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Comment by iamhamm | Hacker News Reader

Here’s some evidence for you: when I close my eye, I see black. That’s it. No amount of effort conjures an image. That’s not what most people I talk to about it report, so I am going to assume there’s a functional difference between me and people with functioning visualization.

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I believe you. Why wouldn't someone believe you? There's not much reason to claim "I cannot do X" maliciously. I'm hopeless at catching a ball, can't play tennis to save my life, for instance... believe me?

I just want to throw my two cents in: I think I have a pretty good level of visualization ability, but it's not actually projected into my field of vision. It's like having a second monitor plugged in somewhere... _else_. It doesn't overlap with the 3D space of our world. I don't SEE it, but I do "see" it, not as concepts but as something akin to generated memories.

It does often help to look away from visually distracting things so that the mind is more free to use its capacity to generate things.

I have the same. I'm looking at my laptop's screen as I type this, and if I close my eyes while typing I cannot even visualise said screen. Now, I can blind-type, recognise faces, navigate aso without any problem. I can even play chess quite well (fide ~2050, 2200 blitz on chess.com), but I cannot visualise a chess board, nor can I visualise my moves or the moves of my opponent.

However, I don't "see" (pun intended) it as a problem. On the contrary, I'm not wasting cycles on irrelevant details while I'm thinking.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm on the hyperphantasia end of the spectrum and it is honestly actively problematic sometimes. For me, it can be very difficult to work with things that I can't translate to visuals, mentally; and daydreaming, and memories can be so vivid they are distracting or disturbing. It's very much an asset in certain circumstances (like debugging code or fixing an engine), but there's a reason most people don't have that fidelity.

>Here’s some evidence for you: when I close my eye, I see black.

This, I can imagine things, but it's like the idea of something, not a picture of it. Blows my mind when people tell me their imagination is like watching a movie.

Same! My wife is at the opposite end and can visualize these wild scenes and describe them in detail and I’m like “I can tell you roughly where the parts of a cat go”.

That's so funny, my wife and I have the opposite dynamic. She rolls her eyes at me when I insist "no the couch would definitely fit through that doorway if we rotate it like that, I don't need to measure", and after she gets a tape measure it's about an inch of room to spare.

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