I had many conversations in the weeks following my original discovery, and this comment thread reflects them perfectly.
Me: There's no way everyone actually sees things and I made it 30 years without knowing.
Everyone else: Yeah I see things.
Me: but, like really see or just remember features?
Everyone else: <some variation of quality, but it was always described visually and everyone agreed it was basically like seeing>
I put "see" in quotes in my original comment simply because that is how everyone I spoke to described it; that it's clearly not physical vision, but it's also clearly a visual experience. I have absolutely zero visual experience when I close my eyes, and I never have, it is simply emptiness.
You seem to describe dreaming as if you experience that visually too, while not being able to do it while awake. It's worth noting that this is not uncommon for people with aphantasia, which is why it is the inability to _voluntarily_ invoke your minds eye. Many people can still dream visually, however I do not. I go to sleep and then simply wakeup with nothing but emptiness in between (not an experience of emptiness as time passes, but more like a time skip).
Yep, imagining/visualizing something goes without an actual visual experience for me. I've always assumed the same thing applies to most people, but I guess I do have some degree of aphantasia.
I can imagine something, but it's like rendering a layer with the opacity brought all the way down to 0, but my "mental computer" knows it's there and can tell its shape, color, all its features & details in 3D space... without seeing the actual visual image.
Dreaming on the other hand is usually multi-sensory and especially visual for me. Much like being awake or in a VR environment, but with internally generated input.
Have you spend time really consciously investigating your sleep? To the point of interrupting it with alarms etc..? I'm someone who's very interested in my dreams: for years, every night before sleep I wonder what I will dream, sometimes I get lucid during the dream, and when I awake my first instinct is to recall my dreams. I think this is why I dream so much. I wonder if the same thing applies to visualization and whether or not aphantasia is "curable" through consciously exercising visualization.
Me: There's no way everyone actually sees things and I made it 30 years without knowing.
Everyone else: Yeah I see things.
Me: but, like really see or just remember features?
Everyone else: <some variation of quality, but it was always described visually and everyone agreed it was basically like seeing>
I put "see" in quotes in my original comment simply because that is how everyone I spoke to described it; that it's clearly not physical vision, but it's also clearly a visual experience. I have absolutely zero visual experience when I close my eyes, and I never have, it is simply emptiness.
You seem to describe dreaming as if you experience that visually too, while not being able to do it while awake. It's worth noting that this is not uncommon for people with aphantasia, which is why it is the inability to _voluntarily_ invoke your minds eye. Many people can still dream visually, however I do not. I go to sleep and then simply wakeup with nothing but emptiness in between (not an experience of emptiness as time passes, but more like a time skip).