Ask Lemmy

26903 readers

1889 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

259

This is a thought experiment "Ball on a Table" for detecting whether someone has Aphantasia. What do you see when you perform this experiment? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

239 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This is more of me trying to understand how people imagine things, as I almost certainly have Aphantasia and didn't realize until recently... If this is against community rules, please do let me know.

The original thought experiment was from the Aphantasia subreddit. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/g1e6bl/ball_on_a_table_visualization_experiment_2/

Thought experiment begins below.

Try this: Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it) a ball on a table. Now imagine someone walks up to the table, and gives the ball a push. What happens to the ball?

Once you're done with the above, click to review the test questions:

What color was the ball?
What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
What did they look like?
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?

And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Just as an exploration with you on this. Use your same instructions for the placing and actions with one difference.

The room is pitch black, and you can't see a thing.

What do you hear?

Click for review questions:

what did the steps of the person sound like? Can you tell what kind of shoes they have with "heal/toe" impact sounds? single thumps indicating flat footfalls? nothing?
how long were they walking before they got to the table?
Did the ball make any sound as it rolled on the table? What kind of sounds? What kind of table would make that sound?
When the ball hit the floor did it bounce or fall flat? Was there an echo? Did the sound of the fall indicate you're in a tiny room or a giant room?
How close was the person to your point of observation?
Could you hear the person breathing?
What else did you hear that I didn't include here?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I am not joking; the only thing I can imagine is for some bizarre reason a bowling ball noise followed by a comical noise of striking pins. I know there is a person but I couldn't imagine that person

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

The person didn't walk, that wasn't the focus of what I was imagining
The ball didn't make a sound when it rolled, but I was imagining a soft futsal ball that would make almost no noise rolling on a table. If I'd been imagining a marble or something that would have been different
The ball bounced once a bit, then fell flat, it's how a futsal ball bounces, it's a kind of "splat" sound with no echoes. I didn't imagine walls, so the room is effectively infinite sized
The person wasn't really part of what I was imagining. They were there to give the ball a push, but otherwise were irrelevant, so I didn't focus on them in any way

If I'd let my fantasy get "polluted" by the other questions and stories, I'd have answered differently. With all the questions about the person, I'd have invented a person and effectively "panned out" so that the person was part of what I was thinking about. Instead I went with my original visualization which just involved an effectively disembodied hand giving a ball a push. If this were a TV show or something, the only part of the person that I ever saw was the hand that gave the ball a push, everything else was "out of frame". But, I wasn't imagining a "frame", just whatever my mind's eye was focused on, which was almost entirely the ball, and not anything else.