I'm a definite 5 and I completely agree with him on that. I feel like I'm missing out on so much by not being able to visualize like that.
Interesting that a popular fiction author is aphantasiac, I wonder how visually descriptive his writing is considering afaik descriptive writing like that is usually meant to elicit visualization.
I've convinced myself that we're not missing anything. every time I talk about it with people they'll ask questions like "well how do you know what apples look like??!!"
I can't explain how I know but I of course do know what apples look like. so what am I actually losing out on? it's all potatoes
I'm probably a 2 on the OP's scale and I've come to believe that the only advantage it gives me is:
when i need to tell someone else where an object is in a space I can visualize. "If you're looking from the door its to your right, beside the coat rack"
otherwise it's probably easier to remember things for y'all since basically everything I think is in images or sounds. If i think of how to spell i word i am imagining an image of the word or imagining the word being written. PLUS I still have some face blindness so I can't picture people's eyes or most facial features
i'm maybe taking it for granted, but its not like I sit around visualising whatever I want, if you did need to know what something looked like you could always look it up anyway
I imagine dreaming could be very different? I tend to have visually very violent dreams, I wouldn't miss that, it's part of the reason I make an effort to avoid dreaming
I'm a definite 5 and I completely agree with him on that. I feel like I'm missing out on so much by not being able to visualize like that.
Interesting that a popular fiction author is aphantasiac, I wonder how visually descriptive his writing is considering afaik descriptive writing like that is usually meant to elicit visualization.
I've convinced myself that we're not missing anything. every time I talk about it with people they'll ask questions like "well how do you know what apples look like??!!"
I can't explain how I know but I of course do know what apples look like. so what am I actually losing out on? it's all potatoes
I'm probably a 2 on the OP's scale and I've come to believe that the only advantage it gives me is:
when i need to tell someone else where an object is in a space I can visualize. "If you're looking from the door its to your right, beside the coat rack"
otherwise it's probably easier to remember things for y'all since basically everything I think is in images or sounds. If i think of how to spell i word i am imagining an image of the word or imagining the word being written. PLUS I still have some face blindness so I can't picture people's eyes or most facial features
Apples actually
i'm maybe taking it for granted, but its not like I sit around visualising whatever I want, if you did need to know what something looked like you could always look it up anyway
I imagine dreaming could be very different? I tend to have visually very violent dreams, I wouldn't miss that, it's part of the reason I make an effort to avoid dreaming
It's much more useful for imagining novel scenarios and objects. See the mathematician in this thread who finds picturing graphs helpful
https://youtu.be/Xa84hA3OsHU?si=e8HB_p7MQgOsWOhq
You can absolutely do a art and a half with aphantasia!