I know a guy who has aphantasia and is using AI image generation to actually see what he’s thinking about.
He explained that his imagination is more like an itemized list.
Basically the same for me. My imagination is a database. Do you get deja vu often as well? I frequently feel like I’ve been somewhere or seen something before because it ticks the same few boxes in the “database,” since I don’t have any actual visual memory. Usually the more important or significant something is, the more specificity I remember it with, which makes places I drive infrequently or things I rarely see pretty imprecise, leading to overlap.
Intersection ✅
Trees around ✅
Certain brand gas station on X corner ✅
Yep, I know where I am (is 15 miles away from there)! Thankful for navigation apps. I’d get lost constantly without em.
I very rarely get deja vu, I don’t think I’ve experienced it in the last year, when I was younger though in my early 20s I would get it a lot.
I do have great difficulty recognising people who I’ve met once or twice. Unless I go through the effort of noting down their features etc I could talk to someone walk off come back and not be able to point them out unless I hear them talk.
Here’s hoping I’m never a witness to a bank robbery or something haha
How do people imagine stuff? When people say something like “I can imagine X vividly,” I really can’t relate. When asked to imagine things, I can only have split-second snapshots of the things in my mind. My mind’s eye is more like reading a comic.
no thought process is wrong as far as I know. you don’t need to visually imagine things even to be successful in art, I know at least one artist who doesn’t think visually, they still paint beautifully, their process just involves a lot of references and live models when possible. there’s a lot of creative professionals who use just as much visual references as they do.
For ne it just happens, like blinking, no though needed. I picture a red ball and it is there i see it, i can spin it, i can even move tge camera around. Even the empty space between the ball and wall and there.
I have a similar problem. My apple becomes like 30 different recent apple images I have seen. Like I can try to imagine a Red delicious and at some point I lose focus and it might become a granny Smith and then back to like a honey crisp.
I’ll get snapshots that are blurry, like a momentary glimpse at a developing photograph, then it moves to the next portion. I’ll see shades of apple colors, faded to just the shape, a silhouette and only a concept of depth. I’ll imagine the weight, having thrown them so often. But no. There is no apple.
I know a guy who has aphantasia and is using AI image generation to actually see what he’s thinking about. He explained that his imagination is more like an itemized list.
That’s exactly how my imagination is.
I can imagine an apple
It’s red It’s round It has stem and sticker
I can’t see it at all
Basically the same for me. My imagination is a database. Do you get deja vu often as well? I frequently feel like I’ve been somewhere or seen something before because it ticks the same few boxes in the “database,” since I don’t have any actual visual memory. Usually the more important or significant something is, the more specificity I remember it with, which makes places I drive infrequently or things I rarely see pretty imprecise, leading to overlap.
Intersection ✅ Trees around ✅ Certain brand gas station on X corner ✅
Yep, I know where I am (is 15 miles away from there)! Thankful for navigation apps. I’d get lost constantly without em.
I very rarely get deja vu, I don’t think I’ve experienced it in the last year, when I was younger though in my early 20s I would get it a lot.
I do have great difficulty recognising people who I’ve met once or twice. Unless I go through the effort of noting down their features etc I could talk to someone walk off come back and not be able to point them out unless I hear them talk.
Here’s hoping I’m never a witness to a bank robbery or something haha
How do people imagine stuff? When people say something like “I can imagine X vividly,” I really can’t relate. When asked to imagine things, I can only have split-second snapshots of the things in my mind. My mind’s eye is more like reading a comic.
no thought process is wrong as far as I know. you don’t need to visually imagine things even to be successful in art, I know at least one artist who doesn’t think visually, they still paint beautifully, their process just involves a lot of references and live models when possible. there’s a lot of creative professionals who use just as much visual references as they do.
I’m an artist with aphantasia! My process is different, but I’m happy with my results.
For ne it just happens, like blinking, no though needed. I picture a red ball and it is there i see it, i can spin it, i can even move tge camera around. Even the empty space between the ball and wall and there.
You’ve just injected a 3d animated scene into my brain and I like it
I have a similar problem. My apple becomes like 30 different recent apple images I have seen. Like I can try to imagine a Red delicious and at some point I lose focus and it might become a granny Smith and then back to like a honey crisp.
Maybe you could train yourself to imagine longer passages?
I’ll get snapshots that are blurry, like a momentary glimpse at a developing photograph, then it moves to the next portion. I’ll see shades of apple colors, faded to just the shape, a silhouette and only a concept of depth. I’ll imagine the weight, having thrown them so often. But no. There is no apple.
How do you know that’s it’s round and red and has a stem and a sticker if you can’t see it?
Because I’ve seen them before?
It’s no different to if I wrote it down