this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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I remember when I learned people weren't just being metaphorical when they talked about "picturing" something in their mind.
Do you have an internal dialogue? Or is it all visual? Cuz my internal world is basically a lightly illustrated book, 95% dialogue and occasionally I can imagine a vague image.
I had that same reaction. "You mean you can see it? No like, really see it, not just think about seeing it? What the fuck?"
When i zone out, i can have full conversations with people ive never met in my mind while walking to work.
Basically flying blind through traffic, unless something relevant registers on my "conscious" mind.
It's funny, really, because aphantasia is supposed to be fairly rare, but every time a thread like this comes up, folks come out of the woodwork saying "Oh, yeah, that's me." Makes me wonder if it isn't a lot more common than believed, but people just don't realize they have it. There don't seem to have been any real studies done on it.
I can have conversations in my mind, but there's no visuals associated with it. It's like a radio broadcast vs. a TV program. I can think about the description of an object, and recite back its physical qualities, but I can't visualize that object at all.
These conversations that never happened don't always go well, so I whish I could have less of them.
Same same, i try to be aware of it and ground myself when i do catch it drift into just verbalising anxiety with no real benefit.
Especially when i should be enjoying reality instead, like during a movie, concert or hike
I can see it, separate it into parts, rotate it around, put it back together, etc etc. I design things entirely in my head visually before actually building them. I assume that's how most engineers/artists operate.
Yeah, I've always been a shit artist for I assume the opposite reason; I can think of a thing in a macro sense, like "I want to draw [thing], it has these features', but when it comes time to actually draw those features, I can't pinpoint exactly what they look like. It's like reading a few sentence description of a tree, and then trying to draw one purely based on that description - you can get a general sense for what it looks like, but not the fine detail needed to accurately represent one visually.
Incidentally, I have a difficult time commissioning art as a result, because I have an idea of what I want, but I have a hard time communicating the finer details. AI generated art has actually been really helpful for me in this regard; I can see something and know if it's what I want or not, so being able to give an AI art generator a broad description and get back 100 images from which I can pick a few and tell an artist which parts of each one I want has made it much easier.
Both internal dialogue which sounds the same as my spoken voice alongside images or videos, similar to when there's a montage being narrated in a movie is the best way I can explain it. This is all fascinating to me now! Do you dream very often?
I only seem to dream if I'm not sleeping well. I can pretty reliably make myself dream by having coffee before bed. Otherwise, nope, there's just a vague sense that time has passed when I wake up. If I do dream it's highly visual, though.
You only remember your dreams when sleeping lightly. You most likely still dream.
I can create images, sounds, smells, etc the whole gaumut experience OF an apple in my mind. I almost always go for visual it made up in my mind. Just depends.
Not the person you were asking, but seems like you're curious.
Damn that's wild, all I can do is verbally describe sounds and smells to myself in my internal dialogue.
I'm a 2 on the scale unless i try (I can do 1 but it's not fast or easy for complex things).
Visualization isn't usually an active thing for me. But when you say "think of a car accident" I can visualize one generic car t-boning another on a generic road. If you ask me to describe a room in my house I visualize most of the things there and described based off that visualization.
I'm a 3 for memories, a 4 for everything else. Before my head injury I was a 5 for everything (no idea what that's about lol)
I can describe a car accident in great detail and draw a picture of it, but in my brain I'm just verbally describing the car accident to myself as if I'm the narrator.
Last year i learned that people see and hear things.
Big if true
People eat food and drink drinks too
Get the fuck outta here
For me when I'm daydreaming it's like watching a movie, my eyes might be open but I don't see shit, my brain's doing other things. Or when I'm visualizing something it's like free and organic AR. But yeah, no dialogue necessary, it's like a hallucination that I control.
Not my experience at all! If I'm day dreaming it's 100% narrative. Brains are weird.
How do you think quickly if you need to say everything in your mind? Is the voice very quick?
It's also unfathomable to me how people can think of what they need to do tomorrow and not see it.
I just think we don't understand our own internal processes very well. The conscious part may come long after we had the thought and if you say it or see it doesn't matter.
Pretty quick, yeah. It's basically my voice, but also, I don't need to breathe or move my mouth or anything. Ever heard the term "stream of consciousness"? Also, grammar and punctuation aren't necessary, I can just talktalktalktalktalk and I understand myself because I always know what I'm saying.
I'm sure if you could listen to my thoughts it would sound like a fucking mess tho lol
But also, there's a difference between when I'm just thinking about stuff to myself and when I'm busy doing something. If I'm in a flow state or "in the zone", I don't necessarily monologue everything I'm doing. I just do it, y'know? It's only when I slow down to think that my thoughts actually become dialogue again.
I can't imagine why you need to see it! I know I need to lay some mulch on my garden tomorrow, I don't need to visualize that? I can just make a mental note of it and keep that thought stored away as part of a to-do list. What would I even use pictures for when I can just tell myself "I need to do X, Y, and Z"?
Well yeah, consciousness is an illusion. I think they've demonstrated with active brain scans that our conscious thoughts come after we've already made subconscious decisions. We make up our minds before we know it, consciousness is more like a way we convince ourselves to do the things we've already decided we want to do.