Re: Visualizing

On 06/09/2024 16:08, Phil Hobbs wrote:

john larkin <jlarkin_highland_tech> wrote:

>
What was interesting was his recalling a conversation that he'd had
with his wife. She was takling about a plant or something and asked
him to visualize it. He was astounded that she, or anyone, could close
their eyes and *see* something they were thinking about.
>
I was shocked to learn that there are people who can't form a mental
visual image.

There is also visual recall of something you have seen which is slightly different. Eidetic memory is the most extreme form.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

Close your eyes and consider a nice white ceramic dinner plate with a
beautiful deep red apple sitting in the center. Can you see it? From
the side and from the top? Do you see the stem? The colors? Imagine it
slowly rotating? See the fruit fly?
>
If the world is divided between people who can visualise and people
who can't, that could explain a great deal.

I have always assumed that most people can do it to some extent. The next level up is being able to look at something (or imagine it) and then carve it or construct one in 3D. Very few people can do that.

Or people who have a dialogue going on in their heads all the time.
Apparently that’s most people.

Using visual memory is one way to beat a classic Alzheimer's test by imagining an apple, balanced on a ball sat on a chair. It doesn't seem to suffer the same degradation as normal short term abstract memory.

But then again, none of us knows what it’s like to be somebody else.

Indeed. The people who I admire the most are composers who can image roughly what an entire orchestra will sound like playing their newly written score. That takes an incredible amount of aural imagining.
We also have no way of knowing if what I experience for red colour is the same as what you see for red. Some colour blind people really do see the world differently (most common red-green colour blindness). But the ones with slightly extended near IR vision through 4 types of cones had advantages in warfare since they can distinguish growing vegetation from cut and dying vegetation that has been used for camouflage.
--
Martin Brown