a bit of sidetrack, but i think interesting; there are some people with aphantasia (which is lack of mental imagery), and they seem to be doing fine (Craig Venter is one of those people). On this distinction, what exactly is abstract shape? I can imagine cube quite easily, but tesseract is a lot harder. Would it be helpful not to have this visual preconceptions in the mind?

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