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Comment by antonvs | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like you have aphantasia but you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t.

Here’s a simple question: how close are your waking visualizations to images you see in vivid dreams? From what you’ve said, assuming you do experience vivid dreams sometimes, it sounds like the answer is “not very”.

Many people without aphantasia report waking imagery quite close or at least comparable to what they experience in dreams. If that’s not the case for you, that’s consistent with aphantasia.

The OP article does a decent job of describing it. I recommend reading it, if you haven’t already. What you’ve described matches how it describes aphantasia very closely.

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Right now, while staring at a blank wall, I visualized a red, 3D apple with a cartoonish worm emerging from it and then taking out a cleaver and chopping up the apple. It was similar in detail to what I'd see in a cartoon, but (like I said above) in another mental plane.

So no, I don't think I have aphantasia.

That's phantasia, but it's not hyperphantasia. It's a spectrum. How does that falsify anything that is under discussion here? Is it so hard to believe that other people have abilities you lack? I don't have perfect pitch but I believe people can have it, because they can demonstrate it.

He started by saying he initially couldn't even achieve phantasia (at school) but now can and that validates his experience which is he has made strides on mental imagery department.

Why is the notion that some cognitive ability needs to be developed to acheive full potential controversial for you?

It's not, but you then must admit that there's a variety of experience that you may not experience, and that some people don't need to learn, or vice versa, cannot learn.

Fair enough but we're not discussing all under the heaven here.

The phenomena we are discussing is, to date, mostly defined and categorized based on subjective (self) reports. Given that, until we actually do experiments where we analyze brain patterns over a period of time and clinically prove that it is not true that a developmental methodology can alter brain patterns of subjects when attempting internal image formation, we can not summarily dismiss subjective reports that claim a degree of improvement.

Parent poster was rejecting the idea that subjective reports claiming impossibility were possible, I'm not going to extend them the benefit of the doubt in the opposite direction. "That's not a real thing" puts the onus on the demonstrator, you can't disprove subjective experience using subjective experience.

I believe in a plurality of human experiences, they do not, because they experienced one thing different. It's a specious argument, just like all the people rejecting the idea that other people can have a different subjective experience (based solely on their own personal experience) in this thread.

> Is it so hard to believe that other people have abilities you lack?

He literally said he HAS the ability. He can actually do it. It is just that he learned it at some point.

I think people can experience A, B, and C, he's saying "I was like A, but I learned to be like B, therefore A does not really exist". It's a bad argument. It's like claiming that, because you have dyslexia and learned to read, dyslexia doesn't exist, even though other people who are dyslexic can have a severity where they can't learn to read.

He desribed his own experience of learninig to visualise. That is entirely valid thing to say in the context of "is it learnable or unchangeable or something in between".

He was neither rude nor dismissive. You was dismissive.

Also, dyslectic can learn to read. They have difficulty with it, including in later age. But "cant learn to read" is not that thing.

He rejected the idea of it being fixed for anyone else, based on it being changed for himself, which is uncharitable at best. Some people with dyslexia are incapable of learning to read, maybe you should check it out. That doesn't mean every dyslexic is incapable, but that's a real variation. And you're rejecting the idea of that yourself, which also feels pretty uncharitable.

How does it compare to the imagery you see in dreams?

FWIW, I don’t have aphantasia; I can visualize stuff in my head, but it’s nothing like actual vision, and neither is how I see in what I would call vivid dreams. My dreams and my wakeful “mind’s eye” are pretty similar, I would say. The point is, they are only faintly comparable to actual vision, but I would never characterize that difference as aphantasia, or say that I have trouble visualizing things.

It’s very difficult to tell how different what others report of their mind’s eye (or lack thereof) really is from my own experience, both on the alleged aphantasia side and on the “I see it as if it’s real” side. It’s conceivable to me that people’s interpretation of their capabilities is much more varied than the actual capabilities.

In any case, it should be pretty clear that it’s not black and white, but a spectrum.

That sounds like hypophantasia, i.e. not the absence of internal imagery, but a very vague one.

Few people routinely mentally visualize with the same breadth and vividness as dreaming, unless perhaps they have poor dream recall or don't dream very vividly. It's probably more rare than aphantasia.

On the flip side, this means with some introspection and reflection most people can appreciate how those with aphantasia think; most people use a mix of mentalisms for cognition, it's just not as apparent as visualization. And unless it's happening subconsciously, I'd venture to say visualization as the dominant mode is the exception, it just stands out because it's more common when you're deliberately thinking in a self-aware manner, and the other modes are difficult to identify or articulate.

A fascinating thing about dreams I realized as a midlife adult after getting into ML is how coupled brain storage : dreaming is.

Example: If you appreciate a good sunset, have you ever had a dream about just a sunset? With the full color experience and wonder?

If not (I haven't, and most people I ask haven't), isn't that weird? Because presumably you've seen hundreds and can imagine exactly what they look like if you focus.

But you know who do seem to dream of sunsets in their fullness from time to time? Professional artists who work with colored media.

Crazy how our jobs and most repetitive experiences influence our neurology and our dreams.

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