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?
My mental image of the bicycle changed as each detail was added, but sometimes the detail changed the image (the handlebars were straight until you said they were dropped) and sometimes the detail didn’t exist; the dropped handlebars were wrapped in handlebar tape, but that tape didn’t have a colour (not sure how to explain that better) until you mentioned it was black. Most of the details “added” something to the scene rather than “changing” an assumed detail.
The “front forks on the ground” question was particularly interesting to me.
The bicycle started with two wheels, and front wheel just sorta disappeared from my image when you mentioned it was stolen, but the front fork remained floating in the air as if there was a wheel still supporting it. But asking the question about the forks on the ground made gravity exist, and then there had to be a reason it was floating, which became it was being held up by the U-Lock.
I seem to imagine scenes with few superfluous details that mostly includes only what is mentioned or implied by the narrative. But it’s super interesting to me what details we’re in fact implied.
The ball on the table was similar. The table was at waist height to the person, and the ball had a specific size of roughly the size of a racket ball because it had to be something that could be easily pushed. But the person pushing it was just a silhouette of a person, it had no gender, the only thing I pictured clearly was the hand that pushed the ball. It was pushed in an intentional way that made the ball roll across the table away from the “person” (as opposed to bouncing, or pushed sideways)
The table was just an elevated plane it had no texture, or even legs supporting it, (probably because there was no ground for those legs to be on,) it didn’t go on forever, you could see the end of the table, but it also didn’t have a size.