this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024

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258

This is a thought experiment "Ball on a Table" for detecting whether someone has Aphantasia. What do you see when you perform this experiment? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by zlatiah@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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This is more of me trying to understand how people imagine things, as I almost certainly have Aphantasia and didn't realize until recently... If this is against community rules, please do let me know.

The original thought experiment was from the Aphantasia subreddit. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/g1e6bl/ball_on_a_table_visualization_experiment_2/

Thought experiment begins below.

Try this: Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it) a ball on a table. Now imagine someone walks up to the table, and gives the ball a push. What happens to the ball?

Once you're done with the above, click to review the test questions:

What color was the ball?
What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
What did they look like?
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?

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?

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[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think my brain might just be lazy... I skipped over the entire walk to the table part. And just imagined a detached arm pushing the ball on a surface, until it rolled off the surface and that was all.

[–] reinei@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for sharing this as well! I also just imaged a detached hand + short bit of lower arm pushing the ball (for which I did imagine it to be of a gray shiny metal slightly larger than the hand)!

And I also imaged a super plain square wooden table so when the questions about the person hit I was super confused wether or not this counted as aphantasia or not (because I am fairly certain that I don't have it...)

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

You basically just expanded on everything I imagined. I couldn't have described it better.