Ask Lemmy

I don't literally SEE it like I would with my eyes but:

Red ball

Clown, no idea of gender

Again, clown

Ball smaller than tennis ball, bigger than golf ball

The table I am sitting at and looking at right now.

And no, I can and do imagine how things look. It's a different sort of knowing/imagining than actual physical vision or dreaming though. Which led me to be confused about what exactly aphantasia is.

• Small push, ball rolls a very short distance and stops
• No color
• Male, maybe an extension of myself doing the push
• I did not visualize a complete person, only a suggestion of a body, and a arm/hand to push the ball
• Size of two fists together
• I did not visualize a full table, more like a camera view of a tabletop. Nondescript wood finish.

Did I already know? Sort of... My brain rotated through multiple possible imaginings. It worked forward, then reversed the logic to complete the scene. Nothing was set in stone: My brain decided that the ball would not roll off the table. Why? The ball has an uneven surface, it wobbled when stopping. Why? Because it has a surface like a soccer ball. Why? Because that was the first "look" my brain landed on that answered the question. I recall rotating through different colors and finishes, but after my brain imagined the ball stopping I had to come up with a why.

red/blue stripes

none

they didn't

small pool ball

generic Simpsonesque brown, but it stopped existing towards the corners.

It's a gentle push so the ball rolls for a second before falling off the edge of the table and bouncing away on the floor.

Ball Color: Bright red

Pusher Gender: Masculine

Pusher appearance: Caucasian, Tan suit, head was out of frame

Ball size: Tennis ball sized, but smooth with a seam around the middle

Table appearance: A square, short end table on a white studio backdrop. Dark wood with a glossy coating.

The important question: I can confidently say every question I already knew and was just describing what I was seeing, with the exception of maybe the pushers clothing. After reading the question my focus shifted to it and it visually resolved and I described it. Looked and felt almost the exact same way that you might not notice the details of an object in your peripheral because the focus of the scene was the ball, and then at a prompt, shifting your gaze and taking note of that object at the edge. It was framed like some kind of ball demonstration physics video.

• What color was the ball?

I didn't see a color in my visualization, but I know it was red.

• What gender was the person that pushed the ball?

They were genderless; more of a concept of a person than an image of one.

• What did they look like?

Like...an area of visual space that my mind attached the identifier "Person" to.

• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?

A little smaller than a tennis ball, but bigger than a ping pong ball.

• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?

I didn't see either property in my visualization, but it's wooden and round.

And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions?

Lol. Well, I guess I botched that one. Obviously I did not know before being asked these questions, for most of the answers.

I didn't know most answers, my mind kinda works with the concepts. The ball was there, but there was no color, not even a grayscale, but the absence of color ( I have difficulty imagining colors in general), the pweson was there, and was a woman, but with no face of features. I don't even know if i really pictured a woman, or if my mind worked on that after seeing the questions. The table was there, but was simply a plane for the ball to be on, without features.

Now that I write this, it seems weird. Do people picture scenarios like this as if seeing a real scene? Can this be related to aphantasia? Should I be worried?

Orange

Male

He was a server in a black waistcoat, white shirt. He was brushing the ball off the table before setting plates down.

It was a ball from a kid's ball pit, so a little bigger than a baseball, smaller than a softball.

The table was round, with a red gingham table cloth.

The orange ball on the red gingham table cloth were there immediately, once instructed to visualize a person pushing it, it only made sense that it was a server, since the table seemed restauranty.

The ball falls off the edge but doesn't make a sound, effectively disappears from the scene.

Glass ball for some reason

Nondescript woman, no distinct features, blurry at the edge of perception. Vaguely wearing business clothes.

Ball was softball size

Table was featureless but the size and color of the table I'm sitting at now

A vague thought of a ball and knowledge of what would happen. Nothing else.

I was really surprised when I learned that the inner eye wasn't just some figure of speech, so I don't see anything, certainly no extra visual details.

Something is still happening though, I can sort of "feel out" shapes/volumes and motion, like depth perception with no visuals attached.

The ball rolls for a bit then stops

1. Colorless ball
2. Didn't image a gender, just the concept of a person
3. They didn't look like anything
4. I guess a perfect colorless sphere roughly the size of a tennis ball
5. Pretty much just a rectangular flat surface. There's no color or material

I didn't know much about it except the size of the ball being roughly proportional to the size of a human hand

The ball was silver and completely reflective. The seen basically looked like that image used for ray tracing testing. No gender just a hand. Table was black

Background: I did this experiment with the pre-existing belief that I likely have aphantasia.

Starting with the important question, no, I didn't know the answer to these things before being asked

The ball was red, but I don't think my initial "rendering" involved a colour of a ball at all, because the colour isn't relevant to how it rolls. The ball felt cold, because that's one of the ways I understood its weightiness, and thus how it rolls. The ball was small enough to hold in one hand, but in "visualising" its size, I imagined how it would feel in my hand. The ball I imagined was a bit larger than a tennis ball and much heavier. I can imagine the force my fingers would need to exert to grasp it.

The person who pushed the ball had no gender because it wasn't relevant. When I considered the person's gender, they were a woman, but that information seems to have gotten lost when I "looked away" by considering other questions; when I reread the questions, I "forgot" what gender the ball pusher was, and this time they were man. I suspect that because the information wasn't relevant to the manner the ball was being pushed, the person pushing the ball was in a sort of superposition of gender, where they are both and/or neither man and/or woman, because it was liable to change whenever I "looked away".

The ball pusher(s) didn't look like anything unless I really pushed myself on this question and then I'm like "erm, I guess they were brunette?", but I think a similar thing happens as with the gender question — unless I have a way to remember what traits I assigned to the ball pusher, I'm just going to forget and have to regenerate the traits. I suspect that if I were actively visualising something, these details would stick together better, like paint to a canvas.

The table has a similar effect of nebulousness. My only assumption before you asked further about the table was that it was level (because the ball started at rest) and rectangular/square. When I tried to consider the table in more detail, I asked myself "what can a table be made out of". Wood comes to mind most obviously, because I have a wood table near me. Laminated particle-board is another thing. I also remember some weird, brightly coloured , super lightweight plastic tables from school. It could also be metal. It could have four legs, or it might have a central base like the dining table at my last house. It might be circular, or oval, or rhomboid. I think I just modelled it as squarish because I've learned enough mathsy-physics that I'm inclined to think of spherical cows, and having a straight edge is easier to model for mathematically, and to draw.

Brains sure are wacky, huh?

I love how by default most tables were wooden and the balls were mostly about baseball size

Light blue ball

Male

Medium height dressed in a long sleeved pale blue collared work shirt, wearing jeans, with a brown belt. Brown hair. Non-descript facial features.

Tennis ball sized

A white, rectangular wooden table.

I already knew, the picture formed instantly on reading the prompt. Initially my perspective was looking directly at the ball then when I read the part about pushing it off the table my perspective shifted further back.

I imagined a sort of physics textbook diagram, not real objects. There was no person, only an arrow indicating the applied force on the ball!

So, in this experiment you're asking people to picture a certain situation that doesn't call for any specific details, then asking them to describe the unnecessary details they came up with: colour of the ball, etc.

I'm curious if the people who have aphantasia can picture something in their heads when it does call for all that detail.

Picture a red, 10-speed bike with drop handlebars wrapped with black handlebar tape. It's locked to a bike rack on the street outside the library with a U-lock. You come out of the library and see that the front wheel has been stolen. Think about how that would look. Picture the position of the bike, and anything you might look for if it were your bike and you were worried. Pretend you needed to examine the situation in as much detail as possible so you could file a police report.

I've noticed that after getting older, suffering several concussions, a short spat with drinking, and COVID that my ability to picture things in my mind has degraded a lot since childhood.

Does your ability to imagine things naturally decline? I remember as a lad I could vividly imagine the feeling of things. My imagination was also much more colorful. But I could never see things in 3D like some people can (I've worked with some really talented tradesmen/machinists who can like assemble or fold or machine a piece in their mind, I don't know maybe that's just practice)

• What color was the ball?
  Grey, I suppose? It wasn't important until this question so it was kind of colorless, even though I could picture it.

• What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
  Androgynous.

• What did they look like?
  Nondescript.

• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
  A bit larger than a softball.

• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?
  It was a rectangular table. It shifted from being smooth and grey to a lightly finished maple, then back again.

• Important question:
  I didn't really think about these details until asked.

I have a question OP. Do you read fiction? Recently I've been wondering if aphantasia's why some people don't, almost seen unable, to read and enjoy.

Color: red

Gender of pusher: undetermined

Looks of pusher: detached skinny white arm/hand

Size: roughly palm sized (full grown adult)

Table: wood, circular. Changed to black void with half pipe like pinball track upon being rolled.

After a quick visualization, that's what I got. Seeing the questions didn't change my answers

Edit: ball moved along the track for a moment before I stopped thinking about it, mostly since that train of thought made my brain switch to Sonic Spinball.

Colorless ball, around the size of a tennis ball on a colorless round table. Person was colorless, genderless, and generally without any distinctive features.

What is my diagnosis?

I only knew the gender of the person and what kind of ball it was. I didn't imagine the other things at my first try.

Blue

Gender-nondescript, like a drawing in a school book

See above

Tennis ball size

Square, particle board like Ikea furniture

Some of them I extrapolated upon after seeing the questions because having unknowns in your mind's eye is not uncomfortable to people with intellectual integrity

What do i have if i can't stop the ball from falling? Like the person stops it from one side and it bounces to the other and fall that way.

I also have trouble stopping clocks from spinning in my imagination

• rolled to the left and up a bit, fell off
• Red
• male
• only saw the arm
• tennis ball sized
• folding card table

What I don't like about this experiment is that being hyperphantic doesn't necessarily mean "you need photographic visualizations of every scenario at all times". My mind conjures scenarios differently depending on context.

I can imagine myself barely being able to see a ball on a table, let alone a person moving into view.

I can see the ball having a glossy, low-res texture alla 1980s CGI, with the ball being pushed by a polygon figure, moving without any real animation and limply falling off the table with no gravitational speed.

I can picture a worn, shiny leather baseball sitting on an old coffee table, stained walnut. The person is Mark Wahlberg and he has a smirk on his face as he lazily finger-flicks the ball, which only barely makes it to the edge of the table before just being able to tip off the edge, bouncing twice with a heavy bomp-bomp and rolling unevenly for a couple seconds. Mark winces because his finger hurts now. I could also imagine the flavor of the baseball and what it would smell like.

The point is that an aphantic might only be able to visualize this scenario at best as well as the first description, or perhaps not even at all and they can only 'know' of the movements in the scene with zero visual or otherwise relation to it.

Hyperphantics generally can conjure near limitless detail and they can retain that information visually for long periods of time without much effort.

Before reading the questions I visualized an all white room, with an average square wooden table with a red ball about the size of the baseball on it and the person was a white man with black hair in a grey suit.

There's another question though. Would your mind get into all this trouble if you didn't know there would be questions coming?

• Ball rolls a bit but stops before going off the edge of the table
• Red
• Male
• Avg Height/Build, Brown hair, shaved face
• Like twice the size of a marble, like a bouncy ball
• Square, wooden table, lightly stained.

Knew the answers before being asked.