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?
A colorless ball is pushed by a non existent person and rolls slightly at a linear speed and then ceases to exist.
Everything was shadows with rainbow outlines, basically.
I think this is a fun exercise, but Idk I’m oblivious to a lot of things excepts shapes and interactions. More telling is my dreams tend to fall into two categories:
Objects without details but with crisp, colorful outlines and dark scenes with illuminated spacces where the more fleshed out areas that are illuminated.
And my ability to imagine is similar- if no lighting condition is given my mental image is shadows with rainbow outlines. If the instructions include lighting the details are more robust: A cat will have a color, a ball will be plain and white and softball sized.
Wait a second.
- The ball had no color at all
- The person who pushed the ball didn’t even exist. It just got pushed by some invisible force. Naturally, they didn’t have an appearance.
- The ball was like… Small I guess?
- The table had no properties at all.
Do people really usually have a more vivid picture in their heads? It’s always just concepts with me. I’m confused.
Yeah, same with me. But I knew the ball was pushed and rolled to the edge of the table and then fell, so I feel like I got the most relevant bit.
Tbh I’ve never been good at visualising faces, recognising people I know, retracing a route I’ve taken etc. This just feels like one of those things I’ve never really been great at.
I also had the “I spent 23 minutes designing this scene in blender” impression of the ball, table, and disembodied hand. The table was made of light grey, the ball was made of light grey, and the hand was made of light grey
- What happens to the ball?
It slowly rolled toward the edge but stopped before falling to the ground. The path was somewhat eccentric because of the texture of the ball.
- What color was the ball?
Yellow
- What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
Male
- What did they look like?
Green and white track suit (why? IDK), mid 60’s Italian, chubby
- What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
It was one of those foam Nerf bullets, so about the size of a shooter marble
- What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?
It was that black IKEA table where the four metal legs screw into the corners. About 6ft by 3ft.
- 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?
The entire scene sprung into my head at once after reading that someone interacted with the ball
Huh. So I imagined the ball on the table immediately as a colorless glass sphere on a white table. Before I even read the prompt to push the ball in my imagination I had already placed my index finger on the ball and was rolling it around it place like a fidgit so I just tapped the ball to push it with my index finger so the person who pushed the ball was me (non-binary) for reasons that I was already interacting with the ball anyway. I imagined this in the first person so I didn’t really see myself in full. The ball itself was baseball sized and rolled a short distance, stopped and wobbled after being pushed.
I didn’t think about what the table was made of but the ball itself was glass that was smooth and cold to the touch. The table was square, waist height and dining room table sized. The room these objects were in was featureless and visualization was instant upon reading.
The blue ball won’t roll because it was on a table of clean laundry
Huh. The person was off-frame. And I’m pretty sure i retroactively chose a color for the ball.
I think I might have a black-and-white imagination.
red/blue stripes
none
they didn’t
small pool ball
generic Simpsonesque brown, but it stopped existing towards the corners.
At first I saw something silhouetted on a card table. Then Action entered the story and I had to choose an adventure after being asked what happened.
I figured how it rolls might depend on who pushed it, and I already knew that. Kevin. Why he did it was less clear. Muscle memory placed us at a table in the canteen. Sitting across from him on any ordinary day, some rolled up piece of napkin or a wad of garbage paper might present itself as a projectile to reach him across the plates and glass between us.
Tonight we were in my kitchen, together there for the first time. I’d moved the table into the corner with both leaves open to make extra space for snacks for the party. We pushed the pretzels and empties aside and sat facing each other off the edge of the table, knees nearly interlocked.
My chin was on my hand and my heart was on the ceiling. We were laughing about something when I noticed the toy baseball on the table. The stairs creaked and the sound of background chatter crept in like a breeze that chilled my spine. He flicked the ball, and it rolled fast off the edge then fell to the floor with a flat thud.
The phone on the wall behind him rang, and I clicked to review the test questions.
Orange
Male
He was a server in a black waistcoat, white shirt. He was brushing the ball off the table before setting plates down.
It was a ball from a kid’s ball pit, so a little bigger than a baseball, smaller than a softball.
The table was round, with a red gingham table cloth.
The orange ball on the red gingham table cloth were there immediately, once instructed to visualize a person pushing it, it only made sense that it was a server, since the table seemed restauranty.
The ball falls off the edge but doesn’t make a sound, effectively disappears from the scene.
Glass ball for some reason
Nondescript woman, no distinct features, blurry at the edge of perception. Vaguely wearing business clothes.
Ball was softball size
Table was featureless but the size and color of the table I’m sitting at now
- Red
- An amorphous blob in a humanoid shape doesn’t have a gender
- An amorphous blob in a humanoid shape
- Baseball sized
- Round, four legs, wood.
Haha no, I had to fill all that info in as I answered the questions. I mean, you can’t literally see the things in your minds eye. They’re more concepts.
I don’t literally SEE it like I would with my eyes but:
Red ball
Clown, no idea of gender
Again, clown
Ball smaller than tennis ball, bigger than golf ball
The table I am sitting at and looking at right now.
And no, I can and do imagine how things look. It’s a different sort of knowing/imagining than actual physical vision or dreaming though. Which led me to be confused about what exactly aphantasia is.
Yeah, same. I can envision things but I don’t literally see it as though with my eyes. I can imagine an object and tell you how it would look if you rotated it, for example. I don’t think I have aphantasia.
- Small push, ball rolls a very short distance and stops
- No color
- Male, maybe an extension of myself doing the push
- I did not visualize a complete person, only a suggestion of a body, and a arm/hand to push the ball
- Size of two fists together
- I did not visualize a full table, more like a camera view of a tabletop. Nondescript wood finish.
Did I already know? Sort of… My brain rotated through multiple possible imaginings. It worked forward, then reversed the logic to complete the scene. Nothing was set in stone: My brain decided that the ball would not roll off the table. Why? The ball has an uneven surface, it wobbled when stopping. Why? Because it has a surface like a soccer ball. Why? Because that was the first “look” my brain landed on that answered the question. I recall rotating through different colors and finishes, but after my brain imagined the ball stopping I had to come up with a why.
The ball was silver and completely reflective. The seen basically looked like that image used for ray tracing testing. No gender just a hand. Table was black
Light blue ball
Male
Medium height dressed in a long sleeved pale blue collared work shirt, wearing jeans, with a brown belt. Brown hair. Non-descript facial features.
Tennis ball sized
A white, rectangular wooden table.
I already knew, the picture formed instantly on reading the prompt. Initially my perspective was looking directly at the ball then when I read the part about pushing it off the table my perspective shifted further back.
