As a person "self-diagnosed" with aphantasia, I feel cheated knowing that other people have a built in cheat-sheet. No wonder why I was struggling with memorizing things like the multiplication table in school.
FWIW, I don't have aphantasia and consider myself a very visually-oriented person when it comes to math, but doing precise arithmetic by visualizing the quantities is mind-boggling to me. I memorized the multiplication tables using a song we learned in school.
This is something I feel like we're going to have to realize more and more in society over the next decades. That a lot of people simply have genetic cheats that others are missing. At the moment we kind of pretend it's nurture to a large degree. Should we 'unbias' the world to make it more equal for everyone regardless of genetic cheat? (If so how?) What's the correct adjustment?
There’s no such thing and fortunately your vision is completely wrong.
There is no such a thing as a base or perfect model, nor goal to reach, by cheating or not.
People who are usually referred as bad at math just need another perspective. They might not understand the dominant perspective.
Compare eg. Groethendick or Lebesgue work with their contemporary fellas. And then ask yourself: why are some people more comfortable and fruitful with one perspective but not some other. Is there some constructions of some fields that will suit better one or another group of the population. Do our brains internal structure mature at the same age… etc.
I thought I was aphantasic, but after a coaching session with AphantasiaMeow, I'm sure I'm hypophantasic.
And having none is very different from having a tiny amount - I think if I was motivated I could train to have phantasic abilities.
So not always a genetic cheat sheet - just something we don't talk about or train people in, when we could. I wouldn't be able to swim either if I'd never been trained!