you can imagine an apple in your head and rotate it for free no one can stop you
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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mfs when parietal cortex
I'm 5 too and I worked out it was different than most people what I was around 6yo when some kid in kindergarten asked me what my mum looked like and I said I didn't know but all the other kids knew what their mum's looked like.
40 odd years later and i still can't picture my mother, wife, kids, friends or work colleagues in my head, I couldn't give you a detailed description but I've trained myself to memorise features but it's more like memorising how to spell a word than an image
I had a girl describe how she remebers things as like the memory playing on a screen in her mind and i realised then that people didnt say they 'see it in their mind' figuratively
Not even playing on a screen. I can close my eyes and visualise apples in a pack at the super market. I can imagine myself tearing the pack open, I can see the apple in level 1 detail of the OP. I can inspect it, it's green with yellowish spotsand imperfections, a black and brown stem, it has a waxy smoothness and I can visualise myself lifting my arm and taking a bite. The next part I lose vision, I can imagine feeling it on my front teeth before taking a bite. Its not a physical feeling, but like a memory of the feeling. And I can imagine taking that bite and then moving the piece to my right cheek to chew. On the first bite with my molars it cuts through the apple flesh but not the skin. Further chewing is required. Now I kindve lose imagination of the texture but the taste I can imagine that sweet acidic taste of apples. And that's about it figuratively speaking
I wish I could experience this superpower.
Do you still recognise people even if you can’t picture them without seeing them? I’m assuming you definitely know your parents lol, but if you were to see the same cashier multiple times or something would you realise or do you just forget what they looked like?
Yeah the cashier thing, I don't think I recognise seeing the same person a few times but like the coffee shop down the road I recognise them there.
One funny encounter I had was a few years ago I had just started a new job and on the second day the boss had keys I needed the following day, we both happened to live near each other and he said to met him at a local shop's carpark and exchange the keys, he beat me there so I had to look for him and realised I hadn't memorise any of his features, so I'm there walking around the carpark just looking in cars for a person sitting in a car and saw a guy but he didn't make any movement so thought it wasn't him so kept walking then he gets out and calls out to me. I could tell he thought it was weird I had stared at him for a few seconds and then walked away...
For me anyway, not the person you asked but lemmy needs comments to feed it.
But for me, i don't visually picture someone's face off I'm remembering it, but i do remember what someone looks like. So when I meet someone I recognise, it just clicks. I could describe someone i know from memory but maybe not with a ton of detail.
I remember what things look like, could remember details of a painting etc etc, it's just when i think of things, theres no visual acompaniment.
Idk its hard to explain now that I'm trying to put it in words
I'm a Maladaptive daydreamer, not only could I "see" an apple, I can imagine it in my hand and look really close at the little details of an apple in real time.
I am not joking, my daydreams play out almost exactly like I'm watching a video, sometimes I look fondly at the story I crafted as if I just finished watching an episode. There is a very thin barrier for me that prevents me from just making up memories.
I’m so insanely jealous of people who can do this. Planning and thinking in my head is extremely difficult
I'm a maladaptive daydreamer as well but mine is more of a 2 leaning into a 3. I don't have as much control over my daydreams and need music and/or motion to really get them in gear. It's kinda like watching them on a secondary screen (like at a computer) while you're working on the first one? I suppose?
:O sounds like a superpower
Are you an artist? I can imagine music pretty clearly (and I'm pretty sure I've got some tune looping around in there more often than not) but I'd say that's largely thanks to having actually trained that skill
It sometimes feels like that, I've used it to organize my thoughts, I also used to use it as a "hud" like a videogame objective but I'm pretty sure that was just superfluous.
I'm into worldbuilding and I want to learn how to draw, problem is this is all counterbalanced by my procrastination and ADHD, it's hard for me to sit down and write anything down or practice drawing. Having a TV in your head when you need to concentrate on things like school didn't help either.
The most productive use I've made of it has been for programming, I still don't have a programming job yet but I was able to learn the skills. I have a lot of technical interests and I feel like I understand a lot of abstract and theoretical ideas more easily. Funny thing is though I can barely do basic math in my head, even my ADHD diagnosis notes I can't easily keep words or numbers in my head, even if I try to visualize them.
Thanks for the in-depth reply!
I can sympathise with the TV in your head thing haha, for me the music feels constant which can be nice but occasionally really annoying and distracting loops get stuck in there. I've found asmr to be a good remedy for that though idk how relevant that would be for the mental images side of things. Also, I get all these ideas which I record/write down and... never really develop -_- feels like there's too much I wanna do and not enough time to really get into the meat of it :/
Even though you find number stuff in your head tricky how have you found algebra / calculus / the more abstract side of maths? Or more closely tied to programming, set theory? Maybe you'd be able to visualise the more abstract concepts well.
I can give you an explanation of godel numbers and how we proved that all general logical systems will have contradictions (knowledge gotten from youtube though), but tell me to subtract a two numbers and I'll need a minute.
As for calculus, I didn't take the class in high school, but I do watch videos about infinite series and proofs which I find fascinating now. I plan on going to college (2nd attempt) and I'm certain I'll be much more proficient in it once I learn the fundamentals.
People can't imagine an apple in great detail? I thought this was just something everyone can do? Not only can I imagine it, or anything else perfectly, I can taste it, smell it, move it around in space inside my head...
I just assumed being able to do that was part of the human condition.
Look up aphantasia, it's when someone has no visuals in their head whatsoever, they tend to think more in concepts and words but never anything visual. And most people fit somewhere inbetween the two extremes (but it's still surprisingly common for someone to have aphantasia, they just don't realize it).
Funnily enough your daydreaming seem a little more advanced than mine, I typically struggle to imagine smells, but that might be link to just having a bad nose overall.
I can feel it too, the oily grippy weird skin of a freshly picked unwashed apple.
But I'm not seeing a red apple, I'm seeing a green apple with streaks of red, because I'm picturing my neighbors Apple tree.
1 has gotta be the norm, right? Like, whenever I see a movie adaptation of a novel I've always heard from people who're mad because the film doesn't line up with their mental image
It's a really poorly communicated image. Less detailed visualization isn't literally a washed out version of the thing, it's more that the details only exist if you're actively thinking about them, rather than your brain subconsciously imagining all the details immediately.
Yea I don't really "see" an apple, it's more that I can pick out one infinitesimally portion of it at any moment. So if I think about the leaf I can construct the leaf, but not the rest, and it is constantly changing as I move to other parts of the apple.
I wouldn't really say I see anything, it's more abstract than that and hard to convey.
I think I'm the same way. Like if I imagine an ornate doorknob from an old temple I can see it in a general view, and I can focus on the details one little bit at a time, but I can't picture the entire thing at once with detail. It's also not like I'm seeing it, it's fluid and honestly somewhat difficult to focus on.
Oh, okay that makes way more sense and does sound a lot more how most brains would work. Fascinating stuff
I was gonna say, when I imagine an apple, I don't think of it simply as an image, but a representation of the concept.
Like, if I were to actually describe the "vision", it's more like a 2 or a 3, but the *concept* in the mind is a 1. I'm aware of all the detail conceptually even if the actual holistic visual image doesn't include it.
Like, moments of imagining the apple would be glimpses of its detail, but "zooming out" wouldn't include that detail, because now you're forest not trees.
Same, I did the same for banana and orange, I don't need an picture to conjure the image in my head.
I'm a 1 but I feel like I gotta see a prototype of the object first. I'm better at recall than conjuring (but I assume most people would be?)
An apple right now? Five
Millennium Falcon when I'm about to sleep? 1-3
Can I control my imagination enough to go through all the motions of a bolt action rifle reload cycle? No
Sounds like hypnogogic hallucinations
That is also a thing and explains the most vivid ones you only remember when something startles you back to fully awake.
But mostly I meant for me it greatly varies by the situation and what I am trying to imagine.
Interesting, I have aphantasia and yet I have both hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations on occasion. Other than those I never remember dreaming, although I almost always wake up thinking of the same thing I went to sleep thinking of. And when I do have waking dreams / hallucinations it's always of whatever I was thinking about. If I realise the hallucinations aren't real they immediately fall apart which is a shame, as I don't normally get to experience any kind of mental imagery.
Definitely 1. I have a terrible visual memory though, so while I can precisely pinpoint details in my mind’s eye if I can imagine it, recalling things I’ve seen is just not it
Oddly enough, this doesn’t apply so much to mechanical devices or technology. I can see and imagine an entire engine bay disassembled in my mind, or a computer with all its components split apart, but faces? The layout of a kitchen? A parking lot? What color someone’s wearing? Instantly shit don’t work
Aphantasia be like: 5
Where're my green apples at?!
I'm like a 3 or 4 at best usually, but because I just saw this meme, I get the specific picture of an apple from 1 instead. Once that fades I'll be back to 3 or 4 again.
I see the back of my eyelids? I’m confused
What the fuck, there's more than 1??
I can choose between 1 and 2 at will.
I'm a 3, but I also see big box text that spells the word "APPLE."
There's one for hearing too i think, so while i'm like a 4 when it comes to sight, i feel hearing the sound in my "minds ear" makes up for it. The limit is how much of the song I remember, otherwise i can loop a part of the song as much as I like, and switch to whatever other song I want :) (And not just songs but the sound of my gf's voice for example. Not as effortless as the songs, but still possible)
I see the apple as a wireframe more than anything. My head isn’t empty and I can activate the smell of apple in my my nose, and how it would feel to hold one, but it feels like loading commands, rather than normal state.
When I was young I tried imagining a seesaw and making it go up and down by will, but couldn’t do it. Later in life it wasn’t a problem though.
ok neo
I'm like a 2 but only on small bits at a time, the rest is fuzzy 😔
1, not sure how this helps though
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