[Forricide]

Conversations around this kind of thing are so fascinating to me, because they seem to present this fundamental breakdown in human communication - how impossible it is to convey what 'really is going on' inside your mind.

The idea (to me) that people can just see full-fledged lifelike photos in their mind is crazy, especially with low effort. I can't really draw things in my mind very well but I can 'pretend' I see them, blurring the line between 'knowing I'm seeing something' and 'actually seeing that thing'.

But, is that the same thing as actually visualizing that object? It feels like it for most use cases, but then there's some task that actually would be way easier if I could legitimately 'see' that thing, and suddenly everything becomes more complicated.

[hombre_fatal]

I wouldn’t be surprised if 99% of the discourse here is just miscommunication on what “picturing something in your head” means and 99% of people who think they are different are not.

Picture a dog in your head. It’s such an fuzzy, imprecise action that you can skew the definition of “seeing it” from nothing (you are mostly reasoning about what this dog looks like) all the way up to a visual mental concept of it that does everything but actually block your field of vision.

Depending on what they think "seeing it" means, 100 different people can have 100 different explanations for the same phenomenon.

[basscomm]

It's this kind of casual dismissal that makes the aphantasia so frustrating to talk about. The people who are able to visualize find it so fundamental and easy that they literally cannot conceive that someone else might be lacking this ability. They tell aphantasiacs that what they've experienced their whole lives isn't real, they just misunderstand what visualization actually is.

No, I understand what visualization of something in your head is. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I can still see part of my dream in my mind's eye, but it fades quickly. I can't do it consciously. Never have been able to.

If you tell me to visualize a dog and describe it to you, I can't do it. I can describe what a dog looks like in general, but I won't be able to tell you what the specific dog that I've conjured up looks like because it doesn't look like anything. I'm not looking at an image in my mind's eye of a dog.

[dom96]

For what it's worth, I spoke to my friend who professes to be able to visualise things very vividly. I think there is something to it because she was able to confirm that she can literally see the thing she is visualising as if it's there, I asked her many questions about it so I don't think there is much room for miscommunication. She confirmed that it is as if that thing is there and that she can hold that imaginary thing in her field of vision for long periods of time. She can do this with her eyes open.

There must be some sort of spectrum of ability with this stuff. But I agree that it's difficult to prove and measure. I do think that great artists must be on the more "gifted" side of this spectrum.

[the_af]

It can also vary depending on the subject to be imagined.

For some people faces, especially familiar ones, I can see their faces in high detail (flaps of their noses, even pockmarks and other texture). The "picture" doesn’t stay still and it sometimes requires effort; though some imagery comes unbidden and effortlessly.

Other topics I have a harder time with and are more abstracted.

The problem with discourse at this level, however, is how subjective it is: when I say I can picture in my head the beautiful outdoors scenery of my last vacation, how accurate is it? If you could download a hardcopy from my brain, would you tell me "this doesn't look like a photo at all"? But what if I'm actually there, watching with my eyes -- is the image that forms in my brain accurate? Maybe someone would also scoff at it if they could download it, "this isn't what the scenery looks at all!".

I fear we will never be able to solve this riddle.

[Forricide]

> I wouldn’t be surprised if 99% of the discourse here is just miscommunication on what “picturing something in your head” means and 99% of people who think they are different are not.

Yeah, this is exactly the issue, and it's really just impossible to know. There's this popular 'apple test' image that gets posted a lot, where you're supposed to self-diagnose your level of aphantasia/visual imagery prowess based on which 'tier' of apple you can visualize, and people will always say: yeah, I can see [extremely vivid, realistic image of an apple] in my mind perfectly well. And that seems impossible to me, but then, how are we supposed to know what other people can actually see in their mind? It's in their mind, after all.

The one thing for me that does make me believe there is some major difference is murder mysteries; I have friends who can visualize scenes and solve mysteries that would be impossible for me.

[dr_dshiv]

Picture Dorothy’s dog Toto from the Wizard of Oz. Now look at her shoes. Don’t look too close!

If you are like me, you get incredible detail so long as you don’t linger. Is the detail really there, or an illusion? And why does attention destroy the detail, like the waking within a dream?

[robluxus]

> all the way up to a visual mental concept of it that does everything but actually block your field of vision.

That does sound like it would put an upper bound on what "seeing with your minds eye" means, but then what about this line from GP above:

> daydreaming has a weird effect of completely blocking out my vision.

This was claimed by a person who also self-reports aphantasia, and I (as a person that claims to NOT have aphantasia) just can't imagine (pun intended) how this would work.

[namtab00]

while reading this, my mind started trying to imagine dogs...

I didn't do it on purpose, it just did.

They were all barking, and had a collar... That probably says something about me.

[huytersd]

I mean I definitely see flashes of images of a dog. Isn’t one of the tests to see if you can seamlessly rotate a yellow star in your head? I can do it in flashes but I know people that can pause it midway through a rotation and draw the exact image they are seeing.