Ask Lemmy

red/blue stripes

none

they didn't

small pool ball

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

At first I saw something silhouetted on a card table. Then Action entered the story and I had to choose an adventure after being asked what happened.

I figured how it rolls might depend on who pushed it, and I already knew that. Kevin. Why he did it was less clear. Muscle memory placed us at a table in the canteen. Sitting across from him on any ordinary day, some rolled up piece of napkin or a wad of garbage paper might present itself as a projectile to reach him across the plates and glass between us.

Tonight we were in my kitchen, together there for the first time. I'd moved the table into the corner with both leaves open to make extra space for snacks for the party. We pushed the pretzels and empties aside and sat facing each other off the edge of the table, knees nearly interlocked.

My chin was on my hand and my heart was on the ceiling. We were laughing about something when I noticed the toy baseball on the table. The stairs creaked and the sound of background chatter crept in like a breeze that chilled my spine. He flicked the ball, and it rolled fast off the edge then fell to the floor with a flat thud.

The phone on the wall behind him rang, and I clicked to review the test questions.

Orange

Male

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

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

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

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

Huh. The person was off-frame. And I'm pretty sure i retroactively chose a color for the ball.

I think I might have a black-and-white imagination.

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

Glass ball for some reason

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

Ball was softball size

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

1. Red
2. An amorphous blob in a humanoid shape doesn't have a gender
3. An amorphous blob in a humanoid shape
4. Baseball sized
5. Round, four legs, wood.

Haha no, I had to fill all that info in as I answered the questions. I mean, you can't literally see the things in your minds eye. They're more concepts.

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

Red ball

Clown, no idea of gender

Again, clown

Ball smaller than tennis ball, bigger than golf ball

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

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

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

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

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

Light blue ball

Male

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

Tennis ball sized

A white, rectangular wooden table.

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

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

Ball Color: Bright red

Pusher Gender: Masculine

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

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

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

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

• What color was the ball?

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

• What gender was the person that pushed the ball?

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

• What did they look like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• What did they look like?
  Nondescript.

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

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

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

Color: red

Gender of pusher: undetermined

Looks of pusher: detached skinny white arm/hand

Size: roughly palm sized (full grown adult)

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

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

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

Answer:

It was a simplistic grescale scenario devoid of unnecessary features. Think a simple and fast 3D render from the 90s or something. So everything was grescale, the person had no gender (or even features), and pushed a baseball sized sphere on a simple rectangular table made of indeterminate materials. Now I can picture something more detailed if required or desired but my mind focused on the mechanics of it all and kept details to a minimum. Asking for these details afterwards doesn't generate them retroactively.

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

I also have trouble stopping clocks from spinning in my imagination

I basically fill in the details as the questions were asked. It could have been anything from a billiard ball on a pool table to a rubber ball on a dining room table. Anything unimportant is basically left "unfilled" or generic until it needs detail.

The person who pushed it was vaguely male, again no details unless the question is asked. They may as well have been a featureless mannequin.

I do not have Aphantasia, but I've always been fascinated by other people's "normal". I always loved the "is my red the same as your red" thought experiment ever since I was a kid. I have spoken to people that claim to have Aphantasia, and they describe their experience as pretty normal. Instead of seeing an image in their head, they just.... know the thing. Where most people can visualize a scene in their head, Aphantasiacs apparently just feel and understand. It doesn't seem to impair them whatsoever and they seem to be perfectly normal people otherwise. My layman's explanation is maybe it's a vestigial function of the human brain back when we needed more empathetic or intuitive responses to stimuli, similar to the theory that ADHD would have been a benefit during hunter/gather societies.

I have complete aphantasia, I can't even visualize a ball or table, or anything else - never have been able to, I see absolutely nothing when I close my eyes and can't visualize or see things in my head at all except when dresming. Same for my Dad. He can apparently visualize an extremely tiny amount (like the night sky but just black + stars, etc) when he's high on thc gummies. I've never been high so idk if it works for me.

It took me 24 years to realize that people actually can actually see images in their head when they think about something or intentionally imagine it. I always thought that phrases like "picture it in your head" or "see in your head what it will look like" were just phrases, not that people actually can see things when they think about it.

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

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

I instantly saw a soccer ball on our dining room table. The push throws a glass of the table.

• The color of the ball was white with black pattern like a classic soccer ball.

• The gender was male.

• I didn't see the person clearly, only the hands pushing.

• Soccer ball

• The table in my imagination was exactly our light brown beech wood dining room table.

The points described were instantly in my head. Only for the person itself I would need to try again.

Blue

Gender-nondescript, like a drawing in a school book

See above

Tennis ball size

Square, particle board like Ikea furniture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• rolls off the table, bounces a bit and rolls toward a glass door, where it also bounces gently after hitting the glass door. You could see outside into a yard that had a green garden in it. And trash bins outside.
• blue
• female, I think. But I didn’t pay much attention to the person at all.
• long light brown hair, wearing a winter jacket, facing away from me. So I couldn’t see their face.
• it was a dodgeball. Blue dodgeball. Not brand new. A few scuff marks on it. I could see like, the raised bumps on it.
• it was a dark brown thin wooden table. It had a tray with a vase in the middle of it with a green plant with long grass-like leaves. There was a black, modern looking chandelier hanging from the ceiling above it. The table kind of looked like it came from IKEA lol.

The reason this is so detailed is that I just so happened to imagine the kitchen from a friend’s house. I already know everything that’s in there. It was easy to picture. And no, I didn’t come up with any of this as a result of answering the questions. I just saw it in my head.

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

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

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

No matter how much I tried to focus, all I can see is Mickey Mouse in a magician's cap trying to control buckets and mops.

I might have hyperfantasia.

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

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

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

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