the apple test

Close your eyes and imagine an apple in front of your face. Can you
see it? In detail, in color? Can you rotate it on any axis and see it
moving? Can you look down on it from the top and see which way the
stem points?

Some people can visualize the apple, some can't. Some of the can't
folks are writers, artists, healthcare providers, programmers. Their
brains apparently process words, not images.

Seems to me that a circuit designer should be able to visualize
circuits, but maybe not.

One guy I talked to today can only imaging the apple floating above
his head, and can't manipulate, or really much see, it. He's a very
good programmer.

I suspect that half of the people that we think are rude in
supermarkets, or bad drivers, aren't so much ill-mannered as they
can't visualize spatial situations or mentally model trajectories.