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laserbeam
omnicognate
I also hate it, for the same reason. And I hate that having read the "this one neat trick" blurb you then have to hear exactly the same information delivered vocally before getting to the technique.
However, this is the first time I've ever seen anybody even suggest a technique that might help with this, and it's something I've come to see as a real limitation. I very badly want a functioning "mind's eye" and if there's any chance practicing this for 10 minutes a day for a few months might achieve it, hell yes I'm going to try.
And when he did actually get to the technique, it wasn't "buy my book" or "sign up for this course". It was a simple and complete demonstration of something anyone can do at home for free. I didn't see any means of monetisation beyond views on the video itself, and he's welcome to his slice of my youtube premium.
I agree that the style is horrible, and that the information should be assumed to be bogus by default. But, fortunately, checking if there's any value in it for me is a cost-free, risk-free thing I can do in my spare time. Fingers crossed!
Edit: Oh, and the whole left brain, right brain thing is disappointing bollocks too. Still, I'm going to try this.
Edit 2: BTW, if you do have any serious aphantasia research sources I'd love to know about them. I've seen very little research into it. (And TBH I'm not really convinced it's worth significant research investment, any more than people not being able to whistle or raise one eyebrow is. I don't see myself as having a disorder, just an undeveloped ability.)
Edit 3: Somewhat relatedly I have also been mostly unable to hear sounds in my "mind's ear", although I am a keen amateur musician. I can imagine tunes but they are not accompanied by the timbre and richness of actual sounds. They're more of an abstraction. This is something I've made actual progress on, though. As a byproduct of learning sight-singing and transcription (as an adult, starting with movable-do sol-fa), I am able to hear sounds much more convincingly at times. I have to remember to exercise the ability, though, or I fall back to my old ways, and it still takes a lot of effort.
dr_dshiv
> whole left brain, right brain thing is disappointing bollocks too
Left brain right brain is a neuromyth myth. As in, there is extensive evidence for hemispheric lateralization.
Omin
The author himself doesn't seem like a scam artist but he looks like he falls for them. He said he heard about this technique from Michael Neill who he calls "a personal development coach, a really good guy". This "good guy" has a bunch of books and videos on youtube offering the answers to everything: Finding happiness, overcoming shyness, anxiety, being effortlessly successful with just these three easy tricks in 3 months yada yada.
And Win Wenger, who the author says this technique originally comes from, is the author of "The Einstein Factor" which is a book with similarly grandiose claims about improving your mental abilities.
laserbeam
I'm not saying this is a scam. It just smells of an attitude that fails at due diligence when it comes to verifying information. The author may be very well meaning but it's enough for me to not warrant a click on the video. I can't trust the information in it is checked at all.
stevenhuang
Nothing is being sold and all other articles on the site are about photography.
Your heuristic for identifying scam articles is overtuned and you're deferring to shallow dismissal instead of engaging with the article to your detriment.
permo-w
even if nothing is being sold, the fact that the author went to so much trouble to write umpteen paragraphs of dross, but didn't bother to transcribe the actual useful information. I may not be suspicious, but I am annoyed
corysama
The “Long Form Landing Page” is a science that has been popularized and refined since the dawn of the consumer internet. It’s all about slowly building emotional investment from the user to trick them into pressuring themselves to engaging the eventual “Call to Action”.
QuantumGood
...and before that it was refined as multi-page copy in direct mail, and full-page or long copy in advertisements. Even if you changed only the formatting in a direct mail piece to make the copy spread over more pages, response rates went up.
drt5b7j
Bingo
larodi
i vote this being scam
CommieBobDole
So, wait, are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of your eyelids gets replaced with something you actually see, like it's projected there?
I can imagine what something looks like, and I guess I sort of 'see' it, but closing my eyes doesn't make it any more real. It doesn't seem to involve the eyes or any part of the visual system at all - it's somewhere else in my head.
Jiocus
If I remember correctly, aphantasia is inability to visualise images, objects or memories in the mind, and this seems to be what the author actually refers to. The alternative, to actually perceive imagery with the eye that isn't there is usually called hallucination. The article doesn't get at this difference and seems to be based on Youtube videos about aphantasia.
If you've ever had a dream with vivid first person eyesight (like most people during dreams) then it's easy to see that we should be very capable of producing high quality visuals without external stimuli.
I've been practicing on this kind of thing as it's a technique for dropping into a lucid dream. In my case, I manage to find some kind of repeat pattern in the visual random noise of my closed eyes. Slowly and consciously I manage to see clouds or waves on an open sea, maybe add color. Then I can try something more advanced. If going to sleep, these images get more vivid and might classify for something called hypnagogic hallucinations[0], but then it's not quite the same level of conscious involvement steering what to see. In any case, it's nowhere near what I'd imagine as useful for an on-site photo session, more like a high effort meditation.
godelski
Speaking of dreams, similar to the author's comment about needing to try a month before getting good results, I used to not remember my dreams at all. I decided to keep a dream journal. First week I only had like 3 entries with one sentence notes like "saw the color blue." But a few months in I was remembering most of my rem cycles, 6 months in and the dreams could continue through cycles (like one long epoch). I did this for 2 years -- stopped because I had a few times where I had just long dreams where I just did normal things (stressed at those times over the monotony of my life) and they just seemed like extra work days -- and a decade later and I still remember most of my dreams. I only ended up lucid dreaming (the goal) a few times though. But mostly because I was enjoying my dreams so much that I had little desire to take control when in them.
Jiocus
I've tried journaling my dreams but I found it to be tedious due to the amount of dreams and their various contents. Some dreams consist of strong emotions and what I sense as I wake up is not the dream, but the feeling of have been separated from the dream. That's hard to put into words in the middle of the night. In the end, I tend to recall my dreams quite well, many of which have a permanent place among other episodic real life events.
I have a few dreams that are like a long running TV show, suddenly I'm in this certain universe and the plot continues, even though it's been a few years. In a single sleeping session it's often the rule that dreams continue even if I wake up in the middle. It's so consistent that waking up from a nice dream doesn't mean it's lost but gives me something to look forward to.
Lucid dreaming in my experience is very much an Inception-like (the film) experience. Once you have "woken", there's a fine line between controlling the dream, and the dream noticing what you're up to, eventually booting you from the matrix.
For something more on topic and for anyone that will be experiencing a lucid dream in the future: Take a moment to really appreciate the extreme level of graphics, and other senses the mind can render.
qingcharles
I've suffered Hypnagogia several times in my life where I have woken up and can see giant spiders running around my bedroom. I hurt myself once leaping from standing on my bed, over the spiders, to my door so I could switch the light on and attack them. Of course, when the light came on and I turned around the spiders were not there. My brain, not understanding where the "spiders" had gone convinced me that they had merely scurried under the furniture to hide, so I spent another couple of minutes trying to find them before I realized I had been punked by my own brain.
vorpalhex
> If going to sleep, these images get more vivid and might classify for something called hypnagogic hallucinations
Try your meditation routine while sitting in a warm shower with a visual focus. That for me gives me the same intensity as the true hypnagogic level visualizations while still having close to full mental faculties.
Some people report being able to use audio patterns as an alternative to visual patterns. I've had mixed success personally but ymmv.
smokel
From personal experience, I have some proof that dreams are not similar to plain eyesight, and are probably produced somewhere else in my brain.
In a dream, I saw a friend. The images in the dream were very vivid, and I could have easily mistaken the dream for reality. However, when I woke up, I could not tell whether I had seen my friend from the front, or from the back.
This suggests that the property "feels very realistic" can be produced separately from a dream actually being realistic. I highly doubt that dreams are indeed producing high quality visuals.
I have also tried to draw faces from people that I have seen in my dreams. I am fairly proficient at hyperrealistic portraits, but with the dream recall -- no luck so far.
synecdoche
Just like image-generating AI can’t write anything coherent, it appears equally hard for me to read any text in my dreams.
davidhunter
Yes. I am like you in that I cannot actually see anything visual in my minds eye but I can still 'visualise' it. For example, I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain.
It was a revelation when I found out that most people can actually see things visually in their minds eye.
A friend of mine can actually place imagined objects into their field of view, like AR.
layer8
I wouldn’t be so sure that what they’re describing isn’t really the same as your “visualization”. I can’t truly see anything in my mind’s eye, same as you and others in this thread, but I can abstractly visualize it, again same as you describe for rotating a die, and I can place that abstract visualization in the 3D space I see before my (open) eyes.
I think it’s more likely that others describe this abstract visualization as “seeing” although they don’t really see it, as opposed to them really seeing it as if it were real. As you say, it’s difficult to describe. It’s like a memory of having seen something, and people might describe that as really seeing (because it’s like a memory of really seeing), but in fact it’s not.
It’s like hearing a song or other piece of music in your head that you know well, and you can hum or sing along it, but it’s not like you’re actually hearing it.
Springtime
Seems to me a way of testing the visualization vs hallucination (if I can distinguish it like that) gradient would be the ability to trace visualized/'projected' objects on paper, particularly for subjects without prior background in illustration/draftsmanship (less skill to lean on) and for images which require replication of details they're not familiar with (things like dice are relatively geometrically primitive shapes, while say a person's face while it can be built up from primitives is inherently complex). Granted part of this would be testing photographic recall.
Like you describe I can visualize a lot of things, with fidelity, but it's still in my mind's eye (that is, a 'sense' rather than a physically represented image that's as apparent as other IRL objects). I can also hone in on details with my eyes open while doing other things. However I can't trace such things merely from this sense since they're not actually there for me. I can however leverage my draftsmanship skills to be able to focus on the mental visualization/sense and progressively draw from memory and for various familiar things visualize them on the paper but not as an optical manifestation.
bqmjjx0kac
Maybe I'm weird, but I have a very real auditory experience of music playing in my head. I'm never confused whether I'm imagining it, but it has nearly the same fidelity as hearing with my ears.
I can't conjure up smell/taste experiences the same way, but I do have a sort of hollow visualization ability.
Edit: I read a few more comments, and it seems I'm not alone! Now I wonder whether this is common in the general population or just HN.
magicalhippo
When recalling memories, it's almost like replaying a film, except in my head. That is, I don't see it as I do with my eyes, but I can "look at it".
I used this often to recall if I did tasks. Just yesterday I forgot if I had washed my body when showering because I was thinking about something technical. I had to pause and thing, and I recalled seeing putting the soap in my hand. Not just some vague thing, more like a movie. Still no recollection of doing the motion though.
However when reading books or hearing tales, I've always struggled with the authors description of a place. Like I'll pick up on some early key words, and then construct the scene or location in my mind. Further description by the author hardly matters.
The weird part is I can get a really strong sense of being there, yet at the same time not really seeing it. It's really weird and the best I can describe it is that it feels like seeing or visualizing something. If there's an office with a red door, I know it's there, I can feel it's part of the location and it feels immersive, but I don't actually see or visualize a red door.
norrius
> I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain.
I think I'm the same. It's as if I can imagine a geometry, but it doesn't have any texture or colour. It's not black, not grey, not brown... It's a shape in its pure form, maybe like a wireframe, without a physical manifestation.
However, I can imagine music and actually hear it. I had this a couple of times where I "replay" a song in a foreign language I've heard a long time ago, and this time I can parse out more lyrics than before. All inside my head.
Ericson2314
I definitely do abstract shapes more often, but I thought but and I could do some lighting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#/media/File:Utah_t... Play with the Utah teapot and then try to do the same thing mentally. Like imagine where the shadows are supposed to go and then see if you are right.
For colors imagine something corny like like a laser scan passing over, and then try to imagine different colors or laser.
GolfPopper
That sounds a lot like me as well. I have a very hard time getting an actual realistic picture, with color and detail, in my head. At most its a faint and hazy thing. And while I don't have face-blindness - I recognize people from their faces easily - picturing the faces of even close friends and family members in my head is very hard, and mostly comes down to a few half-remembered features, tied to words.
But a geometry, or set of relations between objects (whether that's connections or just relative positioning, like a map) is pretty easy, and I can move around, rotate and focus on the geometry with less effort than it takes to imagine, say, an apple.
But familiar music can be played back in my head with only a little effort, or a slight reminder. Not just the lyrics, or the melody, but the full audio as I heard it, missing only background parts that my mind didn't "catch". Rarely (a couple times a year), I'll get a partial song "stuck" and won't be able to get it out of my head until I track it down and listen to it until the end. I can't "invent" a tune though, just replay ones I've heard several times.
Dunati
This is very similar to my experience. For example, I can visualise 3 stacked poker chips, and I can move than around and restack them. But if I try to make them different colours, I can't, similar to how I might keep track of real ones with me eyes closed. I can remember the blue one is on top, but if I start rotating them, taking the bottom one out and putting it on top, I quickly lose track of which one is which.
I also feel like songs I replay in my head (which I do constantly, and without a choice in the song) have very high fidelity.
actionfromafar
I think you are slightly to the aphantasia side of a spectrum. I can do the same as you but with colors.
zeehio
When I had to study and memorize some text at school I used to remember the page where the text was written and then mentally read it. Some of those pages are still in my head (for instance multiplication tables).
Once I was on an exam and I could not understand my own writing in the page I was remembering because I had written it too small on the corner. It was frustrating to not be able to answer the question. Afterwards, when I went to my real notes and I struggled to understand what was written there. I was happy that my memory image was accurate although frustrated for not managing the space in the page properly.
I thought everyone could remember things in this way.
Sometimes I have to write things down to see them and remember them, because mental speeches are harder (and less efficient) for me to remember.
I guess there are many ways to learn and remember stuff we just have to find the one that works better for us.
Being a teacher should require knowing about all this learning diversity I guess.
thinkingemote
I find reading from paper books better than digital for this reason. Spatial memory. Its quick for me to find a passage as I seem to know where to look. I don't remember the words or the passage I want but I know where to locate it. The section of the page, the bit of the chapter, the pattern and shape of the text (better if there's illustrations) the weight of the pages. I imagine it would be a little bit of a jump to use it to memorise the words themselves. I should give it a try with some bible verses but thinking about it all my bibles are formatted differently depending on translation edition etc. Different than most books.
With digital this seems to not be active and instead I have to guess the likely words and jump around the search results.
teekert
Hmm I can imagine what something will look like in a position in a scene but I wouldn’t call it AR like. This is a really interesting thread. I always thought people were much the same. But recently I also learned that my wife just sees words when reading a book whereas I see a “movie”.
Also I will project words in my mind to inspect them visually to see how to spell them, and if they look ok. And when studying I recall pages of books with the info in the place where it is printed, much like zeehio describes. This is super helpful when memorizing entire books ie when I studied biology.
But from this thread I still get the idea there are people that really really see things, whereas for me it stops at “visualizing”. Which does help when composing a picture but perhaps there is more? I think I’ll try this exercise.
One weird thing I often did (or try to do, doesn’t always work) as a kid is stare into the blackness of my closed eyes until I sort of got convinced there was a massive boulder looming over me. It would feel quite real and I’d really feel the massiveness and it would make me feel very small and even make me feel adrift. Strange, this thread actually made me remember, didn’t really do that for a long time now.
colordrops
I have a feeling that, unless you are blind due to illness of the brain, that everyone has the capability to visualize internally. This would include your wife when she is reading. I think they difference is that some people have access to this visualization consciously, with their frontal cortex, and for others it's subconscious. If you didn't have this visualization, I believe it would be really hard to commit what you read to memory and have any sense of a story.
When I meditate, one of the practices is to label thoughts as they arise. When you do this, you realize that a huge amount of thoughts pass by subconsciously. You notice them more and more as you label them, but it feels like a deep rabbit hole of thought that I haven't gotten to the bottom of yet.
edit: just looked at the article and realized that the technique is essentially thought labeling. This is one of the most common practices in Buddhist meditation.
OhHiMarkos
Omg, the boulder thing is something that happened to me a lot when I was a kid. Then it stopped for many years and then at some point I could do it again. I don't know you can make it happen. It scares me a little bit to tell you the truth. If it happens now days I try to shake it off.
But yes, wth is that thing?
Semaphor
I can't do that. I can somewhat remember what a die is supposed to look like, but I have no image of it whatsoever. It's a very abstract memory, like say I "imagine"it with a 6 on top. Then I know logically there are 2 times 3 dots, but I can't even get an image of that, even trying to think of it makes me lose all other parts of the die.
k9unit
It feels like my brain is processing and feeling what it would look like if I truly saw it. I can see a dice, zoom in on it, and feel the indented bumps where the black dots go. But the actual image of a dice just barely escapes me. It's similar when visualizing math too.
LoganDark
> A friend of mine can actually place imagined objects into their field of view, like AR.
I'm so jealous.
TuringTest
That's likely something that anyone with a 'mind eye' can do.
I wonder if that's something that can be trained, just like 'fixing' aphantasia can be trained [1]:
- Sit in front of a table, with a large vase of flowers on it.
- Remove the vase and put it behind you.
- Looking at the now empty table, try to remember the look of the vase on it.
This is how it 'feels' being able to put imagined objects into your FOV. You don't get to actually see it, but you can imagine what it's like to do it.
[1] https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photogra...
_dain_
Yeah it's not a figure of speech, there's LITERALLY another framebuffer (or whatever you want to call it) in my mind in addition to the ones from left eye and right eye. I don't need to close my eyes to do see it (but it helps). I can draw to it, with some effort . Daydreams get painted on it when my mind drifts. It's the stage on which I experience memories.
Most people are like this, with variation in the degree of vividness and control. Some people can make realistic detailed scenes, for other people it's harder and their images are often blotchy or lacking in detail and colour. I'm in the latter group.
If you don't have any of this at all and you're surprised by the whole idea, you are probably aphantasic.
zestyping
Yes, I have another framebuffer too. It's interesting to me that it seems to be located a little bit above and behind my head. Does it feel to you like your framebuffer is physically located at any particular place?
One interesting effect of psychedelics that I've noticed is that they can cause the framebuffer behind my head and the framebuffer in front of my head (i.e. on the insides of my eyelids) merge into one framebuffer. It's quite an odd and fascinating state to be in!
justsid
Reading this is crazy talk to me. I can recall what things look like, like I know what an elephant looked like or my first apartment. But I just know what it was like, I can’t project it anywhere in my brain. It’s also just a very high level knowledge, there is 0 detail whatsoever because there is “nothing”.
It’s incredibly fascinating to learn about nuances between humans.
signaru
Based on how the article describes the imagery, I think I am somewhere in the middle and just always assumed everyone else also is. I can see images that I recall from memory or trigger with my thoughts, but the images are unstable, and the quality is similar to that of after images of bright objects, except the colors are correct, albeit being faint since my recalled images don't last long enough for "persistence of vision". It's almost like an inserted split second subliminal image, that I notice, but not sure if it is there (well it's not because I'm fully aware it's from my mind). I think the biggest difference to how others describe their experience is the "persistence" factor, holding the image long enough to look at the details. Furthermore, the stuff I "see" do not occupy the full field of view. They're just big enough as the object I am trying to remember/imagine while the background is still darkness or reality (like AR) if I'm not closing my eyes.
I'd be interested to see more quantitative descriptions of "duration" and "field of view" of what they see.
hudell
That's a lot more than I can do. I can't see anything at all. No color, no shape. The most I can do is remember if something is taller or wider.
Hnrobert42
I am like you. I’m guessing that the author needed to use the stuff seen by his eyes while closed as a springboard to seeing something with his mind’s eye.
My dad told me about monk’s who meditate on imagining that their thoughts exist behind their belly button. As you noted, your mind’s eye is not located in the same physical space as your actual eyes. Similarly, there is no reason the thoughts you hear couldn’t be happening in your belly button.
But I’ve found it remarkably difficult to convince my mind that it exist anywhere other than my head. I don’t think this difficulty is based on biology. I think it’s just conditioning. But damn, it’s hard.
hutzlibu
"But I’ve found it remarkably difficult to convince my mind that it exist anywhere other than my head. I don’t think this difficulty is based on biology. I think it’s just conditioning. But damn, it’s hard."
It really is hard. I just know the conscious effort of meditating and centering my consciousness in the center of my body (above the belly button) as opposed to my head, really helps my focus and mental abilities and general wellbeing. And everytime I use my mobile .. it helps me if I do it afterwards, to not get lost again. I wonder if the jogis would have advanced much, if they would have had a mobile close to them ..
toombowoombo
Try pinching yourself randomly so that you can attract your mind to different spots in your body. I used to do that when I had headpain to distract me from it (I was a minor back when I learned that. In my country everyone is very careful with any substance given to minors)
izoow
I can't really "see" anything either, but I'm assuming it's something akin to "hearing" your inner voice. I also don't actually "hear" anything, but I can tell that it's going on in my head and it's effortless and "automatic". I don't have to consciously exert effort to "activate it", imagine it, and keep it there.
sebtron
Yes, it apparently most people can. I cannot, and I also found out relatively recently.
For example, you can ask "most people" to imagine a car, and then follow up by asking "what color did you imagine it?". For me and you this question would not make any sense, but you'll find out that "most people" find it completely normal and answer it without questioning you.
sndwnm
If I had been posed this question I could imagine it having gone two different ways. First, I could approach it as remembering, maybe not a car I saw yesterday, but a generic idea of some type of car. For example if I thought about a Japanese pickup or a Lamborghini, I would probably answer the following color question with "white" and "orange", because for me those are stereotypic colors that "come with" the memory. Perhaps many people think in this way and thus assume the color obviously is there.
The second way would be to abstractly build a car in my mind. Start with four tires, put a rough shape of a frame on it — lets make it a sedan. If I proceed this way, I probably would not choose a color, at least not early on. Like many in this thread, this is how I usually imagine things, as "wireframes". The color/texture is not there because I have not assigned it. I can't vividly see the things I imagine, but they can still have color just like they can have shape.
Al-Khwarizmi
I consider myself to have aphantasia (cannot visualize anything in my mind, except when dreaming) and I think I could still pass the test you mention.
If I imagine a car, I can imagine its features, and of course color being a quite salient feature I would probably assign it a color (e.g. I could imagine a red Ferrari, or a black limo). It's just that I wouldn't see it, there wouldn't be anything in my mind similar to the actual experience of seeing a red object, I would just think about the "concept" of the car being red (hard to explain).
So far I've never found a way in which aphantasia really manifests externally or can be measured externally in a more or less reliable way. Which is why I'm still not 100% sure that people who claim not to be aphantasiacs aren't just exaggerating or taking metaphors too literally...
hudell
People without aphantasia can recall details about things that they didn't notice when they first looked at it, because they can "look at it again" in their mind.
I can't recall anything I didn't actively notice while looking. If you stop me when I'm leaving a grocery store and ask me questions about the cashier, I won't be able to tell you their hair color or what kind of clothes they were wearing. Sometimes I won't even be able to tell you if they were tall or fat or any other physical adjectives.
Stratoscope
I have seen lines of code projected vividly like this.
Several years ago a Facebook recruiter invited me to interview with them. It mostly went well, except I bombed the leetcode algorithm quiz.
The next day, as I expected, they sent me a polite note thanking me for interviewing but they would be moving on with other candidates.
The morning after that, I woke up and before I opened my eyes I saw the complete solution on the back of my eyelids, about 20 lines of code.
I stepped through the code mentally and thought, "Yes! This will work!"
So I ran to my computer and typed the code in to test it. Other than one bug - this was old-school JavaScript and I'd forgotten one var statement, so there was an inadvertent global - it worked perfectly.
Modified3019
If you’re not already aware, there is also a phenomenon where a person wakes up with a solution to something they had a problem with. Sleep is required for memory formation and organization, during which new and sometimes novel associations can be made.
I personally consider naps an essential part of studying because of this.
725686
I have, in more than one occasion, gone to sleep with a problem in mind and woke up with a solution, but it is more of a conceptual thing. To actually see the lines of code, if true, is wild.
Stratoscope
The story is indeed true, in every detail. And yes, it was a wild experience.
I'd never had this happen before, nor since. I wish it were a skill I could develop and cultivate!
chatmasta
The thing I've never understood about aphantasia is the emphasis on closing your eyes. Does it really matter? I can visualize an apple (to borrow the example from the frequently shared meme) whether my eyes are open or closed. It's not like my eyelids are some necessary visual backdrop for visualization.
shawabawa3
At this point I'm fairly certain aphantasia doesn't really exist (or is extremely rare), but what exists is a disconnect between what people understand the word "visualising" to mean
I cannot project an image of an apple into my brain, but I can be aware of what an apple looks like and have that awareness move and rotate the apple. I would never call it visualising though
deadbeeves
From talking to people, I would say it exists on a spectrum. I can imagine an apple, the color and texture of its skin, how it feels to touch it, its weightiness, its smell, the sound it'll make when I bite into it, as well as its taste and texture. I can imagine it at different levels of ripeness too, although I don't have the same amount of information for all of them. For me it's so clear that it's almost as good as the real thing.
Some people I've talked to said they couldn't do most of that. They said they could think of an apple, but couldn't tell me much more about it, other than that it was an apple. Now, obviously I can't peer into their heads. Were they actually imagining more but were unable to put it into words? Were they underestimating the vividness of what they were imagining? Or were they accurately describing what was in their minds? Although I can't directly experience their minds, there were certainly differences between what each of us could describe.
4star3star
I watched a video from a woman talking about her aphantasia. I was struck by the fact that she is an avid reader and enjoys fiction. She said she processes descriptive text as facts. Like, if she read, "Raindrops glistened in the afternoon light as they rolled off the red maple leafs, falling peacefully to the lush green grass, below," she would just have a list of facts in her head and no visualization. It makes me wonder what such a person would write, themselves. How could they put together a scene?
moffkalast
> Were they actually imagining more but were unable to put it into words? Were they underestimating the vividness of what they were imagining? Or were they accurately describing what was in their minds?
I suppose some people may imagine a "default apple" when given the prompt which would already have some parameters while others might try recreating an arbitrary apple from scratch in their head which wouldn't be very detailed. The object is only as detailed as you make it in your mind, which might take some creativity if you're not thinking about a specific one you've seen before. If you don't give it colour or smell it won't have any, it'll just be like a generic shape.
sergioisidoro
I think most people with some degeree of aphantasia used to think like you - that no one can really visualise things.
But then I started asking around and people REALLY described visualisation as a vivid clear picture of things in their heads, almost like they are there. Like literally projecting the image on their brain as you're saying.
I now think I do have some degree of aphantasia. I can describe as having low RAM, so I cannot paint the entire scene. I am able to briefly visualise some details and aspects of a scene (usually as flashes, and I cannot sustain them), but never the entire scene. If you ask me to visualise a beach, I can have visual "flashy" perceptions of the sand or the waves, but it's extremely hard for me to put everything together in a visual manner. It's much easer for me to imagine the feelings, sounds, and smells of a scene.
vjerancrnjak
It’s very easy to identify it. What happens when you read a work of fiction? Do you have a rich visual representation of characters, if you draw or if you knew how to draw would you be able to draw everything you see? Colors, scenery, light or dark?
Some people don’t get any imagery when they read books. For me it’s so vivid that I read maybe 30 pages an hour if not less.
bstnbstn
There are some articles and ”quick tests“ that ask you to close your eyes, which can be quite confusing. Some people find it easier to visualise with their eyes open, others with their eyes closed.
Additionally, aphantasia often is represented by a black image, which also is misleading. Some people think they have aphantasia because they see black or Eigengrau behind their eyelids.
But aphantasia has nothing to do with physical seeing with your eyes.
sgt
So you can do AR, basically
layer8
I would be careful with the eye rubbing, as that’s an important risk factor for keratoconus:
drewtato
Maybe this is too obvious to spend words on, but it's really weird that neither actually define eye rubbing, specifically as being with the eyelids closed. The first one even has a section for the definition of eye rubbing and fully avoids defining it.
layer8
I don’t think many people would be able to rub their eyes with their eyes open ;), but yes, more precision would be useful.
i4i
I take the heals of my palms and apply gentle pressure, just long enough to create phonemes. So, not rubbing. (Not that this too might not be a good idea to do too often).
i8comments
Is everyone here this credulous? The website even claims it increases your IQ, which is extremely dubious, to say the least.
Rubbing your eyes doesnt make you not aphantasic, any more than looking at a bright lightbulb for a few seconds or unblinkingly staring at a single image on a bright tv for a few minutes (which is actually more effective if you want to clearly see colorful and bright shapes with closed eyes -- doesnt change your minds eye, which is different), and whats worse is that it will damage your eye!
jasonlfunk
I think the important part of the technique is talking about what you see, not the actual act of seeing things. He talks about creating brain pathways between the visual and linguistic parts of your brain.
It’s those new pathways that are the key.
quickthrower2
The technique was passed down from a self-help practitioner and credited to someone with PhD ... sceptitismometer should be high about claims like that. That said if it works to help photography that is a good usage and no harm in trying. If they start saying this helps cure cancer then run.
drowsspa
Yeah it sounds very scam-like. But it does make me think: IQ tests are basically all about rotating coloured things in your mind. I wonder if being able to visualize them in your head, instead of having to manipulate them with words and algebra like I do, does influence the results.
justinlloyd
The article kind of comes off as spammy/scammy and I fully expected to reach a point where the author wanted to sell me a course for $99 on how to achieve whatever it was he was hawking.
I have a propensity for staring at points in space and daydreaming/visualizing to the point where it thoroughly annoys my wife. Right now I am rotating a small grey elephant wearing blue boots and a red blanket with gold edging on the blanket in my mind's eye whilst staring at the HN web page and there is not a single thing anyone can do to stop me from doing it. It's also free which no doubt irks a number of CEOs and founders who have yet to figure out how to monetize it.
I have a family member who describes themselves as "visual primary" but during conversations of what this means woefully admits that they need to "see things" to know what they look like, cannot visualize rotating an elephant nor picture what the underside of a soup bowl might look like if they had never looked under that particular soup bowl but had looked under many other soup bowls throughout their life. I liken the ability to visualize as my first encounter with NeRF "Yes, it's like that! Seeing things from other angles even though you'd never seen that particular angle."
The human mind, it is quirky to say the least. Quirky in that I can now rest easy because the amount of HN karma I have accumulated has taken on a pleasant shade rather than the jarring visual noise it previously was when it was below 2000.
jocaal
> It's also free which no doubt irks a number of CEOs and founders who have yet to figure out how to monetize it.
Just wait for Neuralink brain ads, it'l come
justinlloyd
I prefer to self host vs running my brain in the cloud. After all, there is no cloud, it's just someone else's brain.
Eventually, someone on HN, in a few decades, will admonish with the same fervour at the proposal of self-hosting their dreams as they do when someone proposes running their own email server.
voxl
I think I have very good visualization skills. To the point where I can solve three dimensional geometry problems in my head with nothing external. However, I never "see" anything with my two eyes in the way I can see an afterglow of a candle or a window, as described in the video.
I see with a "third-eye" or a "minds-eye." Never with me real two eyes. This means I can visualize at any point, eyes closed or open. I can transpose an additional image on the scenery around me, and in fact I did that very often in school, playing games on walls in my head. Anything to avoid the lesson.
But, is that seeing images in your head, or isn't it? Must you see the image as you would see the afterglow of a window? I've never been able to tease out what people really mean when they say they can visualize.
zestyping
That's how I experience mental visualization as well. It's as if there is one framebuffer in front of my head (what I see in the real world, or inside my eyelids when my eyes are closed), and a separate imaginary framebuffer that feels like it's located above and behind my head. Is yours also located behind your head?
An interesting effect of some psychedelics is that they can cause my front framebuffer and back framebuffer to merge into one framebuffer. It's quite a strange experience. I wonder if anyone else has experienced this as well!
HellDunkel
So you can make really good drawings of the things? Like imagine a castle and draw it on a sheet of paper without any other references? I am very skeptical.
hofstee
You’re practically describing Kim Jung Gi: https://youtu.be/MGbvhyTZXfs
HellDunkel
Yes, its called a photographic memory and only very few people have it. It cannot be trained.
voxl
No because I don't know how to draw. But I can program in my head and reproduce on a page.
HellDunkel
Do you visually see the code in your mind? Do you remember it visually? Hoe does that even make sense?
pharmakom
Don’t rub your eyes for any reason (source: my optometrist)
hosteur
Really. Not for any reason? Please elaborate.
buffington
Every eye doctor I've known has also said to never rub your eyes, for any reason.
Here's just a short, non-exhaustive list, as to why rubbing your eyes is a bad idea:
* it's very easy to scratch your cornea
* touching your eyes or eyelids is an easy way to introduce infections
* rubbing can increase the pressure on your eyes, which can cause damage
* rubbing to try to get something out of your eye risks more damage, as now you're rubbing a foreign body around delicate corneas and such
Eyes are also special in that has a dampened immune response. Eyes are relatively fragile as a result.
There are times when you want to rub your eyes because they itch. Doing nothing is the best approach. Your eye will work it out, or the urge will go away. Same for when something trivial is in your eye. Your tears will flush it out.
For non trivial contamination, use water. I have to assume there are exceptions, but when in doubt, water will flush it out.
Name_Chawps
Alternatively, your eye doctor is exactly the wrong person to ask, because they have an availability bias.
Noumenon72
Your eyes and nose are the physical openings by which germs can enter your body. Your hands are the part of your body that picks up the most germs. Never touch your eyes with your hands. I do rub/scratch them sometimes, but I use my shirt.
moffkalast
If your eyes itch then it's clearly an evolutionary advantage to scratch them. Checkmate doctors. /s
555watch
Yeep, stopped reading after that proposal. I'm not sure OP should be advocating stuff like this without at least a warning. It's not the rubbing, the pressure is creating the "stars". Some people already have increased eyeball pressure, as well as increased blood pressure.
I'm not a doctor and don't know what I'm talking about, but would definitely advice against eye rubbing.
ncfausti
This reminds me of a time when I was meditating in my dimly lit office after work some years ago. For context, I had been meditating daily for 20-30 minutes quite consistently at the time.
During this session, about 15 minutes in I had the sensation of "seeing with my eyes closed". I could see very clearly my workspace, desk, monitors, keyboard, etc. It was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life.
I am wondering now if this was related to a sudden lapse in aphantasia (which it seems like I have), a closed eye hallucination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination), both, or something else?
perrygeo
What's the distinction between vivid mental imagery and a closed-eye hallucination? I have aphantasia too (what I used to call "the opposite of a photographic memory") and it always struck me as odd that seeing imagery with closed eyes is considered normal. We put people in mental institutions for hearing voices in their head, but we get a pass if we're hallucinating a visual scene.
My theory is that it's a spectrum from "I only see images when photons hit my eyes" to "I see god right here in front of me." and somewhere on that line is the optimal amount of visual hallucination. It certainly serves some evolutionary advantage.
doug-moen
There's a distinction between delirium, being in a delusional state, where you can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, which is pathological, vs the normal everyday action of replaying a sensory memory in your head, or imagining sensory input in order to explore an idea. Delusional states may or may not involve a sensory component. It's not a spectrum from one to the other.
The term "hallucination" is tricky because the usual connotation is that it is part of a delusion, whereas some people can generate "closed-eye hallucinations" (or whatever you want to call it) as an alternative kind of mental imagery.
For me personally, the distinction between ordinary "mental imagery" vs "closed-eye hallucinations" that I generate under conscious control is that they are subjectively quite different. The former feel like they are in a different "mental domain" than visual input, and I can perceive this imagery with my eyes open. Another commenter in this thread called this a third frame buffer in their head, separate from their eyes. The latter kind of imagery feels like it is coming from my retina, but it's very dim, and I can only see it with my eyes closed, or in a completely dark room. Apparently, visual input from my retina interferes with this second kind of imagery. And it's this kind of imagery that the OP discusses. You can train yourself to experience it. I've managed to improve both kinds of mental imagery by practicing.
buro9
Describing the technique in text would've been helpful
theobromananda
I am stumped: how does visualizing a scene in your minds eye and describing it lead to seeing it on the back of your eyelids as the article linked in the title of this comment section claims? And why call that "image streaming" instead of just "describing a visualized scene". Just advertising, right?
pizzafeelsright
I thought I could use my mind's eye until I read similar threads.
I have a vivid imagination but it turns out it's all conceptual. I don't see an apple. I see a mostly circle shape. It's either green or red. Maybe yellow.
I can't draw well but I can draw anything. I know the concepts and can poorly draw the approximate.
nabakin
I find that I visualize things vaguely/abstractly by default but I can put a bit of effort in thinking about the detail of the object I'm trying to imagine and then I can see that detail.
So I might imagine an Apple as a circle but if I need it in more detail, I put more effort into it, recalling the detail and able to see the red, the stem, peel it with a small knife, add a chunk taken out because it was bitten, etc.
fileeditview
Great to see this topic on HN(aphantasia). I learned about that about 3-4 years ago from my colleagues. Before that I wasn't aware that people can see images. I certainly couldn't (still cannot).
I read a lot about this topic and it's fascinating. This does not only apply to images but also sounds and smells. I cannot "imagine" them too. So I presume that a great musician is able to imagine certain instruments clearly in his head. At least a friend told me that he could do this. And a master chef will probably be able to imagine the taste of different ingredients.
I however cannot. At times this realization feels quite sad. I try to however see the benefits to this.. there are some. E.g. I have a great sleep. I always told my wife that I close my eyes and the world is gone. I then can just fall a sleep given that I am tired enough. She never understood that.
Were this held me back in my life is drawing and chess playing. I am good chess player on club level but I never managed to play blindfolded more than a few moves. I now know why. I also always needed references before me when drawing. I imagine a good mind's eye could be of great help here.
I will certainly try the techniques mentioned in the article/video. But I think if you can learn it depends on whether you have the ability at all. I might have dreamed with pictures very rarely but I am not sure about it. We will see if the technique does something for me.
bergerjac
I used to have have aphantasia.
Now, I can visualize and pre-plan projects and events in my mind's eye.
To get started I never did any techniques. Instead, I just listened to fantasy & fiction audiobooks (eg by GRRM and Joe Abercrombie).
Once I started seeing scenes in my imagination, I made the connection that "This is just like daydreaming or thinking of memories!"
Then I took some training on personal growth which practiced changing the size, color, dimensions, etc and now it's become a powerful tool.
withinboredom
I can see images in my head, but never color. I have never, ever been able to imagine any color, at all, in my head. My dreams are even in black and white.
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I hate the writing style. This is the kind of text you normally see from scam artists: "this cool techinque that I'm going to tell you about", "here's a personal story/testimonial", "soon I'll tell you how I did it", "watch this video if you want to learn more", and there's usually also a "buy my course if you really want to learn about it".
This is not how one shares knowledge, this is how one sells snake oil.
Thus, by default all information shared here should be considered bogus. Every claim needs to be verified (multiple hours of research). As such, I'd rathet disregard the article completely and use actual research on aphantasia as a starting point to learn about it instead.