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0 pointsALittleLight4y ago0 comments

"I have this magical ability. I can generate the feeling of warmth whenever I want."

"Oh neat, you can mentally generate warmth and we can measure with a thermometer!"

"No, no. It's mental warmth only."

"Okay, so you never get cold?"

"Well, no, true cold overwhelms my mental warmth, I get cold as easily as anyone else."

"But, you could make yourself sweat on demand, right?"

"No, sweating is a response to actual warmth..."

That's what it's like in this thread. People claim to have an ability that produces no actual difference. Elsewhere in this thread we see that mental imagery folks aren't better at shape rotation (they're worse), they can't draw from their images the way the could from real images, their mental imagery is vague, low resolution, and imprecise.

A blind person easily discovers the sighted can do things they cannot. Read text, spot distant objects, etc. A person with aphantasia discovers there is nothing the visualizer can do that they cannot. How could this be so?

I think you're just confused about which of us the blind one is.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

Kiro4y ago· 1 in thread

The point is not that it's superior to your experience. The point is that you saying "you can't do it either" is so obviously false. We know what we experience. Someone telling me I can't see images in my head is like someone telling me I'm blind.

With that said, I actually can't phantom how I would function without mental imagery. How do you recognize things? How do memories play out in your head? How do you even know where to put "two wheels, pedals and handlebars" in your drawing if you can't visualize it? It feels like I would be completely handicapped and not far from being blind for real or having amnesia. However, I presume you're a functioning individual so I guess I'm equally surprised but from the other end.

spacedcowboy4y ago

I don’t think either is superior, but I do think they have different advantages. Here’s my take on my lack of a mind’s eye, from above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29370518

Recognition via rules and properties works just as well as visual recognition. What you and I essentially have are two different algebras for the same underlying knowledge. The towers we build on top of those foundations will be fairly similar, even if the coding is different at the lowest levels.

alpha_squared4y ago

You're looking for concrete proof of something that happens in people's minds, but you go about it by evidence of how well they transpose that into other things (like drawing). I think brain scans could be that proof, but I suspect your disbelief may not be satisfied.

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