As I understand it, many (most?) people with phantasia can't really superimpose images onto their vision like this, but needs to close their eyes to imagine something, but I for sure could. I was fully aware not directly seeing it, the image is composed in the mind after all, but I guess a good analogy is you "playing music" onto music you're listening to. It's composed together in your mind, but you're fully aware only parts of it is coming through you ear.

Last, since you can imagine images in your minds eye like you describe, you clearly do not have aphantasia...

What you describe is not quite what they are doing, they are adding nudges at the end of the follow-up question suggestions. For instance I was researching some IKEA furniture and it gives suggestions for followup, with nudges in parenthesis "IKEA-furniture many people use for this (very cool solution)" and at the end of another question suggestion: "(very simple, but surprisingly effective)". They are subtle cliffhangers trying to influence you to go on, not pure suggestions. I'm just waiting for the "(You wouldn't believe that this did!)". It has soured me on the service, Claude has a much better personality imo.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/long-covid-lost-t...

It's so weird, as I know exactly which "muscle" to trigger to make it happen, which I guess someone having aphantasia wouldn't instinctly know, but it just doesn't do much.

-edit- Oh, forgot to mention, in the beginning when I trained on visualizing again (back when it did work), I got _so_ exhausted in my brain afterwards, it was like really trying to used some damaged "muscle". I find that really fascinating. I'm not able to invoke such exhaustion in other ways, that quickly.

I tried visualization exercises (there's a lot more to the story that I didn't consider space to add here) and the first time they worked rather quickly, so I regained the ability in the course of days. But as I mentioned in another comment, I contracted covid again and then it was even worse than it had ever been and training didn't feel like it worked. I regained a little bit since that infection, but got covid yet again (it's an awful disease) and then it was back to square one. It seems like something in the brain had to heal before I could train it back up, but I'm afraid that the damage will be/is so severe that it will not be possible to recover (especially since I couldn't even create images in my dreams).

I might get better over time if I just stop getting covid, but as isolating myself is out of the question, that's unlikely to happen. Unfortunately it seems much harder to recover each time. Since last time it's not really been recovering. On the bright side, my sense of taste/smell has not been damaged again, which has been great.

Reading reddit etc, there are so many people getting very distraught and worse when they discover they have aphantasia (and reddit, for many people, is a magnifier for such thoughts unfortunately). Having been very good at that ability and then lost it I can provide some perspective on that. I would be lying if I didn't admit it's a very nice ability to have, but I also wouldn't really bother spending much energy on considering how life would be if one had it, but rather as you and the article points out, focus on the strengths one builds without it.

As you mention, the most sad part about it is actually the childhood memories, but I still have the memories of course, they're just a bit more "facts based" than re-living experiences.

Luckily, I didn't lose my inner ear or even inner monologue like in another reported case [0]. I do play instruments, so I guess I was/is musically inclined to some degree. I still have ability to imagine music exactly like I would hear it, unlike a friend with aphantasia who can't.

Another interesting detail is that I regained the ability before losing it again (Covid re-infection), and during this time of recovery I could gradually see grey, blurry images that got better and better. It's like the image generator in my head didn't have capacity to create full blown images, but only low res ones. Which makes me believe that in my case the "image generator" was damaged as I couldn't even dream in pictures, while for most people with aphantasia that's not the case, as they can dream normally.

On the bright side, I don't get horrible, lifelike images popping up in my head anytime I hear about something disturbing. Not that that was a big problem, but it's something you notice. It makes me believe that people with aphantasia might be better at coping with disturbing events, as they don't have to re-live the experience visually. But that's just a theory.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-stopped-having-dreams-...

I also stopped dreaming in images for a long time, which was weird. It's still very dim (not so vivid), but at least that part came back.

One usually recommend four oils (of high quality preferebly): one citrus, one mint/eucalyptus, one spicy (e.g. cinnamon) and one flowery (lavendel did wonders for me, then geranium) to start out with. Smell each oil for 20 seconds every morning and evening, while thinking of/imagening the thing you're smelling. Since it's a neurological issue, the last thing supposedly helps. It usually took me 2-3 weeks from starting training until noticing any (very minor) effect at all, and much longer to regain a lot of it.

Sorry if she's already tried, hopefully it's useful for others. It can take a long time for the training to work.

Just beware that polars is not as mature, so take this into consideration if choosing it for your next project. It also currently lacks some of the more advanced data operations, but you can always convert back and forth to pandas for anything special (of course paying a price for the conversion).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32988174

Points: 3

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The ability to boost your favorite sites is a really nice feature, especially for developers. Also not having to sift through all the content-stealing websites and SEO scams is a huge plus. Recommended!

(No connection to it, just happy user).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16918929

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Also, the way routing is handled is really something other frameworks should learn from. It's slightly unusual in the beginning, but when you "get it" you suddenly realize everyone else has got it all wrong.

Just a shame it's not more well known, as it compares very favorably to other state/side effects management frameworks like redux and mobx.