Re:Ask HN: Can you picture things in your mind?
by trompetenaccoun on Sunday August 01, 2021 @01:27AM
(#28024001)
How many of your friends are the same way? According to studies the prevalence of aphantasia is in the range of 1-5% of the general population. Yet whenever I see the topic discussed on social media it seems to be a lot more common, more in the 10-15% range from what I've seen. Already the two only replies so far are both by people without the ability to visualize.
I'm really curious how common it actually is, because that's quite the discrepancy.
Re:Ask HN: Can you picture things in your mind?
by dead-snake on Sunday August 01, 2021 @01:39AM
(#28024058)
I think my friends can see pictures in their minds. Maybe the discrepancy is due to ambiguity about what is meant by "visualize". I can think... something is clearly happening, but it just doesn't seem to be happening via pictures. I often feel as if I get some information, and then just send an intention for a problem to be solved, and then later the answer comes back, but I'm not aware of the process by which the answer was found.
Even things that are highly visual, like Chinese characters that I can write from memory, I don't copy them from mental pictures.
On the other hand, when I listen to music, I easily pick apart all the different elements and know their textures, kind of like flying and knowing what the terrain is via radar. It's still not visual, it's just knowing.