You say “apple” to me and I’m #1, glossy skin, insides, all that
And how in the hell does one navigate life, or enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?! Reading a book is like watching a movie. I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
Yet #5’s are not handicapped in the slightest. They’re so “normal” that mankind is just now figuring out we’re far apart on this thing. Fucking weird.
EDIT: Showed this to my wife and she was somewhat mystified as to what I was asking. Pretty sure she’s a 5. I get frustrated as hell when I ask her to describe a thing and she’s clueless. “Did the radiator hose pop off, or is it torn and cracked?” “I don’t know!”
EDIT2: The first Star Wars book after the movie came out was Splinter in the Mind’s Eye. I feel like I got that title. What’s it mean to you?
I’m mostly a 5 occasionally a 4 with occasional flashes of 1 when reading a particularly immersive book.
I can see things in my head, rotate them, look from different angles, try out different colors for a room, etc. But it’s not really the same as seeing visually. It’s just kind of imagining what it would look like. It’s hard to explain. It’s as if you were dreaming it while you are still awake. But also less vivid than a dream.
Same here, I can rotate things in my head and change their color, but it’s not quite HD. It’s like an abstract image of what it should look like. It’s also quite fleeting since I get easily distracted. But when I’m half-asleep or waking up on a lazy Sunday, holy shit, I can visualize so many things in bright colors and can see them clearly. I wish I could do that all the time.
My architect buddy wanted to hire me to handle IT, do drafting in my down time. He met me managing a reprographics shop, blueprint place. “I can’t look at a blueprint and visualize what it’s going to look like.”
LOL, he looked like I slapped him! Totally alien thought to that man.
fuck you, I’m imagining a rainbow tapdancing apple with a top hat on a Roomba on a taxi
Some people also don’t have an internal monologue. I’m probably a 3 or 4, it takes significant effort to see something in my head. But my thoughts a words and they definitely have a voice.
I assume there is a scale for how well we can imagine every sense.
Some people also don’t have an internal monologue.
I have an internal dialogue.
I have to practice pretty hard to do that, it’s much easier in a journal than in my head to dialogue. Do you find it helps being mindful?
i find it helps finding interesting people to talk to :D
I mean I guess that’s lucky in some ways my thoughts never stop
Mine don’t stop either, but it’s just constant words. Are your thoughts mostly images?
Words mostly but I can visualize accurately
The current prevailing theory is that we (4 here) actually do create the images much the same as you 1s, we’re just not consciously aware of it. Our brains are doing the same thing behind the scenes, and they just translate it differently. Some personal “evidence” of this that I have are that when I’m high, I have an easier time visualizing, and that I dream VERY vividly.
I have a feeling that this is also influenced by people that experienced (emotional) trauma. Some people dissociate from their feelings as a result of things that happened in the past, and this can also impact their ability to visualise things. (Because their brain is protecting them from re-experiencing their trauma)
Mine is probably related to physical trauma. Well, not trauma, but more abnormalities. I have arteriovenous malformations in my brain, around my visual center, and very poor eyesight. The two likely combine in such a way that I don’t get/rely on visual information as much.
Conversely, I have very good audio processing. I love music, wordplay, anything with sounds and words.
It’s pretty amazing how we can adapt to use the mental tools we have to still live in a ‘normal’ way even when we are very weak in certain aspects.
I don’t know how to explain it but mine is in constant flux.
I’ll bounce between full on 3d animated cutscenes to like “Old ass TRON style wireframes of the object”
No snark, but how do you test this?
Like I can picture an apple, but it’s not real, so how do I know if I’m a 1 or a 4?
If you think of how an apple looks and you get a visual representation, depending on how detailed it is. If not, you’re a 5.
I think the “test” is to describe a scene, then ask details that weren’t explicitly described, but would be necessary to fill in the gaps. It requires honesty (nothing to prevent 5s from making up answers post-hoc or 1s just feigning ignorance.)
If he see something with one eye but not the other, is it real?
Describe the apple you see in your imagination. Color? Texture? Shadows? Environment? Can you draw your image?
There is some flexibility here; I tend to have different levels (1-4) based with numbers scaling to how awake I am. (More awake = less detail)
I think it’s the amount of detail when you picture it. Can you rotate it, cut it, maybe take bite out of it?
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Did you try to think of a real apple but got a not real picture of it? Can you change it into some different thing? Can you change it to a realistic picture if you want?
Solid 5 here. And I love to read. I love the smell of books, I love the feeling in my hands and I love the stories of course. I don’t have an image of an character in my head, I don’t have an image if the landscape, but I still enjoy it.
I thought it was either 1 or you have aphantasia. Didn’t realize there was a range.
And how in the hell does one […] enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?!
I can only speak for myself (#5) here, but I can barely enjoy books. If they’re any sort of fiction, where I have to imagine a world, characters, objects, … it’s very exhausting. I read fiction books in school, but haven’t picked up a fiction book out of my own will in years. But I do enjoy non-fiction books, especially when they convey Ideas you don’t need (or maybe can’t) picture visually.
Side note: I found people who read a lot (of fiction) often being critical of movie adaptations. I never understood this, because even ‘meh’ movies offer a far superior experience than just reading the book to me. It took me a while to realize that movie adaptations are a kind of ‘disability aid’ to my aphantasia.
The medium of books are qualitatively different from movies. With movies it’s all about the context, the action, the dynamism, the mood. With books, it’s more of a mind meld with the author, and you get richer subtext, connotations, shadings of meaning, and inner monologue.
If you’ve ever seen a movie that tries to hew exactly to a novelistic source (e.g. the Discworld movies), it’s an extremely plodding thing. If you’ve ever read a book that tries to carry a story onwards from a cinematic source (e.g. Star Wars EU), the pacing and treatment feels very different. It’s unavoidable.
It’s unfortunate about aphantasia limiting your enjoyment of books. I wonder if my “1” referring to the chart above limits my involvement with nonfiction and purely conceptual writing.
I’m a total and absolute 5 no visualization no inner monologue and I absolutely love fiction.
That guy just doesn’t like fiction. Fiction has plenty of “facts” and events. That make it plenty enjoyable. It’s no different then a nonfiction history book. Just it’s not about earth.
So his lack of visualization has nothing to do with his dislike of fiction.
Be just doesnt like it.
Super interesting that you enjoy fiction so much. What I struggle with most is that visual language is often very dense in information, but I can’t do a lot with it. Imagine something like this:
“Light spilled in through the high windows, tinting the hallway into beautiful autumn colors. It looked as if the sunlight was dancing, but of course nothing moved except the dust suspended in the air.”
I would read this and think: cool, I bet this would look amazing if I could see it, but all the information I can actually use from these sentences is “A hallway has high windows, it’s maybe morning or evening”. Everything else is either visual or obvious to me. So fiction books are more exhausting, because I constantly filter out things that I can’t really use. It’s like I’m reading a text where a person constantly rambles and can’t get to the damn point. I’m really curious how or why this is different for you?
Also, I do think fiction books and non-fiction history books are very different. Simply because an author can build a world, story and characters to convey some deeper meaning or overarching theme, or use strong imagery or metaphores. All of that is more uncommon for historic books from my experience. The above example in a history book would probably look something more like “Orange light entered the hallway through the high windows”.
Good to know.
Gosh, have to say there are more aphantasics around than I would have guessed.
Or Indians, they’re kind of known for their mind games.
I am good at design, can visualize how something will look when it’s done but no don’t SEE in my mind like that when I imagine how things look. It’s a different sort of knowing. Cannot hold an image and rotate it in my mind and absolutely can’t read a map that isn’t facing the right way, there is a blindness.
Surely not antphasic because I do see in dreams, same as through eyes. And I do KNOW how things look when they aren’t in front of me, and can know what imaginary things might look like too, but it doesn’t at all feel like seeing it with my eyes.
Love reading. Love love love it, learned when I was very young, same age I was learning to talk, actually, like a language not a skill. And I do have an internal ear, when I remember music I hear it in my mind and it is so much like hearing it in my ears. Imagining how something looks does not feel the same as seeing it.
This is really about how much abstraction you have in your thinking. I’ve seen people be very heavily on the #1 side when i was a kid, and it was always baffling to me that people seem to be unable to talk about objects if they don’t have very detailed descriptions of superficial details that seemed completely irrelevant to me.
I can’t imagine not doing #1, the only way I’ll do other numbers is if you’re asking me to imagine a hand drawn apple, colored or not, etc.
5 here … I just recently learned that mind’s eye actually meant an image.
