Head empty. No apple.

F's in chat for our comrades with aphantasia who cannot rotate a cow in their mind.

Sadly I can't rotate a cow in my mind because it always just wants to dance to that Polish song instead
- Tylko jedno glowie mam... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIpi1HDEhU
- I'm now imagining a rotating cow dancing to the 90s dancing baby meme.
I cannot log into roblox dot com through dad's VPN because I can't rotate the penguin. Is this authoritarianism?
😭😭😔 no cow
There is no ~~spoon~~ cow

Some people don't have a voice in their head either. Like that inner-monologue that is explaining your thoughts

It's wild that some people don't have a little David Attenborough in their head that narrates what they do like an anthropologist angel on their shoulder. Like their lives aren't an extended nature documentary where they live at the mercy of the narrative's critique and plotline. They don't even mentally see things from interesting camera angles that advance mental cinematography, it's just flat and their own thoughts.
- One of my favorite weird scientific theories says that prior to a few thousand years ago, this internal narrative voice was mistaken for the voice of the gods, and explains why so many old texts are full of gods saying and doing things with people. The theory says that as we became fully conscious in the way that modern humans are, this narrator--which is actually the linguistic centers in the left hemisphere--finished integrating into the rest of the brain, and we started recognizing that it was actually just our internal monologue, not the gods; this was supposed to be the catalyst for modern human mentality.
  It's almost certainly false and pretty fringe, but I've always really loved it as a theory. It's called "the bicameral mind."
- This guy goes hard.
Do you have a narrator voice in your head?
- I awoke several hours later in a daze...
- Narrator: They don't
- Sorta, it's not disembodied in the way you may be thinking. But like someone else observing and commenting on my actions or environment. When I wrote this all the words were strung together in my head and I would say and resay (which is a dumb but more apt way of say think and rethink in this context) the sentences I was writing before I wrote them in order to determine that what I'm writing makes sense. I'm assuming everyone does this even those without inner monologue but I might be wrong. Inner monologue for me is like that except for all my voluntary actions, not just speaking or writing. It's questions like, "should I do [blank]" and statements like "maybe [blank] wasn't the best idea"
  However considering this is entirely internal and I never really speak to anyone about I may be misinterpreting what everyone else is referring to as an inner monologue and attributing something completely normal to that concept without fully understanding it but if you do not experience or understand what I said previously then I'm probably right.
Okay, but they still have the theme music, right?
... right?
- The Gang Learns Neurology
That’s me! I experience thought in pictures (opposite of the post) and emotions.
I have to translate into words for external /internal speech. One of the reasons I often “monologue out loud” much to my spouses chagrin.
Ok so I can produce a voice in my head, on purpose. But it's not prattling on endlessly. Does it do that for some people?
- Yah
  . I have control over it but I feel I would have less anxiety if I had less of an inner monologue.
- Yes. It’s infuriating and it’s part of why I’m listening to a podcast 90% of the time. The voice in my head is very active and needs to be drowned out
- It usually is for me, unless I'm very focused on something external.
- and when I'm home alone I just say out loud all the things my brain thinks
Same issue with figuring out who's who. Some people really can't imagine words being spoken. Most can imagine words being spoken. Some can trigger auditory hallucinations. Many of the people in the middle will label themselves as being on one extreme because they think other middle-people are describing the opposite extreme. Like wow you guys can make yourselves just HEAR things that aren't there? And they're like yeah, I can "hear" it in my mind (they don't actually have the sensation of hearing anything at all).
How many voices / thoughts are we talking about?
My internal voice doesn't explain, it is a thought based quasi verbal experience of what I think about, specific sentences I form like sentences (unless I take drugs). It doesn't explain my thoughts.

Inland Empire: They do though. Most of these small minded individuals are too embarrassed to share their internal monologue - because of how stupid it is. Not you though, you're a rock star, and you're the one who's going to bring back communism. How you ask? Simple, by opening up your mind and speaking our dialogue together our loud. The conversations we have together are fucking brilliant, you'll be ten steps ahead of every nay sayer. Stand up on that table in front of this crowd and call their attention. The revolution starts now.
Rhetoric: Low
The city told me it loves me and to save it from nuclear holocaust
Tulpa gang rise up!

I actually literally have an apple for a brain so I am definitely 1

I actually literally have an apple for a brain
The first step towards liberalism
- Apple-brain syndrome would explain the existence of liberal

Oh neat according to this I'm a 1.

Give me praise. Compliments immediately. You have no idea how apple that apple in my mind looks.

It's wet

This whole discussion is fucked, everyone is using the word "see" differently because our language is not built to talk about mental abstractions.

You know how schizophrenia can make you see things and people? Can you experience the visual effects schizophrenia at will? If you said you are a "1", is that what you mean by "1", or is it, in some way, different than that?

If it is different than that, at all, other people who have the same perception as you are imagining that you can trigger literal hallucinations.

Okay, so I had aphantasia before my TBI and afterwards I could literally picture things in my mind. It's wild. You don't hallucinate the picture per se, but the imagined sensation really is like seeing a picture in your mind.
Imagine the feeling of seeing something. You get the same feeling when imagining a picture of it. You can examine the picture and look at it from different angles and perspectives, but like, there isn't literally a ghost image floating around your head like a cartoon. It just feels like seeing.
It's almost like lucid dreaming while awake? You know it's in your mind and not real, even if you also feel like you see it.
idk you'd think having lived on both sides of the fence I could explain it but this probably sounds fucking bizarre to you lol
- Well, it's famously kind of impossible to explain a sensation of any kind to someone who has no frame of reference for it, e.g. "red" to someone who has never seen.
- I mean, reading over your comment a few times, I think there's a 50% chance you're describing exactly the same thing as my perception, but it's so hard to tell.
Yeah this is kind of the conclusion I've come to. I don't really know what it is that 'see' is really supposed to mean. I mean very obviously I don't see it in the same way as I see an object in front of me, but at the same time there is still an apple that has various characteristics and exists in some way within some sort of mental space, and whose attributes, including ones which for a real apple would be visual, I can be aware of and understand
- There is a good chance you are like the OOP from that description
it kinda does piss me off that I can't see someone else's mind from their perspective.
- Ok but it'd probably destroy my brain to be in Henry Kissinger's mind for as much as a minute so maybe it's better this way.
I'm a 1 on this scale. It's like Virtual Reality, where you experience something that isn't your material space. You can manipulate those experiences, but they have an ethereal quality due to their lack of physicality. Not to mention bumping into things while distracted. While I haven't used any AR equipment, I imagine those experiences feel similar.
A good "tell" that I am in this imagination space is a blank stare while otherwise still engaging (conversation, work, etc) because I'm not (entirely) seeing with my eyes. It's the same with hearing, and to a lesser extent touch, taste, and smell. It also functions as a spectrum, with some experiences being stronger or weaker than others, particularly when I have material experience to fall back upon. My own memories work as stronger, more visceral experiences as I can ground the experience more than a brand new space conjured on the spot. However there is a limit. The details can be hazy or morph if I'm not paying attention to that part of the experience. Dreams are an excellent complementary experience of how side details can change to "fit" the experience.
I think it's like this: there's multiple layers to the process of seeing something. Light enters the eyes, it's converted to an electrical signal in the nervous system, that signal is formatted into the "video feed" in our brain, and that picture is matched with existing patterns we know. Visualizing something is working backwards from the resultant pattern to produce possible inputs that would match. It doesn't go to the video feed level, but it goes to the intermediary stage where patterns are being matched to a picture. Less "what are traits I associate with an apple" and more "how does it feel when I recognize an apple?"
- Exactly. And when someone posts 4 pictures of apples and says "I see this" and its literally 4 different images, it only makes sense to think they are seeing images, but they often aren't, even when they insist the image is representative of what they see.
yea i dont think this image is coherent and its intended to elicit the poster’s reaction
Yes some of it is dismissed that way but once you get past that it's a real phenomenon
I'm a 3 or a 2 on the scale I think, and for me it's like I can actually see the thing I'm visualizing, but in parallel to what my eyes are seeing. Like, imagine you were looking at some security monitors on 2 different screens, one is the visual information from your eyes, the other one is the thing I'm visualizing which is very hazy and I only have a loose grasp on it.
It's a very interesting discussion. I would say that a good barometer for this is how well you can draw an object from memory. Trying to squeeze this phenomenon into a 1-5 scale is silly either way.
- I can visualize things pretty much perfectly in my head in great detail but that doesn’t mean I can draw, I can barely draw a passable stick person.
It is a different thing.
I don't think I understand what you mean? I thought it was clear. As a 1 you can imagine an apple within your had at high detail, noting the location of the stem and maybe being able to zoom in on its texture, seeing the striation of its color and perhaps a moisture. Maybe you can rotate it and note the dimple at its underside of slice it and see it's slightly yellow roughly textured crisp inside. As any level between 1 and 5 you lose detail; maybe the shape is imperfect or fuzzy, maybe you can't see the color as clearly or perhaps it's a solid color, maybe it's less of an apple shape and more spherical, the stem may be less noticable or not there at all, you may be able to imagine how it might feel under your teeth but not manipulate the visualization into slices and see it's core or it's seeds. Am I misinterpreting?
Edit: I misinterpreted your comment it seems, I thought you were critiquing the concept itself instead of asking for clarification. Apologies. I do think that the 1-5 scale is entirely arbitrary and doesn't really express accurately the varying degrees at which people are capable of visualizing; like most things, it's probably a spectrum.
- No worries. I think the issue here is that if you brought 10 people into a room and somehow knew that they had exactly the same perception as each other, and got them to look at this post, they'd all start placing themselves at every number along the scale. Again, despite having identical sensory experiences.
  "I can visualize an apple"
  "Really? You can just see an apple in your mind whenever you want?"
  "Of course... you can't do that??"
  "No, I mean I can imagine an apple, but my mind's eye doesn't SEE anything"
  "wow so it's just... BLANK?"
  At this point, the first person thinks they're talking to someone who rediscovers what an apple looks like every time it enters their field of view. The second person thinks they're talking to someone who can just project cartoons onto the back of their eyelids. But they are just making different assumptions about what "see" means - they're both taking each other more literally than they are taking themselves.
  I'm pretty sure there are people with messed up visual memory as well as people who can hallucinate at will, but there are a ton more people misinterpreting each other who don't experience either of those things.

I simply directly access the Platonic Forms with my brain. These 1-5 visualizations are pale imitation of the Form of Appleness.

im currently visualizing a purple apple thats rotating along alternating axes. now a worm is emerging from it and he has a gun. aphantasia havers get owned

Stop toying with my brain

One person is enough at the wheel already
- I visualize a mix between this emoji and an apple. Worms come out of the applemoji, the applemoji starts screaming, a snake with long legs is breakdancing two meters behind it. Zoom away from the emoji, there are wild strawberryplants 1.5 meters in front of the applemoji, tho they bear no flowers or fruit.

There are people who can't visualize things mentally? Are they surprised by the brand new Vista every time they turn a corner? How would one recognize things without it being written down?

- Someone could read this and think that you can hallucinate apples but they're grey. The problem with the whole discussion is that
  some people can actually hallucinate at will
  some people can't hallucinate, and interpret the images as rough abstractions for sort of recalling the visual qualities of objects
  some people can't hallucinate, and interpret the images as hallucinations other people literally see
  some people can't remember what a thing looks like if they aren't looking at it
  It's very hard to figure out who a given person is, because they're all like "I can see things" and "i can't see things" and it's meaningless

I would love to know if you’re good at drawing and the like? I am a 5 on the scale and I have always excelled in school and university, but I can’t draw worth a damn. Hell my handwriting is pretty bad too.
- I am a very visual person and I can picture stuff very clearly in my mind. I can't draw for shit, to the point that it makes me mad sometimes because i can imagine something visual but i can't put it on paper, or it looks nothing like what I imagined.
- I would also call myself a 1, but I am not even remotely good at drawing. I also wouldn’t say I can “see” things in my mind like I can with my eyes, it’s more like I can imagine the way something looks in the same manner as remembering a vivid memory.
  My internal monologue is constant though. Every time I read something or think of something is like that cartoon inside out. I have a mini me that lives in my head.
- I'm in the same boat. It was always frustrating that I had no way of accurately putting what I saw in the brain on paper.
- I'd say I'm like a 3 on the scale. I've never practiced drawing much, but when I was drawing from a reference I've made some half decent sketches. Drawing off of memory though, I'm completely useless. So there might be a correlation here.
- Some incredible artists have aphantasia!
  https://youtu.be/Xa84hA3OsHU?si=e8HB_p7MQgOsWOhq
By 1, do you mean you can picture all the details of an image in your mind, or do you mean you can turn visual hallucinations on and off at will? Many people who say they can't visualize anything are unwittingly just saying they can't hallucinate, because they think you can.
- By 1, do you mean you can picture all the details of an image in your mind, or do you mean you can turn visual hallucinations on and off at will?
  I suppose that's strictly true for me even though real visual input completely overrides the hallucination. It's like comparing the Sun with some random star. However, there was that one time I smoked way too much weed, which had an effect of greatly augmenting my mind's eye so it became comparing the Sun with Venus. Visual input was still at the forefront, but you now had the mind's eye image of the object being superimposed on the actual object.
  If you're talking about just being amused by the floating images when the eyes are closed, yes I've done this countless times. I don't see this as any different from replaying movie dialogue or imagining eating something delicious.
- When I was on Twitter I saw an artist claim they were a 5 the last time this discussion spawned. They said they used a lot more reference images than other artists.

What's more interesting about this to me is... This man writes novels. I've always experienced fiction as a "Movie in my head" kind of experience. When I get really into a book, the world around me falls away, and I feel very literally in the narrative.

So how does one experience a novel, if they can't visualize the story in their mind?

Here's another mind fuck: you don't need to internally verbalize to have thoughts.
- That actually makes more sense to me. My cat clearly has thoughts, ideas, preferences, but she doesn't have words to go with those thoughts. Her inner life is devoid of a monologue.
I just like, absorb the info? Like, I can watch a movie and understand what's happening. Or read words and understand what's happening. Converting words to a movie sounds like an unnecessary step, but idk, I don't experience that.

I love asking people about this. Both whether they have an inner monologue or whether they're able to visualize things. It's always fascinated me. It's something we take for granted. I have an inner monologue I can't turn off, and I'm definitely a 2 or 1 depending on how tired I am. Being a 5 on this scale is called "aphantasia"

- Rude. Just because people don't think the same way as you doesn't mean they're not sentient. Don't be ableist.
- Q&A with a person with no inner monologue
  when reading it's more like they're sorting through a file cabinet of ideas than hearing an audiobook in their heads.
  it helps to read out loud
  they can't play music they've heard before in their heads
  they're not plagued by constantly reliving the past (I think this is actually a very strong positive of not having an inner monologue)
  they can't imagine future conversations before they have them.
  I think it's important for socialists to keep in mind how people process information, sine it can massively change our political strategy of spreading our ideas.
One of the smartest people I know and one of my best friends has aphantasia and no voice in his head, but got perfect scores on calculus and engineering exams, even those for which I had to visualize the forms and calculate based on that. Like multivariable calculus is all about 3D and eventually all other D shit and he got perfect scores with no concept of imagining the shapes. We discuss this a lot generally, because he still works in a research field that I can only grasp visually and he has absolutely no ability to do so but understands it better. He also reads so fuckin fast because he doesn't have to wait for the voice
- He also reads so fuckin fast because he doesn't have to wait for the voice
  Yes, this shows how important neurodiversity is to human kind. People who are seeing this as a disability are missing the upsides.

Are you able to perceive Koishi then? (i also enjoy touhou, hello)

It takes servere, concerted effort to visualize stuff. I'm limited to primitive shapes and distinct things I've already seen before

I used to be a 3-4 but with the help of having used weed just a few times I'm capable of 2 most days.

Edit: By this I mean I'm always capable of a 2, even when sober, which I usually am. THC fixed my brain or something.

I smoke way too much weed and I'm still a 4 on good days.

I can't imagine not being able to see something in my mind. There's plenty of times where I don't visualize, but I can scale things as needed. I can see myself interacting with an apple in the kitchen, or have it be interacted with without objects (e.g. watch it rot on a blank background, or hyperlapse of it rotting on the ground with bugs and everything), I can watch myself eat it and sense the taste internally. I can even see it in front of me in my minds eye like an overlay - my eyes don't see it, but my mind can like augmented reality.

Stands to reason that I'm very good at building and repairing things, I'm decent at art too.

I can't do most things you describe.
- Pretty wild how different we can all think. Diversity of perspectives is a beautiful thing.

My mental mindscape has everything. Narrator, mind's eye, high-level concepts conceptually connected like a mesh, everything. My mindscape is a chaotic ocean of sensory inputs, memories, raw emotions, and high-level concepts. I'm always a bit surprised when someone is missing a part.

When someone says "apple," I think about the color red, the tartness of the skin, the sweetness and sourness of an apple, the sound of the crunch, oranges-as-a-concept-not-as-a-visual (from apples and oranges), Isaac Newton, apple pie, the pixelated apple tree from Stardew Valley because I don't have good visual memory of apple trees in real life, that time I drank apple cider during Thanksgiving after eating apple pie, how "an apple" used to be "a napple" before the "n" shifted away from the word, how I don't pronounce the "l" in apple, but treat it like a vowel so "apple" sounds like "apo."

I'm similar. I didn't realise it was possible to not have images in your head. I get so many images that sometimes when I'm reading a good book I experience it as images and it's a pain to pull myself out of it to read the words to keep the story going. Like being woken out of a dream. Not just with fiction and not just with concrete nouns. The same thing happens with technical, abstract non-fiction. Strange how minds work.

I'm a definite 5 and I completely agree with him on that. I feel like I'm missing out on so much by not being able to visualize like that.

Interesting that a popular fiction author is aphantasiac, I wonder how visually descriptive his writing is considering afaik descriptive writing like that is usually meant to elicit visualization.

I've convinced myself that we're not missing anything. every time I talk about it with people they'll ask questions like "well how do you know what apples look like??!!"
I can't explain how I know but I of course do know what apples look like. so what am I actually losing out on? it's all potatoes
- I'm probably a 2 on the OP's scale and I've come to believe that the only advantage it gives me is:
  when i need to tell someone else where an object is in a space I can visualize. "If you're looking from the door its to your right, beside the coat rack"
  otherwise it's probably easier to remember things for y'all since basically everything I think is in images or sounds. If i think of how to spell i word i am imagining an image of the word or imagining the word being written. PLUS I still have some face blindness so I can't picture people's eyes or most facial features
- it's all potatoes
  Apples actually
- i'm maybe taking it for granted, but its not like I sit around visualising whatever I want, if you did need to know what something looked like you could always look it up anyway
  I imagine dreaming could be very different? I tend to have visually very violent dreams, I wouldn't miss that, it's part of the reason I make an effort to avoid dreaming
- It's much more useful for imagining novel scenarios and objects. See the mathematician in this thread who finds picturing graphs helpful
https://youtu.be/Xa84hA3OsHU?si=e8HB_p7MQgOsWOhq
You can absolutely do a art and a half with aphantasia!

John green is a lib

John green dont see apple

Therefore If you dont see apple youre a lib

Fuck you too. (as a person that don't see apple)
- Uphold Marxist-leninist-applelism

I'm a three. Whenever I visualise food I see it in black and white while hearing a 1950's Atlantic accent newsreel voice talking about the words/ideas/feeling associated with that food.

This thread is going to invoke the psy-wars and I stand by my apple seeing comrades

Hexbear when the smoke clears

I can but everything is deliberately stylized as CGI wireframes because I am a hotbed of strange habits

Besides beiing able to "see" most people have a inner voice that says things "out loud".

Now I'll give you one better, apparently there's levels to this too. One day I surprised my partner by saying that I can "hear" my throughts in any voice I wish, even accent (provided I know such accent).

Like when I remember or imagine anthing I have full visuals and audio. I still lack skill to acually articulate any of these things, so I still suck at pretty much everything I haven't practiced a lot.

Some people don't have an inner voice?!?!??!? Wait some people can't do any of that? How do they read?
- There's actually quite a variety of what goes on in people's minds. Some people's internal worlds are similar to each others', and some are drastically different. I think of it as one of the cool things about being a social species: people think differently, so we can solve different problems to benefit the group. I think that as a species, some of the worst things happen when we all think alike because people who all think exactly alike are easy to control.
- How do they read?
  The words I read make sounds in my head but when I'm just thinking I don't have any inner monologue, I just kind of think the thing directly instead of vocalizing it in my head.
- And they can't even talk to themselves in a vampire voice.
- I can kind of shut off the voice when I'm reading, so I just look at the word and know what it is. It's harder with unfamiliar words, those have to be sounded out.
- I always thought "inner voice" was a figure of speech
- I have an inner monologue, but it isn't active when reading (besides, perhaps, to critique). I just see symbols and know what they mean, I don't have to say the word in my head.
I once played a Tabletop RPG where one of the NPCs was an annoying, opinionated AI who refused to do work beyond what he calculated his level of keep was, but who would freely criticize the plans and opinions of anyone he found it amusing to in a gratingly sarcastic way.
Eventually, I stated having thoughts in his voice commenting on my actions unbidden. It was rather surreal. Truly though, I'm a bit sad it ceased some months after the game ended.
I can do pretty good impressions, both capturing what someone would say and how they would say it. half of this is that I spent a lot of time as a kid playing with my vocal cords, so I know how to move them, but the other is that I can modulate my internal monologue to copy other's mannerisms and consider how they view the world. Apparently most people lack this ability.

Pretty sure you can train and improve this. I don't think it's a skill that you either have or do not have, I don't think the mind is a fixed thing. Much like muscles they can be exercised, trained and rewired. With the right practice drills and routine I'm fairly sure that you could change this in a person, although I'm not sure exactly what drills or routine you'd do for it. Our minds are really moldable and none of this stuff should be viewed as fixed, much like playing an instrument isn't an inherent skill you either have or do not have, it's something you can learn and improve in.

IME, drugs that fiddle with your mind's control can make you aware of mental muscles that you didn't know existed.
Probably some life drawing and color/design classes
- Yeah maybe. I once read Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, and as lib brained as it is at times it was also quite good about being anti-eugenics and anti-ontological factors for creating peak performance in sports/competition.
  Its general thesis is that genetics play almost no role in our success in competition because we're still very very far away from perfection in any sports. It argues mainly that practice with the intent of improvement is the primary driver of improvement. Focused practice. It uses a lot of non-physical sports to demonstrate some of these things, in particular chess, where it discusses that most of the prodigies in chess have been people who were trained in chess from an extremely young age. But using the same training techniques they could demonstrate other people could achieve near identical results with the same methods.
  Its main point discussion point is that the method of training is what produces results, and that different methods of training demonstrate better results than others. That sounds obvious on the surface but its about pointing out simply doing drills aimlessly isn't efficient and doesn't crack the barrier when you think you're peaking at something, very specific methods are needed to crack through the ceilings in performance people reach.
  I think this is similar here. Now I'm tempted to re-read it because it's been a number of years and I kinda liked it originally, maybe my take would be different now. I think it was a significant influence on me though in that it really solidified my belief that I could reach top level in anything if I really worked at it.
- nope, artists, very good artists, can very often have aphantasia.

I guess I'm like a 3 or 4? When asked to visualize an apple or a cow or a campfire or something, I can kinda manage it but only for a split second. I can't just hold an image there.

You can probably strengthen that with practice if you want. That's how it worked for me
I'm a 3 normally but if concentrating I can synthesise a whole world in there. When reading for example, I can concentrate on the language or I can port the book into my internal unreal engine 5 if the writer is visually descriptive enough.
You can't hold it, even if you try?
- Nope. I can see an apple in my mind's eye for like a half second and then it instantaneously vanishes. It's like grasping smoke. A second after that I can then visualize it again, so I suppose in a sense I can imagine something for a while, but it's built from discontinuous frames where I gain and lose focus. I can imagine, like, a person walking, but only the first couple steps before it vanishes. Been like that all my life, though unlike John Green I've been aware that some people can visualize and others just can't.
  I don't even feel where I could hypothetically put the "effort" to "try". It's like if I asked somebody to move an object across the room via telekenesis, or to swish a nonexistent tail, or imagine trying to move a third arm. It's not that I can't do it because it's too weak, it's that I don't even have the "muscle" there.
  I do have a pretty distinct inner monologue in my head though. Not active all or even most of the time because I don't need it (and I tend to talk to myself when alone anyway), but when I need to "summon" it I can "say" sentences or paragraphs with it. So I guess it's just two different mental skills or something.

His follow up tweet and replies are pretty bad. Bordering between weaponized incompetence and just straight up 'Im baby' levels of airhead.

- I have his latest book on audio, and decided to give it a listen. That was one of the worst intro to a book ever. All I think of was Pangloss and his blind optimism, 'all is for the best'.
what does "weaponized incompetence" mean here and how could it apply to a tweet.
- Weaponized incompetence is a trait of toxic masculinity where men express inability to perform regular personal tasks. Being unhygienic or unorganized because,"Honey, I can't help it because I'm just a dumb guy". I don't think I've ever met a woman that would tolerate this kind of behavior in this tweet. Gives me big time never puts the dishes away energy.
  Edit: I also love the reply where someone links a study that he may have OCD, a serious mental health issue. His response: wow

As a autistic person I always find these types of questions hard to answer and I dont know why. Like I am trying to think of an apple and I think apple but I don't know if i am making an image in my head or not.

EDIT: Add something else onto the list It kind of makes sense tho considering I have face blindness as well.

Don't worry, nobody seems to have a consistent answer to this, or know what anyone else is talking about. I would say that I can visualize things, but that doesn't mean I literally hallucinate at will. Some people probably can but others will answer somewhere between 1 and 4 and when you ask them if they can hallucinate a red cartoon apple, hallucinate a white outline of an apple, that looks exactly the same as someone waving around a big white paper cutout of an apple, or shining a white flashlight with an apple outline taped to it, they say no???
- Yea these tests seem so subjective
if you think of what it would look like to graph y = x and you hold that in your head can you overlay onto that mental image another line of y = x/2?

Complete 5 for me. Also, I have an internal voice, but that voice is just me. Basically just putting thoughts into words so that I can express them, nothing different from whatever the "I" or "self" is.

For the record: I always score very high on tests of spatial memory, those tests where you are supposed to have to rotate objects to find the answer, and stuff like that. I enjoy reading fiction; I like reading more than watching movies for the most part. And in general don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, or that aphantasia gives me any problems thinking at all. I often can't tell who someone is from seeing their face, but I think that's the autism.

- Yeah, I guess for me thoughts are something happening, like a transient experience. Very hard to nail down. I wouldn't say I'm fully aware of them, they're very mysterious. I can't get an adequate grasp on them. It's very funny, as according to people like Descartes one thing you can be absolutely certain of is your mind and the ideas it contains. While my experience is that the workings of my mind are the hardest thing to understand. I like to write a lot, because if I just sort of stream of consciousness write without trying to reflect on what I'm writing, that really just lets the thoughts flow into words. And then I can read back what I've written and reflect on it and really know what I think much better than if I try to capture thought internally.
  My internal monologue isn't my thoughts, it's my awareness of the thoughts, feelings, desires, etc. that are occurring and my critique of and reflection on them. I guess because thought is so vague and indeterminate, I do often try to put it into words internally, so I can pin down and get a fix on what I think; and I have to put things into words internally first before I can speak them.
  I can't tell people apart from legs or asses or any of that stuff either. I just have trouble recognizing people full stop. I frequently have conversations at school and stuff with people I know I've met before, who I can tell know who I am, but that I can't ID, until sometime into the convo something clues me in and I remember (though sometimes that doesn't happen). Luckily I have a pretty memorable name, so people are always like "Hey ______," and then I don't need to say their name I just say hey back.

I remember as a kid like 8 years old struggling with this not because I couldn’t visualize “the apple” but because I could but I didnt know how it was possible to visualize something without it being actually there.

Like I could (and still can) remember the feel, shape, taste, weight and smell of “the apple” and even play around with it in my head. Like I could image the sound of it hitting the ground, how itd feel biting into it, cutting it for apple slices etc.

Like all this shit I could not only imagine but feel the speculative sensation of it. Dunno I was a weird and bored kid.

I am now imagining a studio Ghibli style samwise

Don't know how related is this, but when I started studying maths seriously I always used Desmos to graph everything, and tried to think how the graph would look before entering the function on it, to a point when I could kinda see the curve on my mind just by looking at the function. It was extremely useful during tests, being able to visualize the curve and have it help me with the problems, and is still useful now that I work in a math intensive environment.

Same here, was very useful in Calc 3 when we were talking about volumes in 3d space. Starts to break down a bit when you're thinking of 3d volumes as solutions to equations of 4 variables (which would actually be describing a 4d shape, that intersects 3d space in certain regions).
- Trying to visualize abstract 3d shapes from a formula makes my head hurt. It's definitely something I'll get better at as I begin to recognize the patterns in multivariable functions but at the moment it's a real struggle

haha mean

This is exactly my experience too. It's very similar to the issue I always have with mindfulness practices. I can focus on a particular thought or image, or even just "observe" my inner monologue for the smallest fraction of a second, but then it's right back to the noise of uncontrolled thoughts. Just like you said, I can picture the apple just fine, even in extreme detail, but as soon as I do, it vanishes again and I have to reimagine it anew.
I've likened it to being like a game of Hot Potato my brain unintentionally plays with itself. The same instant I've grasped the potato (or apple in this case) it's tossed away again. It's not hard to catch it again after I toss it, but I can't help but toss it as soon as I do.

I don't even understand what "see" means in this context, so I guess I'm a 5

Hang on a sec, being a 5 is not the norm? The more you know... 🤯

Head explode, no apple!

5 is called aphantasia

I’ve always wondered if this is a form of brain damage.

I can’t do much more than a vague impression for a split second.

I can play entire movies I've made up in my head but even though I know how long an inch is if I try to imagine what an inch by inch cube would look like in my hand my brain goes fuzzy.

I'd wager it would be roughly cubic in shape
- Well the practical application of this lack of skill is when I'm trying to buy a dildo online and underestimate the size because I'm not good at imagining how much 3 inches in diameter is.

I'm level 2 I can only visually imagine emojis for objects.

💰💰💰💰💰🤑🔫😁✊
Lenin, state and revolution

I'm baffled that an author, who's entire fucking job is to visualize things in their mind's eye, both doesn't comprehend this and declares himself a 1 on this scale. Man writes fiction novels, how can he not at least consider himself a 2 or 3?

I'm a graphic designer with this issue. I'm highly creative but I never know what something I'm creating is going to look like until it is created. I bet you it's probably pretty similar with writing.
Because you can understand what's in a place and describe it without being able to see it. This isn't a skill you can develop, it's an innate feature of your mind whether you can actually see it like it's in front of you or not. I can visualize a complex scene in my mind, and not really write a great description, because those are entirely different things.
Have you considered that he's a dogshit author anyway?
You can totally be a one and do super art!
https://youtu.be/Xa84hA3OsHU?si=e8HB_p7MQgOsWOhq

Not only do i see fully visualized things, when I'm alone I visualize ideas so fully I start moving sometimes. It looks really really stupid so I don't do it when others can see me. Yes I have ADHD

I think I started around a 3 and made my way to 1 by using it all the time for depressive escapism. 3/10 experience, better than nothing - still not very effective

Fun to have, though.

If someone says "think of an apple" out of the blue, I'm a 5.

If someone says "visualize an apple" I'm a 1-3 depending on how focused I am.

I've always thought this is because I have always been a big reader, and as a consequence, a bit of a speed-reader so it is like my brain is constantly set to "important information only" and I have to mentally set it back to "actually visualize it" because I tend to do the same thing when reading. I can be sitting here and read "Purple lightning split the sky and the ring of white roses was illuminated in the flash of light. I stood there, frozen, as I realized some of the roses were flecked with blood." & at normal speed, my mind will be like a strict 4-5. I can 'see' the scene but it isn't really complete or detailed.

Something like "Sekiro felt the rusted blade part the air behind him and twisted his body at the last second, moving out of the blade's path as he swung his hammer upwards into his attacker's chin" is even less likely to be visualized at all but if I read it even a bit slower - or just take a second afterwards, suddenly I become Sasuke in the Forest of Death

I can visualize an apple pretty easily but if asked to think of an apple my brain presents a big map of apple-related concepts that may not have visualizations attached. Like I can think of an apple's color, texture, shape, flavor, temperature, an apple on a tree, links to memories of picking apples, foods that have apples in them, and so on.
I've always explained it as how words are representations of abstract concepts, and my brain presents the concepts directly rather than the word labels.
- You just described how I tend to think/visualize stuff by default in a much better way!! The 'map of related concepts' is absolutely me whenever I'm asked to think/visualize something out of the blue and probably why whenever I am asked "imagine X" I tend to immediately go 'okay, what am I imagining about X?' and consider that a 5 lol.
This is a great way to think about it. I’ve never understood until now when people said they saw a movie in their mind when reading.
But with the above framing of slowing down extremely to visualize it, I took a relatively long time trying to make a mental picture of that passage instead of speed-reading right through it. It’s still a bit surprising that people read an entire book that way, but that helped a lot.

i can picture/taste/hear/smell/feel if i try, but it's more like a memory than a truly active sensory experience in high competition with others... unless i force it and am drowsy. my family tells me my recall is insane, though. i think they overestimate it, because my recall for auditory is probably my strongest relative to theirs. i experience that as a mental echo. i use it when i'm trying to remember something distinct and complex for a few minutes... i'll say it out loud to myself so i can hear it and let it echo for my recall.

i had was near sighted (uncorrected for a while) as a kid, so it makes sense to me why that one is not as potent. but my recall and general experience of colors is rich.

also, having a few calm, chill, cerebral psychedelic experiences can open up meta-cognitive functions. kind of a little journey behind the curtain to see the active work being done on the stage to create the show.

I’m like a 1-2, not always photo-realistic but I’m a highly visual person so it comes naturally to me.

I have the opposite problem where I'm a 1 and it seems more real than reality. Is that a problem? I can imagine things happening with full sights and smells more clearly than things that are happening right now. Real life seems distant and confusing.

I am autistic but I'm also prone to escapism.

Is this just dissociation?

I think that last part where real life seems distant and confusing is the malady. It's not a mental illness until it starts affecting your ability to live your life. This would inform my framing and approach to the situation because 1) I would want to do something about it bc it affects your ability to live and 2) I wouldn't first try to inhibit your ability to visualize. I would sooner ask about your sleep hygiene, diet, exercise, interpersonals, etc before saying something unhelpful like get a hobby.
- I have zero social life which is probably a large part of it. I used to daydream a lot as a kid too, like full on Doug Funnie style internal fantasies I'd have to get pulled out of.
  I get frequently disappointed with my life and feel like there's no control, so I slip into imagination land where I can do anything. That's the main draw.
Are you on DMT constantly? "More real than reality" is a good description of some aspects of a DMT trip
- I've tried edible marijuana like twice but I've never had anything more intense. The edibles just made me nauseous. I think I'm just depressed?

i can visualize the apple or whatever and like rotate it in my brain, change the lighting, etc. or like, i dunno a spaceship or exoplanet or future hovercraft it sucks because my brain and coordination don't match so despite trying really hard i can't really art despite being able to make brain art. i wish there was a non-invasive, non-Elon brain interface device that let me bypass my "stupid fingers".

Something that comes to mind (ha!) as a method to try that might allow you to still do art, even really good art, would be just to lean into that apparent lack of coordination. Like, ok so your hands refuse to translate what you see in your mind's eye? Cool, let your hands lead the way. You can just leave it at that and just do freeform scribbles, that would still be artistic, even if you're not happy with the result. But you could also take it a step further and try to make it a sensory feedback kind of thing. (There's a term for it, but I can't remember--I have a bunch of brain issues too.) When your hand does something your brain didn't want it to do, pause and remake the picture you had in your mind's eye to incorporate that "error" such that it becomes the new picture in your mind's eye. Then try again with your hands until they once again do something else you didn't intend, even if that happens immediately. Just repeat that process. Incorporate the unintended into a new intention. This not only has the potential to make artwork you're truly happy with, even if it will never be photorealism or anything beyond your personal brand of abstract art, but it can actually help train your brain to get better coordination.
Sorry if I'm suggesting something you've already thought of and tried, I know it's not exactly groundbreaking, and can even just be considered a basic common practice for someone who is, say, beginning to learn to draw. But for me at least, thinking it out like that, and consciously, repeatedly shifting my intention while allowing and being accepting of "mistakes" has lead to the creation of things I'm sincerely proud of, it has gotten me closer to achieving the kind of brain-to-hands interface you describe that we both wish we had, and has just been rewarding in general.
- there's some stuff i'd love to try but it comes down to free time which i have little of (but that may change soon). my current job is doing a number on my hands and tendons so i need to do something less physical first. thank you for the tips though i'll save this for later!

I can’t see shit 😎

I tend to have a really high visual memory, but I also have the monologue, which means that when I read, it's kinda like a narrated movie, which allows me to speed-read fiction and non-fiction with pretty great recall, but it annihilates my ability to do abstract math that I can't visualize. Fortunately, most things I work with are within Newtonian physics and probability, but anything outside of that is a nightmare for me to memorize.

I'd say normally I'm around a 2 to 4, but if I'm focusing I can do 1. Nothing like actually seeing though, with proper seeing the stuff still has detail if I'm not concentrating.

If I'm sitting on public transport I'm usually flipping through movie or machine ideas in between hexbear browsing

I CAN ROTATE A CUBE WITH MY MIND

4.8 I can see the apple I gated for the chickens yesterday (it had a bum) but its like a snap shot and it is really hard too keep it there. But I can imagine biting it and feel in my mouth and hear the crunch as clear as if I was actually eating it.

Yeah I'm a 1 on the scale. I honestly thought everyone could visualise like that, until I joined study groups in high school.

since i CAD and draw a lot i think I really have to see stuff in my head

i can't imagine doing anything without that

Once I started getting involved with BIM everything clicked so much better. I've thought it was the most revolutionary technology ever because, "That is exactly how my brain works". I'm starting to realize if you don't have that ability how frightening that could be.

Look at the “no-apple” thinker!

As a qualia, this is very hard to communicate. I wonder if there's a genuine, measurable difference here, or if what I think of as 'visualising' is the same as them thinking of ideas and feelings. Nobody like, has a second vision they use, it's just.. remembering a sight as if you're looking at it now.

no, I can think of new things I haven't seen before and visualize them as if I were looking at them. It doesn't exist in my field of view, but I can clearly and strongly create a visual representation which does not reflect a witnessed reality.

Mines closer to 1 but I just visualize a memory of the apple, like visualizing my fruit basket

I'm like a 2 but I can't hold the image for more than a second or so.

I can visualize just fine, but literally cannot imagine smells. It makes adding full sensory fluff to tabletop games frustrating, and makes me get confused when authors do it to any great extent.

i just realized i can't do smells either holy shit. i can recall memories of smells but can't conjure them up in my head despite being able to do full dive holodeck immersion. also when i dream everything is odorless.
- You're welcome for that knowledge of your limitations comrade :D
I can imagine smells, but it feels like some are locked. I can smell hot asphalt, vinegar, apples, and grass clipping, for example, but I don't remember what vomit smells like. I can feel it for a second when I imagine the sound of vomit, but it seems to activate my throat, not my nose.

I can hold one image like that in my mind and focus on it for a full 3.5 minutes without interruption. By harnessing this level of concentration I have learned to see without my eyes and can read the front of the playing card while looking at the back.

Trying to learn how to draw informed me how much caricature I keep in my mind. I'm more 2 because I lack the training in perspective and form to internalize the world in a way that actually lets me recall an apple.

i got 2

This is why I'm optimistic that attempts by tech bros to create devices that can read minds will fail. Everybody created their own brain software. Deciphering it will require at least 3 new scientific disciplines.