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 Pyroalchi wrote:
From some discussions on the topic I also find interesting that the ability to visualize different things seem to vary depending on topic. For some reason I find it very hard to visualize written skript in my head. I can "see" a sheet of paper and "know" that there is script on it, but it takes a lot of concentration to see and "read" the actual letters instead of hearing my inner voice telling me what they mean.


On the other hand I can usually visualize low to mid complexety chemistry 3D structures in my head and rotate them or parts of them which obviously came in pretty handy during school and university

I think I might be Hyperaphantasia, bc I can visualize me sitting at a desk, with pen and paper, open empty notebook, grid gak of paper, waster cups with condensation, writing on the lines but messy like i always do, am able to read it visual and even listen to myself reading it within my head. Takes no energy for me to do this at all.


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 Kcalehc wrote:
Aphantasia, interesting. Had never heard of it till today, and honestly it never occurred to me that there were people that could not visualize things in their head. I knew about the 'no voice in your head' thing, and I suppose visualization is a natural extension of that, I imagine there may also be people that can't hear music in their head as well, or recall smells, or textures - and yet are still fully functioning human beings. It truly is a bizarre world.

I myself can visualize very well, almost enough to cloud out actual reality; this was more pronounced when I was younger, takes a bit more effort now. I'm fairly good at seeing how pieces fit together to make something, even if they are all separate when I see them - helps when sorting out the closet at least! - even if my measurements are sometimes a bit off when I come to try it in practice.


One possibly related thing that I also only recently discovered is that many people rarely if ever have lucid dreams; something I experience several times a year. Though I almost never remember any other types of dreams (assuming I have them, I don't know), any night without a lucid dream is just a blank space in my head - I fall asleep, and I wake again having missed the intervening time.

I have sleeping problems (Insanely myoclonic jerks and EHS) I am able to also Lucid sleep as well as I can day dream.

I might have the hyper version. For me, a grey mini is something I can see in whatever color scheme I want. Not literally, but almost. I can almost forget they aren’t painted. And I can switch color schemes whenever I think a new one would be more flattering to the mini. I have done this ever since I was a child assembling Star Wars and Star Trek models. (Painting wasn’t a consideration, and still feels like an unrelated hobby forced upon modeling to me.)

The problem is that my actual painted minis don’t look as good. They look worse than the grey minis to me not only because my painting talent is not great, but because they lose the versatility in my mind’s eye that a blank slate minis has. This is one reason why I try to avoid using green stuff, too, despite converting being the biggest part of the hobby for me.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
From some discussions on the topic I also find interesting that the ability to visualize different things seem to vary depending on topic. For some reason I find it very hard to visualize written skript in my head. I can "see" a sheet of paper and "know" that there is script on it, but it takes a lot of concentration to see and "read" the actual letters instead of hearing my inner voice telling me what they mean.


On the other hand I can usually visualize low to mid complexety chemistry 3D structures in my head and rotate them or parts of them which obviously came in pretty handy during school and university

I remember hearing somewhere (a television show I think) that people can't read in dreams, so you can check if you're dreaming by grabbing a book and seeing how clear the text is. But personally, I can read in dreams. Sometimes it's actual text. Sometimes it's the dream equivalent of lorem ipsum text that my brain just assigns meaning to as I instantly drink in whatever the message in the text was supposed to be.

In dreams I can only read simple things that I already know, like signs. If I try to read a new book, I end up squinting at it and unable to make out the words.

This is a very interesting thread. Personally I can easily visualise things so find it hard to imagine not being able to.

I also have an inner monologue and internally talk to myself and think in words.

Out of curiosity, for those who don't have an inner monologue, what happens when you read? Do you subvocalise at all?

I just had a thought related to aphantasia.

Do you enjoy looking at statues? Do they “work” for you? We as a society have decided not to paint our statues with flesh tones and brightly colored clothes. The Ancient Greeks did, though. To them, statues needed to be painted to look like the people they represented…and most of our ideas about statues come indirectly from them.

So, would Michelangelo’s David look better with a decent paint job? Would it only look improved with an excellent paint job? Or can you visualize it to be a person without the paint?

I can't recall stuff from memory which didn't involve physical strain of some sort. I can't remember pictures or plain sound or visual stuff, what people said but I remember the meting happening. But I can recall all my matchs, writen text, for some reason stuff in german I remember the best. I also don't remember people faces or generaly how they looked, unless there was phyical interaction.

I don't like having "pictures" in my head, because they loop, and make me feel bad. Stuff like thinking about stats of 8th ed GK and how much I spend on them, made me unable to sleep and I had to start taking anti depresants again. If possible I try to have nothing in my head most of the time. Reacting in faster then thinking anyway. In bouts the person that thinks too much loses, to a person that just does stuff. Much faster reaction time.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I just had a thought related to aphantasia.

Do you enjoy looking at statues? Do they “work” for you? We as a society have decided not to paint our statues with flesh tones and brightly colored clothes. The Ancient Greeks did, though. To them, statues needed to be painted to look like the people they represented…and most of our ideas about statues come indirectly from them.

So, would Michelangelo’s David look better with a decent paint job? Would it only look improved with an excellent paint job? Or can you visualize it to be a person without the paint?

I can absolutely visualize it as a person without the paint, but I personally find the lack of color to be kind of pleasing in the same way that gray plastic (when I'm not picturing paint schemes and special effects) to be pleasing. By being monochrome, your attention is drawn to the shape of the model/statue. You could apply an amazing paint job to David, and that paint job might be impressive in its own right, but I'd almost think of the paint job as a distinct piece from the statue itself.

I sometimes feel the same way about 40k models, tbh. If a paintjob is just so-so, I might find my attention being drawn to the pose/details of the sculpt rather than the paint. When I think of the paint and sculpt as a single piece, I think, is when the paint job accentuates the sculpt in some way; using shadows and color to draw attention to or change the effect of details on the sculpt. Ex: Making the eyes of your model strikingly spooky on an otherwise not very spooky model, using a wash to make it easier to notice the ribbing of someone's power armor cables, using the basing to convey something absent from the model on its own, etc.

EDIT: I tend not to mentally paint/add special effects to statues quite as much as I do 40k models, probably because I have fewer colorful associated images that pop into my brain at the site of them.

Aelyn wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Given that autism is diagnosed now in up to 1 in 50 (and increasing to 1 in 30, iirc) children, as exposures to chemical toxins (many mandatory and not at all accidental) during critical developmental periods have increased... Thanks for the interesting thread.

Um, the anti-vax conspiracy theory linking vaccinations to autism is both thoroughly debunked and irrelevant to this thread. There may be a link between aphantasia and autism - they are both kinds of neurodiversity, after all, and it's not uncommon for multiple types of neurodiversity to manifest in a given individual - but blaming either on "mandatory toxins" is actively harmful when the vast majority of scientific opinion basically boils down to "some people's brains are wired a bit differently, and that's just how they are" (obviously that's heavily pared down). And I'm not sure what point you're trying to make when talking about the ancient Greeks and flocks of birds...

Ummm... no. You are wrong. But ok, believe whatever gets to you sleep at night.

And if you do not understand the reference to flocking behavior in the context of autism and different dev trajectories of neural systems, then you frankly are not able to support your contention that anything related has been debunked or not.

Experts are wrong all the time. As a teacher, i tell students that their job is to figure out where everything that i say is wrong, else there is no advance. So, i am not averse to being wrong, here, but you are unable to show that beyond parroting whatever corporate fact checking stooge on whose assertions your position re debunking seems to depend. My suggestion is to read or listen to Robert Kennedy's books and or podcast... then move to statistical analyses on which he bases his position, then to Mattias Desmet on why most people fall for the lies even and especially when they become increasingly absurd.

 jeff white wrote:
Ummm... no. You are wrong.

Sorry, but you're not even close to correct here. The "vaccines cause autism" study was a shameless fraud by someone with a financial stake in its outcome and the author was stripped of his medical license over it. And the "increase" in autism appears to be almost entirely the result of better diagnostic criteria and acknowledging the full spectrum of cases, not merely the ones where it is a crippling disability.

Yeah, I never expected to see someone who actually believes that vaccines cause autism,

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
Yeah, I never expected to see someone who actually believes that vaccines cause autism,

Makes you wonder what toxins they've been exposed to....

Unless they are older then 80 or lived in a third world country, then the highest probability is teflon and plastic micro particles in the western world.

To be honest the names don't matter as much. If it damages the same part of the brain and ends up creating the same effects then something else, who cares. It is like people doing sports and altzheimers. A lot of them don't really have it, they just have all the symptom of it and it is mostly linked to brain damage. All those new names for stuff that already existed, seems to me like companies trying to sell drugs at higher prices for same conditions and doctors REALLY wanting to have a publication in Lancet or at least NYT.

Karol for the win! Yeah, connections with env toxins are becoming clearer, e.g. lead, teflon (Kennedy has a great recent interview with a colleague also responsible for finally getting some accountability from corporations who hid these toxic effects) as are those with mandated vaxxx schedules and chronic inflammation and nutrient deficiencies due to processed foods and seed oils, yada. Safest bet is to avoid them all.
As for the post above claiming a single study compromised by greed, yeah well you out yourself as underinformed. There are hundreds of studies, and the money is on the big pharma side with researchers who publish truth risking livelihoods even losing their lives, so... where is the greed, exactly?

Again, whatever gets you to sleep at night. But, ask yourself why Congress and the CDC would exempt themselves from vaxxx mandates if they are so safe? Why do increasing childhood vaxxx requirements and autoimmune disorders and developmental neuro disorders follow the same curve? Yeah, well no matter. Drop it. My point here is that conditions involving lack of inner voice and perspective taking can be associated with both env and other toxin exposures, and that it should not be surprising that these increase in parallel leading to this discussion here.

Anyways, I am done talking to brick walls. Life is too short. I feel for people, and cannot imagine a life without inner voice and visualization.

Maybe these conditions are also traceable to overmedication on antipsychotics and so called mood stabilizers. Similar behaviors appear in primates dosed on these toxins. I cannot be sure, as my area is systems neurology and dev of purpose and meaning in life... in overall effort to develop computational models and eventually (morally) autonomous robots as proof of concept for human autonomy, with which inner voice has been traditionally associated. My recent pubs are all open access, and i work under this same name, so my position is out there, peer reviewed, tier one...

My suspicion is that my interlocutors here have no such grounds for their observations, and are best ignored.


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 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
Yeah, I never expected to see someone who actually believes that vaccines cause autism,

Boo!

I don't think there is a way to avoid teflon. I remember watching a program with my mom, where researchers for some case in US tried to find samples of blood not polluted by teflon, and they couldn't find any, even among people living in places like deep rain forests of brazil. So in the end they got samples from the US army, which for some reason has US soldier blood samples frozen from the time of the korean blood.

As local vaccines goes. There are two stories, which can be then checked in hospitals and gravyards here. In the 50s we had the last polio outbreak, there are family members in many families, which are still alive, who did not get vaccinated. Horrible burden for a family to have, and very unfun life for sourivours. So vax good. Then at the end of 50s, the soviets made Poland refuse tuberculosis vaccine from UNRRA, and take the soviet one. Result thousand of children dead, because the vaccin was polluted. My gran only sourvived, because her father took gold he got from germans in 1946, and traded it for peniciline , that the soviet soldiers stationed near Goldap had. This vaxx was definitly bad. So in the end, not being a researcher , scientists, doctor or even a simple very smart person. I think the judgment of stuff like medical treatment has to be left to those, who are one of those things. And the decision, like everything fall in to the hands of politicians. Who very often aren't any of those things. But that is how life is in general.