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?
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)
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.