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Some people can't see mental images

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183 points petalmind | 3 comments | 30 Oct 25 17:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.019s | source
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Matterless ◴[30 Oct 25 22:44 UTC] No.45766270[source]▶
I don't know why I'm surprised every time to see so many people astounded in the comments every time another of these articles come out. I guess I thought by now this phenomenon would be more common knowledge... I'm a non-seer and a non-self speaker. That is, I do not have any clear monologue whatsoever, nor can I visualize anything at all. However, I have a pretty great memory, just not for the experience of things, but instead only the circumstances, the trivia, the conclusions, and all of those can be very granular.

Words exist for me in the space beyond my lips, or my fingertips; what that feels like, in the moment, is that it is the act of externalization of words which makes them come into being, but not for a moment are they ever out of my control.

I can't remember the sound of my mother's voice. Not really. Of course if I heard it in a recording it would be as recognizable as any voice, and in fact when I watch animated shows, like classic King of the Hill for example, I'm extremely good at picking out all the celebrity voices and I'm often surprised that I can identify a voice I didn't know that I knew.

I used to have an internal monologue. I used to be able to picture things. That all went away in my teens. Not only can I somewhat remember what that was like, I'm able to experience vivid internal pictures and internal sounds sometimes in the moments just before I'm fully asleep. It doesn't happen very frequently, but it's enjoyable when it does.

And that's it. If you have any questions for thisaphantasic non-self-speaker, have at it.

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1. lordnacho ◴[30 Oct 25 23:03 UTC] No.45766434[source]▶
Well, I have another question further down to another guy about how he imagines sex, I guess you can answer that as well.

But also, how do you solve math problems? Often the you need to draw a graph and look at some crossing points. For me, I can conjure up a video in my mind similar to 3B1B, and I use that to think about the problem. It can even get complicated enough that it would take me a while to draw on paper. How do you solve such problems?

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2. tstrimple ◴[31 Oct 25 15:28 UTC] No.45773160[source]▶
Not the person you asked, but as someone who also cannot see mental images at all I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "imagines sex". I don't really imagine sex and self-gratification is usually not worth it without visual aids. The times I pull from memory, it's more about the overall experience rather than visualizing anything specific.

As far as math goes, I've always been pretty good at it. I generally don't think about graphs at all in mathematics. That's something I associate with learning math more than I associate it with "doing math". The only time I'm reaching for more complicated math is in a computer science context so I'm rarely trying to solve anything other than arithmetic or rough approximations in my head.

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3. lordnacho ◴[01 Nov 25 20:50 UTC] No.45785219[source]▶
> The times I pull from memory

What does memory even mean though, if you cannot recall the video of what happened? I find it hard to fathom you can recall an experience without replaying the sensory impressions you got. It's almost definitional, isn't it? To remember something that happened to you is to be able to re-experience it.