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Comment by galangalalgol | Hacker News Reader

I think that means that you have aphantasia? I just asked my wife if she can see the apple and she can, no doubts, she pointed to it and asked what I meant, of course she could see it, she was imagining it and that is what imagining means. I feel like I'm missing out now, I kind of wish I hadn't read the story now.

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If it means being able to hallucinate on command, i.e. superimpose the apple in your view as if you were wearing AR glasses, indistinguishable from a real apple apart from your knowledge that it's fake -- then that's a much sharper test and I can confidently say I can't do that. I'd be very surprised if anyone told me they could do that. If it's more of a separate mental plane rather than really seeing it, that's where I think it gets tricky to agree we're describing the same thing.

People can absolutely do that. I'm very close to that myself. I can "see" through walls, for example. If I'm familiar with a room I can describe to you what it would look like from the angle I'm looking at, with the wall deleted.

Do you find drawing easy then, since you could trace around a visualization? That seems like it could be a useful test. I would expect those without aphantasia to be better at contour drawings (e.g. cartoon characters) if it really feels superimposed on normal vision.

I can not see a thing with my minds eye most times (it has happened once) but I can easily sketch out the rooms in my house from a specific vantage point.

All the information is there, not just a visual, so I don't think it'd be a viable test at all.

I think it should work in the other direction though. You might draw well even without mental pictures, but if someone has AR-glasses-style superimposed images but can't trace them on paper, that would seem strange to me.

The limiting factor is the sketching skill, I'm afraid!

No, what you are stating is not what he asked.

> indistinguishable from a real apple

This is like saying what you perceive in your head through the wall is exactly as real, vibrant and tangible as if that wall was actually replaced by a window. Most everybody can describe, or "picture," a familiar room in their head - even from long ago like walking through the house you grew up in - but it is not the same as saying it is indistinguishable from actually being in the room and your eyeballs actually looking at it.

at least in my mind, it feels like there are two different systems for "imagine something" and "see it from this angle". Imagining something sets it into a sort of virtual space, and seeing it from this angle overlays reality with it. It's not a fully realized tangible experience but it's a lot closer than people with less vivid visualization think it is.

My point is not "I can do this", but rather, "I'm close to that, and it's foolish to think the continuum ends where I am."

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