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by michrassena
1666 days ago
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I would describe myself as having aphantasia. Anything I can visualize is basically black on black in the fog. It certainly seems to me that in describing visualizing a helicopter, you're really seeing your mental model of one. And when people describe the rare phenomenon of eidetic memory, it's more as if they're able to review the actual image in all its detail. This is pure speculation, but it seems to me that people's mental models succumb to a sort of cartographic compression. Your mind doesn't remember detail which seem unimportant at the time, which makes them impossible to draw later. If your visualization was complete, certainly you could draw the parts, even if you couldn't draw them accurately. |
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I am a part of a large fb group that was formed when the 2015 study was released and we all discovered it.
Here’s something you may find interesting: people seem to have a variety of combinations of “mind’s senses” as well as typically a single sense that their mind functions in normally.
Some examples to hopefully illustrate what I mean:
- Seeing clear pictures in their mind’s eye, and processing things visually
- Having colours and blur in their mind’s eye, almost like it needs glasses, and processing things visually
- Having compete blackness in their mind’s eye and processing things through a “mind’s ear” (for example: by having a complex inner monologue/dialog)
- Bonus: there’s even a difference in inner monologues. Some have a distinct voice, some have an absolutely flat monotone voice, some have a voice that blabs about everything going on combined with memories and perceptions, some have a voice that is only stating literal observations... I find it fascinating how different we all are.
I don’t think I know of anyone who processed everything through a “mind’s nose”, but we have definitely had discussions about the different ways people’s “noses” work.
Kinaesthetic senses (“mind’s hand”/“mind’s sense of physical space”) seems to be a rare one, even among aphants, and that’s what I have: my brain processes things by “touch”. Memories are recalled much like fumbling for threads in a black room. If I can find the right thread (rare: I have a terrible memory), and if I can follow it patiently enough, then I find that everything is connected on the other side. (Who is X?.... [some small detail of their shirt is found on the edge of my awareness]... Aha! I met X at Y, and this is what the day was like, and there was something about a burrito, and some time later we went for great Mexican food).
It took a while before I could properly learn complex topics as I had to translate them all to a sort of mental “muscle memory”. I couldn’t tell you what the name of something is, but I can tell you the mechanics of how it works.
So yes, I think you’re entirely on to something with the cartographic compression of a mental model, but that does not seem to be the majority of people. On the contrary it seems that we’re in the minority.
You’d think that this kind of topic is impossible to understand properly because of how poorly most people know themselves but I have seen the initial discussions first-hand and if you saw what I saw you would know that those people were not faking but were instead self aware enough and open enough to reveal some hidden truths about human beings in general.