You say “apple” to me and I’m #1, glossy skin, insides, all that
And how in the hell does one navigate life, or enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?! Reading a book is like watching a movie. I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
Yet #5’s are not handicapped in the slightest. They’re so “normal” that mankind is just now figuring out we’re far apart on this thing. Fucking weird.
EDIT: Showed this to my wife and she was somewhat mystified as to what I was asking. Pretty sure she’s a 5. I get frustrated as hell when I ask her to describe a thing and she’s clueless. “Did the radiator hose pop off, or is it torn and cracked?” “I don’t know!”
EDIT2: The first Star Wars book after the movie came out was Splinter in the Mind’s Eye. I feel like I got that title. What’s it mean to you?
When tying your shoelaces what images or dialogue you have in your head?
When tying your shoelaces what images or dialogue you have in your head?
Uhhh… none.
Is that a thing that happens for some people?
I was answering the “how does one navigate life” question towards the end lmao.
Op’s post was a long and winding road. It’s hard to know what to react to.
That’s fair. Thank you for the light criticism. I edited it :)
Content not viewable in your region
Do you have shares in imgur or something? Use a different image host that doesn’t delete your images for not upgrading.
Stop supporting enshittification.
I’ve been using imgur to save random images for what feels like a decade and not a single one has been deleted
You’re not in UK. UK banned imgur because the crown is trying to build a database of internet users to oppress and imgur said no.
No, imgur isn’t banned, they were threatened with a fine, and it wasn’t because of three online safety act, it was because they were tagging user data with suspected age range, and selling browsing habits of children. The ICO said that they had to come up with a plan to exclude the child data from sale out they could be liable for a fine. Rather than implement a simple filter on the database, they implemented a complicated geofencing filter because they took offence at being regulated at all.
Wow that’s a lot of pointless words. They were told to implement an internet user tracking system or be fined, but since they have no desire or obligation to do so they chose to cease operating under those rules. This has nothing to do with children and everything to do with tracking adults, there’s your ‘simply’. Trying to spin this as ‘protect the children’ is completely worthless word garbage.
You are factually incorrect and clearly haven’t read the ICO report, falling for the corpo spin instead.
I understand that you believe what you’re saying but I don’t think you’re factually correct. You’re parroting the propaganda of a censorship and tracking regime that has no sincere desire to help children in any way.
The good news is that this is already teaching a whole new generation of UK citizens the value of VPNs and encrypted paths out of the ever-tightening information noose the UK has been trying to create for the last 41 years.
You think I disagree with you about the OSA. I don’t. I disagree with you about imgur. Imgur is a greedy corp who deleted a bunch of old posts but excluded ones with a subscription and sold child browsing habits and blamed it all on the OSA when the investigation predated the OSA. It was already illegal to sell children’s data without parental consent in the UK for years and years. They’re not the good guys fighting for internet freedom they’re painting themselves as.
Some people really are out there living their lives with aphantasia. I can’t imagine that.
I am definitely a number 1, I couldn’t imagine not being able to imagine. I can go beyond one. I can visualize the apple and taste it as I begin to eat said apple.
Discover the trick as a kid, when denied food from my abusive mom boyfriend. He made me stand in a corner while they ate dinner. I used this skill to bring a cheeseburger into existence and then began to eat it. Even felt full afterwards. Of course that sensation only lasted couple hours, but was still interesting trait to discover.
I can’t imagine
I’m somewhere between 3 and 4 I think. If I try to imagine a detail, I can’t see the rest of the thing. If I want to see the whole thing, it’s all very vague and shadowy.
Yes this is me. I have to ‘zoom in’ to get details
being a 1 with ADHD is crazy, like I can be in the middle of a class and zone out and start visualising myself walking around the campus in incredible detail, or FPV droning inside a friend’s house, or really anything I can think of, although that said it takes a fair bit of effort to keep it going beyond a certain amount of time.
Dude it’s a constant battle to not get lost in thoughts. The real world is boring af 90% of the time. I’ve sat for hours quietly immersed in the imaginings. It’s also fantastic for extrapolating and working through ideas though. Sights, sounds, tactile sensations, movement, it isn’t vivid like reality but it has such depth.
And don’t get me started on the times you imagine yourself doing a task and then completely believing you actually did it until someone gets mad at you for it, it’s funny but also kinda ass
Haha 😅
My sister has #5 and I can ask her to make a response if you want OP.
Last we talked about it she said if she tried really hard she can see come colors and shapes but that’s about it.
The best conversation about it we ever had went something like this (keep in mind were both autistic and when together dont always communicate like neurotypical people do):
*while driving*
her: “get in that turn lane to the right”
*i do the 👆hand tricks and turn*her: “when I don’t want to do that I always think in my head ‘never eat soggy waffles’ and remember that east is left and right is west”
me: “that’s not even correct, but like WHY would you do that??”
her: “to remember how to turn”
me: “why wouldn’t you just do the hand things?”
me: “like imagine them in your head and-”her: “MUST BE NICE HUH?”
*we both explode in laughter*she didn’t even mean to make a joke about it, that’s just genuinely the way she remembers lefts and rights
also this meme has become a common occurrence whenever the topic is brought up
The left/right story might be a different thing. Was in my 40s until I could instinctively know left from right. Before that I would snap my left fingers, or mime it, because I’m sinister and can’t snap my right.
Only way I got better was saying to myself, “This is bullshit and you’re all growed up. Work on this thing.” Somehow I got better, can’t say how.
I have serious issues with modelling the world in 3D, but I’m a solid 1 on the aphantasia scale. Weird.
Isn’t 5 is called Aphantasia ? To be unable to visualize something in the mind?
Yep! Craziest thing is that we just started looking into this thing in the past 10-20 years. Proof to me that it’s no handicap, but if you took my mind’s eye away I’d feel crippled.
It has its benefits. You can talk absolute depravity, like Trump farting so much shit into Ivankas mouth that liquid diarrhea is overflowing from the side of her mouth with chunks of yesterday’s pasta bolognese dangling off her chin, and get no mental image of that filth. But you can enjoy that imagery.
I’m probably 1 but I can tune stuff out.
Stuff like “you are now manually breathing” doesn’t really bother me.
I’ve also got a lot of intrusive thoughts so maybe I’m just practiced at shutting it down.
It’s more of a spectrum with hyper- and a- phantasia being the extremes on each end
(Prophantasia is considered the ability to project imagined images into your physical field of view)
If you really want to blow your mind (heh), you should check out SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory), which is thought to be linked to aphantasia
Wow. I didn’t know about the term “prophantasia” until now. Probably because I think that visualizing things in our 3d world is a normally developed imagination power of the people who don’t have Aphantasia.
Prophantasia seems like biologically evolved Augmented Reality. Where instead of wearing a piece of AR glass, We’re naturally born with this trait.
I can pull out my palm in front of me and visualize a small cat jumping around. Not for too long because I cannot imagine the random movement a cat does. But, as a still object, visualizing an apple is easy.
I am more curious to wonder if someone can manually develop Spatial Intelligence without being born with it priorly.
Wait you can not only in some sense see a-cat-on-your-hand when imagining that, but also see an imaginary cat on the hand you are actually seeing???
Do you then not see the stuff behind the cat while you are imaging the cat to be in the way???
Imagining a cat on my hand is just for adding easiness.
I can imagine a cat anywhere. Right now, a tall water bottle is on a table in front of me. I can imagine a cat one the table, walking towards the bottle and ultimately jumps on it. I can also imagine the bottle to shake or fall down as an impact.
Imagining a still object, for example an apple is more easy. I can imagine the apple has a non scientifical gravity trait and it keeps bouncing on every flat surfaces around the room.
I’ve been considering this as normal imagination power for the people who don’t have Aphantasia. Probably because I can imagine like this with ease.
Seeing past the thing that I imagine is kinda a cognitive blindspot. Because, I don’t try to look past what I imagine. A cat or an apple.
Only when I get aware of the fact if I really do look past or not, the confusion arises. But it is much difficult for me to imagine a transparent object. Like an apple made of glass.
I’m a #5 on that scale.
And how in the hell does one navigate life, or enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?! Reading a book is like watching a movie. I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
I won’t say I’m not jealous of people who’re #1s. However, to directly answer your question, it’s not like our heads are empty. You think apple and (apparently) ‘see’ an apple. I think apple and it’s like thinking of how you’d describe an apple. It’s red, it’s round. It has a stem. It’s juicy. It tastes good… but I can’t see it. Or anything else. They’re just thoughts.
I have a very difficult time with facial recognition, presumably as a result of this. If I’m watching a movie where there’s a lot of characters that are shown but not named, I have a difficult time following that. I need to be able to assign names to them to keep them straight in my head, and often-times if a character isn’t named but they’re important, I’ll assign them a name myself just to have something to track them with. I can recognize people I interact with a lot obviously but if you asked me to describe what someone looks like who I’m not currently interacting with, that’s very difficult for me to do, beyond very surface-level stuff, like their gender or their build. If I had to describe someone for a police sketch, I’d be useless at that. Remembering facial features is like remembering a list of words; I can’t just call up an image of them to describe… if I haven’t already committed that description to memory, I can’t describe the person.
It’s funny, honestly, because I never realized this wasn’t how everyone is until I saw the image you linked some years back. I actually called up my mother immediately after and asked her what she could see. The conversation went something like:
“When you think of an apple, can you see the apple?”
“Yes…”
“Yeah, but like… you can actually see it, though?”
“…yes…?”
“Yeah but I mean like… you can see it, as if you’re looking at it?”
“…yes, what is this about?”
I’d never really connected my lack of a mind’s eye with my inability to follow unnamed characters through a movie until you just said that. 🤯
So you never have sexual fantasies? If somebody asks you to describe how something looks, how are you able to do it? Can you at least remember the colors red and blue?
I have sexual fantasies, but they’re more like reading erotica than watching porn.
I imagine I describe things just like I expect others do, except that instead of having a catalogue of pictures to reference, I have a filing cabinet of documents with descriptions of those things. The concept of a ‘photographic memory’ is completely foreign to me. If I’m walking down the street and I see someone get mugged, then I get asked about it later, I can recall and recite the things I specifically took notice of in the moment, but if I want to be able to give a description of e.g. what the person was wearing or what color their hair was, I need to consciously observe those things and commit them to memory at the time. As I understand it, some folks can just recall the event and ‘replay’ it in their mind, and recall things they might not have taken direct notice of originally; I definitely can’t do that.
I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
But aren’t you visualizing the assigned character’s face? I think we all have varying amounts of this depending on what it is. It sounds like you can visualize faces, but not spaces.
Edit: I see you say further down that you have a difficult time with facial recognition.
Everyone’s brain does such wildly different things.
It sounds like you can visualize faces, but not spaces.
Can’t visualize faces at all; I think you pulled that quote from a different post. ;)
The thing to remember, though, is that… I didn’t even know this was something that I “couldn’t do” until it was pointed out to me that others can do it. I just assumed everyone else was being metaphorical when they said they “visualized something” in their head, or whatever. So whereas you hear it and think “Oh gosh, these people can’t do this very normal thing! That must be awful!”, to us, it’s more like we’ve just been living our lives as normal and then 30+ years in, we discover that most people have a superpower that we don’t have.
But is it a superpower if the ability hadn’t been called out until the 21st century? That’s what kicks my ass. We can be so radically different, on what to me is a fundamental cognitive skill, yet it doesn’t make enough of a difference that the ancients didn’t figure it out three thousand years ago!
Thoughts are a weird thing to describe. I bet it just never really occurred to anyone to discuss specifically what they see in their head when they think of a thing - everyone just assumed what they saw was the same thing everyone saw.
It’s like the theory that the color you see as green might not be the same color I see as green - how do you actually determine that?
Oh I see, you were quoting OP. My mistake.
I think it’s kind of cool that are brains adjust.
I’m basically the opposite. I can remember peoples faces very well but have a hell of a hard time trying to remember their names. I’d say I’m a 1 or 2 on this scale, depending imon if I’m fully engaged with the content (like reading a book).
I had that exact same conversation with my mom but it went like this:
“Ok mom, picture a cow in your head”
“Oookayyy”
“Now you can see a cow right?”
“What do you mean”
“Like… You can see a picture of the cow, right?”
“Nooo”
My dad chimes in “yes, obviously”
“…crap. Mom, I have some news for you”
Both of us grew up thinking we had no imagination or were dumb. I remember being incredibly frustrated when a teacher taught us the concept of the Memory Palace where you picture things in rooms of a house. Like if you had to remember five playing cards you’d picture a room with 7 red clowns, with hearts on their cheeks. Then in the next room you’d picture a king, holding up a spade, etc. That just made it harder for me to remember and the teacher kept telling me I wasn’t listening or trying.
I feel that explanation about being useless to a sketch artist on a spiritual level, that blew my mind as a kid. To this day I can’t really describe what my parents or wife looks like, I can just list characteristics. I feel my brain trying to visualize but then it comes up empty
I used to want very much to be an artist, or at least, be able to draw capably, but it’s always seemed impossible. I can think of what I want to draw in a macro sense - like, if I was thinking of that famous Norman Rockwell painting with the boy with the bindle sitting at the diner next to the police officer, I can certainly imagine the scene. Just thinking of that painting from memory, the officer is looking down at the boy who’s looking up at the officer, there’s a man behind the counter in a white outfit looking at both of them with an amused expression, there’s some pastries or donuts or something on the counter…
But to draw something, it feels like you’ve got to be able to imagine the micro details, and without references to look at, I just can’t do that. The same is true if I was going to try to describe the minutia in the painting - what color is the officer’s hair? Are any of the characters wearing glasses? What do the wrinkles in their clothes look like? What kind of shoes are they wearing?
I even have a difficult time commissioning artwork as a result of this, because it’s difficult to describe what I want without having something visual to reference.
I’ve seen a recommendation for the books ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ by Betty Edwards and ‘The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are’ by Danny Gregory. The commenter also attached their drawings from before and after, saying it took a quite short time to go from rudimentary scribblings to full-fledged detailed realistic drawings. So perhaps these books help, though I’ve got a feeling they might be about drawing from references.
The same is true if I was going to try to describe the minutia in the painting - what color is the officer’s hair? Are any of the characters wearing glasses? What do the wrinkles in their clothes look like? What kind of shoes are they wearing?
I’m not really an artist, but for myself I resolved this problem by making decisions like that when I come around to those details. I.e. I’ll choose the fitting shoes when it’s time to draw the shoes. And of course, sketching is for planning this kind of stuff before drawing proper begins.
I’ve seen a recommendation for the books ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ by Betty Edwards and ‘The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are’ by Danny Gregory.
I’ll give this a look! Thanks for the recommendation!
I’m not really an artist, but for myself I resolved this problem by making decisions like that when I come around to those details. I.e. I’ll choose the fitting shoes when it’s time to draw the shoes. And of course, sketching is for planning this kind of stuff before drawing proper begins.
I don’t think I’m really explaining the problem well, but like… If I don’t have a visual reference, I just can’t imagine (or draw) what the minute details actually look like in those situations. An artist might be able to take a side-profile picture of a shoe and visualize what that would look like if it was a front or back or diagonal viewpoint, and draw it into their scene. I know what a shoe looks like… I can describe one, I know a shoe when I see one obviously, but when it comes to needing a level of detail sufficient to actually draw the lines - to know where the next line should go - I come up blank. I can draw something and recognize that it doesn’t look like what I want, but it’s difficult to actually identify what it is that I do want unless I stumble on it.
I can draw very low-detail things. Stick figures, say, or basic outlines, but the details come very hard to me.
The person who recommended those books said they ‘teach how to draw what you see instead of what the brain tells you to draw’. Which is a bit odd, and I don’t know if they meant drawing from references specifically, but it kinda sounds like it might help with capturing an object how it should look. Especially since their ‘after’ example was a detailed drawing of a crow down to the feathers.
I’m actually simultaneously intrigued and a bit wary of these books, since I prefer unrealistic and quirky style and want to develop one like that for myself, but am afraid I might go for detailed looks if I learn to do that.
What Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain teaches you is to draw how an object does look. I’m probably a 4 on the scale and can draw because of this book. One of the memorable techniques is to take a photograph, turn ti upside down and draw it that way. Then, turn your drawing upside and see what you got. By making the image a bit confusing, you can focus on the lines and shading your eyes see, and not ‘a man in a chair’ your mind sees.
Good heavens! I learned about the memory palace in a Hannibal Lector book, thought it was genius, assumed everyone could do that.
I have aphantasia as well but I do actually have something sort of like a memory palace… kinda. It should be completely useless when I’m awake, but isn’t. I have a dream town, and every place I’ve dreamed about more than three times in the last ~20 years is there in a surprisingly consistent and exceptionally vivid way, like logging into a mmorpg, but spawning in random places. If not for it being easily recognizable as “my town”, I’d struggle to tell it from waking reality because that’s the only other time I experience “sight”. It’s genuinely unsettling sometimes, when my brain makes a new place, to not know if I was dreaming. Maybe that’s why I revisit places until they feel comfortable and familiar and get incorporated into the town.
I say it isn’t completely useless because I use spacial memory to “go places” when awake. I can’t see it, but I know what’s there if I go there, the same way I can mentally count the windows, and know what’s around them, in my house without visually touring the house; I think about where I go to open windows on a nice day, and count the stops.
I can’t put things into the town purposely. Locations or objects, unfortunately. Everything has to already be there if I want to make use of it. But if I can find a useful thing on my spacial tour, I can make note of where I found it, or move it to somewhere more useful. Like the finding the windows exercise, but, to continue your example, I happen to recall that next to window 3 is a Christmas cactus with pink heart-shaped flower buds, and I choose to ”move it” it to the 7th window of my tour. (And yes, if I make note that I’ve moved something, it does stay there when I dream, so that’s really neat)
Genuinely not that useful for things people probably normally use a memory palace sort of thing for, like short-term memories, (finding useful objects is difficult, and sometimes requires a lot of in-dream exploring, which takes actual time) but somewhat useful for certain long-term things, like numbers or recipes. And as a bonus, when I forget something, I’ll often stumble across it in my town and be reminded. Like the recipe for my mom’s cheesecake is the literal ingredients just sitting on the counter in the pocket floor she lives in (she’s a nightmare I had often enough to join the town’s residents, but I shoved her in an impossible floor so I can avoid her). I put that recipe there because I like to modify it, and I often forget what the base recipe is. It’s not written down in the normal sense because I’ll lose it, but it’s simple enough for a representation like that to be easy to hold onto.
But I’ve had similar frustrating experiences with people telling me to visualize things for whatever reason. Like nope, my internal computer is GUI-free. Text output only, with a screen reader. Not even multiple voices, which I hear is a thing most people can do, just the one default reader voice.
On the subject of not being able to visualize people, if there’s someone you haven’t seen in a long time, do you falsely match other people up with the description? For example, my mom died when I was 23, and I’m almost 40 now. It’s been so long that I genuinely don’t remember what she looks like unless I’m looking at a photo. But I know her general description, and when I see other women who fit the description I -feel- that they look just like her even though they usually don’t, actually.
You think apple and (apparently) ‘see’ an apple. I think apple and it’s like thinking of how you’d describe an apple. It’s red, it’s round. It has a stem. It’s juicy. It tastes good… but I can’t see it. Or anything else. They’re just thoughts
I think I’m a one, but I might be a five and I can’t tell, because how do I know what format my brain uses to tell me apple? I just know that it does.
I can imagine tastes well enough to cook pretty well and can often predict what a dish will taste like with pretty good accuracy ( I just recently saw a recipe for chocolate rosemary banana bread, and I could imagine that combination, even though I’d never had it before), so there are clearly some senses I can do it for. I think I can also do it visually, but I can’t exactly print it out, so I just know that I’ve received the thought.
If you close your eyes and focus on an apple, what do you see? My understanding is that people without aphantasia / who are “1s” can actually see an image of the apple, as though they were looking at it. If you just see black, no image at all, you might be a 5.
I think I’m overthinking this, but I can’t tell how you would know that you’re seeing it. I think I see it if I try, but my natural inclination is more like I know the apple’s there but I’m not looking at it.
Bizarrely, I am sure that I can “see” aspects of the apple, because that’s how I’m trying to focus on seeing it. Like, I can see the dimple where the stem connects and the curve of the apple with natural color variation for the part of the apple that I can see, but if I try to zoom out, it’s back to awareness of the apple.
I think I’m overthinking it, because I can “see” approximations of the apple variations in this post, but maybe it’s because they’re two dimensional.
It’s possible that you’re a 3 or a 4. My understanding is that people who are 1s can see the apple as though it was there in front of them. They can rotate the image in their minds, break it in half and examine the insides, see the seeds and the veins on the leaf and the discoloration near the stem. Zooming in or out isn’t problematic at all.
If you’re a 5, you can certainly be aware of these things - that they’re features of an apple - but if you really focus on seeing the apple - as though with your eyes, rather than just thinking about the features of the apple as qualitative properties - you can’t do it. It’s just blackness.
I’m not sure what difference this makes, but I can see snapshots of each of those, just not video. Though if I imagine biting into an apple, I can get all the senses together.
I think I might have just been trying to isolate sight from the other senses, because the only real experience I have with only the sight of apples is in pictures, so it being automatically 2d does make sense.
They can rotate the image in their minds, break it in half and examine the insides, see the seeds and the veins on the leaf and the discoloration near the stem.
Yeah, checking now, I can see those things as well as long as I’m also feeling, hearing, and smelling them.
Thank you! I first learned about this a while ago and I’ve occasionally wondered about it. I don’t think I would have figured it out without you talking me through it.
You’re welcome! It’s a topic I find intriguing, and it’s always interesting to discuss the different ways people experience these things, now that I realize we’re not all the same. :)
This reminded me of a sort of similar topic, and curiously enough it’s about reading, and might provide some insight into your question.
Some years ago, I happened on a thread in which the OP asked people whose voice they “heard” when they read.
I couldn’t even make sense of that question. The only time I “hear” voices when I read is when a character speaks. The rest of the time, I not only don’t “hear” the words - I’m not even really aware of them. My eyes follow the lines while my brain instantly translates the words I’m seeing into images and concepts and the like. And yes - it’s like a movie playing out inside my brain, and yes, I’m a #1 on this chart.
But apparently there’s a not insignificant number of people who “hear” a book inside their heads just as if someone else was reading it out loud. Instead of visualizing things, they remain focused only on the words - the representations - and somehow glean from them alone the necessary details.
I wouldn’t be surprised if those people are also generally #5 or thereabouts on this chart, and again what it is is that their brains don’t directly envision things but instead rely on descriptive representations.
I don’t get how it works either, but self-evidently it does.
I wouldn’t be surprised if those people are also generally #5 or thereabouts on this chart
Afaik the two are unrelated. I’d guess the ‘narration’ rather might be tied to the internal monologue. E.g. I’m around 2 or 3 on visualization, but have lots of monologuing going on constantly, and likewise ‘hear’ the text being read unless I specifically try to skim. It’s also worse in the second language, which is English for me, while I can read my native language faster — I’ve noticed before that the second language requires more brain processing and isn’t absorbed as directly.
Do you have the internal monologue, when not reading?
The ‘speed reading’ technique, of which you might’ve heard, is all about turning off the internal narration while reading and just absorbing the text directly. However, studies show that for most people, the narration helps comprehension and recall; and also that everyone or nearly everyone has subvocalization when reading, i.e. involuntary muscle movement of the throat, mirroring the words that they’re reading.
Do you have the internal monologue, when not reading?
It depends on the situation.
I actually have it sometimes when I read - like when I’m reading something purely conceptual, like a question on a forum.
Basically, as near as I can tell, if it’s a written description of some tangible thing or place or event, I jump straight to visualizing it and the words don’t really register. But if it’s conceptual - an expression of an idea or philosophy or such - I “narrate” the words to myself.
I also have an internal voice - my own - when I write, presumably because I can’t directly share my visualizations, so have to translate them into words right from the start.
When I’m not reading, it seems to split broadly the same way - I only have an internal monologue regarding things that are conceptual. If it’s available to my sensorium, then my consciousness of it is simply those sensory impressions without the accompanying words, so no internal monologue.
But if it’s something conceptual, or something I’m sharing with someone else, then I translate it into words.
Well, it seems that you don’t have the internal monologue as a mandatory part of your everyday life, instead using it sporadically as a helping instrument — which also translates to you not using it when reading, for the most part.
Although it seems weird to me that you’re using narration for conceptual things, and not ones describing tangible stuff. Since you’re a borderline case, you might want to commit yourself to one of the neuropsychology departments, for us normies to study what the hell is going on in your brain.
normies
I think you missed the point of this thread.
Again, I want to emphasize that what’s going on in your mind is not normal at any point, and you need to immediately surrender yourself to the nearest mental hospital, to be studied by your friendly psychotherapists and neuropsychologists. This is a matter of humanity’s well-being.
I hear a narrator if I decide to; otherwise the words just go directly into my brain like you described. I just had Morgan Freeman read your comment to me for funsies.
Wow! No, I’ve never “heard” a novel. Some writing is easy enough, like a meme where, “You just read this in Morgan Freeman’s voice.” OTOH, I didn’t “hear” it, but somehow I read it that way in my mind’s eye/ear.
I might be a 5 on the hearing scale! That’s really something to think on.
Your mind has an active visual cortex. Other folks think more using their audio cortex. Some more with somatic awareness (feeling tone).
Mathameticians can visualize math.
Everyone is wired a bit different.
I’m a two or a four on the scale, depending on how much weed I consume. As heavy weed use dulls the minds eye. Though irregular use can enhance it.
And after years working in kitchens, I can think in smells. I.e.mix spices in my mind and smell them in my head before adding to a dish.
And after years working in kitchens, I can think in smells. I.e.mix spices in my mind and smell them in my head before adding to a dish.
I’m that way with ice cream. I own an ice cream business that creates custom ice creams, and after many years, I can think of a a flavor combination, and sort of “taste it” in my mind.
I love ice cream, but I don’t eat it that often any more. If I have a craving, often just thinking about what flavor I’d have is satisfying enough, but I don’t really need to eat the ice cream.
I just did it as an experiment, and imagined a combo of honey, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper. My mouth watered, but after a moment of really concentrating on what that flavor would taste like, I felt fairly satisfied enough about experiencing the taste, that I don’t feel a need to actually eat the ice cream. I think my brain has trained itself to release ice cream endorphins based on the thought alone, and not the actual taste experience from my tongue, and that satisfies my craving.
I should write a diet book: “Think And Grow Thin.”
Just from that one flavor combo I now want to try all your ice creams 😂💜
Yeah, you do. Honey Cinnamon is my secret weapon.
I can make ice cream out of almost anything, but here are some of my favorites:
Peach Cinnamon
Bananas Foster (Banana, cinnamon, caramel)
Raspberry Chocolate Chip
Raspberry Brownie
Raspberry Nutella
Coffee Nutella
Salted Caramel with Candied Bacon
Almond Joy (Coconut, Almonds, and mini dark chocolate chips)
Mayan Chocolate (Cocoa powder, cinnamon, cayenne pepper)
The Honey Cinnamon is also great when it’s infused with Bourbon or Scotch. We also make our own homemade caramel, fudge, brownies, cookie dough, etc., all organic or natural as much as possible. All of our fruit ice creams are made with real fruit, no artificial sweeteners, flavors, or colors.
I literally make the best ice cream in the world, and have done events alongside Top Chef contenders and winners, including Richard Blais. Don’t you wish you had that mental tasting ability right now?
Oh, I can imagine well enough! They all sound amazing! I want to try chocolate pistachio honey, and blackberry vanilla 💜 Where is your shop? (If you can even tell me without doxxing yourself lol, please don’t dox yourself 😂)
I no longer have a retail shop, the 7 day a week grind got to be too much after a lot of years. I just do events now, colleges, weddings, corporate events, etc. all over the East Coast. It isn’t as creative, and I miss my regular customers, but I actually make a lot more money, with a LOT less work this way.
So if you want to try my ice cream some time, you’d have to hire me for a gig somewhere on the East Coast. Know anyone who is getting married? Or have a big corporate event coming up?
I do know someone getting married in December, but in Texas 😂
I’m glad you got your work/life balance more manageable now, that’s awesome!!!
I’d do it, but the travel charge would be significant.
They’ve done studies on dopamine with sugar. It’s not the eating it that’s satisfying, it’s the getting it. So most dopamine is released on the way to the mouth. Assuming you’ve had ice cream before and the neural pathways are laid.
Which is why the first bite is the best.
But yeah the mind has some plasticity. We can learn to be more visual or olfactory ‘thinkers’.
Makes sense. It’s why we have that Pavlovian response to just the promise of something tasty. It shouldn’t be surprising that the same effect that is making our mouths water, is also releasing endorphins in anticipation of the taste. Just thinking about it is pleasurable enough to release endorphins.
Some of us can even think without any senses.
Yeah I think everybody actually does, but the sense consciousnesses are a lot less subtle than stuff like intentions.
And even that last part can be let go of. What is beyond that is beyond conceptualization, but it’s not nothing. Nor is it something. As both are concepts.
I do have a hard time thinking without “listening” my own voice
Do you guys sometimes also get the weird feeling of: “this is my body, this is planet earth, this is my flat and I live here.” Sometimes that happens. And when that happens, I usually think about things like how the universe came to be the big bang, the laws of physics fighting each other until settling on a seady state. Then the Earth is created, millions of years of evolution go by and here you are, sitting on the toilet. The entire chain of thought only lasts for about five seconds and then you’re again stuck with the feeling of “I am back here on planet Earth”. Do you guys also get that sometimes?
Kinda? I usually drift about how the hell we even reached our current situation from the beginning of the universe; how, despite being a huge collection of cells and bacteria, we understand ourselves as a single unit
That’s what happens when you get character switched to.
No
I’m somewhere between 5 and 4 if I’m really trying. Never felt like a handicap or anything before
I never know how to interpret this scale. I can think of objects and describe what I’m thinking about, but I don’t see anything in the same way my eyes do. Or rather, I see a black void, and if I try to picture an apple it’s like a black object on a black background, but I know it’s there.
I also get better at it the longer I do it; if I read a book for a long while, the ideas get sharper in my head and can be in color, but I’m still not “seeing” in the same way my eyes do.
I’d call that a 5. With work a 4?
@KoboldCoterie you can still be an artist. You’ll just have to rely more on references but it’s possible. There’s one person that made a video about it that I saw some time ago. https://youtu.be/ewsGmhAjjjI
