Comment by feoren
11 hours ago
Yes, it's harder to evaluate whether someone can visualize well, but that does nothing to invalidate my point.
Have you actually dedicated significant time to trying to learn how to visualize? I suspect that if you did, you'd realize: oh, wow, maybe I can actually get better at this. If most people who give it a serious effort also come to that conclusion, I feel like we've pretty much settled the question. So it is testable, just not as easily.
> Have you actually dedicated significant time to trying to learn how to visualize?
I haven't had to. I don't have aphantasia. Visualizing doesn't feel like a learned skill to me. It feels like something I've always known how to do. Of course if I pay more attention to what I'm doing, I can visualize in more detail than if I just do it casually. But I've never had the feeling that, oh, if I practice this and learn I can get better at it, the way, for example, that I can get better at playing the piano by practicing.
Where I'm stuck is, if someone else who couldn't visualize asked me to teach them how, I wouldn't know what to do. Whereas, if they asked me to teach them how to play the piano, I'd at least have some idea.