Comment by 0xADEADBEE | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xADEADBEE | Hacker News Reader

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I hate to muddy the waters here but for years thought I had face-blindness before realising that I have Aphantasia.

You're exactly right: I know what a Sphere looks like but I am missing the bit that the rest of the world seems to have where they can conjure up an image of it. Even less abstract objects like a desk or Angela Merkel's face, I am quite unable to picture.

To answer your question, if I ask you to picture a barn in a field, you presumably have no difficulty in doing so. You've probably even made assumptions about things like the colour of the barn, the weather or surrounding terrain and have a sort of portrait with a barn at the centre, but I can't do that. I am having difficulty describing what I get but it's nothing close to anything like that. I know my barn is made of wood and I know it's in a field but that's about as far as I can get.

I'm happy that this is getting discussion because obviously it's quite strange to find out that a) you're not wired the same way as the majority of the world and b) that your self-diagnosis isn't a medically recognised condition. I'm excited to see what research comes out over the next few years.

Many people, in my experience, exaggerate the ability of the mind’s eye. Ask them to picture Bugs Bunny and they’ll say they can see him perfectly, give them a pencil and ask them to draw the shape of his mouth and they’ll flounder, because they were never really seeing that sort of detail. What they were “seeing” was more like the memory of a symbol.

I hadn't considered that possibility so this is helpful; thank you. I might run a few experiments around the office later!

I think people's ability to imagine scenes, and then render them, are two very, very, very different skill sets. In fact, have somebody render the scene right before your very eyes, or even try to render bugs bunny from the image they see right in front of them.

I can imagine enormous paintings from the Prado in my head, but could I render them? No, and I have decent artistic ability (not great, but I could probably do a decent bugs bunny).

I’m not asking them to copy it exactly. I just want them to put everything where it should be.

A better example is probably a bicycle. Everyone knows what a bicycle looks like. Ask someone with a great “mind’s eye” to draw one with all the parts in the right place. I haven’t tested it, but my guess is that they’d struggle.

You're in for a treat! Here's a curated collection of bicycle drawings, complete with full renderings of some of the most interesting designs.

http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html

What I find interesting about those (I've seen something very similar before, maybe even that set) is that people don't bother to be informed by the obvious inability of the device they drew to function.

I think there are two separate skills: the ability to remember the visual symbols and the ability to draw them. Even if you can remember the symbols in great detail, you still might not be able to draw them if you haven't acquired drawing skills. However, anyone with deep visual recollection should be able to notice when something has changed. For example, they should be able to notice if Bugs Bunny's tail changes from upward-pointing to backward-pointing without looking again at the original.

> isn't a medically recognised condition.

Personally I wouldn't describe it as a medical condition, it has no adverse effects at all, and I wouldn't want to "cure" it. Whats wrong with having a spectrum from no imagery to vivid imagery and accepting that mentally healthy people can be anywhere on that spectrum? This tendency to classify any variation between people as normal or abnormal is completely unnecessary in this case.

PS not meant as a personal attack at all :)

You've inherently assumed that a medical condition must be bad. It is, literally, a deviation from the normal human condition which is brought about by a medical abnormality. To identify it does not require fixing it. But to understand it, to study it, you must be able to classify it.

I think this is a great point also. Something like Synesthesia is similar in not typically having adverse effects and it's helpful to have a taxonomy.

I agree I think. And not at all - I think I could have chosen my words more carefully there!

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