Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

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I have aphantasia, but I still say I "imagine" things (in the visual sense; I find it funny that this notion of visualising things in our mind is so ingrained that "imagine" has broadened to refer to the other senses) because I still clearly recall or imagine imagery in a way that means I can mentally operate on them.

E.g. I can draw things I imagine, or describe them, or "mentally navigate" spaces I remember with ease.

I also see images in my dreams, which seems to be pretty normal for people with aphantasia, so clearly a lot of us are not unable to see things in our mind, but something is - usually - preventing it from happening while we're away. Usually rather than always because some people see brief flashes, and I sometimes think I might but I'm not sure (it's surprisingly hard to determine). I've also had exactly one experience that seems to have been in a waking state where I saw clear imagery. I say seems, because while I don't think I fell asleep, I was meditating, and while I was aware and able to manipulate the imagery, it's possible it was lucid dreaming, but it was noticeable in particular because the imagery was far clearer than when I dream.

You said you have aphantasia, then you listed a number of ways in which you can mentally process images, so I couldn't really understand what you were missing. Then I went and did the aphantasia test, and apparently I have hypophantasia, so I guess that explains it.

I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme?

> You said you have aphantasia, then you listed a number of ways in which you can mentally process images, so I couldn't really understand what you were missing. Then I went and did the aphantasia test, and apparently I have hypophantasia, so I guess that explains it.

This is similar to how I found out - I assumed what I experienced was what people meant when they talked about visualizing things, and it took a long time before I realised that a lot of them meant it very literally when they said they could "see" things.

> I wonder if there's a link between engineering skills and aphantasia, given the prevalence of the "programmer art" meme?

Ed Catmull, ex-president of Pixar, has aphantasia, and he found that artists at Pixar where not all that more likely to be able to visualize well [1], so the "programmer art" bit is far more likely to be down to practice and interest (on average, at least). I think it's more likely that the better you are in a field, the less time you're likely to have to devote to getting good in another field. Of course there are always exceptions.

But his sample was hardly representative, and so it's hard to tell whether it makes a difference. Maybe it does, and people who work at Pixar, including non-art staff are just more likely to be sufficiently interested in art to overcome extra difficulties.

That said, for my part I was decent at art when I was younger, but my drawing style was different when "imagining" things than when drawing something I had in front of me. But I also suspect I'd commit "programmer art" if I tried again now, at least without a lot of practice.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256

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