I can do mental rotation quite okay, but it's not really visual. It's kinda in the back of my mind, colorless, faded, greyish etc. but I'm aware of the shape "outline", well not really the outline but just aware of the shape, without actually seeing it. As if you were in a dark room and were feeling out the objects by touch in part (but I am aware of the whole 2d projection at once, unlike touch). I can only really visualize things while drifting to sleep. If people can do that level while awake, that must be awesome.
But I do wonder how much of it is about different uses of words by different people. I do have an internal monologue when I want to build sentences, eg crafting a sentence for writing or just imagining talking to someone and trying to convince them as if practicing arguments for a debate (though decidedly not hallucinating someone to talk to). Or when trying to serialize so explicit steps I need to do, I may list them verbally in my mind.
I may call this a conversation with an entity, but actually I feel I'm just talking to myself. I identify with the speaker. I guess, and I'm trying now, I can sort of feel as if the stream of sentences is coming from a different entity.
It might be that we have very similar (though not equal) experiences we just use different terms and stories to make sense of them.
There's a book that argues that Ancient Greeks in the time of Homer also believed their gods talked to them and it might have been something like this. And that the idea of an individual free-will autonomous singular human is a relatively modern cultural concept.
> But I do wonder how much of it is about different uses of words by different people.
There are qualitative differences, however. I think a better question would be not how vivid the imagined shape is, but how connected and contextual it is.
Someone might imagine a 6 red star and stop at that, someone might imagine a 3 star, but with the whole Kremlin tower attached on a snowy night with distant car sounds.
Testable things i found are looking for reactions. Imagine yourself at the beach, standing half immersed in the sea, enjoying the view, then something grabs your leg underwater.
-Did you flinch, or was these just words? Some people would, since they are contextually immersed in the scene.
-Can you answer side questions, like how calm the sea was, were you looking towards the land or the horizon, were there any birds in the sky, and so on? Some people can, because they were visualizing the scene, some people won't unless prompted, since they were constructing the scene.
In the similar vein, do you project your imagination over the world around you? People who do tend to not comprehend how you can lose things, like forgetting where you parked your car.
I do think there is something to this, but it's exceedingly difficult to communicate about the differences.
For example English is not my native language and even though I'm basically fluent as far as understanding any TV show or reading books goes, but I still notice it doesn't reach me as viscerally as speech in my native language. It's blunted, it's like touching things with gloves on. So there is some sort of vividness of ideas, but it's hard to describe.
I think people who claim they can visualize something don't actually pixel for pixel visualize it. I read about some study where these people only realized this when followup questions came. I think you can excite your neurons to represent the visual concept of a house without having to expend all the effort to actually create all the parts, decide on the color of window frames, all the small details.
Overall I'm torn. I guess there are differences and we should listen to descriptions like these. On the other hand, I also know how unreflective and un-introspective average people can be.
"-Can you answer side questions, like how calm the sea was, were you looking towards the land or the horizon, were there any birds in the sky, and so on? Some people can, because they were visualizing the scene, some people won't unless prompted, since they were constructing the scene."
- this is exactly it. I seem to be unable to visualize things in my mind. If someone asks me to visualize a beach, I can create a description of a beach and know what exists on the beach, I am able to give an verbal explanation of it. However I do not at any moment see it, nor do I have insight into the beach that I didn't construct. I don't notice that there is a hotel in the distance, but I can think about it and add it in the description. I feel this is very different to what apparently majority of people can do.
Hm, not at the speed of reading. Takes a bit of slowing down to get some.
A complication is that a lot of these are from elementary school geometry books, so i tend to just remember the answer before getting a chance to look at it.
Can you imagine each Tetris shape, one after the other, in some kind of spatial way? Can you "make" the L shaped one sit on its short side then lie down on the long side?
Can you do this? "You see the silhouette of a cube, viewed from the corner. What does it look like?"
Or mark the edges of a cube into thirds, and cut off each of its corners back to the marks. What does the result look like? Can you mentally rotate this shape around?
I don't really see anything. If I attempt to visualize a cube from the corner, I can maybe say I can see the corner and three edges leading from it (to be honest, it's hard to say that I truly see it, but maybe a vague outline of three lines). I don't see the remainder of the cube.
If I try to imagine a cube, and then mark the edges into thirds, I cannot imagine what remains when I cut off corners back to the mark. And the cube itself is more of an idea of a cube rather than visual representation.
I cannot mentally rotate the shape as I do not see a shape.
I'm sure it's hard to believe, but trust me, it's hard for me to believe people can visualize in the way people describe.
Do you see any sort of visual imagery when dozing off to sleep? Have you ever played a lot of some visually repetitive game, like Minesweeper, Tetris, Bejeweled etc? I find that if I play a lot of those (hours) then at night when I shut my eyes I can't get rid of visualizations of these shapes in my mind, it's even kind of annoying.
For reference, this is what happens to me. If I spend a few hours playing a particular videogame, its imagery "burns into" my mind - when I close my eyes, I can see recurring patterns from the game (like ground textures or UI elements); if I'm tired, that's an easy way to get me to high level 3 on the "starn scale". The effect disappears after I sleep for a few hours.
But I do wonder how much of it is about different uses of words by different people. I do have an internal monologue when I want to build sentences, eg crafting a sentence for writing or just imagining talking to someone and trying to convince them as if practicing arguments for a debate (though decidedly not hallucinating someone to talk to). Or when trying to serialize so explicit steps I need to do, I may list them verbally in my mind.
I may call this a conversation with an entity, but actually I feel I'm just talking to myself. I identify with the speaker. I guess, and I'm trying now, I can sort of feel as if the stream of sentences is coming from a different entity.
It might be that we have very similar (though not equal) experiences we just use different terms and stories to make sense of them.
There's a book that argues that Ancient Greeks in the time of Homer also believed their gods talked to them and it might have been something like this. And that the idea of an individual free-will autonomous singular human is a relatively modern cultural concept.