SamdellCan you rotate an apple in your head? (by Shen)
limelight79A friend of mine has that condition where she can’t visualize things. I wonder how she would like this comic. My guess is she’d crack a joke about it being a good thing she can’t do this.
FlaxIsn’t that aphantasia
I had a friend and constantly joked “picture this”
Yeah: [email protected]
Aphantasia 💭 - Lemmy.World
> Aphantasia is the inability to create mental imagery. For discussion, research or memes. Rules: - Be kind, even if you disagree. - This is not a place for spreading hate. - No spam. - No NSFW. - No trolling or low-effort content. - No racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, or ageism. — ::: spoiler reason behind community icon — The community icon is a reference to this popular test for one’s level of visualization vividness: [https://www.labusas.org/data/attachments/13/13474-e5abc0c84f3b5247004c40098219c74e.jpg] — ::: — You may also like: - [email protected] [https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]]
Having a hard time imagining what things looked for these folks before communities were formed.
They largely just didn’t know
The internet made having Exploding Head Syndrome much easier
I think people with aphantasia would also have a hard time imagining what life would have looked like for them as well
picture this
I’m a bag of dicks
put me to your lips
I’m a bag of dicks
put me to your lips
don[shrugs and puts you to my lips] [open eyes, peek inside]
Hey, you tricked me! You said you were a bag of dicks, and all I see are inch-long pencil-sized erasers!
DJ Shadow - Nobody Speak feat. Run The Jewels (Official Video)
Download/Stream "Nobody Speak" feat. Run The Jewels at https://DJShadow.lnk.to/TMWFNSPre-Order DJ Shadow's New Album - Our Pathetic Age - http://smarturl.it/...
I’ve got aphantasia and honestly the comic kinda reminds me of how I feel ‘left out’ but I also spent most of my life trying to draw and only found out about the term a few years ago making me realize I spent so much time following a dead end. that’s just a me thing tho
I should preface this by saying that this is just my opinion and that I may be completely wrong.
I’m convinced that for 99% of people thinking they have aphantasia, it’s just a miscommunication about what it means to “see” something in your mind. When people picture something in their mind, they can’t literally see it in the way that they would see something with their eyes. Seeing something in your mind is just having an understanding of what it would look like.
People will say that they can “see” whatever you’re asking them to “picture” but they only ever hold an understanding of what the thing would look like. This understanding can be elaborate but there is not actually an experience that could be perhaps better described as a visual hallucination.
If you visualize a cube in your mind, you don’t actually see it. You just understand where all the lines, faces, and vertices would be. If you rotate it in your mind, you understand how those angles and the appearance would change at each moment as it rotates. You can even superimpose where these lines would go onto something you’re looking at, but still you don’t actually see it there, you just understand how you would perceive it, where the edges would go, what it would obstruct.
The reason that I’m convinced that people only hold concepts and visual understanding in their minds and not actual images is that most people are pretty bad at drawing. When people do start drawing, they create a representation of the sparse landmarks that actually made up their visual idea and then they have to start filling in the details using reasoning and logic. Artists and people who practice drawing get better at this, are more attentive to detail and learn techniques to make more convincing images. If people actually saw complete images in their minds, they’d be far easier to recreate and I think everyone would be more artistically inclined.
blaue_FledermausIt's not as clear as real vision, but if I close my eyes I can really "see" a visual image of the thing I'm thinking of.
Really like a "visual hallucination" as you said, but it clearly exists in, how can I say? "Another space"?
It doesn't automatically translate to the muscle movements required to draw it.
Interesting. Maybe if there’s a spectrum of ability for visualizing things, I’m just closer to aphantasia than I am to vivid mental images which rival visual perception.
I think that’s the case. It’s definitely a spectrum.
Yes it is. People on the opposite spectrum of Aphantasia have what is called hyperphantasia.
Mine certainly don't rival visual perception, unless I'm focusing on a detail they are mostly blurry, and as I said it works better with my eyes closed.
I suspect that for schizophrenics the images are so vivid they break out of the "imagination box", or are vivid because the "barrier" is broken.
LumidaubIf people actually saw complete images in their minds, they’d be far easier to recreate and I think everyone would be more artistically inclined.
People can’t even draw stuff that is sitting in front of them, in real life, unless they’ve practiced. There’s a lot more involved in drawing than just knowing what something looks like.
Not being flippant here: If you can actually see it, why not just see it on the paper and essentially trace what you see?
I can’t speak for others, but it’s not overlaid like that. It’s like a separate visual part of my brain.
Because that’s not how drawing works.
I understand that drawing doesn’t work that way. What I’m suggesting is that drawing doesn’t work that way because visualizing something in your mind is so far removed from actually seeing it.
For example, you could imagine that you want to paint a lake with mountains. You can get an idea of how you’ll compose the image, what the colors are, how the strokes might make textures on the canvas, all the details. It’s more than just knowing the facts of each object, color, line. It’s an understanding of how it will look visually and you “picturre it” but it’s nowhere close to the sensory experience of actually looking at the finished painting.
This is my experience, at least.
I have aphantasia. I definitely cannot rotate a cube in my mind. I can with great effort and concentration kind of do what you describe, follow where individual edges and vertices would be in space relative to each other, but normally it would just be the idea in my head “there’s a cube and it’s rotating”.
My go to test for aphantasia goes like this:
- Imagine a circle
- OK
- What color is it?
People always answer with color and many times with more a detailed visual description, like texture, material, the surrounding scene, etc. I personally would very stumped by that question because when asked to imagine a circle, I just imagine the concept of a circle. It has no color, no texture, no substance.
talwhen asked to imagine a circle, I just imagine the concept of a circle. It has no color, no texture, no substance.
Huh.
Is the association with the word circle? Like, what does the concept of a circle involve?
The infinite sharpness of its edge, the rigid but smooth change of direction as you move along it. The feeling you get when you see a circle. The concept of rolling.
For me, “imagine a circle” is kind of a meaningless instruction until you follow it up with something
Very insightful! No pun intended.
when asked to imagine a circle, I just imagine the concept of a circle. It has no color, no texture, no substance.
I mean, I don’t have aphantasia, and if you ask me to imagine a circle, with no other details, I won’t get most of that either right away. If anything I guess I’d tend to “see” it as a black outline, i guess because that’s how it appears commonly in math problem figures. But I certainly wouldn’t make up a texture or material for it if it wasn’t mentioned.
Now if you’re talking about a green and red tartan circle that smells like rotten cheese, yeah sure, I can summon that.
samus12345Yeah, a circle by itself isn’t an object that actually exists in real space, but a geometric concept, so I don’t imagine more than black lines if not given any other information. Same with a square, triangle, etc.
Ok, I’ll add my personal experience here. When I imagine something, like an apple, my perception of the imagined object ranges from a rather blurry apple to a very detailed apple, but anyway I do peceive it very visually. It’s definitely not just understanding in my case. I perceive the color, the shape, movements if need be, everything. When I do this, the normal perception coming from my eyes kind of shuts down and I only concentrate on “seeing” the thing I imagine, but if I focus I can also imagine something being somewhere in a real lication I see with my eyes, so then it feels a bit like AR. I’ve read somewhere that the same centers in the brain are active when you imagine something and when you see it, so you could say it’s a kind of deliberate visual hallucination. I can also do this with music - I can play it in my head and enjoy hearing it.
Sounds like somoene with aphantasia would say.
But jokes aside, it’s most likely a significan difference since people with aphantasia would lack the physical reaction to inner images.
For example, when a normal person is asked to imagine a bright light source, a slight dilation of pupil can be noticed. Kinda shocking to find out that tbh.
The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength
The pupillary light response is an important automatic physiological response which optimizes light reaching the retina. Recent work has shown that the pupil also adjusts in response to illusory brightness and a range of cognitive functions, ...
Match!!Oh, no, that’s not a dead end! Holding mental focus is a skill you develop and you can practice it, and doing exercises specifically for that will help you learn to draw
ORbituaryI developed aphantasia. I used to be able to visualize things and now cannot… EXCEPT for in the first 20-30 minutes after waking up. It is quite disturbing since I only recently realized this, but can’t actually tell when the last time I was able to picture or conjure things in my mind visually.
What’s crazy is that I have no problem conceptualizing the apple. I am highly capable of imagining it. Not only that, I am a DM for a D&D game that’s been going on for nearly a decade - so it has no bearing my creativity. Also, I am an artist and can draw and paint both realistic images as well as stylized or abstract things without problem.
I wish I could see images again. I do like being able to do so after waking up. Perhaps that’s how I can exercise the skill and try to extend it.
I can’t really imagine the combinations you described.
If someone described a sunset or other vivid cliché, ut would spark what in your inner eye?
I have something similar. I have to push, extremely hard, mentally. Even then the resultant visualization is weak and fuzzy.
In my mind, the concept and the image are decoupled. I have the concept of an apple. A viewed apple can be matched to it for comparisons. That concept includes all variants. Red, green, yellow, small, large, bpy or smooth. It also doesn’t have a view direction built in.
It’s a bit like how you can still recognise a cat, when seen from below. You might never have seen it like that, but your model of “catness” includes it. You can mentally render it and compare. My brain just drops the rendering stage as useless fluff.
Sorta sounds like your job / routine is making you stressed and unable to focus
This might be it.
How do you even know you can visualise things? Like, I think I can imagine an apple rotating, but it’s not like you actually see it the way you’d see an actual apple in front of your eyes, right?
No, but you should be able to imagine the relative change in the angles and orientation of points on the apple - like, if you carved your name on it, you could imagine rotating it so only part of your name is visible and the remaining letters start to skew
Aphantasia is a spectrum, but even when you visualise a full realistic scene it should be easy for most people to tell the difference between that and seeing something physically. When you can’t tell the difference that’s a hallucination.
It’s only total aphantasia if you can’t visualise an image in your mind at all. I believe then you’d get more a concept of an apple than an image or other depiction of an apple but that’s only my understanding from hearing other people talking about it.
Like, I think I can imagine an apple rotating, but it’s not like you actually see it the way you’d see an actual apple in front of your eyes, right?
That highly depends on your specific definition of that. But personally I can do things like think of a place I’ve been, and basically walk around like I’m controlling a video game character. “Seeing” the place as if I was there.
That sounds neat. I definitely don’t have that.
potoooooooo ✅️Maybe you can toggle it on if you mess with some of the menu settings?
SmeeSame. I also like to study floorplans of places and “walk around”, exploring it in my mind.
Dizzy Devil DuckyMy first attempt at rotating an apple in my head after reading this had the apple moving in 4 steps to do a full circle. Now the apple is spinning at a high speed after some more thinking.
OwlThis comics always freaks me out
Something about those characters is so uncanny
apples are uniquely hard to rotate in your head because apples are bland and uninteresting and nobody’s favorite fruit. try rotating a cow instead. it’s free and the cops can’t stop you
You lied to me! I started rotating cows but the cops still arrested me for tax evasion
'90s Internet rotating cow GIF now playing in my head.
Me: Hmmmm.
everybody loves, magical trevor
Ricky RigatoniWhat the fuck did apples do to you to deserve such a scathing review. Are you a doctor?
Teacher
Is your specialty oranges?
I don’t know how a cow looks like directly from the front though. How would you even imagine that??
How would you even imagine that??
I would imagine a cow, directly from the front. Or maybe starting with the side on, then slowly rotating so it’s facing my minds eye.
Oh dear, it looks angry!
Cows hate feeling dizzy!
cally [he/they]A cow is too complicated, I would rather rotate a banana. I’m actually doing that right now, just rotating a banana in my head.
And there’s nothing we can do to stop you!
Same as the comic, you got to utilize the stem and the leaf, or maybe give it a worm or something
Vanilla_PuddinFudgeI have a friend at work who openly confessed to not being able to mentally create images when discussing why he wasn’t into reading books.
I was like “Wow, I can’t really imagine your reality for myself, that sounds strange.”
he said, “Now you’re getting it, as I can’t imagine it, either.”