5d ago

What was your "I can't believe I have to explain this to an adult" moment?

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Something explained to me...
I was 41 when I realised that people actually see things in their minds eye. It is not just a metaphor.
Blew my mind, like it is some kind of superpower, you can just imagine stuff, and you see an image of it....
My partner is such a good cook, partly because she can combine flavours in her mind, to check if they will taste good together, that is just fucken cheating.
When people "get a song stuck in their head" they can literally hear it.... How the fuck do you get anything done, you crazy bastards.
- I've encountered this the other way. I would design something for a customer, and I'd leave it Fusion360's default grey texture. Let's say I'm making a table. The following conversation would take place:
  "Why is it grey?"
  "That's just the software, I'm gonna make it out of wood."
  "I don't want it to be grey, I want it to be wooden."
  "I know, I'm going to make it out of wood. What do you think of the shape?"
  "I can't see it if it's not wooden."
  I honestly don't know you function like that.
  
  Horrifying.
  What makes it even more horrifying is that they might vote.
  
  i can't see things in my mind's eye but like, i can fucking comprehend the concept of representative models, that has no relation to the aphantasia lmao
  i think they were just a bit dumdum
- My partner is such a good cook, partly because she can combine flavours in her mind, to check if they will taste good together, that is just fucken cheating.
  Okay I can do the other stuff (as can most people; you probably have aphantasia) but this? This either is fucking cheating or I have atonguasia
  
  I may be biased since I'm also able to do this (and have gotten pretty good), but I'm reasonably sure it's a skill you can learn. Just take two things, make a prediction how they'd taste together, then try it and see how correct you were. If you keep doing this, you'll eventually be pretty good at predicting new things.
  I've done this since I was a child (because it was always interesting to me), so it might take some time, but humans are very good at learning such patterns!
  If you want something to start with, take a slice of banana and add mustard. It doesn't taste great (also not terrible), and the flavors mostly stay separate, but they combine a bit in an interesting way.
  
  I have multi-sensory aphantasia.
  
  I cannot combine two flavors I've never tasted together in my mind, but I can recall what I did taste before and make an educated guess as to how to reproduce it based on how the individual parts taste. Apart from that it's trial and error - I'd say 65% of the time it works, 25% of the time the result is forgettable, and 1/10 times it's a "what was I thinking??" situation.
  
  I don't think I could even do my job without this. I mean, I know not everyone can do it as well as Zi can, but I guess I never thought that there are people that can't do it at all.
- That’s how I compose music. My brain plays it to me before I can try and put it on paper. Also when I sing I can hear the instrumental on my brain without actually playing it.
  
  Related to this, I'm a fairly decent dancer....but only if there is music playing. I cannot dance at all with no music, it is just impossible for me to look at all coordinated. I have no music or beat in my head to follow, it is a little crazy to think that the "normal" case is that people hear music in their heads.
  
  Same. I can't see anything in my mind's eye but it's loud as hell up there.
  
  gotta love when you're in a dead quiet room and suddenly it just becomes an mp3 player, i've straight up fallen asleep to music playing in my mind.
- I'm on the other side of your discovery. When my kids were young and in karate, I couldn't understand why they were having so much trouble acting out techniques in the air. In my mind, I could see where the imaginary opponent was and how they would move, but most of the kids had a lot of trouble with that.
  While talking to my wife, I found out that not everyone can envision people and things in 3D.
  I was also the parent who made the kids' Halloween costumes. My sewing technique is pretty terrible, but I can see how the costume should look, and I can take it apart in my head and see what shape the pieces should be.
  
  I am very confused now. Isn't that just imagination? I know some people are not good at envisioning things but never heard about people not being able to do it. Ig TIL.
- I think more what I’ve had to explain is the opposite. Aphantasia exists, so there are people out there (like me and assumingly you) who CANNOT picture stuff in their head.
  But yeah I also had to learn people could actually do this as an adult. Boy did that make me not caring to read books make way more sense.
  
  I think that liking/not liking books doesn't have a lot to do with aphantasia. I love books and reading, but some authors are just terrible because they put too much visualization porn between interesting story elements (looking at you Tolkien).
  For me to like a book, the story has to flow; Terry Pratchett is my favorite author, his stories flow in a really nice way and he tackles a lot of social issues in a great way.
  
  I mostly meant just personally, not that anyone with aphantasia would not like reading. Just not my thing, and once I realized everyone else could actually picture things, kinda clicked why I never got into books as these great doorways to the imagination.
  If I read, it would probably be Terry Pratchett, the couple made for TV movies are some of my favourites. Fantastic writer.
  
  It is really different for everyone, much like the distribution in more "neurotypical" people. For me it is all about story, a good story will get me, but just describing how something looks doesn't add to the story for me.
  e.g. enough character detail for me would be something like, "just then, Jim walked in, extremely tall and whippet like, he had a sallow sickly complexion" much more than that, and it becomes redundant for me.
  I was a member of r/aphantaisa for a long time, a lot of discussions there were started because someone was trying to blame their (perceived) shortcoming in some area on aphantasia. Without fail, some other aphant would come along and say...na that is how I make my living, it isn't because of your neurodiversity. The classic one is visual art (I'm terrible at that), but a whole heap of artists are aphants. But reading came up fairly regularly also.
  
  Yeah I mean, it’s funny I don’t care to read, but I will sit and read entire setting books for TTRPGs. Much more into how things work or about interesting stuff than reading stories.
  
  I don't know, I'm pretty sure I've got aphantasia, but I love reading. I just tend to skip over character descriptions and have no clue what any of them are supposed to look like. On the plus side, I'm pretty much never disappointed with casting of an adaptation meaning the characters don't look as I'd imagined them, since it's just not something I do.
  
  i'm utterly unable to imagine new visuals, but i can sorta half-imagine things i've already seen (though they have to be kinda distinct so to stick in the memory), so when i'm reading books all the characters end up looking like actors i've seen that feel like they fit the role. Very strange when i think about it.
  
  What's funny for me is I definitely think I've got a bit of aphantasia, I can somewhat see images but it's low detail, details are wrong, have a horrible memory for faces, etc.
  However I loved reading, I did usually tend to skip over descriptions of scenes that might go on too long because I get the gist and everything else just doesn't get added in lmao.
  Doing LSD and other hallucinagines (misspelled?) was extremely interesting due to the effect on aphantasia, it absolutely allowed me to "see" in that way as I never had before, I am not sure how much it actually "stuck with me" or not though if you get my meaning.
- I was maybe an early teen when I learned that. Might explain my decreased skillset.

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