↩ 019. aphantasia. ↩

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 18:34:15 +0200

I present the following minimally-editorialised conversation between me and a dear friend (who wishes to remain anonymous for the purposes of this reproduction) in the hopes that it will be useful but without any warranty; except for the warranty that it is true to my proverbial soul. The only context this requires to avoid unduly scandalising the reader is that he's also gay, so the call is coming from inside the house. Comment and opine under post.

[14:50] Mayfly:

I'm sorry but I will simply not argue with someone who is wrong

[14:50] nabijaczleweli:

and i wont because i dont care

[14:50] nabijaczleweli:

unrelatedly, i saw this couple 2 weeks ago

[14:50] Mayfly:

another mayfly victory

[14:51] nabijaczleweli:

and relatedly to that, i think weed fixed my aphantasia that i didnt know i had

[14:51] nabijaczleweli:

who knew drawing were so easy if you can just induce a hallucination and trace off that!

[14:52] nabijaczleweli:

you're telling me youve had this tech forever and never told me?

↬ nabijaczleweli: who knew drawing were so easy if you can just induce a hallucination and trace off that!

[14:52] Mayfly:

us ubermensch can do it on command

[14:52] Mayfly:

like i can picture a lizard on my keyboard eating a smurf jello or whatever

[14:53] nabijaczleweli:

no wonder bitches were so good at drawing

[14:53] Mayfly:

or imagine an apple, red, spinning, a bit shiny

[14:53] Mayfly:

an entire scene

[14:53] nabijaczleweli:

this is literally a cheat code

[14:53] Mayfly:

i close my eyes i'm at the beach

[14:53] nabijaczleweli:

crazy crazy crazy crazy

[14:53] Mayfly:

complete with sounds and touch feeling

[14:53] nabijaczleweli:

insane

[14:53] Mayfly:

smell is very hard to conjure though

[14:53] nabijaczleweli:

(it didnt fix it to that extent ftr)

[14:54] Mayfly:

nab hardcore mushroom arc incoming

[14:54] nabijaczleweli:

never

[14:54] Mayfly:

midcore

[14:54] nabijaczleweli:

you know

[14:54] Mayfly:

ok so

[14:54] Mayfly:

if i ask you to picture the face of a family member

[14:54] Mayfly:

can you?

[14:55] nabijaczleweli:

this actually explains why me, aged like 5-8, drew trees as straight lines and my father laughed at me that i couldnt draw them normal and curvy

[14:55] Mayfly:

"oh no"

[14:56] Mayfly:

"she's retarded aphantastic"

[14:56] nabijaczleweli:

"wow normally people cant draw straight lines but you can only draw straight lines wow funny"

[14:57] nabijaczleweli:

turns out when you have to model the universe based on semantic data alone its almost impossible to draw anything that isn't a schematic!!

[14:57] nabijaczleweli:

especially at age 7

[14:57] Mayfly:

indeed

[14:57] Mayfly:

why didnt you get the DLC before starting up the game

[14:57] Mayfly:

you're playing in low res

[14:58] nabijaczleweli:

nope

[14:58] nabijaczleweli:

before this it was inconceivable that anyone could get visual hallucinations of any kind

[14:58] nabijaczleweli:

to me

[14:58] Mayfly:

well let me reassure you

[14:58] Mayfly:

the opposite concept is equally insane for us

[14:59] Mayfly:

inability to conjure mental images (or sounds) is just inconceivable

[14:59] nabijaczleweli:

recalling a memory is equivalent to getting an ordered list of semantic, semiotic, and spatial relationships

[14:59] Mayfly:

yeah thats what ive gathered from similar aphantasoids comments on HN

[15:00] Mayfly:

for us real people we recall the physical entire scene in varying degrees of details

[15:00] Mayfly:

the way a lossy camera would

[15:00] nabijaczleweli:

i can also tell you that it's impossible to answer the aphantasia test diagram correctly

[15:00] Mayfly:

what is that

[15:00] nabijaczleweli:

this standard jpeg

[15:01] Mayfly:

1

[15:01] nabijaczleweli:

before this i thought i was like a 2

[15:01] nabijaczleweli:

now i know i was a 5

[15:01] Mayfly:

she a 2 but looks like a 5

[15:01] nabijaczleweli:

me with eyeliner [context, ed.]

[15:02] nabijaczleweli:

theres a fundamental conceptual wall when youre reading this that it's 100% not possible to imagine a world where you do actually hallucinate something

[15:02] nabijaczleweli:

can you see an apple? sure the apple is red, has a leaf, the underside has a fucked up flower left over if you spin it

[15:03] nabijaczleweli:

this is what that means

[15:03] nabijaczleweli:

not can you see an apple? sure, here's a fucking hallucination of an apple

[15:03] nabijaczleweli:

????

[15:04] nabijaczleweli:

being autistic is this bandgap but about everything youve ever experienced in your life btw

[15:04] Mayfly:

i think id rather be gay

↬ nabijaczleweli: this is what that means

[15:05] Mayfly:

well the question is more

[15:05] Mayfly:

"imagine an apple"

[15:05] Mayfly:

"make it red"

[15:05] Mayfly:

"make it spin"

[15:05] Mayfly:

generally aphantasoids will go "what" by the 3rd statement

[15:06] nabijaczleweli:

i can make it spin easily

[15:06] nabijaczleweli:

i can apply any rotation to any thing to get to a solution to a question

[15:06] Mayfly:

then i dont get what you cannot see

[15:06] nabijaczleweli:

but i dont hallucinate an apple

[15:07] Mayfly:

so if I ask you to imagine a little lizard on your keyboard the question makes no sense?

[15:07] nabijaczleweli:

to you this means hallucinate an apple and look at it, to me this means "i will be talking about apples. when answering questions about the result, remember that it's red and spinning"

[15:08] Mayfly:

i see so you're basically redis

↬ Mayfly: so if I ask you to imagine a little lizard on your keyboard the question makes no sense?

[15:08] nabijaczleweli:

"a lizard could be on my keyboard i suppose. to what end?"

[15:08] nabijaczleweli:

rendering a scene to answer a question about it is a conscious process

↬ nabijaczleweli: to you this means hallucinate an apple and look at it, to me this means "i will be talking about apples. when answering questions about the result, remember that it's red and spinning"

[15:09] Mayfly:

but then one could ask questions like

[15:09] Mayfly:

"make it spin faster"

[15:09] nabijaczleweli:

nope

[15:09] Mayfly:

"which way is it pointing to now"

[15:09] nabijaczleweli:

this makes no sense

[15:09] nabijaczleweli:

there is no apple

[15:09] nabijaczleweli:

it's not pointing anywhere

[15:09] Mayfly:

yeah this is what i am saying

[15:09] Mayfly:

those are the statements that should tell you something is off

[15:09] nabijaczleweli:

there are 5-10 semantic elements

↬ Mayfly: those are the statements that should tell you something is off

[15:10] nabijaczleweli:

its impossible to conceive of a universe where there is a counterfactual to this

[15:11] Mayfly:

i think there could be

[15:11] nabijaczleweli:

i can only give you this analysis because weed fixed my aphantasia a little bit

[15:11] nabijaczleweli:

therefore i can conceive of a universe with a counterfactual because i am living in that universe

[15:13] Mayfly:

so when are you upgrading to 1 apple diagram rating

[15:13] nabijaczleweli:

unclear

[15:13] nabijaczleweli:

i have real weed (as opposed to weed goop which is narrow-spectrum) on the way. this may work better or it may work worse

[15:14] Mayfly:

the nab descent to hell lounge -> systemd -> weed -> ability to hallucinate spinning apples

[15:14] nabijaczleweli:

lol

[15:21] nabijaczleweli:

if you want to know what being autistic is like you should watch poor things (2023)

[15:21] nabijaczleweli:

its pov me

[15:21] nabijaczleweli:

no media that claims to be about being autistic actually is, it's all reddit chungus

[15:23] Mayfly:

similarly if you want to know what being gay is like you should watch belami boys

[15:23] nabijaczleweli:

lmaoo

[] :

[16:25] nabijaczleweli:

i will be editorialising our conversation above for a blogue poast btw

[16:27] Mayfly:

the part where you're unable to imagine yourself sitting on a blinking cactus that's spinning counter clockwise? 😔

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