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by _dain_ 999 days ago
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.

1 comments

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!

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.

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.