Unless these comments are trolling, it now seems very believable to me that some people talk to Jesus or God and hear back. If you do an atheism-Christianity debate with such a person who actually hears God all the time, you'll have a hard time I guess.
The amount of such threads I've read here and elsewhere strongly suggests to me than this isn't trolling. I think it's reasonable to conclude that people who claim to talk to God and hear back may actually be experiencing this (though with no actual God being involved).
Someone else mentioned rotating 3D shapes in their head, and I think this is a good point of reference. I have somewhat strong aphantasia. On this test image[0], I score 2, maybe 3 on a good day. I've managed 4 when tired. I showed that to my wife the other day and she says she does easy 6. That suddenly explained various arguments we had in the past, that boiled down to me requiring explicit presentation of something that she, as it turns out, was entirely capable of processing in her head.
Very interesting little test. I wonder if you've tried it at different times of the day or different states of mind? The ratio of neurotransmitter chemicals that are dominant in the brain changes widely with different conditions, which affects function.
For example, I just tried the test and felt like it was a great effort to visualize the star. I've just had a cup of coffee (similar to amines). But this morning, transitioning from a very restful sleep (when acetylcholine levels would have been high), I was having clear, partially directed mental images, similar to dreams, but wakeful.
EDIT: And even more interestingly (to me) I'm having a very _easy_ time with the other exercises you linked below...
I knew there were people who don't see anything, but I would have thought anybody could do 6. I can imagine far more complex 3D stuff (more than rotating, also complex movements) but it's blurry unless I designed it or know the thing/place well (like my house), but I can "zoom" into things to get more detail.
You learn something new every day I guess. I wonder if this can be used to predict what fields someone goes into or could go into that they'd be good at (engineering, etc).
I asked half a dozen friends. Only one could see more than 1, and in that case they reported only 3. Most of us are in engineering. The one that could see 3 is closest to an artist out of us all. Those of us with strongest engineering background reported 0.
Mmm, strange. I do some minor diy stuff and I can't imagine not imagining stuff. I do draw on paper to brainstorm and use CAD but most of the design problem solving goes on in my head.
But then I am also an artist... Although more because of this than the other way around. Although drawing has further trained this ability, I have accurate detailed childhood (~5-6y) memories (of houses, schools, objects, etc) from before I was drawing consistently enough for it to matter (high school).
I wonder, can people who see 0 imagine movement if they're seeing the object right in front of them? And if they can draw 3d objects, can they still do so if they close their eyes?
As I said in another comment I think it's a communication issue. I guess it doesn't literally float in front of their eyes as part of the world for those who say 6.
Perhaps a better test is how difficult someone finds these exercises:
> As I said in another comment I think it's a communication issue. I guess it doesn't literally float in front of their eyes as part of the world for those who say 6.
That's the thing, though: apparently the same thing was being said about internal monologue historically, with people assuming claims contrary to their experience are just turns of a phrase. Until, the legend goes, somebody got enough academics in the same room that they finally realized inner voice is a thing that not everyone has.
So I'm leaning towards believing that people claiming they can mock their own visual input actually can do it.
(The hardware for that is already there. Despite being 1-2 when awake, every now and then I wake up remembering a dream that was a clear 6.)
Not sure if it connected, but this internal monologue is another thing that I fail to understand. I think I do not have internal monologue, but this is especially hard to describe.
Perhaps there is some crossover between people who can't visualize and those who do not experience internal monologue.
Another aspect I've known for a long time is that I have bad "situational" memory. I have good trivia/history memory but very bad memory about personal situations or events. I am not sure about faces, I didn't really notice myself struggling with it but hard to really judge.
Makes me wish somebody would do a study of all these facets simultaneously and put the answers on a scatterplot.
For me, it is:
- 1-2 / 6 on the "mind's eye" scale
- perfectly working internal monologue; almost all of my conscious thinking involves me "hearing" sentences in my head (I don't experience actual auditory stimulus, but I can "hear" the words, the cadence, and sometimes even tone)
- good trivia/history memory
- bad situational memory, bad memory for people's names
- I can only recognize faces of people with whom I dealt for prolonged periods of time
> perfectly working internal monologue; almost all of my conscious thinking involves me "hearing" sentences in my head (I don't experience actual auditory stimulus, but I can "hear" the words, the cadence, and sometimes even tone
Do you feel like it's always "you" who is actively saying the monologue, or is it being "dictated" from the outside, you are listening but not saying it internally? Perhaps by an imaginary friend, Jesus, aliens, gods, buddhas, whatever?
It's always just me. I never had an imaginary friend. I never felt a different entity speaking in my head. It's always my own voice in my head saying things or conversing with itself.
Strangely I did not have a strong internal monologue when I was young. My thoughts were mostly "visual" unless reading. It is more 50/50 now, but I still "see" most of what I think/read if that makes sense.
I can do mental rotation quite okay, but it's not really visual. It's kinda in the back of my mind, colorless, faded, greyish etc. but I'm aware of the shape "outline", well not really the outline but just aware of the shape, without actually seeing it. As if you were in a dark room and were feeling out the objects by touch in part (but I am aware of the whole 2d projection at once, unlike touch). I can only really visualize things while drifting to sleep. If people can do that level while awake, that must be awesome.
But I do wonder how much of it is about different uses of words by different people. I do have an internal monologue when I want to build sentences, eg crafting a sentence for writing or just imagining talking to someone and trying to convince them as if practicing arguments for a debate (though decidedly not hallucinating someone to talk to). Or when trying to serialize so explicit steps I need to do, I may list them verbally in my mind.
I may call this a conversation with an entity, but actually I feel I'm just talking to myself. I identify with the speaker. I guess, and I'm trying now, I can sort of feel as if the stream of sentences is coming from a different entity.
It might be that we have very similar (though not equal) experiences we just use different terms and stories to make sense of them.
There's a book that argues that Ancient Greeks in the time of Homer also believed their gods talked to them and it might have been something like this. And that the idea of an individual free-will autonomous singular human is a relatively modern cultural concept.
> But I do wonder how much of it is about different uses of words by different people.
There are qualitative differences, however. I think a better question would be not how vivid the imagined shape is, but how connected and contextual it is.
Someone might imagine a 6 red star and stop at that, someone might imagine a 3 star, but with the whole Kremlin tower attached on a snowy night with distant car sounds.
Testable things i found are looking for reactions. Imagine yourself at the beach, standing half immersed in the sea, enjoying the view, then something grabs your leg underwater.
-Did you flinch, or was these just words? Some people would, since they are contextually immersed in the scene.
-Can you answer side questions, like how calm the sea was, were you looking towards the land or the horizon, were there any birds in the sky, and so on? Some people can, because they were visualizing the scene, some people won't unless prompted, since they were constructing the scene.
In the similar vein, do you project your imagination over the world around you? People who do tend to not comprehend how you can lose things, like forgetting where you parked your car.
I do think there is something to this, but it's exceedingly difficult to communicate about the differences.
For example English is not my native language and even though I'm basically fluent as far as understanding any TV show or reading books goes, but I still notice it doesn't reach me as viscerally as speech in my native language. It's blunted, it's like touching things with gloves on. So there is some sort of vividness of ideas, but it's hard to describe.
I think people who claim they can visualize something don't actually pixel for pixel visualize it. I read about some study where these people only realized this when followup questions came. I think you can excite your neurons to represent the visual concept of a house without having to expend all the effort to actually create all the parts, decide on the color of window frames, all the small details.
Overall I'm torn. I guess there are differences and we should listen to descriptions like these. On the other hand, I also know how unreflective and un-introspective average people can be.
"-Can you answer side questions, like how calm the sea was, were you looking towards the land or the horizon, were there any birds in the sky, and so on? Some people can, because they were visualizing the scene, some people won't unless prompted, since they were constructing the scene."
- this is exactly it. I seem to be unable to visualize things in my mind. If someone asks me to visualize a beach, I can create a description of a beach and know what exists on the beach, I am able to give an verbal explanation of it. However I do not at any moment see it, nor do I have insight into the beach that I didn't construct. I don't notice that there is a hotel in the distance, but I can think about it and add it in the description. I feel this is very different to what apparently majority of people can do.
Hm, not at the speed of reading. Takes a bit of slowing down to get some.
A complication is that a lot of these are from elementary school geometry books, so i tend to just remember the answer before getting a chance to look at it.
Can you imagine each Tetris shape, one after the other, in some kind of spatial way? Can you "make" the L shaped one sit on its short side then lie down on the long side?
Can you do this? "You see the silhouette of a cube, viewed from the corner. What does it look like?"
Or mark the edges of a cube into thirds, and cut off each of its corners back to the marks. What does the result look like? Can you mentally rotate this shape around?
I don't really see anything. If I attempt to visualize a cube from the corner, I can maybe say I can see the corner and three edges leading from it (to be honest, it's hard to say that I truly see it, but maybe a vague outline of three lines). I don't see the remainder of the cube.
If I try to imagine a cube, and then mark the edges into thirds, I cannot imagine what remains when I cut off corners back to the mark. And the cube itself is more of an idea of a cube rather than visual representation.
I cannot mentally rotate the shape as I do not see a shape.
I'm sure it's hard to believe, but trust me, it's hard for me to believe people can visualize in the way people describe.
Do you see any sort of visual imagery when dozing off to sleep? Have you ever played a lot of some visually repetitive game, like Minesweeper, Tetris, Bejeweled etc? I find that if I play a lot of those (hours) then at night when I shut my eyes I can't get rid of visualizations of these shapes in my mind, it's even kind of annoying.
For reference, this is what happens to me. If I spend a few hours playing a particular videogame, its imagery "burns into" my mind - when I close my eyes, I can see recurring patterns from the game (like ground textures or UI elements); if I'm tired, that's an easy way to get me to high level 3 on the "starn scale". The effect disappears after I sleep for a few hours.
