Hacker News Reader

Comment by konschubert | Hacker News Reader

I find it funny how I can "see" a map of the world in front of me when I imagine it, but I totally cannot draw it.

Clearly, much less information is stored than the whole image... yet my mind DALL-E style fills in the gaps and "sees" a map.

View on HN

Already plugged this book elsewhere in the thread, you might be interested in "The Mind is Flat". One chapter of the book explores the concept you're describing. Our brain creates the illusion of a "full picture" when often our imagination and internal representation is quite sparse. I think that's one of the key impressive qualities of our brains and general intelligence. We only do the minimum necessary imagination and computation. As we explore a particular concept or scene, our brains augment the scene with more details. In other words, our mind is making it up as we go along.

A thousand brains is another really interesting book I read recently.

Keep drawing until what is on paper equals what is in your imagination. Seriously, try it.

Can you expand on this? Can you give an example of a kind of image it might work well with? I’ve always assumed the apparent detail of mental images was a kind of illusion, a bit like the illusion of detail outside the centre of the visual field.

Well, only you can find out. About yourself. It's also up to you how much time you're willing to sink into this

I found out the separation when I can read Chinese perfectly fine but can't write it. When I'm writing, or trying to write it, I employ the technique you described. Though more often than not, I'd have tiny parts missing here and there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com