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?


  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    3 days ago

    As an aphantasia person myself, it is honestly mind boggling that people can visualise things that aren’t there. Like that must be so much effort on things that aren’t needed.

    Suppose it means you can just have a wank and not need porn though.

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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    4 days ago

    No matter how much I tried to focus, all I can see is Mickey Mouse in a magician’s cap trying to control buckets and mops.

    I might have hyperfantasia.

  • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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    3 days ago

    I’ve put some effort into improving my visualization since learning about aphantasia. Upon reading the prompt, I was able to imagine a colorless ball, but with shading to indicate a 3D shape, like a preview render in a CAD program. That’s progress! It didn’t have a size inherently. For the table, I could picture a white, rectangular plane hovering in a black void. If it was a normal dinner table size, then the ball was something like a softball or basketball.

    And that’s it. That exhausted my ability to visualize. No person, no push, no motion. Best I can do is to see the white rectangle after the ball has rolled off of the edge.

  • Juice@midwest.social
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    3 days ago

    The ball was red, like a red rubber ball. The person was sort of indistinct from the neck up, it was more like my view was focused on the ball itself and didn’t see a face, but it was a man, wearing a white shirt and dark tie, and dark pants. The ball was about the size of a baseball, wasn’t completely smooth and shiny, sort of a matte with a slight grippy texture. Table was square, wood, like a medium brown color. The ball rolled off the table and bounced a few times.

    All these decisions were automatic when reading the prompt, it’s what I saw.

    I’ve just become aware of aphantasia myself, I have a few family members who have it apparently. I was talking to my BIL about it the other day, I was saying how I’m a big fan of reading, but I mostly read nonfiction. He said he doesn’t read much, mostly biographies, but fiction doesn’t do much for him because he can’t picture anything in his head. I can picture everything in great detail when I read fiction. Its interesting because our minds work very differently

    • go $fsck yourself@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Exactly. There’s no need to add more details unless that’s part of the requirements. Otherwise it makes it harder to keep track of things. Keep it simple first, then add complexity as needed.

  • HollowNaught@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Grey, female, cartoonish with that weird bob round kind of look that comes with bushy brown hair that’s slightly longer than shoulder length, slightly larger than a ping pong ball, wooden square/rectangle, no.

  • uniquethrowagay@feddit.org
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    3 days ago

    Wait a second.

    • The ball had no color at all
    • The person who pushed the ball didn’t even exist. It just got pushed by some invisible force. Naturally, they didn’t have an appearance.
    • The ball was like… Small I guess?
    • The table had no properties at all.

    Do people really usually have a more vivid picture in their heads? It’s always just concepts with me. I’m confused.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I also had the “I spent 23 minutes designing this scene in blender” impression of the ball, table, and disembodied hand. The table was made of light grey, the ball was made of light grey, and the hand was made of light grey

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Do people really usually have a more vivid picture in their heads?

      I can’t speak for others, but I do if they’re concepts I’ve encountered before. I have “default” visualizations of things that are changed if the description warrants it.

    • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Yeah, same with me. But I knew the ball was pushed and rolled to the edge of the table and then fell, so I feel like I got the most relevant bit.

      Tbh I’ve never been good at visualising faces, recognising people I know, retracing a route I’ve taken etc. This just feels like one of those things I’ve never really been great at.

    • sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 days ago
      • What happens to the ball?

      It slowly rolled toward the edge but stopped before falling to the ground. The path was somewhat eccentric because of the texture of the ball.

      • What color was the ball?

      Yellow

      • What gender was the person that pushed the ball?

      Male

      • What did they look like?

      Green and white track suit (why? IDK), mid 60’s Italian, chubby

      • What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?

      It was one of those foam Nerf bullets, so about the size of a shooter marble

      • What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?

      It was that black IKEA table where the four metal legs screw into the corners. About 6ft by 3ft.

      • 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?

      The entire scene sprung into my head at once after reading that someone interacted with the ball

  • Psythik@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    What does it mean if I already knew the answer to every question except what the person looked like?

    • Yeller_king@reddthat.com
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      3 days ago

      Same here. I knew it was a man but nothing else. But I had a clear view of a small red rubber ball on a card table.

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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    3 days ago
    • small dull red rubber ball
    • no obvious gender
    • they looked simple, like a Simpsons character. Impression of having a body, but only actually saw their hand
    • table was standard rectangular, wooden affair

    My visualisation is quite chaotic, so I mostly see a jumble of overlapping objects then have to choose which one to focus on.

    Surprisingly, I had a real hard time visualising the ball rolling on its own. The hand was either pushing it or it was bouncing off of the floor.

    Interesting exercise!

  • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    I imagined a sort of physics textbook diagram, not real objects. There was no person, only an arrow indicating the applied force on the ball!

    • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      That’s how I did it too. There is a sphere on a plane. A force is applied to the sphere, parallel to the plane. Neither the sphere nor the plane have a defined color, size, material, etc. Nothing specific pushed the sphere.

      My job is often to mathematically model the things people say to me, and in those circumstances thinking like this is correct.

      I don’t think this way when I daydream, although the visual components of my daydreams are more like the feelings I get when I look at something than like concrete mental pictures.

        • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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          4 days ago

          I remember when I was at school (this was 6th or 7th grade) and the teacher wrote y = x and drew a diagonal line on a Cartesian plane. At that moment, I realized that the world was made of math and I was enlightened. I’m not exaggerating - the experience revolutionized the way I could think.

          The interesting thing to me is that I have worked with physicists who appear to be capable of even higher levels of abstraction than I am. If I read an equation, I need to think about its geometrical representation but they claim to think directly in terms of equations. (Pure mathematics, not the letters and numbers that make up the written equation.) I believe them because they can comprehend equations much faster than I can; they and I would go to talks where the presenter just put up slide after slide of equations and I would be lost almost immediately while they were able to follow along. I don’t think that’s simply because they’re much smarter than I am, because I am otherwise generally able to match them intellectually.

          • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            I wish I had their brain type, I struggled in math to remember the formulas. I had a great time learning it, otherwise. Calculus was awesome, I had never considered measuring the rate of change of the rate of change and I got pretty excited. Set theory was great too.

  • Eiri@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    Huh. The person was off-frame. And I’m pretty sure i retroactively chose a color for the ball.

    I think I might have a black-and-white imagination.

  • Zozano@lemy.lol
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    3 days ago

    Both my partner and I answered the same.

    The ball was the size of a tennis ball, no colour.

    The person had no gender or any distinguishing features.

    The table was a standard kitchen table.

    Neither of us knew what the test was about.

  • glitchcake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    The ball had no color, the person had no gender or specific form other than vague shapes (the hand and arm being the most visualized), no memory of deciding any specific clothing, the ball was the most fleshed out part where it was the size of a softball. The table was square with vaguely wood coloring. The size was about 2 ft by 2ft maybe 3 ft high.

    I did not already know most and I did not retroactively change them. I gave answers as I remembered my visualization.

  • finestnothing@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I have complete aphantasia, I can’t even visualize a ball or table, or anything else - never have been able to, I see absolutely nothing when I close my eyes and can’t visualize or see things in my head at all except when dresming. Same for my Dad. He can apparently visualize an extremely tiny amount (like the night sky but just black + stars, etc) when he’s high on thc gummies. I’ve never been high so idk if it works for me.

    It took me 24 years to realize that people actually can actually see images in their head when they think about something or intentionally imagine it. I always thought that phrases like “picture it in your head” or “see in your head what it will look like” were just phrases, not that people actually can see things when they think about it.

    • MadhuGururajan@programming.dev
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      4 days ago

      For me it was a round coffee table and it was a lanky butler wearing white gloves who gently reaches out with index and thumb and pushes the baseball sized ball forward