[michrassena]

I think you're on to something with how people describe their experience of visualizing. On the one hand, I don't doubt there are artists and architects who can visualization clearly, or musicians who hear music and can transcribe what they hear. But I can't help but think the description of these capabilities are exaggerated for the majority of the population.

I've asked someone to visualize a house then asked them how many windows it has. They didn't have a answer. This isn't any different from what I'd say. I can try to imagine an apple. I know it's red. I know there's a stem and a green leaf on the stem. I know the shape of a Macintosh, with the wide top narrowing at the base. But the serrations and veins of the leaf, I'm not sure of. And I'm fairly confident that most people who claim to be able to visualize couldn't describe the leaf well enough to distinguish it as an apple leaf and not some idealized idea of a leaf. Could they describe it well enough that an artist could draw it?

[cjameskeller]

I think some of this comes down to the way the question is asked. If you asked me to imagine "a house", I would have a somewhat abstract, child-like template in mind. Some of that would be due to expectation -- that you probably will have me do something with respect to the _concept_ of a house, rather than asking details of it. If you asked me to picture, instead "a specific house, perhaps one on your street", then it would be a detailed image, and I could easily count the windows, give the colors of roof, siding, and trim, etc. But I suppose thinking about it now, I couldn't even in that case provide you with the number of rows of siding on the house. It's something I would imagine one could do with practice, but the brain seems to naturally drop some level of detail when recalling or imagining an object.

[thom]

I’m inside my house right now with my eyes open. I couldn’t tell you how many windows it has without either looking at each wall or going through my memories, yet I’m not blind. So it is with visualisation. Your minds eye has a field of vision and just like in real life, you can focus on whatever you find interesting, manipulate it and move about.

You’re conflating memory and visualisation. You think that a visualisation of an imperfect memory isn’t a visualisation. Nobody’s claiming it’s a superpower, or really any different a way to live in the main, but I find your denial of people’s lived experience slightly odd.

[FPGAhacker]

For me the visualization loses precision in the periphery. And if I focus on one part of the house then switch to focus on another part and then return, things won’t be the same. It’s not stable.

So answering the question “how many windows” changes from moment to moment.

I’m not saying everyone is this way, but I am.

[michrassena]

That's interesting. To the degree I can visualize, it's the same for me.

[tigershark]

I can easily visualise an house with how many windows you want. I can even visualise a cat with how many windows you want.