[CommieBobDole]

So, wait, are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of your eyelids gets replaced with something you actually see, like it's projected there?

I can imagine what something looks like, and I guess I sort of 'see' it, but closing my eyes doesn't make it any more real. It doesn't seem to involve the eyes or any part of the visual system at all - it's somewhere else in my head.

[Jiocus]

If I remember correctly, aphantasia is inability to visualise images, objects or memories in the mind, and this seems to be what the author actually refers to. The alternative, to actually perceive imagery with the eye that isn't there is usually called hallucination. The article doesn't get at this difference and seems to be based on Youtube videos about aphantasia.

If you've ever had a dream with vivid first person eyesight (like most people during dreams) then it's easy to see that we should be very capable of producing high quality visuals without external stimuli.

I've been practicing on this kind of thing as it's a technique for dropping into a lucid dream. In my case, I manage to find some kind of repeat pattern in the visual random noise of my closed eyes. Slowly and consciously I manage to see clouds or waves on an open sea, maybe add color. Then I can try something more advanced. If going to sleep, these images get more vivid and might classify for something called hypnagogic hallucinations[0], but then it's not quite the same level of conscious involvement steering what to see. In any case, it's nowhere near what I'd imagine as useful for an on-site photo session, more like a high effort meditation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

[godelski]

Speaking of dreams, similar to the author's comment about needing to try a month before getting good results, I used to not remember my dreams at all. I decided to keep a dream journal. First week I only had like 3 entries with one sentence notes like "saw the color blue." But a few months in I was remembering most of my rem cycles, 6 months in and the dreams could continue through cycles (like one long epoch). I did this for 2 years -- stopped because I had a few times where I had just long dreams where I just did normal things (stressed at those times over the monotony of my life) and they just seemed like extra work days -- and a decade later and I still remember most of my dreams. I only ended up lucid dreaming (the goal) a few times though. But mostly because I was enjoying my dreams so much that I had little desire to take control when in them.

[Jiocus]

I've tried journaling my dreams but I found it to be tedious due to the amount of dreams and their various contents. Some dreams consist of strong emotions and what I sense as I wake up is not the dream, but the feeling of have been separated from the dream. That's hard to put into words in the middle of the night. In the end, I tend to recall my dreams quite well, many of which have a permanent place among other episodic real life events.

I have a few dreams that are like a long running TV show, suddenly I'm in this certain universe and the plot continues, even though it's been a few years. In a single sleeping session it's often the rule that dreams continue even if I wake up in the middle. It's so consistent that waking up from a nice dream doesn't mean it's lost but gives me something to look forward to.

Lucid dreaming in my experience is very much an Inception-like (the film) experience. Once you have "woken", there's a fine line between controlling the dream, and the dream noticing what you're up to, eventually booting you from the matrix.

For something more on topic and for anyone that will be experiencing a lucid dream in the future: Take a moment to really appreciate the extreme level of graphics, and other senses the mind can render.

[godelski]

> That's hard to put into words in the middle of the night. In the end, I tend to recall my dreams quite well, many of which have a permanent place among other episodic real life events.

Yeah I found that when I start losing the ability to recall that if I just try to remember. That's the point of the journal anyways. But yeah, it is crazy the dreams I had and how real they were. Entire lives. And even the lessons you learn from choices you make. The emotions and how things even feel real to the though.

> and the dream noticing what you're up to, eventually booting you from the matrix.

This kept happening to me! The first time I did it started to fly but then just kept going up and up and it got brighter and I woke up haha.

> Take a moment to really appreciate the extreme level of graphics, and other senses the mind can render.

It really is insane and makes me think of the computation that the brain can do so efficiently. Like it doesn't get everything right -- which is why you're really able to get lucid (e.g. you can read something 2 times and it'll be different) -- but it is very real regardless. I'm sure there is a lot of compression going on and some tricks being played but it is often convincing. But what is also insane is that we know even pretty small animals dream in at least some realistic way. My cat tries to run in her sleep, meows, chirps like she does at birds, and wakes up with different emotions. I've had a pet rat do some similar things, at least the feet. It begs the question why this evolved, how important it is (essentially simulating your environment. Like learning from synthetic data, but shower thoughts on steroids), and how this relates to consciousness. And I wonder if we'll push harder to make machines do these incredible feats in much smaller packages and without nearly the same training or energy requirements. And I wonder how convincing these simulations are to the smaller creatures.

[the_other]

It seems like an extension of memory and map-making to me. And so many animals behave according to some map: squirrels and dogs digging up stored food; birds migrating; any animal that hunts or fights; any animal that brings food back to kids in a nest. All these actions require comparison of current sensory data against an ideal or memory of some benefit. The comparison requires some kind of model-forming/holding.

Now I write it out like this, it almost seems that the more interesting questions lie not in “can they do it” and more in “why do people have variations of ability; why does it stay active during sleep?

[navigate8310]

I think, having an easy to reach voice recorder is better than stressing and writing about what you saw.

[qingcharles]

I've suffered Hypnagogia several times in my life where I have woken up and can see giant spiders running around my bedroom. I hurt myself once leaping from standing on my bed, over the spiders, to my door so I could switch the light on and attack them. Of course, when the light came on and I turned around the spiders were not there. My brain, not understanding where the "spiders" had gone convinced me that they had merely scurried under the furniture to hide, so I spent another couple of minutes trying to find them before I realized I had been punked by my own brain.

[vorpalhex]

> If going to sleep, these images get more vivid and might classify for something called hypnagogic hallucinations

Try your meditation routine while sitting in a warm shower with a visual focus. That for me gives me the same intensity as the true hypnagogic level visualizations while still having close to full mental faculties.

Some people report being able to use audio patterns as an alternative to visual patterns. I've had mixed success personally but ymmv.

[smokel]

From personal experience, I have some proof that dreams are not similar to plain eyesight, and are probably produced somewhere else in my brain.

In a dream, I saw a friend. The images in the dream were very vivid, and I could have easily mistaken the dream for reality. However, when I woke up, I could not tell whether I had seen my friend from the front, or from the back.

This suggests that the property "feels very realistic" can be produced separately from a dream actually being realistic. I highly doubt that dreams are indeed producing high quality visuals.

I have also tried to draw faces from people that I have seen in my dreams. I am fairly proficient at hyperrealistic portraits, but with the dream recall -- no luck so far.

[synecdoche]

Just like image-generating AI can’t write anything coherent, it appears equally hard for me to read any text in my dreams.

[davidhunter]

Yes. I am like you in that I cannot actually see anything visual in my minds eye but I can still 'visualise' it. For example, I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain.

It was a revelation when I found out that most people can actually see things visually in their minds eye.

A friend of mine can actually place imagined objects into their field of view, like AR.

[layer8]

I wouldn’t be so sure that what they’re describing isn’t really the same as your “visualization”. I can’t truly see anything in my mind’s eye, same as you and others in this thread, but I can abstractly visualize it, again same as you describe for rotating a die, and I can place that abstract visualization in the 3D space I see before my (open) eyes.

I think it’s more likely that others describe this abstract visualization as “seeing” although they don’t really see it, as opposed to them really seeing it as if it were real. As you say, it’s difficult to describe. It’s like a memory of having seen something, and people might describe that as really seeing (because it’s like a memory of really seeing), but in fact it’s not.

It’s like hearing a song or other piece of music in your head that you know well, and you can hum or sing along it, but it’s not like you’re actually hearing it.

[Springtime]

Seems to me a way of testing the visualization vs hallucination (if I can distinguish it like that) gradient would be the ability to trace visualized/'projected' objects on paper, particularly for subjects without prior background in illustration/draftsmanship (less skill to lean on) and for images which require replication of details they're not familiar with (things like dice are relatively geometrically primitive shapes, while say a person's face while it can be built up from primitives is inherently complex). Granted part of this would be testing photographic recall.

Like you describe I can visualize a lot of things, with fidelity, but it's still in my mind's eye (that is, a 'sense' rather than a physically represented image that's as apparent as other IRL objects). I can also hone in on details with my eyes open while doing other things. However I can't trace such things merely from this sense since they're not actually there for me. I can however leverage my draftsmanship skills to be able to focus on the mental visualization/sense and progressively draw from memory and for various familiar things visualize them on the paper but not as an optical manifestation.

[layer8]

Yeah, I don’t know how well I'd be able to draw/trace what I can mentally see, but on the other hand I'm pretty sure that this is a separate ability that can be trained independently from the mental-seeing ability, much like you can train drawing 3D shapes or human anatomy.

[bqmjjx0kac]

Maybe I'm weird, but I have a very real auditory experience of music playing in my head. I'm never confused whether I'm imagining it, but it has nearly the same fidelity as hearing with my ears.

I can't conjure up smell/taste experiences the same way, but I do have a sort of hollow visualization ability.

Edit: I read a few more comments, and it seems I'm not alone! Now I wonder whether this is common in the general population or just HN.

[layer8]

I agree with your description, but having the same fidelity is still very different from actually hearing it (having an auditory hallucination). Visualization being more hollow than auditory imagination makes sense because of the much higher bandwidth of visual information.

My impression is that individual differences lie much less in the actual mental abilities than in how people interpret and describe those abilities.

[magicalhippo]

When recalling memories, it's almost like replaying a film, except in my head. That is, I don't see it as I do with my eyes, but I can "look at it".

I used this often to recall if I did tasks. Just yesterday I forgot if I had washed my body when showering because I was thinking about something technical. I had to pause and thing, and I recalled seeing putting the soap in my hand. Not just some vague thing, more like a movie. Still no recollection of doing the motion though.

However when reading books or hearing tales, I've always struggled with the authors description of a place. Like I'll pick up on some early key words, and then construct the scene or location in my mind. Further description by the author hardly matters.

The weird part is I can get a really strong sense of being there, yet at the same time not really seeing it. It's really weird and the best I can describe it is that it feels like seeing or visualizing something. If there's an office with a red door, I know it's there, I can feel it's part of the location and it feels immersive, but I don't actually see or visualize a red door.

[norrius]

> I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain.

I think I'm the same. It's as if I can imagine a geometry, but it doesn't have any texture or colour. It's not black, not grey, not brown... It's a shape in its pure form, maybe like a wireframe, without a physical manifestation.

However, I can imagine music and actually hear it. I had this a couple of times where I "replay" a song in a foreign language I've heard a long time ago, and this time I can parse out more lyrics than before. All inside my head.

[Ericson2314]

I definitely do abstract shapes more often, but I thought but and I could do some lighting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#/media/File:Utah_t... Play with the Utah teapot and then try to do the same thing mentally. Like imagine where the shadows are supposed to go and then see if you are right.

For colors imagine something corny like like a laser scan passing over, and then try to imagine different colors or laser.

[GolfPopper]

That sounds a lot like me as well. I have a very hard time getting an actual realistic picture, with color and detail, in my head. At most its a faint and hazy thing. And while I don't have face-blindness - I recognize people from their faces easily - picturing the faces of even close friends and family members in my head is very hard, and mostly comes down to a few half-remembered features, tied to words.

But a geometry, or set of relations between objects (whether that's connections or just relative positioning, like a map) is pretty easy, and I can move around, rotate and focus on the geometry with less effort than it takes to imagine, say, an apple.

But familiar music can be played back in my head with only a little effort, or a slight reminder. Not just the lyrics, or the melody, but the full audio as I heard it, missing only background parts that my mind didn't "catch". Rarely (a couple times a year), I'll get a partial song "stuck" and won't be able to get it out of my head until I track it down and listen to it until the end. I can't "invent" a tune though, just replay ones I've heard several times.

[qingcharles]

Interesting. I'm the same. I can't visualize anything in my head, but I can play back songs as perfect audio with the lyrics and all the music. I'm playing Moby in my head right now. But, like you, I often have to go find the music to physically listen to in order to end the earworm.

[Dunati]

This is very similar to my experience. For example, I can visualise 3 stacked poker chips, and I can move than around and restack them. But if I try to make them different colours, I can't, similar to how I might keep track of real ones with me eyes closed. I can remember the blue one is on top, but if I start rotating them, taking the bottom one out and putting it on top, I quickly lose track of which one is which.

I also feel like songs I replay in my head (which I do constantly, and without a choice in the song) have very high fidelity.

[actionfromafar]

I think you are slightly to the aphantasia side of a spectrum. I can do the same as you but with colors.

[zeehio]

When I had to study and memorize some text at school I used to remember the page where the text was written and then mentally read it. Some of those pages are still in my head (for instance multiplication tables).

Once I was on an exam and I could not understand my own writing in the page I was remembering because I had written it too small on the corner. It was frustrating to not be able to answer the question. Afterwards, when I went to my real notes and I struggled to understand what was written there. I was happy that my memory image was accurate although frustrated for not managing the space in the page properly.

I thought everyone could remember things in this way.

Sometimes I have to write things down to see them and remember them, because mental speeches are harder (and less efficient) for me to remember.

I guess there are many ways to learn and remember stuff we just have to find the one that works better for us.

Being a teacher should require knowing about all this learning diversity I guess.

[thinkingemote]

I find reading from paper books better than digital for this reason. Spatial memory. Its quick for me to find a passage as I seem to know where to look. I don't remember the words or the passage I want but I know where to locate it. The section of the page, the bit of the chapter, the pattern and shape of the text (better if there's illustrations) the weight of the pages. I imagine it would be a little bit of a jump to use it to memorise the words themselves. I should give it a try with some bible verses but thinking about it all my bibles are formatted differently depending on translation edition etc. Different than most books.

With digital this seems to not be active and instead I have to guess the likely words and jump around the search results.

[teekert]

Hmm I can imagine what something will look like in a position in a scene but I wouldn’t call it AR like. This is a really interesting thread. I always thought people were much the same. But recently I also learned that my wife just sees words when reading a book whereas I see a “movie”.

Also I will project words in my mind to inspect them visually to see how to spell them, and if they look ok. And when studying I recall pages of books with the info in the place where it is printed, much like zeehio describes. This is super helpful when memorizing entire books ie when I studied biology.

But from this thread I still get the idea there are people that really really see things, whereas for me it stops at “visualizing”. Which does help when composing a picture but perhaps there is more? I think I’ll try this exercise.

One weird thing I often did (or try to do, doesn’t always work) as a kid is stare into the blackness of my closed eyes until I sort of got convinced there was a massive boulder looming over me. It would feel quite real and I’d really feel the massiveness and it would make me feel very small and even make me feel adrift. Strange, this thread actually made me remember, didn’t really do that for a long time now.

[colordrops]

I have a feeling that, unless you are blind due to illness of the brain, that everyone has the capability to visualize internally. This would include your wife when she is reading. I think they difference is that some people have access to this visualization consciously, with their frontal cortex, and for others it's subconscious. If you didn't have this visualization, I believe it would be really hard to commit what you read to memory and have any sense of a story.

When I meditate, one of the practices is to label thoughts as they arise. When you do this, you realize that a huge amount of thoughts pass by subconsciously. You notice them more and more as you label them, but it feels like a deep rabbit hole of thought that I haven't gotten to the bottom of yet.

edit: just looked at the article and realized that the technique is essentially thought labeling. This is one of the most common practices in Buddhist meditation.

[JshWright]

I am quite certain that I cannot visualize, consciously or subconsciously. I don't see how that would be related to remembering what you read? Reading is just learning a series of facts (potentially fictional "facts", depending on the genre).

[colordrops]

How would you know that you can't visualize subconsciously?

[JshWright]

How would you know I could?

[OhHiMarkos]

Omg, the boulder thing is something that happened to me a lot when I was a kid. Then it stopped for many years and then at some point I could do it again. I don't know you can make it happen. It scares me a little bit to tell you the truth. If it happens now days I try to shake it off.

But yes, wth is that thing?

[Semaphor]

I can't do that. I can somewhat remember what a die is supposed to look like, but I have no image of it whatsoever. It's a very abstract memory, like say I "imagine"it with a 6 on top. Then I know logically there are 2 times 3 dots, but I can't even get an image of that, even trying to think of it makes me lose all other parts of the die.

[k9unit]

It feels like my brain is processing and feeling what it would look like if I truly saw it. I can see a dice, zoom in on it, and feel the indented bumps where the black dots go. But the actual image of a dice just barely escapes me. It's similar when visualizing math too.

[LoganDark]

> A friend of mine can actually place imagined objects into their field of view, like AR.

I'm so jealous.

[TuringTest]

That's likely something that anyone with a 'mind eye' can do.

I wonder if that's something that can be trained, just like 'fixing' aphantasia can be trained [1]:

- Sit in front of a table, with a large vase of flowers on it.

- Remove the vase and put it behind you.

- Looking at the now empty table, try to remember the look of the vase on it.

This is how it 'feels' being able to put imagined objects into your FOV. You don't get to actually see it, but you can imagine what it's like to do it.

[1] https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photogra...

[LoganDark]

Well, I have a mind's eye. I've gotten quite deep into it before for dissociative reasons. But it just doesn't seem to work very well for me at any other time. Whenever I try to imagine something like that I get frustrated that I can't really "see" it well.

Yes, I can imagine everything about what it would be like to see it. But I cannot actually see it.

[Shadowmist]

I can’t focus on the table because I’m trying to figure out how these flowers are floating in mid air above the table.

[TuringTest]

Did you hear the joke about the programmer found dead in the shower? The shampoo bottle had instructions:

1 - Wash

2 - Rinse

3 - Repeat

[_dain_]

Yeah it's not a figure of speech, there's LITERALLY another framebuffer (or whatever you want to call it) in my mind in addition to the ones from left eye and right eye. I don't need to close my eyes to do see it (but it helps). I can draw to it, with some effort . Daydreams get painted on it when my mind drifts. It's the stage on which I experience memories.

Most people are like this, with variation in the degree of vividness and control. Some people can make realistic detailed scenes, for other people it's harder and their images are often blotchy or lacking in detail and colour. I'm in the latter group.

If you don't have any of this at all and you're surprised by the whole idea, you are probably aphantasic.

[zestyping]

Yes, I have another framebuffer too. It's interesting to me that it seems to be located a little bit above and behind my head. Does it feel to you like your framebuffer is physically located at any particular place?

One interesting effect of psychedelics that I've noticed is that they can cause the framebuffer behind my head and the framebuffer in front of my head (i.e. on the insides of my eyelids) merge into one framebuffer. It's quite an odd and fascinating state to be in!

[justsid]

Reading this is crazy talk to me. I can recall what things look like, like I know what an elephant looked like or my first apartment. But I just know what it was like, I can’t project it anywhere in my brain. It’s also just a very high level knowledge, there is 0 detail whatsoever because there is “nothing”.

It’s incredibly fascinating to learn about nuances between humans.

[Rapzid]

This is so wild to me I feel like there must be a misunderstanding lol.

I apparently have excellent spatial awareness and reasoning. I can imagine shapes and scenes. Rotate a shape and have a good crack at sketching it from my mind.

But I would never describe this as similar to actually seeing in any way. If I had to describe what I experience after reading through a lot of these descriptions it would be "knowing". When I visualize something it's like I'm "knowing" it's shape, size, position, and etc. But it's nowhere and I'm certainly not seeing it in any way that's meaningfully similar to actual sight.

[signaru]

Based on how the article describes the imagery, I think I am somewhere in the middle and just always assumed everyone else also is. I can see images that I recall from memory or trigger with my thoughts, but the images are unstable, and the quality is similar to that of after images of bright objects, except the colors are correct, albeit being faint since my recalled images don't last long enough for "persistence of vision". It's almost like an inserted split second subliminal image, that I notice, but not sure if it is there (well it's not because I'm fully aware it's from my mind). I think the biggest difference to how others describe their experience is the "persistence" factor, holding the image long enough to look at the details. Furthermore, the stuff I "see" do not occupy the full field of view. They're just big enough as the object I am trying to remember/imagine while the background is still darkness or reality (like AR) if I'm not closing my eyes.

I'd be interested to see more quantitative descriptions of "duration" and "field of view" of what they see.

[hudell]

That's a lot more than I can do. I can't see anything at all. No color, no shape. The most I can do is remember if something is taller or wider.

[Hnrobert42]

I am like you. I’m guessing that the author needed to use the stuff seen by his eyes while closed as a springboard to seeing something with his mind’s eye.

My dad told me about monk’s who meditate on imagining that their thoughts exist behind their belly button. As you noted, your mind’s eye is not located in the same physical space as your actual eyes. Similarly, there is no reason the thoughts you hear couldn’t be happening in your belly button.

But I’ve found it remarkably difficult to convince my mind that it exist anywhere other than my head. I don’t think this difficulty is based on biology. I think it’s just conditioning. But damn, it’s hard.

[hutzlibu]

"But I’ve found it remarkably difficult to convince my mind that it exist anywhere other than my head. I don’t think this difficulty is based on biology. I think it’s just conditioning. But damn, it’s hard."

It really is hard. I just know the conscious effort of meditating and centering my consciousness in the center of my body (above the belly button) as opposed to my head, really helps my focus and mental abilities and general wellbeing. And everytime I use my mobile .. it helps me if I do it afterwards, to not get lost again. I wonder if the jogis would have advanced much, if they would have had a mobile close to them ..

[toombowoombo]

Try pinching yourself randomly so that you can attract your mind to different spots in your body. I used to do that when I had headpain to distract me from it (I was a minor back when I learned that. In my country everyone is very careful with any substance given to minors)

[oh_sigh]

Do blind people have this same issue?

[totetsu]

I find that a lot of my awareness of space also comes from sounds around me, which are also centered at the head by ears. So maybe blind people could still be head centered.

[izoow]

I can't really "see" anything either, but I'm assuming it's something akin to "hearing" your inner voice. I also don't actually "hear" anything, but I can tell that it's going on in my head and it's effortless and "automatic". I don't have to consciously exert effort to "activate it", imagine it, and keep it there.

[sebtron]

Yes, it apparently most people can. I cannot, and I also found out relatively recently.

For example, you can ask "most people" to imagine a car, and then follow up by asking "what color did you imagine it?". For me and you this question would not make any sense, but you'll find out that "most people" find it completely normal and answer it without questioning you.

[sndwnm]

If I had been posed this question I could imagine it having gone two different ways. First, I could approach it as remembering, maybe not a car I saw yesterday, but a generic idea of some type of car. For example if I thought about a Japanese pickup or a Lamborghini, I would probably answer the following color question with "white" and "orange", because for me those are stereotypic colors that "come with" the memory. Perhaps many people think in this way and thus assume the color obviously is there.

The second way would be to abstractly build a car in my mind. Start with four tires, put a rough shape of a frame on it — lets make it a sedan. If I proceed this way, I probably would not choose a color, at least not early on. Like many in this thread, this is how I usually imagine things, as "wireframes". The color/texture is not there because I have not assigned it. I can't vividly see the things I imagine, but they can still have color just like they can have shape.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I consider myself to have aphantasia (cannot visualize anything in my mind, except when dreaming) and I think I could still pass the test you mention.

If I imagine a car, I can imagine its features, and of course color being a quite salient feature I would probably assign it a color (e.g. I could imagine a red Ferrari, or a black limo). It's just that I wouldn't see it, there wouldn't be anything in my mind similar to the actual experience of seeing a red object, I would just think about the "concept" of the car being red (hard to explain).

So far I've never found a way in which aphantasia really manifests externally or can be measured externally in a more or less reliable way. Which is why I'm still not 100% sure that people who claim not to be aphantasiacs aren't just exaggerating or taking metaphors too literally...

[hudell]

People without aphantasia can recall details about things that they didn't notice when they first looked at it, because they can "look at it again" in their mind.

I can't recall anything I didn't actively notice while looking. If you stop me when I'm leaving a grocery store and ask me questions about the cashier, I won't be able to tell you their hair color or what kind of clothes they were wearing. Sometimes I won't even be able to tell you if they were tall or fat or any other physical adjectives.

[Stratoscope]

I have seen lines of code projected vividly like this.

Several years ago a Facebook recruiter invited me to interview with them. It mostly went well, except I bombed the leetcode algorithm quiz.

The next day, as I expected, they sent me a polite note thanking me for interviewing but they would be moving on with other candidates.

The morning after that, I woke up and before I opened my eyes I saw the complete solution on the back of my eyelids, about 20 lines of code.

I stepped through the code mentally and thought, "Yes! This will work!"

So I ran to my computer and typed the code in to test it. Other than one bug - this was old-school JavaScript and I'd forgotten one var statement, so there was an inadvertent global - it worked perfectly.

[Modified3019]

If you’re not already aware, there is also a phenomenon where a person wakes up with a solution to something they had a problem with. Sleep is required for memory formation and organization, during which new and sometimes novel associations can be made.

I personally consider naps an essential part of studying because of this.

[725686]

I have, in more than one occasion, gone to sleep with a problem in mind and woke up with a solution, but it is more of a conceptual thing. To actually see the lines of code, if true, is wild.

[Stratoscope]

The story is indeed true, in every detail. And yes, it was a wild experience.

I'd never had this happen before, nor since. I wish it were a skill I could develop and cultivate!

[winrid]

This is just common solving problems while you sleep. Everyone does this. If you're having trouble with something - try a nap.

[tjbiddle]

I think you missed the point.

[chromoblob]

Which point? That there were so many lines of code imagined exactly? It's a continuous scale. 20 lines seems very good, but not exceptional.

[winrid]

I must. It doesn't sound like anything special.

[donpark]

It 'feels like' like seeing. There is sense of dimension and position in the space and objects. I can imagine people I know and places I've been to with amazing details but visual details like texture are limited to where I'm focusing. Rest of the view is filled with 'feels like they are there'. It's not retrieval because when I try to focus on non-memorable parts of a face, I can tell that details are made up on-demand using common variety.

And what I 'see' is affected by light over closed eyelid as well as inner blood vessel, minor debris and micro organism floating over the cornea, meaning input from the eyes does play a role even with eyes closed.

While I have very vivid imaginations, I don't think I have photographic memory because what I can recall is rather too creative.

[krapp]

> are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of your eyelids gets replaced with something you actually see, like it's projected there?

No.

>I can imagine what something looks like, and I guess I sort of 'see' it, but closing my eyes doesn't make it any more real. It doesn't seem to involve the eyes or any part of the visual system at all - it's somewhere else in my head.

Yes. That's all it is. Although it does seem to be indirectly related to the visual system, likely whatever part of it lets people "see" things when they dream, despite not actually processing visual stimuli through the eyes. It's just dreaming while awake.

[SirMaster]

That's not what's being described in this article though.

They are saying like how you see golden dots after gently rubbing your eyes. They are saying they see images like that. Definitely seems like more than just imagining seeing something.

When I rub my eyes I definitely see some dots that are way more real than not rubbing my eyes and just imagining dots.

[_dain_]

>No.

ahem. yes we do. we really, really do.

[krapp]

Really? Like you literally see the things you imagine?

How do you function? How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination?

I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.

[_dain_]

>How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view?

They don't block the view, in the same way that the image from your left eye doesn't block the image from your right eye, even though they're overlaid on the same "mental space". Hold up your finger in front of your eyes, and focus on a distant object. You can see two images of the finger, but also see straight through them simultaneously. It's kinda like that.

And it usually doesn't manifest when I'm intensely concentrating on one task (unless deliberately imagining something is part of how I solve the task). At any rate, driving is mostly a system 1 activity, carried out autonomically. In real life, people's thoughts drift all the time when they drive. It's unavoidable and mostly not a big deal.

>How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination?

Because they're on different channels. Like stdout vs stderr.

>I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.

Again, most people are like this. You are the one who is unusual. You probably have aphantasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

It's common for aphantasics to be initially completely incredulous at the concept of mental imagery, so you're not alone here. See this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...

>Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery1 to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images

[krapp]

I don't profess complete incredulity at the concept of mental imagery. My experiences don't match those of people who claim to have aphantasia at all, I'm capable of imagining objects, events, actions, etc. in my mind. I just don't actually see them as if they were there. That's the part that seems unusual to me.

[geoelectric]

I'm fairly sure I'm aphantasic. When I try to imagine something I don't get any visuals, even the visual processing equivalent of subvocalization. Sometimes I can get a flicker of an outline or something but I can't hold the concept and it'll dissolve inside a second. I used to be a pretty good artist working from photos, but I can't compose in my head. At all.

But I do also know what familiar things look like more or less, and I can easily imagine layouts of buildings I know really well. I can explain those things verbally fine.

But it registers more in the way you might expect if you were encountering the object in darkness, or became blind after thoroughly learning the object as a sighted person. I imagine aspects of the object or scene in relationship to each other, sort of feeling over it with my mind, and cross-referencing with facts I remember about it. I'm wondering if that's what you're talking about--being able to conceptualize it rather than visualize it.

I did manage to imagine "blue" once during meditation, though, and that was pretty cool. I really saw it when I did--my whole visual field behind my closed eyes seemed sky blue. Normally I just see clouds of purplish dots on a black field, if there's no light shining through my eyelids, and it's been that way all my life. That experience, more than anything, convinced me people who say they "see" stuff in their mind's eye really do see stuff.

I'm definitely going to check out the linked technique. Maybe it's snake oil but doesn't seem likely to hurt to try. That blue experience was pretty compelling.

[_dain_]

well where is your mental imagery? can you not do it with your eyes open?

[loosetypewriter]

Can people who literally "see" clear mental images look at a blank piece of paper, imagine an image, and then just trace it out? I have never seen anyone do this, but based on the way mental imagery is described online by people who claim other people are aphantasiac, I don't understand why it's not a very common ability.

[_dain_]

Some people can, but it's not common. For me the image isn't stable or detailed enough. I imagine it would get better with practice.

[coumbaya]

Well it's not like it's blocking your view, it's kind of a separate thing, you know it's not real and you retain the entierty of you eye's information.

[RamRodification]

Yeah I have the same question. It's either that, which sounds kinda crazy, or that's just how they describe what you and I can already "see" when we imagine something that is visual, I guess? Whereas when you have aphantasia you cannot do that

[reliablereason]

No people can’t see stuff in their vision, it is just a way of describing the "minds eye".

I was also confused when I first heard of aphantasia, so talked about it with a few people. Enough people to come to the conclusion that a loot of it comes down to some people using crude language for the "minds eye". But that some people use the minds eye more than others.

[huytersd]

I think it’s a spectrum. I see really vague still images if I really try but yep just back of the eyelids most of the time. I’ve had a real feel for what vivid imagery looks like a few times right before I fall asleep. I envy people that can conjure up that sort of vividness when they want.

[BizarroLand]

No. It's only rarely that vivid. It's more like the memory of an image, but one you may not have seen yet.

Like if you imagine a 1950's spaceship, yellow with red stripes and long curving fins resting on a cratered moonscape with astronauts in shiny puffy silver suits holding their glass helmets in their hands as if they can breathe in the vacuum of space smiling brightly with a sign above that reads, "buy astrogum! It's astrolicious!" in the coca-cola font.

You won't see that the same way you see the words on the page in front of you, but in that same way that you "see" the hazy memories of your childhood playing with friends, running around, parks and blue skies in the ever-lasting summer of your youth.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I'm like you. It's called aphantasia. But to this day, I still wonder if we are really different from most people or it's just that most people are more lenient in using words like "seeing", "mind's eye", etc. in a highly metaphorical sense.

There seems to be no external measurable manifestation or consequence (contrary to what some people might think, I can answer questions about hypothetical spatial rotations, etc. just fine. I don't visualize and rotate the object, but I sort of imagine the "concept" of the object and can rotate such "concept". It's just that the process for me doesn't involve "seeing" anything). So it's hard to know to what extent the difference is real.

[Winsaucerer]

It's not leniency in words. I see images in my mind, with colour and shape. I'd go so far as to say these are literal images. Dreams at night are like participating in a movie, with animations and sounds.

I think about other senses like smell, sound, touch, and taste. I can imagine sounds very clearly in my mind. I can also imagine very well how something would feel to touch, to the point where the imagination is almost as clear as the real thing.

However, what I can do for images, touch, and sounds, I cannot do for taste and smell. And this helps me to appreciate something of what 'aphantasia' might be like, though with different sensations.

I have a question I like to ask people, that I think helps show some external measurable consequence of this. I ask people to tell me how many doors there are going off the hall in their house (it may help you to take a moment to try answering before reading the next part).

For myself, and many others, we imagine a picture in our mind of us standing in the hall, and in the picture we just 'look' around and count off the doors. However, I made an error and missed a door when I did the counting, I forgot to count the door that was behind where I imagined myself standing in the hall, because I couldn't "see" it.

I asked someone with aphantasia this same question, because I couldn't understand how they could answer it (I'm a very visual thinker). He told me (if I understand right) that he does something like tell a story via words, and uses that to somehow enumerate the doors and answer the question. Perhaps his strategy is prone to analogous mistakes like mine, but presumably not the same mistake.

[chr1]

In several occasions, after very intense and new visual stimulus, (e.g. being the first time in a forest, watching "where dreams may come", playing a beautiful video game for the first time, strangely, playing checkers for almost the whole day) i could close my eyes and literally see scenes similar to the scenes that had made impression on me.

After several days the images would fade and i would return to not seeing anything.

So i also wonder if those realistic images i could see in those few occasions are the norm for other people, or if they have not seen such images and describe something else as seeing.

Also somewhat related i have similar experience with sound, while normally i can imagine music as my inner voice singing, but on some occasions i could hear the whole orchestra. And here as well, people describe different experience from hearing to not having an inner voice at all.

[Ericson2314]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia seems like the "fully visual" one is different, and possibly not good.

[ranprieur]

In my imagination I can see images basically the same as I see with my eyes, but less detailed and nowhere near as persistent.

Back of the eyelid visuals are a whole different thing, and it's good to know there's so much room to work with them.

[stouset]

No, not with their eyes. Hence the “mind’s eye”. The darkness of your eyelids isn’t replaced, it’s just that your focus is on a mental image of what an object feels like and not just on the darkness of your vision.

[SirMaster]

When I rub by eyes, the darkness of my eyelids is definitely replaced by yellowish dots that fade in and out and move around. I'm definitely seeing them even though my eyes are closed. I'm not just imagining them.

This article is saying the effect is like that, so it seems to be different than just imagining something with your eyes closed.

When I imagine something I don't "see" it at all the way I "see" the yellow dots after rubbing my eyes.

[TheHappyOddish]

Welcome to the club.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

I only know that terms like 'mental imagery' or 'daydreaming' aren't metaphorical because of another HN thread about it years ago. Turns out (to varying degrees) the vast majority of people have a TV in their minds they can switch on.

[fallingfrog]

If I really try I can put myself in a place, I can imagine for instance going to the grocery store with my kids: I’m in the parking lot holding their hands. I feel the sun shining too bright in my eyes when I look to the left, I feel a slight breeze on my arms and face, then the automatic doors open, and my boy is fussing so I pick him up, and I can feel his arms around me, then I put him in the cart, and he’s heavy. I hear the beeping of cash registers and the murmur of people talking. One wheel is bad on the shopping cart and it squeaks and pulls to the left. The handle of the cart is smooth plastic, it’s translucent but with a red stripe painted on it. I reach for the cucumbers and I can see that they’re waxy but also the end of the first one I see is wrinkly, meaning that it’s starting to shrivel. You get the idea. I see it all in detail and I can feel certain sensations and hear sound too. Yeah visualizing with that much detail takes effort but I can do more than just visualize an apple.

It’s not exactly the same as watching a movie. But I think if I was doing this and you moved something in front of me, I wouldn’t see it. It would be an interesting scientific experiment. Certainly people have told me that when I was staring into space that they waved to me and I didn’t respond.

One way this is really useful is if I’m packing for, say, a camping trip. I can put myself in the campsite, and I first want to gather firewood, but it’s too thick to break, so I pick up a saw. -ok write that down, a saw. At night we climb into the tent and when we get inside it’s very dark -write down flashlight- and then after unrolling my sleeping back I notice that it’s uncomfortable without a pillow -write down pillow. That kind of thing.

I can do this with music too. Sometimes that’s how I write songs. I’ll work the parts, hearing them all together while I’m taking a shower, then later ill go to the music room and play the whole song one instrument at a time.

[pavlov]

For me, it makes a difference whether I imagine my body in the image or not.

A disembodied mental image is located somewhere else in my head; a first-person one moves behind my eyes. It’s not like a projection in the sense that it would replace what I actually see, but like a secondary feed that overrides some processing in the same place just after the eyes.

[southernplaces7]

Speaking from personal experience and only that, I've always had a fairly vivid imagination and yes, the images created in the mind's eye during an imaginative episode (in not referring to dreams here, but waking-state fantasies desired or not) "look" remarkably clear. It's not the same as literally viewing something because you're fundamentally aware that you're lacking the external physical stimuli of a real thing, but the mental fidelity of details is more than good enough to perceive colors, textures, specific appearances and with a bit of focus even tiny details of an internal visual story.

I always assumed this was completely normal for most people, but apparently it really is difficult for some.

[glitchc]

Everything that physically excites the rods and cones in our eyes is perceived in the occipital cortex which is at the back of our brains, right above the medullaoblongata. It isn't surprising that it's somewhere else inside our heads.

[gumballindie]

I can, but in my case it’s not always a coherent image sequence like in movies. I see “episodes”. Actually that’s my only way of falling asleep. If i don’t “see” images i dont fall asleep. And when i sleep well it’s always after having a clear dream. Although somehow when i am about to get a cold or a health issue they get more vivid. Strange.

[richarme]

Apparently, people are on a spectrum when it comes to this [1]. Super interesting!

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/science/minds-eye-mental-...

[aiiie]

It varies for me depending on my mood state. I find it most vivid in bouts of psychosis. I remember once being in such a state and being overwhelmed by my mind's eye seeming even more vivid than the images coming into my actual eyes. Seeing two distinct views at once was quite disorienting.

[jonplackett]

Yeah they really can. My wife is an artist and she can literally just close her eyes and imagine layouts and colour schemes. The whole thing!

The downside is it’s hard for her to shut it off.

I have the opposite problem and see nothing. Only learned about aphantasia a few years ago - made so much sense when I realised.

I am super excited to try image streaming!

[ebw]

I have exactly zero images in my "mind's eye" I have a blank movie screen.

I can remember dreams, although they're pretty abstract. I take a picture of my kids before I take them out so if they get lost I can tell people what they are wearing. (learned that the hard way)

[doug-moen]

I can imagine imagery in two different ways.

1. One way is the "behind the eyelids" technique, where the imagery seems to be coming from the retina, or at least I experience it that way. I cannot currently generate the high quality photographic imagery of the OP, and even the experience of colour is pretty sketchy. That's today, awake, although sometimes it gets better when I'm in bed and about to fall asleep. Either way, this only works if my eyes are closed, or it's pitch dark. With my eyes open, the signal from my retina washes out the image, which is very dim. One person I met who experiences this calls the experience "phosphenes". The experience doesn't look real, and I have no sense of depth or spatial location, like I do with vision. It is only partially under conscious control. I get images, then I "make suggestions" about what I want to see, and then it kind of drifts in the direction of what I want.

2. The other way works with my eyes open. I can do 3D objects, even set up a wire frame cube spinning around my head. The object can be "inside my mind" with no defined location, or I can locate it in space. I barely have any colour available in this subsystem, but that could be lack of practice. This is under full conscious control. I have no difficulty distinguishing these images from what I am seeing, I experience eyesight and these images as two different mental domains.

I just ran a test, and I can do both things at the same time, but it requires a lot of concentration and I'm not good at it.

I know from talking to people that there is a lot of variation in how people experience mental imagery.

Based on what I've read, LSD and psilocybin hallucinations may be be a more powerful version of "system 1" imagery as described above. That's because: at low doses, you can only see the hallucinations with your eyes closed, and they are only partially under conscious control. (There are instructions on the web on how to influence the imagery.)

UPDATE: I wondered whether my system 1 imagery is "in the retina" or "in the visual cortex". As an experiment, I stared at a bright light, then closed my eyes to see the retinal afterimage of the bright light. Everybody gets these afterimages. Then, I was able to modify the afterimage! After some work, I eventually changed the colour of the afterimage and made it into the centre of a flower. To my delight, the flower had an almost photographic quality. This doesn't really prove anything about retina vs visual cortex. But this is a better result than I've had in the past, before I read the ideas in this post.

Finally, the OP and video describes "image streaming", which seems to be a more advanced version of what I do when I try to shape a system 1 "retinal" image. Afterimages are one way to produce a seed image. In the past I've just created images starting from a black visual field, but I guess it's easier if you start with a seed. Apparently if you get really good then you can have full conscious control over system 1 mental imagery! I had not previously considered talking out loud to influence the image.

Now I'm wondering whether "microdosing", a Silicon valley practice that has been discussed on HN before, would improve your ability to perform "image streaming". Maybe other people with more knowledge of this can comment.

[SanderNL]

No, that’s hallucinating. Mind’s eye is like what you see when you remember a visual scene.

[anentropic]

Exactly the same for me, I always assumed people were speaking metaphorically when they talked about "seeing" with their mind's eye until a few years ago I first heard about Aphantasia and was like WTF

[iseanstevens]

I don’t even need to close my eyes and the images are fairly vivid. AR before AR.

I thought for a long time that’s how it was for everyone.

Anyone else have that?

[nurbl]

Yes. I don't have very good conscious control of it, but if I start "daydreaming" the images can pretty much override what my eyes are seeing. I wouldn't say it's overlaying like AR, for me it's more like tuning in to a different channel. I guess somehow the things my eyes see are still registering, e.g. if something new comes into view I will pop back to reality.

[pixl97]

I'm the same. I can pop things in and out of reality as needed to visualize things. Of course the counter to this scares me thinking about what happens if I did this without conscious awareness...

My dreams can feel more real than reality too. Like full senses lucid dreams. Looking at things like clocks and books worked in my dreams. My dreams are just a reality inside the reality everyone else shares.

Also, In my teens and early 20s I had dreams I could levitate. If you could imagine being able to follow magnetic fields just under your skin would be about the best way to describe it. It was disappointing to wake up and realize that I couldn't do this.

[naruhodo]

Yep. Super helpful for visualising structures of source code and other things. Don't close your eyes, just patch your brain output back to brain input. Same as when you're dreaming.

[mensetmanusman]

Yes, a side effect of this skill is that schizophrenia runs in the family. Super helpful for lots of other things though.

[Eupraxias]

Aphantasia?

[klipt]

I think it's normal to distinguish imagined pictures from real ones.

If you can't, that's schizophrenia.

[mistermann]

Or sometimes, critical thinking. ;

[pixl97]

If your mind is lying to you, there is no amount of critical thinking that can save you in the long run.