[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