Some desires are universal among humans.
- I want to be rich without putting in much effort.
This is particularly meaningful message to me. It is about a year ago when I found a youtube channel talking about "small work big money." It isn't just a discussion channel, but they try to carry their desire to action, by drawing characters, making hoodies, and communicating with users and running and expanding their business; it was just impressive that they stretch their ability in the theme of "small work big money."
Since then, I believe human desires have the potential to influence people, even if it is just a dream.
Efficiency is everybody's concern, IMAO. I hope you can share progress on this issue later on:)
In online space, I saw several productive people who get reward by just crossing off the to-do list. I also get content feeling when I cross off, but it is not sufficient enough to let me do all the to-do list before sleeping. Lesswrong's karma system I get every morning is sufficient enough to write a comment constantly. I hope you hack the mechanism and boost our productivity:)
Your project sounds compelling! I think you may consider doing this as open project, so that people who find your project on online can contribute to the wiki site.
My gaining here is that people without aphantasia still have weakness in creating mental images. Aphantasia people just have more. Writing a visual description, creating a mental image for art, or remembering every moment of life are obviously difficult tasks to normal person, while trained aphantasia person may be able to. In my experience, intention of creating mental image directly turn to the "feeling" of creating the image(most people stops here), which can be scattered easily if I try to look up the image clearly.
Based on unreliable online source, aphantasia comes from the error of response from visual part of brain. Then brain's memory ability can be unrelated issue. Well, it is intuitive to remember something we know well and vice versa. We can lead to more memory issue.
I suspect personality, skill level, and now aphantasia in your case impacted on fiction writing. Right now, I put personality as the top reason for this. I like comic books and web comics, thus my fiction consists of a series of images and motions in my head, and I don’t really write them down in texts. In this path, I am also not confident of writing a description with a variety of vocabulary. Oh, at the end, lack of time is the main issue, sadly;)
Normally I would say it happens and people forget details. But his case seems like he has a biological issue. I think something serious is happening to him.
The essay has several shocking parts. I enjoyed reading it.
Besides being aphantasia, I like short, easy and clear writings, few sentences summarizings, and facts without decorations. Generally that is journalism writing. And if this is related to aphantasia...that’s interesting.
Although I am not an aphantasia, I agree that fiction writing will be impacted by it, in addition to limited vocabulary, lack of practice, etc. And the graphic art will be the same case, as reference images and its mental processing are important.
After I posted the question, today I experienced a handful of moments when my brain didn’t work to visualize, even though I can. Also I am assured mental images are not the only source of creativity. Thank you for pinpointing out.
James_Miller mentioned Aphantasia and it blows my mind: "What?...imagination has been my greatest portion of thinking...and there are people who cannot imagine..." To me, weak but constant visualization & audioization come right after reading any texts, and I stop reading when my brain can't visualize properly. I once suspected my sister(very young at that time) does not like reading books because she was not used to imagine while reading.
How do people with Aphantasia read texts and process while studying?
There are a list of actual stories and descriptions of creepy sexual harassment. It was enough for me to frown and think to recommend people to choose other branches of medical doctor other than cardiologists. Although I consider myself sensitive to anecdotal evidence and confounding variables, my inner disclaimer didn’t make it explicit this time.
So wow, the last paragraph is talking directly to me.
I suggest this society help people with this issue, to the same degree as poverty, as it is hard to make out of it alone.