[fellowniusmonk]

If your core issue is with trying to quantify and observe others Qualia I think you're going to have a hard time.

I still have people tell me I must be faking my colorblindness, or just treat me like I'm blind. Normally teenagers, theory of mind is tough at that age.

I'm not sure nice or just a smidge of humility/uncertainty in expressing doubt.

Propagation of information pre-internet was so low people just couldn't easily triangulation on some of these things.

Fwiw I generally agree with you, my wife brought this up to me just in the last few years and I was like, oh I just thought this happened to everyone around 13 like a reverse Hook (the movie) thing.

But I can't paint or draw worth a damn sense then and she can freehand paint hyper realistic pictures. I don't see how she could do that without the imagination version of a stencil.

After I found out it wasn't a normal part of puberty I just figured it was brain damage acquired during the surgeries.

Also, from what I understand fMRI shows enough of a difference I'm inclined to believe the other people who say they were born that way.

[card_zero]

Well, I'm an artist, but I don't insist that I can visualise things vividly, whatever that really means.

I'm looking at the brain scans in the article now. It's good that it's got 'em. Do they really mean what they're presented as meaning? It shows that some people, when told to imagine things, activate a bunch of brain regions. Some of those are also involved in actual looking, though not with clear purposes. Then there's also areas to do with memory and salience. I'll say that the people in this group are having a more emotional experience when they imagine. They give more of a shit, they pay more attention. I'm not sure that this qualifies as a skill, or an ability, or "seeing". But heck, what's seeing anyway?

[vidarh]

Ed Catmull surveyed people at Pixar, and there wasn't a particularly strong correlation in their staff between ability to draw and aphantasia or not - they had artists with aphantasia such as Glen Keane, who created Ariel[1]

For my part, while I'm not a great artist by any means, there was absolutely a time where I was well above average at drawing, despite aphantasia.

People struggle to draw things that are right in front of them - being able to see what you draw is not inherently a huge asset.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256

[fellowniusmonk]

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

Obviously because each person is different a/b tests are somewhat impossible for qualia issues. All I have is access to my pre/post expierence. It seems aphantasia can be intrinsic or emergent and since mine developed potentially through damage or re-wiring during surgery I wouldn't be suprised in the slightest that the pathways and compensations are different or non-existent for my case but not for others.