Ask Lemmy

Amateurs, all respondents imagined something new.

My mind is so efficient, it just plays something back.

This is what I saw

Except he pushed it towards her instead of picking it up.

Honestly, it's patchy.

'ball on a table' is very generic, so my brain keeps suggesting different versions. A beach ball on my grandparents' living room table when I was a child. A fairly featureless basketball-sized sphere on a beech-like table in some kind of gallery-like environment. A tennis ball, but on little more than the concept of a table. The person, not being specified... could be anyone. In some versions it's my own arm, POV, in others it's like something seen out of the corner of your eye. Yeah someone came in and did a thing, I wasn't really looking.

The motion is more like a series of vignettes, unless I concentrate more - in which case the surrounding detail gets more abstract.

Now, if you give me details, that's another story.

A fuzzy yellow tennis ball on that cheap folding card table from my childhood with the padding cut off, leaving the textured fibreboard surface. My older sister strides up and shoves the ball across the table, making the flimsy legs wobble as she does so.

Do that, I can see the texture of the carpet and the bare walls from our shitty childhood apartment, I can downright smell the table and have the heft of the thing kinaesthetically along with the shape and visual textures. I can see the skitter and wobble of the ball across the table; my sister more an abstract bundle of mannerisms and gait, and the actual path of the ball is still more implied than observed, though.

For the most part, my visualisation is handwave, like looking through your blind spot or your peripheral vision: the part your brain makes up to fill in the missing details. When I read a book, it's like half-remembered cover-illustrations of the general scene: more vibe (sometimes richly textured, vivid vibe) than a literal image.

It was a billiards/pool ball, but no idea which one as I just associate balls on tables with playing pool.

No idea on gender, formless concept.

No idea on looks, just a concept.

Whatever size a pool ball is, 2-3 inches? Just a concept though.

It is a pool table with green felt and a raised edge and six pockets because that is what a pool table is. Can't really see it. Just aware of it's general properties and how the felt and wood feels.

Eveey detail is based ona pool tabke and ball because my first thought about balls on tables is playing pool. Without the table detail I wouldn't have anything at all to work with.

Maybe I am broken by all the physics thought experiments, but my image was very bare-bones

Sure, OK.

Very interesting!

I have hyperphantasia according to these kinds of tests (although I am not sure how accurate they are). In any case, the ball was white with a green glow it was smooth and looked like plastic but no seams where the halves were joined, male, like a large blue bird I saw in a cartoon, a bit larger than a baseball, the table was a very long rectangle shape. It was also white. The ball was pushed very hard from one end of the table to the other and then it bounced on the wall, the floor and the ceiling. The room was a bit small, with only a very small window rectangular window. It was black behind the window. The room was also rectangle shaped, with concrete grey walls. It was a bit dark, but there was some artificial light from a lamp. The bird acted very cartoonish when pushing the ball. I think that is all.

• rolls off the table, bounces a bit and rolls toward a glass door, where it also bounces gently after hitting the glass door. You could see outside into a yard that had a green garden in it. And trash bins outside.
• blue
• female, I think. But I didn’t pay much attention to the person at all.
• long light brown hair, wearing a winter jacket, facing away from me. So I couldn’t see their face.
• it was a dodgeball. Blue dodgeball. Not brand new. A few scuff marks on it. I could see like, the raised bumps on it.
• it was a dark brown thin wooden table. It had a tray with a vase in the middle of it with a green plant with long grass-like leaves. There was a black, modern looking chandelier hanging from the ceiling above it. The table kind of looked like it came from IKEA lol.

The reason this is so detailed is that I just so happened to imagine the kitchen from a friend’s house. I already know everything that’s in there. It was easy to picture. And no, I didn’t come up with any of this as a result of answering the questions. I just saw it in my head.

What does it mean if I already knew the answer to every question except what the person looked like?

Color - none (I hate not being able to visualise color as I hate doing 3d texturing work in blender and I would like to be able to enjoy it)
Gender - ambigious
Look - lack of info
Ball - unpleasant to touch, got pushed from the top, palm sized, it made a sound, the scene looped before the ball fell off the table, in the next iterations the ball was made of foam, and lacked sound, the camera spunn around the table.
Table - four legs, square, standard height.

Edit: Added the spoiler thing. Quite interesting to read others replies.

• Striped white and blue
• Male
• Casual clothing, nondescript
• About the size of a softball
• Round wooden table

All of this came before I was asked about it.

A colorless ball is pushed by a non existent person and rolls slightly at a linear speed and then ceases to exist. The ball had no size and I don't remember the table existing.

I didn't know most answers, my mind kinda works with the concepts. The ball was there, but there was no color, not even a grayscale, but the absence of color ( I have difficulty imagining colors in general), the pweson was there, and was a woman, but with no face of features. I don't even know if i really pictured a woman, or if my mind worked on that after seeing the questions. The table was there, but was simply a plane for the ball to be on, without features.

Now that I write this, it seems weird. Do people picture scenarios like this as if seeing a real scene? Can this be related to aphantasia? Should I be worried?

• What color was the ball?

I didn't see a color in my visualization, but I know it was red.

• What gender was the person that pushed the ball?

They were genderless; more of a concept of a person than an image of one.

• What did they look like?

Like...an area of visual space that my mind attached the identifier "Person" to.

• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?

A little smaller than a tennis ball, but bigger than a ping pong ball.

• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?

I didn't see either property in my visualization, but it's wooden and round.

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?

Lol. Well, I guess I botched that one. Obviously I did not know before being asked these questions, for most of the answers.

At first I saw something silhouetted on a card table. Then Action entered the story and I had to choose an adventure after being asked what happened.

I figured how it rolls might depend on who pushed it, and I already knew that. Kevin. Why he did it was less clear. Muscle memory placed us at a table in the canteen. Sitting across from him on any ordinary day, some rolled up piece of napkin or a wad of garbage paper might present itself as a projectile to reach him across the plates and glass between us.

Tonight we were in my kitchen, together there for the first time. I'd moved the table into the corner with both leaves open to make extra space for snacks for the party. We pushed the pretzels and empties aside and sat facing each other off the edge of the table, knees nearly interlocked.

My chin was on my hand and my heart was on the ceiling. We were laughing about something when I noticed the toy baseball on the table. The stairs creaked and the sound of background chatter crept in like a breeze that chilled my spine. He flicked the ball, and it rolled fast off the edge then fell to the floor with a flat thud.

The phone on the wall behind him rang, and I clicked to review the test questions.

That is interesting. I imagined it more like an abstract physics problem than an actual scene. My ball was about 6 inches diameter, made of a nonspecific hard but not very dense material similar to, but not necessarily solid plastic, of no specific color. It was in the center of a table roughly 3 x 6 feet in surface at normal sitting table height, and was also of no specific color or material. The person was just the vague notion of a person applying a push slightly off from across the short axis of the table. The ball bounced slightly on the generic idea of a floor as it rolled away. My mind quickly supplied the additional details when requested, but not until then. (Yellow ball, wood table, etc). If I'd been asked in a way that didn't feel like a physics problem, but instead asked me to imagine a scene, I would already have had many of those details in my mental view.

In my head, a red rubber ball the size of a baseball rolls off a square wooden table and falls on the floor. A guy pushed it.

Edit: I knew ahead of time. I added more detail once I saw the quiz but I can imagine pretty vivid images.

• Ball rolls a bit but stops before going off the edge of the table
• Red
• Male
• Avg Height/Build, Brown hair, shaved face
• Like twice the size of a marble, like a bouncy ball
• Square, wooden table, lightly stained.

Knew the answers before being asked.

Before reading the questions I visualized an all white room, with an average square wooden table with a red ball about the size of the baseball on it and the person was a white man with black hair in a grey suit.

What I don't like about this experiment is that being hyperphantic doesn't necessarily mean "you need photographic visualizations of every scenario at all times". My mind conjures scenarios differently depending on context.

I can imagine myself barely being able to see a ball on a table, let alone a person moving into view.

I can see the ball having a glossy, low-res texture alla 1980s CGI, with the ball being pushed by a polygon figure, moving without any real animation and limply falling off the table with no gravitational speed.

I can picture a worn, shiny leather baseball sitting on an old coffee table, stained walnut. The person is Mark Wahlberg and he has a smirk on his face as he lazily finger-flicks the ball, which only barely makes it to the edge of the table before just being able to tip off the edge, bouncing twice with a heavy bomp-bomp and rolling unevenly for a couple seconds. Mark winces because his finger hurts now. I could also imagine the flavor of the baseball and what it would smell like.

The point is that an aphantic might only be able to visualize this scenario at best as well as the first description, or perhaps not even at all and they can only 'know' of the movements in the scene with zero visual or otherwise relation to it.

Hyperphantics generally can conjure near limitless detail and they can retain that information visually for long periods of time without much effort.

• The ball was red
• The person was of indeterminate gender, I only really saw their arm
• They were wearing a blue button up over a white shirt
• The ball is about the size of an orange, and it rolled forwards
• The table was made of wood

I had to picture it again to get the shirt color but not the rest. I can say that the background was dark, almost like a dimly lit billiards hall, and there was a light shining on the ball

Blue rubbery ball with small dents in it like for a dog toy.

Pushed by a man in a suit with brown hair but face of Olaf Scholz because I did read a news about him prior.

Ball had a diameter somewhat smaller than a tennis ball but bigger than a golf ball.

White table with very flat plastic top, like in a students learning room. Because I automatically associated this as some kind of experiment which I often did at school.

I could feel the table I rested on while watching the man push the ball to fall of the table.

I have a high level of imagination and work creatively all day in my free time, be it doing art or playing creative games. But this never increased in a way, I remember being able to create these same quality images in my head since I was able to read as small child.

• The ball was red and smooth and uniform and shaded like it had been painted there or drawn with colored pencil.
• the gender of the person was indeterminate, perhaps leaning female
• they did not have a definite look to describe, it was more a concept of a person. They were a featureless, fuzzy, void-white silhouette adorned only by a similarly featureless light blue t-shirt, black pants and black hair, all so ill-defined it was as if they they had been hastily cut from craft paper and slapped over top the glowing form. Like the color scheme of the fitness boxing mascot, but the more simplified form of South Park Canadians, and more amorphous.
• the ball was slightly larger than a baseball but smaller than a softball
• the table was rectangular, of beige ‘wood’ with a light grain, and very sharp edges. It looked distinctly like it was out of a low poly video game.

Important question: The ball and table were distinct and known but oddly not “real-life”. The person was very indistinct and the gender is merely speculation. The edges defining their arms and hands became more defined as they approached and interacted with the ball. The color and form of the clothing and hair manifested then too.

Interestingly, I “know” the visualization took place in my kitchen, in an orientation different than my actual kitchen table. I saw the light from the windows Illuminate the table and the ball, and I could tell where I was in the space watching it happen, but the kitchen wasn’t there and neither was I. The table, ball and person appeared alone in a murky dark void.

• What color was the ball? Blue
• What gender was the person that pushed the ball? Male
• What did they look like? Skinny, pants, dress shirt
• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? Blue, smooth, baseball sized
• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Around 2ft square, wooden, light color, four square legs

All of this was built in my head with each part of the prompt. Pretty sure I don't have aphantasia.

The ball was white/light gray. It has the surface texture of plaster of Paris, but it is somewhat lighter than would be appropriate for its canteloupe-like size.

I don't think I actually pictured a whole person as pushing the ball, more likely it was a disembodied hand or the general sensation of pushing it myself.

I remember being specifically intrigued that I pictured the ball rolling back towards the center of the table and pondering why I had chosen the table to be slightly concave. I don't remember more attributes of the table, but I have the feeling that has more to do with inattention to its details rather than not picturing them at the time.

I imagine that, based on the framing of the story, my interpretation was to picture the sphere as a literal entity, but the person as the "concept of a push"... The table probably lied somewhere in the middle.

I've always found this subject fascinating. Why are we all so different in this regards? What's going or not going on up there? Anyway, this is my result…

Blue. Didn't really envision a person, just the hand, didn't notice the potential sex. It was a billiard ball on a pool table. The ball kinda rolled gently across the table at an angle, hit the side, and slowly rolled back before stopping.