You say “apple” to me and I’m #1, glossy skin, insides, all that
And how in the hell does one navigate life, or enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?! Reading a book is like watching a movie. I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
Yet #5’s are not handicapped in the slightest. They’re so “normal” that mankind is just now figuring out we’re far apart on this thing. Fucking weird.
EDIT: Showed this to my wife and she was somewhat mystified as to what I was asking. Pretty sure she’s a 5. I get frustrated as hell when I ask her to describe a thing and she’s clueless. “Did the radiator hose pop off, or is it torn and cracked?” “I don’t know!”
EDIT2: The first Star Wars book after the movie came out was Splinter in the Mind’s Eye. I feel like I got that title. What’s it mean to you?
My sister has #5 and I can ask her to make a response if you want OP.
Last we talked about it she said if she tried really hard she can see come colors and shapes but that’s about it.
The best conversation about it we ever had went something like this (keep in mind were both autistic and when together dont always communicate like neurotypical people do):
*while driving*
her: “get in that turn lane to the right”
*i do the 👆hand tricks and turn*her: “when I don’t want to do that I always think in my head ‘never eat soggy waffles’ and remember that east is left and right is west”
me: “that’s not even correct, but like WHY would you do that??”
her: “to remember how to turn”
me: “why wouldn’t you just do the hand things?”
me: “like imagine them in your head and-”her: “MUST BE NICE HUH?”
*we both explode in laughter*she didn’t even mean to make a joke about it, that’s just genuinely the way she remembers lefts and rights
also this meme has become a common occurrence whenever the topic is brought up
Also a pretty interesting thing I remembered while writing this is a clip on TV (can’t remember what show it was) where they asked a room of people to draw a bicycle then they made it IRL by welding it and told them to ride it a block or two and back. Only 1 of ~15 did it correctly, one girl got it exactly but forgot the peddles. Pretty interesting how they could all imagine a bike but couldn’t draw it correctly
The left/right story might be a different thing. Was in my 40s until I could instinctively know left from right. Before that I would snap my left fingers, or mime it, because I’m sinister and can’t snap my right.
Only way I got better was saying to myself, “This is bullshit and you’re all growed up. Work on this thing.” Somehow I got better, can’t say how.
I have serious issues with modelling the world in 3D, but I’m a solid 1 on the aphantasia scale. Weird.
The left/right story might be a different thing.
very well could be, our genetics are a concoction of adhd, autism, anxiety, depression, etc etc
i used to be able to know without doing the L R hands in highschool, but I guess that skill faded over time 🤷♀️
personally it’s not big enough of an issue for me to do anything about bc taking a wrong turn is way more embarrassing than doing a L R hand.I have serious issues with modelling the world in 3D, but I’m a solid 1 on the aphantasia scale. Weird.
that’s interesting, my sister has done some stuff with a CAD program for 3d printing and it wasn’t an issue for her. What specifically do you have trouble with?just realized you were probably talking about a mental map rather than a 3d modeling program 😂, my sister has the same issue and hates driving because of it
While we’re at it, when I start falling asleep reading a novel, it just keeps going in my head, like a movie. And believe it or not, the plot is usually a logical progression from where I left off. Stephan King is perfect for this, but that may be because I’ve read his books so many times. May also be because his prose flows so smoothly for me that I can just roll with it.
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On the upside our kids aren’t going to be traumatised by pictures of apples.
WARNING your neurochip implant has detected copyrighted material in your imagination cortex. Please be aware that we are legally obliged to report repeat offenses to the authorities. For your protection, please refrain from picturing further copyrighted material.
I’m a 5, yet I can have extremely vivid dreams that are exactly like I am in that world. I can perfectly picture peoples faces from the past too while dreaming. So the ability is in there somewhere. 🤷♂️
Are you able to see your memories more like dreams or are your memories more like a vibe?
Memories are more like the feelings and senses associated with the memory, alongside a narration of what happened. Like if I had a fight and had to recount it to police, I’d think of how I moved, where I was hit, what kinds of sounds and smells there were, etc. alongside a sort of fight announcer narrating the fight like a boxing match.
You mean 5s can’t even remember the visual aspect of memories?!
I’m a 2 or 3 and I can’t imagine this, that sounds horrible.
I’m a 4, and I’m very poor at remembering people’s faces. Same goes with memories, I realized early on that I have really shit memory especially if I rely only on visuals. These days I just try to deduce past events based on information I’m sure of. I also figured out a few years ago that I can remember my day a lot better if I’m narrating the events to myself in real time and compiling a script in my head, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to remember much other than the events that affected my emotions more intensely.
I’m very poor at remembering people’s faces
Like all the time?
Do you ever experience hallucinations? Like see people or animals in the corner of your eye that turn out to be just shadows or a coat. I’m a 1 and I sometimes experience vivid hallucinations when I’m really tired or have just woken up. Like I have a recurring hallucination that I occasionally get. Sometimes when I wake up I see a spider hanging above my head. Then I jump out of bed and notice that nothing is there.
Wait, clarify for me.
If you are a 5 and cannot visualize at all while awake, how do you know your dreams were vivid? Can you imagine the dreams once awake and picture them? Otherwise how can you know how vivid they were?
Maybe my question is dumb haha, i just cannot grasp not being able to use ones mind to imagine.
Yeah - I can recall the dreams that are that vivid just like I would remember seeing a sunset or another impressive scenic view. I can’t see the view again in my mind, but I recall it.
A big one kind of recently was flying in my dream over this gigantic megacity theme park, I remember waking up and being awed by all the varied things I had populated in my imagination (had recently learned that other people could visualize anything so it was curious to me what I could do subconsciously). Right then I recalled it enough that I probably could have drawn some of it, now it is much more vague.
It does make me wonder if I could train myself to visualize while awake.
Interesting, this is my own theory so take it with a grain of salt. But I think everyone has wild confusion with the subject of the minds eye. We are all just recalling things, it’s the same thing.
I believe the difference between 1-5 is much smaller than online discussing would make us think.
I can “see the apple” and I can “feel it crunch” but not actually. I’m just recalling the “idea” of those sensations.
If I stare off in my environment, I can place the apple on a table, I can “pick it up” but there is no apple. I’m simply recalling what it feels like to take that action, or what I would think based on previous experiences it would feel like.
I don’t think anyone is able to legitimately hallucinate things into their reality (within reason of course haha, mental conditions and such) and I always leave these discussions feeling like people who align with 5 think 1’s can legitimately create objects in their reality.
But I can only experience my mind, so we will probably never have a solid answer to this.
I would also be very interested to know if people who align with 5 are able to “train” themselves up the scale.
No snark, but how do you test this?
Like I can picture an apple, but it’s not real, so how do I know if I’m a 1 or a 4?
Did you try to think of a real apple but got a not real picture of it? Can you change it into some different thing? Can you change it to a realistic picture if you want?
If you think of how an apple looks and you get a visual representation, depending on how detailed it is. If not, you’re a 5.
I think it’s the amount of detail when you picture it. Can you rotate it, cut it, maybe take bite out of it?
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If he see something with one eye but not the other, is it real?
I think the “test” is to describe a scene, then ask details that weren’t explicitly described, but would be necessary to fill in the gaps. It requires honesty (nothing to prevent 5s from making up answers post-hoc or 1s just feigning ignorance.)
Describe the apple you see in your imagination. Color? Texture? Shadows? Environment? Can you draw your image?
There is some flexibility here; I tend to have different levels (1-4) based with numbers scaling to how awake I am. (More awake = less detail)
Some people really are out there living their lives with aphantasia. I can’t imagine that.
I am definitely a number 1, I couldn’t imagine not being able to imagine. I can go beyond one. I can visualize the apple and taste it as I begin to eat said apple.
Discover the trick as a kid, when denied food from my abusive mom boyfriend. He made me stand in a corner while they ate dinner. I used this skill to bring a cheeseburger into existence and then began to eat it. Even felt full afterwards. Of course that sensation only lasted couple hours, but was still interesting trait to discover.
I can’t imagine
I am not on this scale.
How to draw an apple in the mind?
- Start with the seed. It’s full of some stuff and feels solid.
- Cover the seed with a rigid, plasticky smooth membrane. It has not particular taste.
- Stick a lot of mushy watery stuff to the membrane and go outwards.
- At some point, there’s a twig starting to form and goes outward
- Shape the mush
- Cover it with another membrane that’s now, a little less rigid and feels different.
Colour? What colour?
That’s extra charge.Make a ring in your mind, have it spin about one of its axis.
Make another ring inside the first, have it spin on a different axis than the first.
Make a third ring, put it inside the first two, have it spin on a different axis than the second.
That is as far as I can go, it’s hard, but I can make it look right if I concentrate, and it has to be in one particular orientation. I absolutely can not get a 4th ring into the mix, the details get fuzzy and I can’t get it to move right. How far can you go?
I tried visualising 4 dimensions once or twice, but it doesn’t really work out for me.
So I have no way to get that 4th axis for the 4th ring.It’s extremely easy upto the 2 rings and I am also able to change the axes while moving them.
The moment I add a 3rd ring, the difficulty seems to abruptly increase, making me take quite a while to imagine it and even the slightest diversion, making me forget the simulation.
I just realised that in your explanation, you didn’t explicitly require orthogonal axes. Now it makes more sense to try the 4th ring. Perhaps I will try doing that when I am about to sleep, after doing the 3 rings for a while and see if I am able to do so.
There is a way to cheat yourself out of this, by first making the animation and watching it on a screen and then internalising it. I will keep that for later, after knowing how well I can do without it.
I also feel the need to say that while in my above description, I am able to do something similar to visualisation, that doesn’t really help me in drawing stuff. Even when I try using a 3D CAD program, that way of visualisation ends up making it harder for me to make it. Instead, I need to force myself to reduce the extra information of touch and feel and taste, to make it easier for me to model it and it takes further effort to make a 2D projection.
One time I had a dream about the ascii game I played. I dreamed it both IN TEXT, and my brain produced images of the people, places, and things at the same time as I usually imagined them.
1 or two and rotatable.
this is just language semantics. you’re not special
Either that or aphantasia, a well documented phenomena, is a thing.
People aren’t good at describing their own thoughts.
Riiight, but like, I can make some shit up about a fancy ass apple “The surface is mostly red, mottled with large swaths of not yet ripe green and yellow patches. It’s waxed, shiny skin reflects rays of a nearby lightsource behind me. There’s a slight bumpiness to it, almost like goosebumps, but not as pronounced, with darker spots at the apex of each peak. My mouth is watering.”
Meanwhile, if I try to picture an apple I actually don’t see shit because I have aphantasia, so…
Not everyone is like you.
i definitely believe you
I have severe 5 aphantasia. It was such a relief when a name was put to it.
Hahaha same! I started asking every person I know about it because I was so curious. Like, that can’t be real, you can’t see stuff. But everyone I know seems to have some level of actual visualization except me. And I am an okay artist, just need references and a lot of trial & error when drawing.
Solid 5 here. And I love to read. I love the smell of books, I love the feeling in my hands and I love the stories of course. I don’t have an image of an character in my head, I don’t have an image if the landscape, but I still enjoy it.
being a 1 with ADHD is crazy, like I can be in the middle of a class and zone out and start visualising myself walking around the campus in incredible detail, or FPV droning inside a friend’s house, or really anything I can think of, although that said it takes a fair bit of effort to keep it going beyond a certain amount of time.
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Dude it’s a constant battle to not get lost in thoughts. The real world is boring af 90% of the time. I’ve sat for hours quietly immersed in the imaginings. It’s also fantastic for extrapolating and working through ideas though. Sights, sounds, tactile sensations, movement, it isn’t vivid like reality but it has such depth.
And don’t get me started on the times you imagine yourself doing a task and then completely believing you actually did it until someone gets mad at you for it, it’s funny but also kinda ass
Haha 😅
Do you guys sometimes also get the weird feeling of: “this is my body, this is planet earth, this is my flat and I live here.” Sometimes that happens. And when that happens, I usually think about things like how the universe came to be the big bang, the laws of physics fighting each other until settling on a seady state. Then the Earth is created, millions of years of evolution go by and here you are, sitting on the toilet. The entire chain of thought only lasts for about five seconds and then you’re again stuck with the feeling of “I am back here on planet Earth”. Do you guys also get that sometimes?
Yes, though it’s when I start thinking about my layman’s understanding of quantum mechanics or other small science, then I look around and think, “How the hell? What is this and why am I in it.”
That’s what happens when you get character switched to.
No
Kinda? I usually drift about how the hell we even reached our current situation from the beginning of the universe; how, despite being a huge collection of cells and bacteria, we understand ourselves as a single unit
