[wayoverthecloud]

Reading a book is not really passive. Especially if it's a good book. You have to constantly imagine the layouts and the connections the book is trying to draw. For me, after years of Internet, getting back to books made me appreciate my younger self because books need active imagination and follow-through in the brain. I was able to do that effortlessly when I was a child. In fact, if you read all the HN comments the way you read books, it will be challenging(if you have no book reading habits).

[grayhatter]

I don't use imagination when I read. The connections are instinctual, and the layouts are often irrelevant (which I can say because I've never attempted to consider them and don't ever find myself missing out on the story).

I'd like to say I'm astounded when I hear other people visit other worlds when they read, but really that whole idea is so foreign to me, it might as well be a complete lie. I have no thread in which to pull on to begin to imagine it. I chalk it up to aphantasia, but my point is that not everyone processes and interacts with the world in the same way you might.

[Aeolun]

So when a scene is described, what happens in your head? You take it all in as a sort of dry list of facts? If someone gets punched in the face that conjures an image of a fist connecting with a face for me.

[grayhatter]

> You take it all in as a sort of dry list of facts?

"dry list" was your description, not mine. But also, no. Take the common example;

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

You don't have to imagine a picture of shoes, nor of a for sale sign to go... "oh, shit...".

Or even even that's too far to grasp... consider the melody of happy song, or a sad song. I assume you don't imagine a piano to figure out which it is?

[Aeolun]

Yes, I was trying to figure out how that would work, describing how I imagined it as a starting point. Not saying that’s how you experience it (hence the question mark)

I don’t have to imagibe baby shoes to understand what they are, or what happened, but if I read ‘baby shoes’ there’s definitely an image of small shoes appearing in my mind (constantly morphing, because the description doesn’t give me anything to go off).

If I read ‘sad song’, some variation of a sad song will play in my mind.

Of course often you read many of those things in sequence, and the mental scene constructs itself as you learn more.

If you read quickly it’s a bit vague, not enough time to truly think about it, but it’s there. At least for me.

[magnio]

> “Bitch,” he repeated. The mallet came down. She shoved herself upward and it landed just below her kneecap. Her lower leg was suddenly on fire. Blood began to trickle down her calf. And then the mallet was coming down again. She jerked her head away from it and it smashed into the stair riser in the hollow between her neck and shoulder, scraping away the flesh from her ear.

Does your mind conjure no images while reading this?

[collingreen]

Aphantasia is hard to explain, especially in a drive by comment.

I'm not the person you're replying to but the answer, for me, depends on what you really mean by conjuring images. Very technically no, I see no images for this but I don't know if that is truly the whole point of what you're asking.

I mostly understand what is happening but I also really struggle to get the angles right in my mind of someone swinging a mallet quickly and one time hitting a shin and the next aimed for the head so maybe I'm missing something.

There are other senses involved as well even though it isn't visual, including things like spatial reasoning or maybe even something like proprioception - like I said it's hard to explain.

I can imagine myself in this position better than I can "visualize" it happening to someone else.

[plewd]

Aphantasia is really annoying to explain to people, like trying to explain blindness to a person who's always seen. I can't "see" anything, but I'm able to reason about it and kinda trace what I imagine with my eyes.

Interestingly enough, I have very lucid dreams and have realized that I am able to visualize (with color!) inside of them. I can't imagine being able to do that at will while awake, must be amazing.

[collingreen]

I also can "see" in my dreams! Aphantasia is so fascinating to me because it helps me think about all these senses in much smaller units. I think the more we study and learn about aphantasia the better we will understand the brain in general. It is kind of like a natural experiment where you can remove one piece of the system and reason about the whole because of what changes.

For example, I had never considered that there would be different processes involved with imagining something visual vs recalling it but now that seems super obvious to me! I love when something tweaks my perspective and suddenly a new world of possibilities is revealed.

[Spivak]

This happens with all forms of art, it's not unique to the written word. With movies and TV you're imagining the world outside the frame borders. With paintings you're imagining the whole scene or story depending on the piece.

So there's a point here that TikTok is competing for leisure time that in its absence has a better chance of being imaginative but I think that undersells the creativity of social media to a degree.

[bccdee]

I think that's the key thing. Social media bombards us with stimuli based on an algorithm optimizing for what will grab our attention best. It doesn't matter if it has value, or even if it can hold our attention, because there's always some new novelty in the pipeline.

Long-form writing ask us to choose a subject and then focus deeply and deliberately on it. It's more demanding and more rewarding.

[non-]

Depends on the book. Depends on the TikTok.

You can have passive experiences via either medium. TikTok is really optimized for that shallow level of engagement though and books trend in the opposite direction.