Comment by techgnosis

> zero evidence

That's a bold claim. It doesn't tell me there is zero evidence... hardly anything has zero evidence. It just tells me you either reject the evidence or haven't looked. It's not hard to check. For the lazy, Wikipedia provides a nice summary and 82 references to get more details. But that's just a starting point.

> there are suddenly two types of people

This comment is pretty revealing. For almost any trait, there are way more than two types of people. Usually there's a whole spectrum with lots of diversity. It's a beautiful thing. What would be very unusual is if there was only one type of person, or only two types.

Even distinct "types" is a bit of a misleading concept. Instead of distinct types or buckets, most things have more of a cluster or nebula structure. Each individual member of a cluster is different, but has overall similarities, on average, to other members. There will usually be a fairly dense core, and then it gets more sparse with distance. And there will often be several clusters near each other, overlapping, so there is no clear boundary between one cluster and another. That is how descriptive categories work... nebulous clusters in thingspace, where that space is a many-dimensional abstract space with each trait having its own axis, and many degrees of each trait.

For convenience and efficiency, we use labels to refer to these clusters, but when deeper understanding is needed, or more nuanced communication, the labels stop being a useful simplification. It's like trying to dig out a splinter with a shovel; shovels are very useful, but they're way too coarse and blunt for something as precise as a splinter. A deep enough understanding requires us to more explicitly recognize the cluster structure and the multidimensional spectrum of diversity.

Don't mistake the map (the labels, or the "types" of people) for the territory (the rich variety of life).

> why do we default to believing that there are suddenly two types of people

Because we know that there are already more than two types of people, even when we ignore aphantasia? So there is nothing new here.

Also if you read the FA, it explains that there are objective differences:

> People have taken various physiological and behavioral tests in a research lab. Researchers have observed that people who report vivid imagery respond differently to these more objective measures than aphantasics. Although this doesn't let us know definitively that they vividly see an image, it all points to the fact that something is truly different between people who claim to see vividly and those who don't.

Here’s some evidence for you: when I close my eye, I see black. That’s it. No amount of effort conjures an image. That’s not what most people I talk to about it report, so I am going to assume there’s a functional difference between me and people with functioning visualization.

> zero evidence besides a self-reported experience

There are clear differences in brain scans [1].

[1] https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/01/mind-blindness...

I believe it, because I tend to have a hard time visualizing even the faces of people I love and know well. It takes great effort.

It was funny to watch this discussion turn from skepticism at the top to then a bunch of proponents moving in and crowding out the rational voices. It feels a bit religious to me, at least unscientific, there are obviously no testable hypotheses about subjective descriptions, and so people seem to dig in on their sides more than if there was a real basis for comparison. I default to not believing in it until there is actual strong evidence, same as ghosts and the Loch Ness monster and whatnot.