this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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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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[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 104 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Today@lemmy.world 61 points 2 months ago (2 children)

A vague thought of a ball and knowledge of what would happen. Nothing else.

[–] gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago

Exactly. There's no need to add more details unless that's part of the requirements. Otherwise it makes it harder to keep track of things. Keep it simple first, then add complexity as needed.

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[–] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 38 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I imagined a sort of physics textbook diagram, not real objects. There was no person, only an arrow indicating the applied force on the ball!

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)

That's how I did it too. There is a sphere on a plane. A force is applied to the sphere, parallel to the plane. Neither the sphere nor the plane have a defined color, size, material, etc. Nothing specific pushed the sphere.

My job is often to mathematically model the things people say to me, and in those circumstances thinking like this is correct.

I don't think this way when I daydream, although the visual components of my daydreams are more like the feelings I get when I look at something than like concrete mental pictures.

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[–] MicrowavedTea@infosec.pub 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

spoilerInteresting, on the first sentence I actually thought of many different sizes and shapes for the ball, then realized I'd have to pick one before moving on to the next part, so it was kind of a conscious decision. I ended up with a simple grey anti-stress ball. But the table was always the same, light brown wood. All focus is on the ball so the person is just a silhouette partly out of camera but the hand is white and wearing a black sleeve. I only chose what the person looked like after the questions based on what felt right for the initial visualization, like panning out the camera.

There's another question though. Would your mind get into all this trouble if you didn't know there would be questions coming?

[–] xantoxis@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Interesting. I also had only the vaguest impression of the person pushing the ball, but I definitely caught a glimpse before the ball rolled off the table. Slacks and a blue shirt, that was about it.

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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

I can visualize things in my mind, but it's not... Clear? Like it's not as vivid as seeing with my actual eyes. It's like seeing images as reflections on tinted glass. Dark, murky. Muted colors. There is also an emphasis with text. I think of a ball. I imagine a red ball with the text "Ball" above or below it.

In the scenario given, I see a dark image of a red ball on a wooden table. A hand not attached to a person pushes the ball. The ball rolls across the table and falls off. There is text below describing the situation.

[–] kamenlady@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's important to know if the text was displayed in comic sans or not.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 9 points 2 months ago

Times New Roman.

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 months ago (9 children)

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.

Questions

  1. Were your front forks resting on the ground, or up in the air?
  2. Was there any other damage done to your bike or to the lock?
  3. Are there any other bikes nearby? People nearby? Security cameras that might have caught the crime?

[–] SolarMonkey 12 points 2 months ago (12 children)

I’m aphantasic. You can say “picture this” followed by whatever you like. It’s not possible for me in any way. Growing up I honestly thought “picture this” or “close your eyes and see” was just metaphor. I legitimately didn’t understand other people can see things.

My mind has a verbal descriptive stream, and I’m good with muscle-based or proprioceptive spacial memory, and the two combine to handle most things, but nothing visual. So like I can easily describe things from memory or from an idea, and it’ll be fully consistent, but not something I see.

If you have aphantasia, and not just hypophantasia, it makes no difference how much detail is provided, there’s a total, fundamental, inability to visualize things.

[–] greedytacothief@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

So as someone who coaches sometimes I have to ask. Can you imagine and feel body movements? Sometimes I'll ask someone to visualize themselves performing an action before they do it.

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[–] WldFyre@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago

I have aphantasia, and people really struggle to comprehend what it means or what it's like. Now to be fair, I don't really comprehend how people without aphantasia think or process things either.

  1. Were your front forks resting on the ground, or up in the air?

No idea, all I could think was that the front tire was missing, it didn't occur to me to think how that affected the bikes position.

  1. Was there any other damage done to your bike or to the lock?

I didn't think about there being any damage.

  1. Are there any other bikes nearby? People nearby? Security cameras that might have caught the crime?

I had just thought of a bike rack with only my bike, no people or other bikes nearby. Looking for security cameras seems obvious now that you mention it, but I didn't think of that. If you had said "what advice would you give if your friend walked out and found their bike had been stolen/vandalized" I probably would have thought of that, but trying to think of an abstract situation is much more difficult for me.

[–] Txmyx@feddit.org 6 points 2 months ago

This was fun to read. Everytime I read a new detail the scene in my head changed :)

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[–] 90s_hacker@reddthat.com 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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

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[–] django@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Colorless ball, around the size of a tennis ball on a colorless round table. Person was colorless, genderless, and generally without any distinctive features.

What is my diagnosis?

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[–] NorthWestWind@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I imagined it in a cartoon-ish fashion, so I think I can actually draw it out.

drawing

  • Red ball
  • Male
  • Like Google's default profile picture, without facial features, except he's in gray and has a neck
  • My single hand can surround more than half of it in a cross section view, so about 12cm in diameter
  • Rectangular table, about 5:2, I didn't imagine the material, but it's plain brown, so I guess wood?

Additionally, the ball rolls parallel to the long edge of the table, and falls off the short edge. The person also have legs.

I already had these in my mind before being asked.

[–] catbum@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

My brother in Christ you have described almost the exact same specs I visualized. The only difference is in the level of resolution of my "scene." And by that, I mean essentially I did a few more render passes in my head to anchor everything you've written within a sort of Impressionistic, highly softened, out-of-focus backdrop. I saw hints of shadowy cabinets, the concept of a darkened kitchen out of sight. The shape and finger placement of my slightly more textured, clothed yet featureless male. The gray-brown feeling of a floor below, a dark white ceiling above, and the faded glow of sunlight through an unseen dining room window grazing one end of that oaken table.

But the basics ... They're the same, and before being asked to recall them. Damn.

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[–] finestnothing@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] ralakus@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

The ball rolls for a bit then stops

  1. Colorless ball
  2. Didn't image a gender, just the concept of a person
  3. They didn't look like anything
  4. I guess a perfect colorless sphere roughly the size of a tennis ball
  5. Pretty much just a rectangular flat surface. There's no color or material

I didn't know much about it except the size of the ball being roughly proportional to the size of a human hand

[–] AsudoxDev@programming.dev 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] KittenBiscuits@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I imagined all the details for the items, but didn't pay attention to the person. I don't like looking at people's faces.

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[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago
  1. The ball was red.
  2. I have no idea.
  3. I have no idea.
  4. Like, maybe softball sized? A little bigger? I'm not sure.
  5. Square. It was made of brown.
[–] greedytacothief@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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)

[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 months ago

Mine got better as I got older. Especially after some experiments with psychedelics. I didn't think I was able to imagine a 3D object in detail, and for most of my life I wasn't. But then I had a shroom trip in which I was able to freely rotate an imagined 3D object. Even render an object in my mind based solely on touch.
Afterwards I went back almost to normal, but not completely. It's like I learned to use some previously inactive part of the brain.

[–] Dravin@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] Eiri@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] Darohan@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I find it very interesting that the vast majority of people saw a red ball. I did too.

::: spoiler

  1. red
  2. Indeterminate, mostly just an arm
  3. shoulder-length brown hair, androgenous body, hidden face
  4. Like a rubber bouncy ball you'd get in a party bag
  5. wooden, square

Mostly I already knew, but it felt like things were "filling in" as I tried to "remember" the image to answer the questions, especially around the person.

:::

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[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 7 points 2 months ago

I can imagine it in the sense that I can understand what happens. There is nothing visual at all for me. My assumption was that it was roughly-tennis-ball-sized absent any other info, but it wasn't even a person, just a hand pushing a ball (and again, just the idea and nothing visual) as no other info is relevant.

[–] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 7 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Wait a second.

  • The ball had no color at all
  • The person who pushed the ball didn't even exist. It just got pushed by some invisible force. Naturally, they didn't have an appearance.
  • The ball was like... Small I guess?
  • The table had no properties at all.

Do people really usually have a more vivid picture in their heads? It's always just concepts with me. I'm confused.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I also had the "I spent 23 minutes designing this scene in blender" impression of the ball, table, and disembodied hand. The table was made of light grey, the ball was made of light grey, and the hand was made of light grey

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[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 6 points 2 months ago

I've put some effort into improving my visualization since learning about aphantasia. Upon reading the prompt, I was able to imagine a colorless ball, but with shading to indicate a 3D shape, like a preview render in a CAD program. That's progress! It didn't have a size inherently. For the table, I could picture a white, rectangular plane hovering in a black void. If it was a normal dinner table size, then the ball was something like a softball or basketball.

And that's it. That exhausted my ability to visualize. No person, no push, no motion. Best I can do is to see the white rectangle after the ball has rolled off of the edge.

[–] Juice@midwest.social 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The ball was red, like a red rubber ball. The person was sort of indistinct from the neck up, it was more like my view was focused on the ball itself and didn't see a face, but it was a man, wearing a white shirt and dark tie, and dark pants. The ball was about the size of a baseball, wasn't completely smooth and shiny, sort of a matte with a slight grippy texture. Table was square, wood, like a medium brown color. The ball rolled off the table and bounced a few times.

All these decisions were automatic when reading the prompt, it's what I saw.

I've just become aware of aphantasia myself, I have a few family members who have it apparently. I was talking to my BIL about it the other day, I was saying how I'm a big fan of reading, but I mostly read nonfiction. He said he doesn't read much, mostly biographies, but fiction doesn't do much for him because he can't picture anything in his head. I can picture everything in great detail when I read fiction. Its interesting because our minds work very differently

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[–] aido@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What does it mean if the first time I pictured the ball being pushed I noticed it was sliding instead of rolling and corrected it

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[–] renzev@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)
  • What happens to the ball? It rolls of the side of the table.
  • Color: I didn't imagine a specific color
  • Gender: I didn't imagine a specific gender. Most of the person was "out of the frame"
  • What did they look like: Again, most of the person was out of the frame, they were just kind of a gray silhouette
  • What size was the ball? Like a dodgeball I guess?
  • What about the table? Very minimalist square table made up of five rectangular prisms (the surface and four legs). No specific material, uniform texture. I imagined everything in isometric perspective.

This is what I recall from my first time imagining the scenario, I'd have to imagine some more if I wanted to give specific answers.

With all due respect, I don't believe aphantasia is a real thing. The way people imagine things is so varied, weird, strange, and unique that I don't think it makes sense assigning labels. Different people will give varying levels of detail to different parts of their imagination based on their past experiences and knowledge.If you ask someone to imagine a chessboard, someone who plays chess might imagine a specific opening or valid board state, while someone who doesn't might just have a vague blob of chess pieces on a board.

Even with your ball on a table experiment, the experiences people have had throughout the day may give more or less detail to the imagined scenario. I'm fairly certain that the reason I imagined everything so abstractly is because recently I found an artwork with a similar minimalist isometric style that I liked a lot, so it's kind of floating around in my subconsciousness and affecting how I imagine things.

[–] Sybilvane@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have aphantasia. The reason this experiment works is because someone with aphantasia will logically think about what they're being asked, but since they're not really "picturing" it, they won't have any answers about details. Color, type, and size of the ball? I have no idea, that information wasn't relevant to my mental checklist. For me, it really does work like a checklist. My brain supplies exactly zero imagery. For some people it's more like a spectrum, where they might be able to have a hazy picture with minimal details.

But aphantasia is 100% real. It's just hard for people to believe it because it's so foreign to the way they're used to thinking, in the same way it sounds unbelievably exhausting to me that regular people are constantly creating movies in their heads.

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

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[–] weew@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] zlatiah@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Oh my! I didn't know what to expect, and I have to say... I was quite surprised by some of your answers. Also confirmed to me that I am definitely not normal

Not many replies that are indicative of Aphantasia so... here goes nothing. I tried really hard at this okay

spoiler

I don't "see" see anything when I close my eyes. I can create a very vague concept of a ball, a table, and... kind of a person in my head, but I don't actually see the scene, I used to think when people say imagining things they were just making a metaphor. Things get really funk from here... But the overall schema feels more like one of those badly drawn scenes from the hit visual novel Slay the Princess. And yes I imagined it in 2D for some reason

  • Color: the ball doesn't have a color
  • Gender: it wasn't even a real person; it seems like a silhouette of the hand and back of a person
  • Looks: As I said, the person isn't even facing me
  • Size: No idea; in retrospect it's fairly large compared to the table (diameter probably 1/2-1/3 of table?), but the table is also an abstract concept so...
  • Table: no clue, it is a square table but that's it. If anything it looks like the things served on Pizza Hut pizzas
  • Well I spoiled the question for myself so... but I didn't have to choose, heck I couldn't choose even if I know what the questions are

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 points 2 months ago

As an aphantasia person myself, it is honestly mind boggling that people can visualise things that aren't there. Like that must be so much effort on things that aren't needed.

Suppose it means you can just have a wank and not need porn though.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Neat!

spoiler

  • Red. It was rubber.
  • Male.
  • Tall, thin. I don't remember a face, but he was wearing an old-fashioned formal shirt and sport jacket. The cuff of the shirt was unbuttoned and folded back. He also wore a wide-brimmed black hat. (I'm currently watching an episode of Hell on Wheels which probably influenced that.)
  • Large for an apple, small for a canteloupe.
  • Square, dinner-table-hieight. Dark-stained wood. I'm no woodworker, so I wouldn't know what kind of wood it was, but I've got a couple of bookcases of the same wood and staining.

Aside from that, I can say it took place in an old cabin and in the background, I saw an open doorway to a... foyer? The door to the outside was open. It was very sunny. And I saw green grass outside.

And, I knew all those things before I got to the questions. I just had to consult/replay the scene in my head to get all the answers.

Seems fair to say I don't have aphantasia.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I’ve never head of this test before now. Spoiler tags to help others avoid the answers before they take the test.

Tap for spoiler

The ball was somehow chrome but not reflective, and bigger than a large marble. The table was a flat plane with no features. The person pushing the table had no features. There were no other features within this thought space

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I have a question OP. Do you read fiction? Recently I've been wondering if aphantasia's why some people don't, almost seen unable, to read and enjoy.

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[–] Zozano@lemy.lol 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Both my partner and I answered the same.

The ball was the size of a tennis ball, no colour.

The person had no gender or any distinguishing features.

The table was a standard kitchen table.

Neither of us knew what the test was about.

[–] AnarchistArtificer 5 points 2 months ago

Background: I did this experiment with the pre-existing belief that I likely have aphantasia.

Starting with the important question, no, I didn't know the answer to these things before being asked

The ball was red, but I don't think my initial "rendering" involved a colour of a ball at all, because the colour isn't relevant to how it rolls. The ball felt cold, because that's one of the ways I understood its weightiness, and thus how it rolls. The ball was small enough to hold in one hand, but in "visualising" its size, I imagined how it would feel in my hand. The ball I imagined was a bit larger than a tennis ball and much heavier. I can imagine the force my fingers would need to exert to grasp it.

The person who pushed the ball had no gender because it wasn't relevant. When I considered the person's gender, they were a woman, but that information seems to have gotten lost when I "looked away" by considering other questions; when I reread the questions, I "forgot" what gender the ball pusher was, and this time they were man. I suspect that because the information wasn't relevant to the manner the ball was being pushed, the person pushing the ball was in a sort of superposition of gender, where they are both and/or neither man and/or woman, because it was liable to change whenever I "looked away".

The ball pusher(s) didn't look like anything unless I really pushed myself on this question and then I'm like "erm, I guess they were brunette?", but I think a similar thing happens as with the gender question — unless I have a way to remember what traits I assigned to the ball pusher, I'm just going to forget and have to regenerate the traits. I suspect that if I were actively visualising something, these details would stick together better, like paint to a canvas.

The table has a similar effect of nebulousness. My only assumption before you asked further about the table was that it was level (because the ball started at rest) and rectangular/square. When I tried to consider the table in more detail, I asked myself "what can a table be made out of". Wood comes to mind most obviously, because I have a wood table near me. Laminated particle-board is another thing. I also remember some weird, brightly coloured , super lightweight plastic tables from school. It could also be metal. It could have four legs, or it might have a central base like the dining table at my last house. It might be circular, or oval, or rhomboid. I think I just modelled it as squarish because I've learned enough mathsy-physics that I'm inclined to think of spherical cows, and having a straight edge is easier to model for mathematically, and to draw.

Brains sure are wacky, huh?

[–] kshade@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

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.

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