Since as far back as I can remember I had the vision-proprioception synaesthesia… I literally see some dark-on-dark image of my limbs with my eyes closed.. Ditto for anything I touch. It is not exceptionally exact though. I can concentrate on it, and see more of the objects i am aware of, or see less.
All of the body usually, and all non-body items that I have in immediate memory if i focus (e.g. if i close you eyes now I see my hands and outline of the computer and the bed, if i concentrate i also see window and the dog even though they are almost outside my field of view). It works correctly when moving or turning head, too. When i was younger i thought everyone has this, formed due to conditioned association—you always see your limbs where proprioception tells they are. It’s not like imagining either—it lacks the colour entirely, its involuntary (for some of the image), etc.
Yes. I am computer graphics programmer, I used to work on photo-realistic rendering but now I am mostly earning my living off a computer game I made. I can imagine 3d vector field as a 3d vector field, not as some 2d projection with arrows, that’s quite weird (and that kind of thing helps me a lot with my work).
So clearly your visualization is top notch, I take it you primarily think visually.
I am myself both quite strong in mathematical visualization, I have done some graphics programming (openGL) but nothing significant. My actual probe was for the ability to produce viasual art more directly and unaided, i.e. drawing and painting; since one of the prerequisites to being a good painter is usually the ability to look past the Symbolic World Representation (capitalized for mad drama) and actually see the lines, curves and colours that compose ones visual field.
This indirectly, coupled with a decent sense of proproiception should allow one to “see” oneself and ones surroundings without sight, purely by remembering the shapes of the enviroment.
But that is a relatively weak hypothesis, I think I need to investigate if non-visual thinkers can do it, if non-artist visual thinkers can and if art-skill is even correlated.
one of the prerequisites to being a good painter is usually the ability to look past the Symbolic World Representation (capitalized for mad drama) and actually see the lines, curves and colours that compose ones visual field.
This reminds me of the way children draw a strip of blue at the top of their paper to represent the sky instead of bringing it down to the horizon.
Study 1 examined the landscape paintings of a group of 45 7-10-year-old children and found the children leaving an air gap to be significantly younger than those painting the sky to the horizon. In addition the omission of the air gap was associated with the use of devices to represent three-dimensional space in two dimensions.
That seems to imply it may be a learnable skill; though it’s weak evidence.
This reminds me of the way children draw a strip of blue at the top of their paper to represent the sky instead of bringing it down to the horizon.
That is exactly what I am talking about.
That seems to imply it may be a learnable skill; though it’s weak evidence.
It is but the evidence is lacking other than a lot of artist going “yeah it’s totally learnable,” including myself. In actuality it is much the same techniques as applied in realising words aren’t what they appear to be.
I personally think it is strongly correlated with realising that the map isn’t the territory.
Small children usually draw symbolically. A house is a square with a triangle on top, a man has two arms and two legs, en eye is an oval with a dot in it, etc. The skill is to see that the house has perspective and funny looking windows and in fact doesn’t have a chimney, to see that the man is sitting so his left leg is barely visible and that the eye is viewd from the side, etc.
Your field of vision is composed of curves and colours, your visual reasoning is composed of concepts and symbols. To draw, one needs to let the first be close connected to the hand that holds the brush, than the latter.
Remembering in two dimensions (say, replaying a movie in one’s mind to check visual details) and remembering in three dimensions may be different processes.
Hmm, well, when you look at object you reconstruct 3d item from 2d image; it could be considerably more compact to store the 3d objects than 2d images. Think ‘demoscene’ where a lot of 3d imagery is packed into 64 kilobytes.
What I find most odd is the immense diversity of human thought… it’s almost as if people have some thinking substrate in their head, the cortical columns replicated all over the brain, and that substrate invented the ways to think and organize itself, on it’s own (to the point that early brain damage is so amazingly compensated for). Usually same areas take on same functions, and there may be tweaks to properties of substrate, but all in all it’s as if brain invents the ways to think—different ways.
I heard something recently (sorry no cite, might be a TED talk) that brains might be plug-and-play—that there’s a world-building capacity which will make something coherent out of whatever senses happen to be available.
What I find most odd is the immense diversity of human thought… it’s almost as if people have some thinking substrate in their head, the cortical columns replicated all over the brain, and that substrate invented the ways to think and organize itself, on it’s own (to the point that early brain damage is so amazingly compensated for). Usually same areas take on same functions, and there may be tweaks to properties of substrate, but all in all it’s as if brain invents the ways to think—different ways.
I have to ask for clarrification, was that sarcasm?
I meant, some people can reason visually, some are entirely incapable of visualization; some have internal monologue, some don’t; and so on. Some people may be unable to reflect on their thoughts altogether while still acting normal. The early (childhood) brain damage results in parts of brain taking function of the other parts, which implies that the brain is capable of sort of emerging this function from scratch.
Note: I don’t care how common or rare is particular phenomenon here; if one person on Earth could instantly see number of matches (in the hundreds range) ala Rainman character, human brain is capable of that (with very minor physical changes), and that is amazing diversity even if everyone else had been copies of 1 perfectly ordinary mind upload. Most of people may be thinking in exactly same way, for all I care; there’s still immense diversity if there’s a few percent within which everyone thinks in different ways.
well one can often encounter arguments of how this or that function is ‘hardwired’ by evolution, which makes very little sense in light of a: evolution’s slowness, and b: early brain damage to those regions not always resulting in loss of that function or any strong disadvantage. (perhaps the region where the task usually ends up implemented gets slightly tuned for the task, but that’s it)
The relevance is that the very implementation of e.g. visual memory may differ between individuals, to the point of structuring the data in radically different ways. It seems that as brain develops, there’s a great deal of hill-climbing of some kind performed by the brain to implement each particular function, and different hills end up climbed even for pretty ordinary functions.
Not only do I not have that (as synaesthesia—I can still have vague mental images of my limbs the way I can with anything else), but if I lie with my eyes closed long enough (say, more than half an hour) I kind of forget which way I’m facing—though I suppose this description wouldn’t really make sense to people who haven’t experienced this.
Since as far back as I can remember I had the vision-proprioception synaesthesia… I literally see some dark-on-dark image of my limbs with my eyes closed.. Ditto for anything I touch. It is not exceptionally exact though. I can concentrate on it, and see more of the objects i am aware of, or see less.
Can you get the visual image when you’re moving? How much of your body can you include, even if sketchily?
All of the body usually, and all non-body items that I have in immediate memory if i focus (e.g. if i close you eyes now I see my hands and outline of the computer and the bed, if i concentrate i also see window and the dog even though they are almost outside my field of view). It works correctly when moving or turning head, too. When i was younger i thought everyone has this, formed due to conditioned association—you always see your limbs where proprioception tells they are. It’s not like imagining either—it lacks the colour entirely, its involuntary (for some of the image), etc.
I do not think that is exceptional. I never tried it before, afaik and I have a similar thing.
Are you a visual artist by any chance?
Yes. I am computer graphics programmer, I used to work on photo-realistic rendering but now I am mostly earning my living off a computer game I made. I can imagine 3d vector field as a 3d vector field, not as some 2d projection with arrows, that’s quite weird (and that kind of thing helps me a lot with my work).
So clearly your visualization is top notch, I take it you primarily think visually.
I am myself both quite strong in mathematical visualization, I have done some graphics programming (openGL) but nothing significant. My actual probe was for the ability to produce viasual art more directly and unaided, i.e. drawing and painting; since one of the prerequisites to being a good painter is usually the ability to look past the Symbolic World Representation (capitalized for mad drama) and actually see the lines, curves and colours that compose ones visual field.
This indirectly, coupled with a decent sense of proproiception should allow one to “see” oneself and ones surroundings without sight, purely by remembering the shapes of the enviroment.
But that is a relatively weak hypothesis, I think I need to investigate if non-visual thinkers can do it, if non-artist visual thinkers can and if art-skill is even correlated.
This reminds me of the way children draw a strip of blue at the top of their paper to represent the sky instead of bringing it down to the horizon.
http://jbd.sagepub.com/content/13/1/49.short
That seems to imply it may be a learnable skill; though it’s weak evidence.
That is exactly what I am talking about.
It is but the evidence is lacking other than a lot of artist going “yeah it’s totally learnable,” including myself. In actuality it is much the same techniques as applied in realising words aren’t what they appear to be. I personally think it is strongly correlated with realising that the map isn’t the territory.
Small children usually draw symbolically. A house is a square with a triangle on top, a man has two arms and two legs, en eye is an oval with a dot in it, etc. The skill is to see that the house has perspective and funny looking windows and in fact doesn’t have a chimney, to see that the man is sitting so his left leg is barely visible and that the eye is viewd from the side, etc.
Your field of vision is composed of curves and colours, your visual reasoning is composed of concepts and symbols. To draw, one needs to let the first be close connected to the hand that holds the brush, than the latter.
Remembering in two dimensions (say, replaying a movie in one’s mind to check visual details) and remembering in three dimensions may be different processes.
Hmm, well, when you look at object you reconstruct 3d item from 2d image; it could be considerably more compact to store the 3d objects than 2d images. Think ‘demoscene’ where a lot of 3d imagery is packed into 64 kilobytes.
What I find most odd is the immense diversity of human thought… it’s almost as if people have some thinking substrate in their head, the cortical columns replicated all over the brain, and that substrate invented the ways to think and organize itself, on it’s own (to the point that early brain damage is so amazingly compensated for). Usually same areas take on same functions, and there may be tweaks to properties of substrate, but all in all it’s as if brain invents the ways to think—different ways.
I heard something recently (sorry no cite, might be a TED talk) that brains might be plug-and-play—that there’s a world-building capacity which will make something coherent out of whatever senses happen to be available.
I have to ask for clarrification, was that sarcasm?
I meant, some people can reason visually, some are entirely incapable of visualization; some have internal monologue, some don’t; and so on. Some people may be unable to reflect on their thoughts altogether while still acting normal. The early (childhood) brain damage results in parts of brain taking function of the other parts, which implies that the brain is capable of sort of emerging this function from scratch.
Note: I don’t care how common or rare is particular phenomenon here; if one person on Earth could instantly see number of matches (in the hundreds range) ala Rainman character, human brain is capable of that (with very minor physical changes), and that is amazing diversity even if everyone else had been copies of 1 perfectly ordinary mind upload. Most of people may be thinking in exactly same way, for all I care; there’s still immense diversity if there’s a few percent within which everyone thinks in different ways.
Yes, and that is obvious. The variance in the human population is enormous, no two humans are the same, etc. etc.
I was just mistaking your tone for a sarcastic one, i.e. “this is so obvious that anyone not realising this isn’t worth my time” feeling.
well one can often encounter arguments of how this or that function is ‘hardwired’ by evolution, which makes very little sense in light of a: evolution’s slowness, and b: early brain damage to those regions not always resulting in loss of that function or any strong disadvantage. (perhaps the region where the task usually ends up implemented gets slightly tuned for the task, but that’s it)
The relevance is that the very implementation of e.g. visual memory may differ between individuals, to the point of structuring the data in radically different ways. It seems that as brain develops, there’s a great deal of hill-climbing of some kind performed by the brain to implement each particular function, and different hills end up climbed even for pretty ordinary functions.
Is that actually uncommon?
Not only do I not have that (as synaesthesia—I can still have vague mental images of my limbs the way I can with anything else), but if I lie with my eyes closed long enough (say, more than half an hour) I kind of forget which way I’m facing—though I suppose this description wouldn’t really make sense to people who haven’t experienced this.
No idea, people i ask irl don’t have it. I thought everyone had it.