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?
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.
Yellow
Male
Green and white track suit (why? IDK), mid 60’s Italian, chubby
It was one of those foam Nerf bullets, so about the size of a shooter marble
It was that black IKEA table where the four metal legs screw into the corners. About 6ft by 3ft.
The entire scene sprung into my head at once after reading that someone interacted with the ball