| > it makes me think visualization isn't real. It is. The problem is that it's not a pixel-perfect reproduction of things on a screen. It's not a movie theater, or a computer screen. The brain is a powerful pattern-recognition machine that gets exceedingly more complex with age and experience. So: If you ask the person visualize a bicycle, the person will visualize an amalgamation of bicycles that roughly has two wheels, a saddle, and a handlebar. And this will differ from person to person. A kid will vividly imagine the bicycle he/she has, or the bicycle he/she wants. Same is likely for avid cyclers. For most people it will probably be a superimposed image of many bikes they've seen over the course of their lives blurring together. The reason is probably because recollection of details is costly, and usually not that important for our very ancient very lizard brain whose primary reaction to things is still fight or fight :) But then if you ask a person to visualize "a yellow bycice with red tyres", the visualization will become clearer, but still fuzzy and different for different people. If you've seen such a bicycle (esp. recently), you will visualize that, with high degree of fidelity. If not, your brain will once again create an amalgamation of bicycles, and create an overlay of yellow and red that may or may not be of high fidelity (I can't imagine red tyres on a bike for some reason, but I can imagine red rims on a bike, go figure). Kids are better at visualising and imagining things because they have fewer sources to draw from, and they don't interfere with each other. For adults it's more like a combination of camera obscura and long exposure: - You visualize certain details in a sea of recognizable fuzziness. Example: "vizualize a street vendor" can be something similar to this (long exposure): https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/kIDQANDGRgVD91zdzZpg... - You visualize a regonizable pattern without specific details. Example: "visualize a passage" can be similar to this (camera obscura): https://i.shgcdn.com/dea29cf1-c27d-4f55-a029-9443222c0a0b/-/... |