
What it’s like to be unable to visualize anything - Kdparker
http://www.vox.com/2016/5/19/11683274/aphantasia
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gwern
Original: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-
it-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-
be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504) HN discussion (176 comments with
author comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894)

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tshadwell
I have a really excellent visual imagination. I can imagine myself walking or
driving great distances, and I can imagine all the scenery, the trees, the
colour of the sky. I can put things in the scene, take them out, rotate them.
I don't have any sounds or smells.

I have trouble imagining what a person looks like. Especially hard is their
face. I don't really have any idea what my mother's face looks like except
that she has blonde hair. My dreams don't have people in them, not really.
Sometimes there's the concept of a person, but I can't really see them.

Is there a name for this?

Edit: before this article, I didn't know it was possible to have a condition
like this. I just assumed I was misinterpreting my imagination somehow.

My sister once related a dream to me that involved several people, some,
famous people she hadn't even met. I couldn't recall one that really had
anyone physically present. I remember a terrifying nightmare when I was very
young that my father was in, but really it was just his trousers. I couldn't
see any of him.

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thaw13579
Not a medical practitioner here, but it might be worth looking into
prosopagnosia, or face-blindness. It more generally includes trouble
recognizing faces, but maybe also what you describe. It's sometimes hard to
diagnose too, since there are many non-face signals that are useful in
identifying people, e.g. gait, hair, voice, context, etc.

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jayhuang
Face blindness is really quite frightening. I'm not sure if it includes not
being able to imagine one's face as opposed to not recognizing them in person,
but there's a documentary on face blindness somewhere that show people waking
up everyday unable to recognize their children, husband, etc.

As much as it's frightening for the family members, I can't imagine how much
more so it is for the victim.

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fr0sty
In 1880 Francic Galton did a survey[0] to determine the extent to which
different people were capable of mental imagery and he identified much the
same phenomenon. Some responses to his questionnaire:

_"These questions presuppose assent to some sort of a proposition regarding
the 'mind's eye' and the 'images' which it sees….. This points to some initial
fallacy…… It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection
of a scene as a 'mental image' which I can 'see' with my 'mind's eye'….. I do
not see it… any more than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which
under due pressure he is ready to repeat. The memory possesses it, &c."_

Also related, apparently some people can make it all the way to college
without knowing they have no sense of taste[1]:

_"...I was stopped dead by the question of what a peach smelled like. Good.
That was all I could come up with. I tried to think of other things. Garbage
smelled bad. Perfume smelled good. Popcorn good. Poop bad. But how so? What
was the difference? What were the nuances? In just a few minutes' reflection I
realized that, despite years of believing the contrary, I never had and never
would smell a peach.

All my behavior to that point indicated that I had smell. No one suspected I
didn't. For years I simply hadn't known what it was that was supposed to be
there. I just thought the way it was for me was how it was for everyone. It
took the right stimulus before I finally discovered the gap."

    
    
        [0] http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm
        [1]https://www.quora.com/Is-going-for-a-Ph-D-worth-it-if-Im-extremely-passionate-about-a-field-but-dont-really-want-to-spend-my-20s-poor-toiling-away-in-a-lab-and-living-in-a-city-that-I-dont-particularly-want-to-live-in/answer/Mark-Eichenlaub?srid=slK&share=1

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rconti
I think this confuses me more than clarifying anything. His descriptions make
me think other people are better at this than I am. How do I know I'm
"picturing" a beach when I say I am? I don't see sand and trees and water and
lifeguards unless I specifically stop to think of them. When I think beach, I
suppose I think sand. Then I'll say okay maybe there's some water, and maybe
there's an umbrella, but I'm kind of "seeing" each item individually, if at
all. Or, I see sand and water, then I think of an umbrella so I add that to
the sand, and now I see sand and umbrella, until I remind myself to see sand,
umbrella, and water. I'm not sure I visualize things the way he thinks I'm
suposed to.

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dogma1138
Whelp I might just might discovered something about myself when people ask me
to imagine a beach in close my eyes and hear my self say I'm on a beach, on
occasion when you have one of those flashes that happen due to pressure on
your eyes I might associate a flash to an image.

The darker it is in a room the less likely for me to see any flash or
associate any image with it.

