eyes, experience has taught me that when I cover my eyes I cannot see things, when I close my eyes I cannot see things. That is what seeing is. I cannot see with my ears, I cannot see with my fingers.

What he and others here don't grasp is that we see with our brains, and the signals that the brain processes do not have to come from the eyeballs.

>they imagine that they see something and lack the language to convey the imagined unperceived object, the notion of phantasia or aphantasia is merely a by-product of the term "picture it in your mind's eye" or the like, leading many ignorant people to believe that something is literally rendered within the individual's head.

I think by any reasonable definition everyone has aphantasia, which is why it's a nothing burger.

Yet you decline to offer an explanation for the observed physiological differences between people who self-report aphantasia and those who do not?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49473050

Intellectually lazy, to be honest.

I am able to see stuff in my head all the time. It is a matter of degree, i.e. some people see things more clearly than others. But the same could be said of real eyesight.

Very few of us have 20/20 vision but that doesn't mean we're blind.

> Nobody hallucinates or "sees" the object

Prove it.

> If you quiz someone long enough you can get them to acknowledge they don't see anything "in their head" whatever that means.

This is simply false, as numerous people here have demonstrated.

> irrationally annoyed

Yes, irrationality and emotive reaction is evident.

> I suspect because it's unfalsifiable attention seeking

You suspect a lot of things based on no evidence whatsoever.

> some people I've met mention it every chance they get angling at it being some sort of disability

How is being able to see things in one's mind's eye a disability? Ah, but you meant the opposite -- your whole framework is irrational, baseless, intellectually dishonest, bad faith, and indeed quite annoying.

> I get it, you don't see anything...I don't see anything either...nobody does.

Again, it was the claim that people do see things that you were rejecting. You can't keep track of your own argument because it's irrational and devoid of evidence or logic.

I won't respond again.

aaw, touched a nerve have I because I'm suggesting you're not special?

>Prove it.

Precisely, unfalsifiable nonsense.

>You can't keep track of your own argument

MY argument is this: people don't actually see things or even have imagery inside their head, which is normal, and self-proclaimed aphantasiacs are attention seekers who think they have a disability or special characteristic...there is no logical inconsistency in my argument.

Not sure what could be motivating your reasoning here, but you've ignored several times the physiological evidence of differences in visual cognition between self-reported aphantasics and non-reporters that shows up in: fMRIs, skin conductivity tests, visual priming tests, and pupil dilation tests.

Agreed no logical inconsistency, just very strange laziness and prickishness.

He doesn't even know what an argument is ... he says "MY argument is this:" and then just makes an assertion, not an argument. Of course there's no logical inconsistency in his raw assertion -- there's no logic of any sort. But what I pointed out about his previous comment is that he asserted that no one "sees" objects in their minds -- implying that it is those who claim that they do who are lying -- and then he attacked aphantasics as attention seeking and angling at it being some sort of disability (a remarkably stupid mischaracterization, but then that's true of just about everything he said, like his remarkably hypocritical accusation that I had a nerve touched -- I simply chose to fisk the incoherent ranting of a troll). So his whole "argument" is inconsistent in its framing and presentation and who he is criticizing. It's hard to call it logically inconsistent because there's no logic ... his claims don't flow from reason or evidence, just sheer emo. His utter irrationality, cognitive ineptitude, and bad faith are epitomized by his response to my demand that he prove his claims with saying "Precisely, unfalsifiable nonsense."

The guy has a lot of baseless and downright false opinions, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296897

And he seems to live in a perpetual state of annoyance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296897

Oops, the second link should have been https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49287006

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