EPTAsk and answer stupid questions here! - Page 772
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Sent.
Poland9239 Posts
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farvacola
United States18835 Posts
https://tl.net/blogs/395244-can-you-picture-it I believe it's known as aphantasia | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5649 Posts
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KwarK
United States43186 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11603 Posts
I can generally form images of stuff in my head. Yet with people, i kind of know how they look, and i can definitively recognize my friends and so forth. But the second someone is out of my line of sight, i can absolutely not describe them. I have a hard time accurately describing the hair colour of my friends, not even talking about stuff like hair style, facial features or clothes they are currently wearing. I would be the worst witness in a murder case. "There was a person. Wearing clothes. Probably had hair on their head." | ||
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KwarK
United States43186 Posts
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Sent.
Poland9239 Posts
I mean it's like knowing that x + y + z = 20. If you see those 3 next to each other you'll remember that their sum equals 20, but you still don't know how to precisely describe x, y and z because you've never seen them in a different configuration. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
I have difficulty describing faces though though I can recall and draw a reasonable picture of a face I have seen. In that case, it is probably due to language and vocabulary than visualisation. I think that is "normal" though. Afterall, how often in life do you need to describe a face? Whilst nearly everything you do when interacting with the world around you requires visualisation. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28702 Posts
My dad is much the same, and we have both always had a way with words, while at the same time being 'artistically challenged'. At least for me though, it is a spectrum thing, not complete inability. | ||
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farvacola
United States18835 Posts
On January 14 2021 02:54 Liquid`Drone wrote: I'm really bad at visualizing items and things. I generally cant remember the color of things unless ive specifically told myself what the color of said thing is - this can include not knowing the color of a house ive lived in for the past two years. However I think my memory (and 'way of thinking') for words, names and numbers is strengthened comparably. (For example I've worked as a substitute teacher on many occasions and normally I know and remember the name of every pupil after a five minute introduction, or remembering long quotes, or remembering phone numbers that are just mentioned once. ) My dad is much the same, and we have both always had a way with words, while at the same time being 'artistically challenged'. At least for me though, it is a spectrum thing, not complete inability. This kind of interactional associative memory runs strongly on my dad's side of the family as well. | ||
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28702 Posts
In the sentence 'for example the amount of letters in said words, I immediately, without thinking or counting, know that it is, in order, 3 7 3 6 2 7 2 4 5, and this works fairly flawlessly up until ~15 letter words or so. When I was a child and I watched subtitled shows, I would normally play a game with myself where I tried to calculate combinations of numbers that added up to either 5 or 10 or 15 etc, and then I'd give 5 points for each such combination, and then I'd see whether the total number was greater or smaller than the total combination of words possible. If it was greater, I would be 'satisfied'. Looking at the aforementioned sequence of words (3 7 3 6 2 7 2 4 5 would give me: 5 for 3+7, 5 for 3+7+5, 5 for 7+3, 5 for 5, 5 for 3+7+3+6+2+7+2, 5 for 3+6+2+7+2, 5 for 5+3+7+3+6+2+7+2, 5 for 2+7+2+4+5+3+7, 5 for 2+4+5+3+7+3+6, 5 for 4+5+3+7+3+6+2. Maybe I'm missing something, it's been a long time since I did this. :D But anyway this would have given me a total of 50 points, but a word sequence of 9 words gives me 73 different possible combinations (9x8+1), so the sentence 'for example the amount of letters in said words' ends up being a sentence that does not satisfy me. I mean I wouldn't be able to finish this sequence in time if the subtitles was 9 words long, but if it was only ~6 or so, I normally would Reading this, I guess there's another spectrum I'm part of, too? | ||
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Dan HH
Romania9135 Posts
On January 14 2021 00:43 KwarK wrote: Probably also a spectrum but I have similar issues. We also don’t have great language for facial features I think and a lot of thinking is built on the framework of language. It’s hard to conceive things without words to anchor them. You know when you have part of a song that you haven't heard in years stuck in your head and when you finally listen to the actual song again that part doesn't sound anywhere near as good as it did in your distorted memory of it? That's how I feel about language most of the time, like what I say and write is just a disappointing approximation of what I wanted to convey. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4935 Posts
It's apparently called subitizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing Edit: and apparently up until 4 it's kind of perfect, but then becomes rapidly more difficult. | ||
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28702 Posts
On January 14 2021 05:22 Uldridge wrote: Yeah there are these "amount queues" humans have which works fairly well up untill 5 or 6 but then becomes unreliable. IMO it's probably is an ancient social mechanism. It's apparently called subitizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing Edit: and apparently up until 4 it's kind of perfect, but then becomes rapidly more difficult. Interesting! But I'm basically saying that for me, and specifically regarding the amount of letters in a word, it's highly reliable until I get to somewhere in the 10-15 range. I don't think I'm 'counting really fast' either. | ||
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KwarK
United States43186 Posts
On January 14 2021 05:42 Liquid`Drone wrote: Interesting! But I'm basically saying that for me, and specifically regarding the amount of letters in a word, it's highly reliable until I get to somewhere in the 10-15 range. I don't think I'm 'counting really fast' either. My understanding is the brain doesn’t see 12, it sees 4 3 times. | ||
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Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9712 Posts
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Uldridge
Belgium4935 Posts
On January 14 2021 05:42 Liquid`Drone wrote: Interesting! But I'm basically saying that for me, and specifically regarding the amount of letters in a word, it's highly reliable until I get to somewhere in the 10-15 range. I don't think I'm 'counting really fast' either. You could have trained it a a child, with your subtitles game, or like KwarK said. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On January 14 2021 03:31 Liquid`Drone wrote: Not quite 3d hollow shape, but the full cross-sectional volume, skin, flesh, pips, the space between the pips and all. The colour and blemishes of the skin, the texture and hardness of every part of that apple. I can imagine it being cut, in half, in slices or anything in between. Obviously I can imagine it hollow, like imagining a football. And when I say combining, I mean more than one shape/volume that can be interacting in 3d space like the pistons in a combustion engine or interlocking links in a chain, or say an apple being shook, bouncing in a pint glass. I don't mean the apple is now shaped like a cucumber, though I can do that, but that's more of imagining an entirely new fruit that happens to be shaped like a cucumber.Also, while my ability to visualize items and things is very weak (I definitely can't do what DMCD describes, visualizing 3d shapes, imagining them internally and externally and combining with other 3d volumes sounds impossible to me. I can visualize an apple just fine, but rotating it around, imagining a hollow 3d shape of an apple and combining that with a hollow 3d shape of cucumber or whatever, that sounds difficult.), it feels like I have some innate ability to visualize words, for example the amount of letters in said words. I don't "see" why you can't just imagine a rotating apple. Surely you held an apple in your hands and rotated it at some point in your life? Surely you know the 3d shape of an apple, despite only ever seeing half of it's surface at once? Though at this point this conversation sounds like 2 blind people describing colour to each other. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6986 Posts
On January 14 2021 00:14 farvacola wrote: Indeed, 'twas long ago discussed on these very boards :D https://tl.net/blogs/395244-can-you-picture-it I believe it's known as aphantasia Amazing what you can find on TL.net. The describing of faces has probably something to do with the ability to draw I imagine. I can see a clear face in my mind but I could never get it on paper. I never would have thought that not all people have the ability to imagine shapes and forms and not turn/ mirror them in their minds. I thought some do it better and some worse but not at all? Crazy | ||
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Zambrah
United States7371 Posts
One thing I learned from a single cognitive neuroscience course I took back in like... 2014, was about stuff like prosopagnosia, which is the condition of not being able to recognize the faces of familiar people. We basically spent the class talking about the way the brain processes visual information and what parts of the brain are screwing up to cause forms of agnosia, like testing the visual processing centers of the brain that are responsible for really basic stuff like interpreting shape and color, if I remember V1 - V5 were the visual processing steps, with each area responsible for a more specific form of visual interpretation. And then theres the the fact that human faces are an incredibly important part of human interaction, back then we talked about the Fusiform Face Area as a potential area of the brain responsible nearly exclusively for interpreting the human face. That was a neat thing, because think about it, you can look at ten goats and more or less think they all look alike, can't differentiate any sexual dimorphism easily, etc. but you look at ten humans and you can pick out a ton of characteristics apart. It also explains why theres not really a harsh uncanny valley for non-human stuff. Being able to strongly interpret those minute differences in someone's face can be hugely important to the social interactions human beings have evolved to benefit so strongly from. Very neat potential stuff to think about. The professor also told us that neuroscience was new and changing all the time and in a decade everything we learned could be debunked as crap though, lol. I wish I kept up with it to know whether or not all the stuff I learned held up at all. | ||
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