I can guess, and I definitely have already done so.
I don't claim I have aphantasia, but it's pretty obvious that I don't experience "visual imagination" the same way some other people do.
Like, so, people just say things like "I see it in my mind's eye", and insist it is not a metaphor... why, exactly? If the typical mind fallacy assumption of denialists was correct, then no one would have any incentive to use such metaphors, because they would feel false. So clearly minds do in fact differ.
To state otherwise is a kind of narcissism / solipsism, or at least there is something monstrous about this kind of denial. "Everyone else is clearly wrong about their experience and their descriptions of it. I know better".
I suppose, hypothetically, there are people who come to HN to fib and spin tales, but I am here with no agenda other than learning and conversing.
From the way people describe their experiences, it's difficult to know what they truly mean. I don't think anyone is lying, but it must be hard to convey these experiences with our language as it is.
In your first post, I thought "that's definitely not me", but in your second post I thought, "oh, that's actually 100% me"
To me, everything I imagine is on a different mental plane. This is what I thought people meant by a "minds eye". You don't see it literally, but it's there in your imagination.
What confuses me though is that for some people, it sounds like it's an overlay on their actual visual perception, something so vivid they could practically rotoscope it. I could never do that; I imagine I'd be a better artist if I could.
My imagination on this plane is so vivid that I'll get lost in it, and not see what's in front of me, as you describe it, simply because I'm "not paying attention" until some immediate danger jolts me "awake". I colloquially call this "zoning out" or "daydreaming"
Actually, I think my imagination might be part of what makes it so hard for me to read books. I'll get distracted by the world building, playing the different scenarios in my head, that I'll forget about the words in front of me, and minutes will go by before I remember I'm supposed to be reading a book.