I always wondered this during meditation in high school: Do people actually see things when they close their eyes? The whole “you are at a beach, there is a gentle breeze...” never did anything for me. I can remember colors, relative positions, even how a specific place looked overall fairly well, but I don’t see anything.

You likely have Aphantasia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

As for your question, yes! I don't need to actually close my eyes, I can think about certain things and see a vivid image of it deep inside of my mind.

If you need something to compare it to, can you actually hear music in your "mind" when you think about a song? It's kinda like that.

Anectotally, aphantasia seems highly correlated with reading HN (or probably programmers in general). HN threads about aphantasia-related topics always have lots of people with aphantasia, while these people make up a much smaller proportion in for example reddit threads about the same topic.

Just piling on to say that I learned that I have aphantasia from a HN thread about it a few years ago. I don't think it discriminates but it has been stated that many creative people (artists, animators, etc...) also have aphantasia. It could be that the HN population just has a lot of creative types, which does jive with the overall theme of this place.

I would not go as far. Self selecting bias is probably the reason. People without aphantasia just don't comment in these threads.

However we can say HN is the site where people with aphantasia feel safe when describing what they experience.

I wish we had a better way of conveying what goes on in our heads.

I have dreams and I can visualize things, but it's never like I'm "watching" a dream or memory. While I'm dreaming it feels real, but when I recall a dream it feels visually distinct from a lived experience. It's like I "see" things but my eyes aren't doing the seeing. Is that what others experience, or are dreams visually identical to the real world?

To me dreams are visually alike the real world. Sometimes I struggle to remember if a particular memory happened in dream or real life (provided nothing too wacky happened).

There are individual differences in autobiographical memory [1]. I don't have any memories like this either.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29807853/

Yes, I mean I can certainly vaguely visualize past moments in some 50/50 abstract/visual form I guess, but movie like... I'm unsure what they mean to be honest... and I'm sure that would be hard to explain as well. I guess I can see these "movies" mentally in the same way as how I vaguely remember the sequence of events in a recent dream. Unsure if I'd call that a movie though. Sounds like a pretty crappy one at that!

I don’t think so. If you don’t have any memories that are visual at all, you probably just have aphantasia.

I was under the impression that aphantasia had to do with a general lack of visualizing ability / visual imagination.

Aphantasia and SDAM (Severely deficient autobiographical memory) often go hand in hand.

you ever had a dream?

I have aphantasia and I do not recall my dreams. Never have. I tried various dream recall techniques over the years. Nothing worked.

someone waking you up during rem should do it right? or about 4 days after quitting weed. those ones get real powerful and lucid.