this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Well I don't play chess in my head. That doesn't stop me from being a reasonably decent chess player when there's a physical board in front of me. I'm not sure why aphantasia would be considered relevant to chess?
Do you have it? I'm just curious how someone would plan multiple moves ahead without an image of changes to the board in their head.
"Well, if I move the bishop here, then it's pinning the knight to the king. Then I can capture over here, threatening a fork." etc.
I do. Feel free to ask further if you have more questions.
Basically, when I'm playing, and trying to look multiple moves ahead, at least for me it's like a logic tree. Exactly like what you described. I just don't visualise any images. To me, I'll keep track that the bishop will be on this spot, this spot will be empty, etc etc. I just need memory for that, it doesn't involve any imagery.
That's fascinating. What about controlled squares? Like, visualizing the cross-shaped lines extending from a bishop? Or the asterisk-shaped lines extending from the queen?
In my head, I sort of "highlight" them like this:
Same thing, but with knowledge instead of colors. Like how you can (I assume) know your birthday without visualizing a calendar.
Wow. That's wild. I suspect a lot of folks here without aphantasia are wondering what it even means to "know" something without being able to see (or hear/smell/taste/feel/whatever) it in your head.
I guess I "know my birthday" by virtue of the fact that I hear the words "August 17th" (not my real birthday, but yeah) in my head when I casually wonder what my birthday is.
If I know my birthday is on a Wednesday this year, I can picture a calendar page with the middle square of the third row "highlighted" like The Picard Maneuver was talking about with controlled squares above.
For me, I'm not sure I can imagine "knowing" something without either hearing or seeing (or otherwise sensing via some anlogue of the 5 senses) it in some sense in my head.
If I ask you your birthday, I’d expect you to hear “August 17th” in your inner voice before answering. But if I asked you “is your birthday January 3?” would you have to mentally say your birthday before answering “no”? I’d assume not.
My inner voice is used almost exclusively for forming sentences before speaking or typing them. If I’m alone, not thinking of conversations, and not reading, there’s rarely anything there except maybe a song stuck in my head. My inner voice isn’t constantly there saying “let’s go switch over the laundry” and stuff.
Folks with aphantasia are also more likely to lack an inner voice.
I wouldn't say my birthday in my head before responding. My inner voice isn't so different from yours, except being in a conversation mine is silent. With typing as well mine isn't always present. Typing on my phone I have to think the word to swipe it, but on a keyboard I sometimes just type.
That would describe my experience. Aphantasia only affects the ability to visualise something, not the mental voice that I believe everybody has.
It's funny that you mention it, because while I would of course "know" a date, any time I read one I always visualize a calendar at the same time.
Pretty much. I don't visualise it with pretty colors, but I can look at the board and see their lines of control. I feel like you're imagining aphantasia to be a lot more limiting than it actually is?
Maybe so then. In my mind, "seeing" the line that's not there would count as visualizing.
Well you might be seeing an actual line. I'm mentally tagging the squares in that line as 'line of control'. It's like seeing somebody point a finger at something. I don't need to visualise an actual line coming from their fingertip to be able to judge where they're pointing at. It's more a spatial thing than visualising an image.
IDK, it's tough explaining how brains and thought processes work. They just... are.
This is why I'm always interested in talking to people about aphantasia. It's like 2 people trying our best to describe colors to each other and wondering "are we talking about the same thing...?" the whole time.
Yeah, it was so interesting hearing about it for the first time and going... oh, so I'm not mentally handicapped!
Not an avid chess player, but as someone with aphantasia pretty much spot on for my experience.