Chris Hallbeck
ᵲηsηʀᶏ@Chrishallbeck and an earworm?
The FrogI bloody hope this one is really a figure of speech!!!
Alexander The 1st@Lily_and_frog @resera @Chrishallbeck I presume you're thinking it's a figure of speech in the sense of it being about a song you can hear in your head without needing to actually hear it in the physical world. Well, that's real to me.
And not in the Animorphs sense, because that is in fact not...well, sometimes there are spiders in real life in ears. So earworms *could* be a thing, but...not a common occurrence.
Machine Lord Zero@Chrishallbeck ...hhhuh, I was recently posting about this thing.
WGAvanDijk@Chrishallbeck
Number 5 for me. All my life I thought all people were like that. This cartoon is about me.
Including the voice in my head, I don't have one.
Smell, music, feelings. Nope. Aphantasia for me, to the max. Sometimes it drives my wife crazy (oh, and it drives me crazy too).
Number 5 for me. All my life I thought all people were like that. This cartoon is about me.
Including the voice in my head, I don't have one.
Smell, music, feelings. Nope. Aphantasia for me, to the max. Sometimes it drives my wife crazy (oh, and it drives me crazy too).
justpeachy@WGAvanDijk @Chrishallbeck I’m sorry if this is a dumb question. I’m not trying to be insensitive or rude. If I am, just say so & I’ll delete this. How do you think about stuff without the voice? I have to use the voice to decide what I’m going to type. What is your mind like when you’re thinking about what to write back?
@justpeachy @Chrishallbeck
Not a dumb question, I have the same, and I only started thinking about it when I realised I have aphantasia and what it means to have aphantasia.
I hear my own voice. But it's not my voice, because it "sounds" different. I read somewhere that it is called "milk voice", a mirky opaque solution. And it's not really a voice.
Nick@WGAvanDijk @Chrishallbeck
Question out of interest:
How do you process logical thoughts like math for example?
Question out of interest:
How do you process logical thoughts like math for example?
@freestyle @Chrishallbeck
By thinking. I don't need images to calculate the square root of 780.
I am not sure how people with a mind's eye would do it, do they see the number 780 and a square root sign and a calculator that actually does the calculating work for them?
@WGAvanDijk @Chrishallbeck would be cool but no.
I meant more as in carrying numbers over or when building more complex equations where it helps me too see the numbers i would need to write down.
@freestyle @Chrishallbeck
I just have to remember the numbers as good as I can while doing the computations. Because I don't "see" the numbers in my head.
I just have to remember the numbers as good as I can while doing the computations. Because I don't "see" the numbers in my head.
Josh@Chrishallbeck The final face in the last panel is wrong though, its friggin fascinating how differently people work and experience the world! :D
Illiath The Fae@Chrishallbeck Ah... Aphantasia... how I loathe thee...
And yeah... this makes me feel seen...
... PUN INTENDED *stands behind the pun challenging anyone to attack it*
Tony WellsI have met someone who could not do images or inner voice. Other than that they seemed ok, even though I thought they may have been an android or alien.
J. R. DePriest 
:EA DATA. SF:@Chrishallbeck
It's pretty cool that humans with such a wide range of ways to experience reality can communicate and get along as well as we do.
It's pretty cool that humans with such a wide range of ways to experience reality can communicate and get along as well as we do.
syn@Chrishallbeck feeling bad for all the people who can't rotate a cow in their mind rn
Lisa Hamilton@syn @Chrishallbeck I didn't realize that was one of my skills til right now! Thanks :-)
Coyoty@syn @Chrishallbeck Some of us had virtual reality before it could be simulated with computers.
TJ Radcliffe@syn @Chrishallbeck Yeah, they have to use VTK to do it! https://examples.vtk.org/site/Cxx/Rendering/WalkCow/
artisanroxI wonder if aphantastic people are more prone to be extraverted? And likewise introverted people can do the picture-thing?
the Hearth 
@Chrishallbeck wait the voice thing is real too?
-F
-F
@Chrishallbeck The ancient Greeks did complex geometry in their minds all the time. Nick Tesla reportedly could visualize his working inventions before putting them to paper, like Tony Stark but without a Jarvis.
Sibshops@Chrishallbeck has anyone developed a test for this? I feel like everyone sees the same but just describes the experience differently.
@Sibshops Yeah, the test is shown in panel one.
Ugh (“ugh”)@Sibshops @Chrishallbeck This debate does frequently have a bit of this feel to it:
Robbie@Chrishallbeck Nothing but static in my eyelids.
Gomijacogeo@Chrishallbeck The best way I can describe it for me is, ya know when you look at something and then look away, the visual stimulus is gone, but there's a certain 'freshness' to the memory of what you were just looking at? The best I can do is to get back some of that sense of freshness as if I've just glanced at something and then turned away - some parts of my brain are definitely going "yes, yes, we know what it looks like" but the more visual/conscious bits are going "sorry, we got nothing".
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.@Chrishallbeck I'm not sure if what I have is aphastasia or not. But the visual part of my imagination doesn't overlap with my visual field, ever. But, I can "see" realistic things, just not "on the table" or "in the circle".
The voice in my head when I'm talking to myself or "reciting" something does have a "sound", but it doesn't sound like any voice (mine or others) coming from headphones, or my own including bone conduction.
Evannakita@Chrishallbeck Wait, imagining an apple isn’t supposed to take effort? For me I have to think for a while to try to remember exactly what an apple is shaped like. The only vivid sensation I can easily imagine with an apple is what it feels like to hold one. For visuals, it’s like I’m remembering looking at one.
Is this not normal? Can most people literally *see* an apple when they close their eyes? This is so confusing and I can’t figure out if I can form mental images or not.
fritzoids@evannakita @Chrishallbeck , I saw a TikTok that likened it to the degrees that people can be visually impaired. So some people have 20/20 vision, some people need glasses, some people can see movement and distinguish between light and dark, and some people see nothing at all. So some people can visualize better than others and some cannot visualize inside their head at all.
For me it is more like I have an internal catalog of images. Some are photos others clip art.
For me it is more like I have an internal catalog of images. Some are photos others clip art.
@fritzoids @Chrishallbeck Huh, and does that mean with those “photos” you can tell people details in them as easily as you could if you were actually looking at a photo?
@evannakita , yes. But if I want a different angle (so not a cat from the front, but from the side, or from the back) I can't just rotate the object. I have to "choose" a different photo.
@fritzoids Holy heck, that must be so useful. Thank you for sharing this!
@evannakita , I like your tactile imagination. Does it include weight?
@fritzoids Yeah! I can imagine how heavy it is, how cold it is, how smooth the surface feels. I can imagine running my thumb over it and having it feel slightly sticky because of how the surface is sleek but still has friction. I can imagine biting into it and feeling the peel give way to the crisp interior, and feeling the acidity of the sticky juice.
Sight, smell, and sound give me basically nothing. But touch is vivid.
@evannakita , that sounds so satisfying.
Mullana@Chrishallbeck
It's funny that a lot of artists are number 5. (Me too.) Somehow doesn't stop us from drawing.
It's funny that a lot of artists are number 5. (Me too.) Somehow doesn't stop us from drawing.
TheStrawberryOverkill 
@mullana @Chrishallbeck This thread reminded me of a comment from an artist with aphantasia that I saw on Reddit nearly a year ago explaining how they work around it while creating. It's so interesting to me, really hard to wrap my head around, but just goes to show there's always multiple ways to achieve a goal and one is not necessarily better than the other.
Momo@Chrishallbeck
Uuh, hits close to home. When I say I have a song stuck in my head I can for real take a sheet of paper and write down the instrument patterns. My musical training is too bad to recognize and write down the melody notes and accords as well but I can whistle the melody including all detunes and key changes...
@mullana
Uuh, hits close to home. When I say I have a song stuck in my head I can for real take a sheet of paper and write down the instrument patterns. My musical training is too bad to recognize and write down the melody notes and accords as well but I can whistle the melody including all detunes and key changes...
@mullana
Jonathan Hill@Chrishallbeck I can visualise things that I remember quite well. But I cannot visualise things that I’m asked to imagine. I can sort-of visualise imaginary things if I’m not consciously trying to do it, e.g. when reading a book, but they are usually pretty vague. If I actively try to imagine an apple I would get at best a sort of roundish mental flickering.
Jacqui Caren@Chrishallbeck when i was younger, I read pages of a book in seconds. I could take a snapshot of the page and read it later.
If I lost something, I could rewind my day and see where I put it.
A certain medicine damaged this and two things.
1 I had to learn how to memorise stuff - jeez it's hard rebuilding short term memory.
2 I realised not everyone could remember it all or rewind the day.
Until then I thought many others were lazy or slow
Isaac Freeman@Chrishallbeck I’m still not entirely convinced that anyone actually just “sees” or “hears” things in their mind. Like… how then do they make connections between concepts? Don’t they find it distracting when they’re trying to think? Does anything they visualise _mean_ anything to them?
I mean… I can see that people with hyperphantasia operate perfectly well in the world, I just don’t get how it works.
@isaacfreeman You think it’s hard to make connections between concepts when you can do it visually?
@Chrishallbeck Kind of, yeah. It seems like visualising objects would entail keeping track of a lot of extraneous specific detail that would get in the way of understanding the concepts.
The best way I can relate to it is that I see things, reduce them to a network of concepts and store those. Other people tell me they store entire unprocessed images and reduce them to concepts every time they recall them. That seems like a lot of work!
@isaacfreeman I have no idea what “Store entire unprocessed images and reduce them to concepts” means.
@Chrishallbeck We may be reaching diminishing returns for mutual conprehension here, but… when I think of the apple I just ate, I don’t remember details of what it looked like. I remember that it was mostly red, with some green parts, but not the exact pattern.
People who don’t have aphantasia tell me they can literally visualise an apple like they’re seeing it in front of them. So when they remember a particular apple, are they recalling all that unnecessary detail? If so… weird.
People who don’t have aphantasia tell me they can literally visualise an apple like they’re seeing it in front of them. So when they remember a particular apple, are they recalling all that unnecessary detail? If so… weird.
@Chrishallbeck To put it another way, how does one visualise an object without also having a photographic memory? I get these aren’t the same thing, I just find it hard to imagine where one ends and the other begins.
@isaacfreeman It’s the same as when you were originally experiencing the Apple. The memory isn’t any more overwhelming than the real one was. But it’s more useful to me in creating new things that aren’t just playback of a memory. I can climb out onto my roof and put on a jet pack and fly around my neighborhood. I can watch Star Wars with different camera angles. Stuff like that.
RevK 
@Chrishallbeck what is fun is people seeing that comic and totally not getting it because they don’t have an internal monologue. It is weird that there are things people don’t realise are different :-)
wruffian@Chrishallbeck i remember there was a time as a kid when i went and developed the ability to imagine things. somehow. i've had that skill present for a while, but now i'm back to not having the skill of imagining things. i want to develop this skill again.