This is a thought experiment "Ball on a Table" for detecting whether someone has Aphantasia. What do you see when you perform this experiment?
This is a thought experiment "Ball on a Table" for detecting whether someone has Aphantasia. What do you see when you perform this experiment?
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?
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- yellow
- male
- round face, beard, brown hair, mid 20s (I think probably some internet-famous person whose name I don't remember)
- small plastic ball filled with air
- a simple square table with a natural wood top and legs
That was my first thought. But then (before reading the questions) I also imagined other similar scenarios like with a soccer ball and my desk at work, lol.
My experience with this experiment was kind of like when they play memory flashbacks in movies, I could see the ball being pushed and falling, but with jump cuts and the timing was off. Detail-wise I'd say it was kinda like what you got from AI image generation when Dall-E first came out two-ish years ago.
I don't think I have the most visual imagination out there but if aphantasia is one end of the scale I'm pretty far to the other side.