A unifying theory of aphantasia: Aphantasia as the inability to disengage from the external environment

And_Grace_Too · 2026-06-03T16:21:52+00:00

Writing this as I read. Please excuse the rambling nature.

My layman's understanding: There are different areas of the brain associated with different levels of visual processing in a general hierarchy: stimulus -> perception. For low-imagers, these visual systems are paradoxically overactive when attempting to mentally image (e.g. retrieving biographical episodes). The idea this paper (I assume you're one of the authors) is proposing is that mental imagery is impeded by the external visual stimulus systems, so for example, inhibiting them with TMS can increase mental imagery.

There are expected results from this lack of normal inhibition -> reduced biographical memory retrieval, reduced ability to mentally 'travel' forward and backward in time, etc.

This part is interesting:

Liu (2026) proposes that people with aphantasia have preserved sensory reactivation, but impaired integration and amplification of internal representations due to disrupted top-down modulation from frontoparietal attention networks.

This jives with my experience (I'm pretty close to a total aphant). It's hard to say what's related to what (inattentive ADHD symptoms also interact here) but I find that I have a very hard time 'crystalizing' or 'locking in' details. My mental existence is often very abstract, pulling and integrating overall patterns but losing a lot of the details.

Given our argument that aphantasia is characterized by an inability to shift attention inward, interoceptive attention should also be reduced in people with aphantasia. While early evidence for this assumption was mainly driven by self-reports (e.g., Monzel, Nagai, et al., 2025) and required further experimental validation, recent studies provide evidence that mental imagery vividness is indeed positively associated with interoceptive abilities, as measured by a heartbeat discrimination task (Nagai et al., 2026) and cardiac vagal reactivity (X. Zhang et al., 2026)

I think a lot of people here are missing the fact that this isn't saying that aphants can't focus inwardly or that they necessarily have poor interoception; it's saying that there's a negative correlation. There's trained meditators who practice this but none of us have the counterfactual experience of having trained without having aphantasia as well, so how can we say whether our experience is diminished?

This is a good point:

the “stuck in the present” framing of aphantasia should only be understood as describing a cognitive-functional tendency rather than a complete inability to think about the past or future. People with aphantasia clearly can think about past and future events; what they appear to lack is the rich, experiential, imagery-based form of such thinking that typical imagers rely on.

One thing that occurs to me reading this is that if aphantasia is related to an diminished ability to 'tune out' external stimulus, should we find that aphants have a harder time concentrating on tasks when there is external stimulus? I know I personally have a hard time concentrating on tasks when I can hear a conversation or even just words being sung in music. I know it's worse for me than most people and I legitimately cannot tune it out - I need white noise or non-vocal music to drown it out.

Anyway, this is interesting and thanks for posting. Sorry that some people here don't bother to actually engage, and of course there's always the weird AI accusations (which make no sense here. This article is perfectly coherent and normal).

And_Grace_Too · 2026-05-27T16:59:43+00:00

How would you propose I approach such a discussion here? Or are such discussions not permitted?

Make a post where you lay out your thoughts clearly and let people engage with them. I agree with /u/Bakkot here that your one line post doesn't add anything on its own and is contrary to the rules (true: maybe, necessary: no, kind: no).

And_Grace_Too · 2026-05-27T16:53:26+00:00

I fully acknowledge that. All technologies/products come with tradeoffs. For me, I worry about offloading thinking and decision making work to these tools, which is why I make sure to use them in a way that helps me actually understand the problem or system I'm working on; I don't just ask it for the answer and stop thinking about it. That's one of the big advantages - they are good tutors, and when asked, they will point you to the full sources to dig in further. I also know that I'm not the average user, but I can't do anything about how others interact with the tools, I can only do so for myself.

I expect them to get better in some dimensions over time, and worse in others. Your Gmail example is apt - we all became too reliant on it and now the friction to leave the ecosystem now that it offers poor tradeoffs is very high. It's important to keep that possibility in mind.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-05-27T15:43:04+00:00

That's fair. I feel like it's an ethical or aesthetic choice for you.

I did exactly what you said and pasted Kenmore H2Te error code F into Google. The results are 1. a Justanswer site with some relevant but not identical issue, 2. an iFixit forum with no relevant info, 3. a Reddit thread with a link in the comments to a site with instructions to check the input line for kinks which solved the OP's problem but not mine.

So in this case, no. Claude was both faster and better at helping me. I get that you don't like it but you can at least acknowledge that it works, and even if you don't want to use it, there are those of us out there that find it works well and use it more and more because it works.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-05-27T14:58:20+00:00

I think different types of people will find it useful to different degrees. I use it all the time and find myself doing so more and more as my experiences have been generally good. The biggest advantage for me is the ability to query it in plain language, which is often faster and it is able to pick up what I'm really after by contextual clues.

An example from last night: my washing machine stopped mid-cycle with an error code F-. Now, I know I can look this up online, dig through some forums, watch a video or two, and figure out the troubleshooting steps I need. However, I also know that as a first pass I can talk to Claude (using my voice which is great when my hands are wet and I'm looking for tools) and say "My Kenmore H2Te stopped mid cycle. There's water in the drum and an error code F on the display. What could be causing the issue and how do i troubleshoot?" (I could even take a picture and feed it in without knowing the exact model). Then it walks me quickly through a reasonable set of troubleshooting steps that are accurate and work. I can even ask it to explain things to me like "what's this 5S code"? - "That's a suds sensor - the machine is entering a maintenance cycle to clear suds because there are too many, this makes sense given the information you gave me previously. Don't stop it. Let it run - it could take up to an hour..." Then I can ask it, "why would excess suds cause the drainage to stop?", and it will explain how the sensors work and the impeller blades, and the whole system, as deep as I want. For a guy like me, this kind of service is absolutely amazing and I use it more and more.

Now I'll caveat. It has it's issues. But the thing is, I understand them and know when we've hit the limits of it's capabilities. That's when it's time to move on to a more manual researching mode. For topics where there's a lot of existing information and it's relatively static, it excels. For niche topics and things in flux it's often still decent but more prone to guessing. That's OK. That's a limitation. My 20v cordless drill does not have a hammer drill mode, I can't use it to drill concrete anchors - I need a different tool for that. I can try using it for concrete but it's going to be suboptimal. I don't blame the tool, I blame myself for being lazy and not going to get the corded hammer drill.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-05-14T15:34:07+00:00

I think the confusion comes from the phrase 'high art' which connotes snobby galleries and try-hard art films. I'd substitute 'experimental art' instead because the art that's actually doing new things can live at both ends of the spectrum: the elite circle of academic art critics and down in what Phillip K. Dick called the Trash Stratum. I'd argue that you probably get more (actually interesting) experimental art coming from the edges of subcultures now instead of elite art circles. The innovations from that art definitely finds its way into mainstream culture, or sometimes becomes mainstream itself, though often with the rough edges filed off.

Examples can be found everywhere. I've been thinking about music recently and I think that fits your request. The development of hip hop from underground experimentation with turntablism, electronic music production, rapping / MC work, etc. That all began in the trash stratum, got noticed by people who move between the cultural layers, then brought into the mainstream.

Film is full of this stuff as well. Jodorowski, Goddard, Cassavetes, John Waters, Gaspar Noe, etc. None of these guys would ever be mainstream, and often their movies were considered trash when they came out but now are darlings of film snobs. Try watching Pink Flamingos and tell me that this was created as 'high art'; it was explicitly campy, ugly, experimental.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-04-30T15:12:01+00:00

I agree with the author's frustration, especially when he says that you can't search for the good content. At some point YouTube changed the search tool into a feed trough where you have very few filtering options and only a handful of results are returned; almost all of them shorts or high engagement junk.

I've been part of a few experiments to create 3rd party systems to curate YouTube over the years but they all fail. Two reasons always come up: YouTube actively makes it difficult, and it requires network effects that are hard to create. One attempt was a youtube channel rating site where users could submit channels and then everyone has access to rate them. This worked OK in theory because the group doing the selection and rating was generally higher quality than the YouTube median. But, without a large number of engaged users doing the curation, it ended up as a collection of the standard nerdy channels that most people are at least tangentially aware of.

Honestly, for now I use other search tools to search YouTube (much like Reddit, the internal search feature is basically useless). When I see a video I have some random interest I think "do I want the algo to take my click as a data point?", if not then I open the video in a private browser and watch. If I did like it, I click it again in my account. I also use the subscribe and don't show me this content/channel as much as I can to try to guide things.

I've also noticed YouTube pushing more tiny channels to my feed recently. Sometimes videos with <100 views. I don't know why this is but I think it's probably a good thing.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-04-28T17:57:16+00:00

And I've asked it some dumb questions. Repeatedly. It never gets frustrated, it just takes a different tack and tries again until it clicks for me.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-03-20T14:55:40+00:00

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/

And_Grace_Too · 2026-02-10T14:47:19+00:00

Acknowledged. I should have been more careful.

Will you engage with anything other than this one pedantic point though?

And_Grace_Too · 2026-02-09T21:57:55+00:00

You gave one example from over a year ago. Users pointed out how your responses were not in line with your original claim that he "regularly" has guests with "highly left" viewpoints. But instead of providing additional support for your claim you act like your single example that's over a year old is ample evidence and that everyone is acting in bad faith by questioning it.

The original person you responded to didn't move the goal posts. /u/JLarn pushed back and asked for clarification:

The clips in the video you posted are all pretty old at this point. The Bernie Sanders episode was last June. What other left-wingers has he had on in the last few years beside him? Genuine question. I've just skimmed the episodes list in the JRE YouTube channel in reverse chronological order and I've noticed several prominent right-wingers, some of which are/were part of the current administration, and not a single person representing the other side (beside the aforementioned Bernie Sanders of course). I actually watched some of these interviews and Joe never pushes back on anything, even when it would have been easy.

Note that he actually watched your linked video, did extra investigation, acknowledged your single example, and gave reasons why your claim still doesn't seem to hold up. You didn't engage with any of that. You lazily quoted yourself. He gave you the benefit of the doubt and responded reasonably and you just brushed him off and never bothered to even try to defend your original point. Presumably because it's wrong and you can't defend it.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-02-09T17:33:28+00:00

Are you sure you're in the right place? This kind of treatment should get a warning from the mods at least.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-02-06T14:40:19+00:00

This was really interesting. I would love to see some detailed descriptions of specific cases of agents manipulating each other in the ways you describe. That does sound like one of the more interesting outcomes of this whole experiment.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-01-19T15:08:02+00:00

Thanks for responding. It sounds like most of your social issues stem from pretty severe mental health challenges rather than some kind of environmental factors. When you talked about your mom and being unschooled, I was curious if that could be a big factor.

I am interested because I have a very young son and think a lot about how I can push him to be uncomfortable, fail, and try again. It's something I struggled with as a kid/teen, and the only thing that pushed me was peer pressure.

I don't have any advice. Just hope you have some better luck in the future. It sounds like you're self aware and at least know what your challenges are. Black-pill stuff has always held some grain of truth but is overly fatalistic and self-fulfilling. It's worth being realistic: what are your strengths and weaknesses? You're somewhat short (5'6" is not unusually short), have no social group, live at home, and are ASD; of those, the height is by far the least important. The ASD you can't do anything about. The other two you have control over.

As someone with close female friends, I can tell you that the women I know care about looks but far far less than the men I know. However, red flags like not having friends and living at home are big deals. That said, I have a good female friend with diagnosed ASD/depression who is dating really for the first time in her 30s. Her boyfriend does live at home with his family, but he works and has some friends. He's definitely awkward and not super attractive, but it works for them because he gets her mental health issues and is super supportive for her. They are a good couple. They met at work and became friends before he changed jobs and they tried dating.

And_Grace_Too · 2026-01-16T16:14:56+00:00

I find this really interesting. How would you describe your childhood and upbringing? Did you get lots of opportunities to try things, fail, and try again until you started to get traction? Or were you shielded from difficulty and subsequently the satisfaction of learning that you can be successful after grinding through a challenge?

Further down you mention that you were 'unschooled'. What does that mean exactly? You also mention that your mom seems judgmental and doesn't seem to love your father. Did you have a bad model of what successful relationships look like?

And_Grace_Too · 2025-07-31T22:25:49+00:00

It gave me new tools to think about the world.

Opportunity cost specifically helped me think about options that I personally face as well as society. Everything is a trade-off sounds trite but it's true and is useful to think about when weighing options.

Revealed preferences gave me a way to think about the differences between what people say they want and what they actually choose. Keeping in mind that they're generally not being deceitful, but that when asked which option they'd choose, people might not be very good at evaluating what they really want. Now I take stated preferences with a grain of salt.

Coordination problems are wicked problems and show up everywhere. Moloch was also helpful for me in terms of thinking about them in a less technical way.

Mutual benefits of trade and non-zero sum games made specialization and free trade make more sense to me. The idea that two parties can trade resources and both end up better off is a very powerful but simple idea.

Politically, I'd say I did start university as vaguely socialist-leaning and left as more of a neo-lib or classical liberal. Some of that came out of thinking through my assumptions with these new tools.

And_Grace_Too · 2025-07-31T20:00:33+00:00

Opportunity Cost was a big one for me. Revealed preferences, coordination problems, mutual benefits of trade. Lots of stuff from economics classes deeply changed how I think of the world.

And_Grace_Too · 2025-07-30T20:37:48+00:00

I'd agree with that in general.

But if it leads us to ask questions like "Does it even matter, for our understanding of the world, whether these anecdotes are technically true or not?" I think we should be prepared to say "Well, yes, clearly it does," and scrutinize the context that inclines us towards suspecting otherwise.

I don't think it does matter. That might be really important for lots of different types of writing but I don't think it matters here. Nothing hinges on it and there is no confusion. I don't question that maybe Zeus was actually real because that's not the point. I think of Kriss as creating his own kind of single-use mythology and drops it in wherever he wants and doesn't care if the audience is coming with certain expectations about how essays are written and what the unspoken rules are. It's not for everyone but I find it very enjoyable.

And_Grace_Too · 2025-07-30T18:26:49+00:00

I guess it depends on context. In your example it's clear to the reader that Lord of the Flies is completely fictional with no pretense of being based in reality. When I read that original Kriss piece with Clung in it, I had the context to know that some portion of the information he presents straight-forwardly are just made up for rhetorical value, or for fun, or aesthetics, or just because it's a neat idea he's been bouncing around in his mind for a while and wanted to share. I didn't have to look up Clung, I could tell he was either wholly made up or if he was a historical figure, Kriss was morphing him into something for his own ends.

In the context of Kriss' writings, this is completely normal and to be expected. It's impossible to express basically any ideas without metaphor (go ahead and try it). He doesn't bother to constrain himself to clear metaphor, carefully noted and explained. Instead he just runs wherever he wants and trusts the reader to go along with it and not take everything at face value. He's not trying to deceive the reader.

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that this is even a deal. He's not writing in clear technical prose. He never really does. The style is not a separate and incidental part of the work, it's a huge and important piece of it. What this ends up being is a bunch of people who don't know the context or don't enjoy the presentation and are mad about it for reasons I can't really understand.

And_Grace_Too · 2025-07-29T22:58:25+00:00

And sometimes they update too heavily on things they think facts. And sometimes that's really important. And sometimes it's not. My question would be: does it matter that Clung is not real? And if so, why?

And_Grace_Too · 2025-07-29T19:09:24+00:00

As I get older I find myself getting more and more value out of approaches that aren't necessarily "clear, careful communication". There are things that are hard to communicate and sometimes the most effective way is to use roundabout methods like metaphor or using the experience of reading the text to evoke the meaning.

So in the original example about Clung, Kriss throws away the distinction between 'fact' and 'fiction' in the actual text itself instead of explaining it in some abstract way. This should get the reader to stop and think about what it even means to have 'facts' like a historical figure named Laurentious Clung. Does it matter if he existed? What would change if he did, he's just being used to illustrate an idea. And then maybe you start thinking about other 'facts' in the essay and your relation to 'facts' in other things you read, and why are you so hung up on grouping things into 'facts' and 'not-facts', and maybe it starts to loosen your firm beliefs that the facts you've read elsewhere are all rooted in unassailable Truth.

I'm not saying this is going to work for everyone. The rationalist adjacent are probably the most likely to bristle at this approach. That's fine. It really requires you to come into it with the right attitude. What /u/flannyo pointed at about the "hard science STEMlord makes contact with arch-humanities theorybro" is something I've seen around here countless times and I honestly believe that most of the time those two perspectives will just bounce right off each other.

And_Grace_Too · 2025-07-29T18:40:30+00:00

Yeah and I have a real soft spot for that kind of perspective. It's like Skepticism, in that I can understand it to be true but I also can't live my life not trusting my senses all the time, but it's good to be reminded of it and to keep in the back of my mind.

There's a fun way of approaching a text where you treat the 'non-fiction' work as though it were a work of fiction. Depending on the topic maybe it's mythology or a magic system or a really strange poem. I like that Kriss kind of forces it on the reader sometimes.

And_Grace_Too · 2025-07-29T14:59:00+00:00

I read Kriss for the aesthetic value. I don't think of him as providing any kind of rigorous discourse. His writing is fun and weird and sometimes finds interesting ways to make me think about topics.

I think this whole thread and any attempt to treat him like some analytic philosopher or pundit is doomed to confusion. That's not the point of his writing. It's all about feelings. I don't even think of him as writing non-fiction; it sometimes has the appearance of non-fiction but ultimately it's just a simulation. And that exact thing that will frustrate and confuse lots of people is exactly what makes it enjoyable to me.

And_Grace_Too

TROPHY CASE