Dogs wouldn’t leave someone to die.

Plotting a route to the peak of mount stupid, I suppose.

I’ve needed to change my computer within the next six months for the last five years, and the plan is to try out NixOS, because as a programmer it looks like a reasonable kind of OS, despite all the warnings to the contrary (shame it’s Linux and not BSD, though… the more I learn about Linux and BSD, the more reasonable BSD looks).

I haven’t significantly used Linux since I was studying over two decades ago, and I’m pretty certain the last time I set up a Linux system it was Slackware.

My plan is to read the allegedly insufficient documentation and try to figure it out from there. 🤷‍♂️

Wish me luck, I’ll certainly need it.

Tiny protein dismantles the toxic clumps behind Alzheimer’s

Yeah, so does fluoroantimonic acid.

Most of the atoms you’re made of were born in stars long dead; the rest were born in the big bang.

I couldn’t possibly remember specific apples.

I could describe to you the Granny Smith variety (the only one I like), or maybe the Golden or Gala (the other varieties common in supermarkets around here), but not particular apples, unless I had actually tried to memorize their details (which would look like a list, not an image).

Maybe I don’t care enough about apples.

I could describe my old pets (I did care enough about them to remember them), but, again, that’d look more like a list.

Not see it, no. I could describe it, from memory, if I had looked at it for long enough and paid enough attention (especially if I knew beforehand I’d have to describe it), but obviously I wouldn’t be seeing it. There’d be no image, just a memory.

I’m pretty certain the visual processing parts of the brain are not involved when I imagine or remember stuff.

I mean, there’s a lot of image processing going on in the retina and optic nerve (edge detection, contrast highlighting, and whatnot) that’s obviously not available when not using the eyes (which makes it very hard for me to imagine how this seeing images in your brain thing works), then a lot of spatial and temporal signal processing (motion detection, noise reduction, speed classification, and so on) in the thalamus, then there’s several layers of visual cortex doing the rest of the image processing, pattern recognition, and whatnot, and then there’s the rest of the brain (mainly prefrontal cortex and parietal and temporal lobes), which actually deals with that information, stores it, recalls it, and whatnot.

I imagine the whole retina-thalamus-visual cortex bit isn’t significantly involved in the way I “visualise” stuff, while it might be more involved for people who “see images” in their brains.

All the processed stuff (concepts, descriptions, dimensions, spatial and temporal relationships, and whatnot) is still there, though, just not the raw visual data (which would be superfluous in most cases anyway, unless I was trying to do something like recall a written page I hadn’t read in order to read it later, which I can’t do but you or someone with photographic memory might), so I’ve got everything I need anyway.

See, if I imagine an apple there’s no images. There’s just… the concept of an apple, I suppose.

I know what an image of it would look like. I know what light shining on it (photorealistic, phong, gouraud, take your pick), or water beads on its side would look like. I could draw it for you, if I didn’t suck at drawing. Make a decent vector image of it, sure, with the right software.

But I don’t see it. I’d need eyes for that, and my eyes point towards the outside of my brain, not the inside.

No, I’m not taking about effort. I’m aware the brain does it automatically, and puts it in the same energy budget as the rest of the reading experience (though now I’m wondering if the brains of people with aphantasia consume less energy when reading).

What I’m saying is that there’s so many more layers to books than to film that being “forced” by your brain to see books in a visual way might produce a limited experience when compared to someone who can enjoy a book as, well, a book.

More importantly, whatever you’re visualising is made up by your brain… based on the author’s descriptions, sure… but those descriptions might be incomplete until the very last page.

If you’re viewing the book like a film, you’re necessarily making up details that can conflict with later descriptions by the author, which means you’d either have to change your visual representation (akin to a recast of an actor, which is often jarring) or ignore the author’s description (I had a friend who, having read The Hobbit, somehow imagined Gollum as a sort of gelatinous blob; I suspect this is what might have been going on there). Again, this seems like it’d lead to a lesser experience than just experiencing the book like… a book.

Yeah that wasn’t aphantasia (someone with aphantasia would have no problem understanding your model; probably even less than someone without it, in fact); that was them having their heads so far up their own arse they weren’t able to see and think properly (and lack of experience doing the latter).

There are.

We can’t see magnetism. Or most of the electromagnetic spectrum.

We can’t hear too low frequency or too high frequency sounds.

We can’t perceive gravity (other than by its effect on our body), or the strong or weak nuclear forces.

There’s a flood of neutrinos constantly going through us without us noticing.

There are whole ecosystems of minuscule animals and bacteria living on and in us, which we can’t see.

We can’t even see the very air we’re breathing.

How could you possibly read for fun if you can’t picture what’s happening?

Probably better than people who need to visualise stuff.

There’s much more in books than just the visuals. There’s the story, there’s the characters’ thoughts and personality, there’s the author’s style, and influences… they’re infinitely more detailed and nuanced than film or TV.

Limiting them to the visual aspect seems like a disservice to both reader and author.

And, anyway, I know what’s happening, it’s written right there on the page, why would I need to visualise it?

And what if I imagined it a certain way, and later the author describes it differently than I imagined it, or adds some new detail that was missing in my mental image? Personally (if I experienced books like I do films) that kind of thing would completely pull me off from the story…

And what if the book is set somewhere alien to our senses? How do you visualise Flatland? Or the other universe in Asimov’s The God’s Themselves?

Frankly, needing to visualise books seems more like a handicap to me.

Yeah, pretty much the same here. I can imagine shapes, smells, textures, whatever, but it’s entirely different from seeing, smelling, or touching. Concepts, not images. Feels like the same part of the brain I’d use to, for instance, write a computer program. No issues visualising and designing 3D models either, or imagining what something in a book looks like.

Same when dreaming; I could describe everything in my dreams (if I had time during the few seconds after waking up when I still remember them) as if I had seen, heard, and felt it… but it was a completely different experience from actually seeing, hearing, or feeling it. Which means I can never mistake a dream for reality (which I suppose means I lucid dream too), because it’s immediately obviously different (and I’m on the bed, with my eyes closed).

Thing is, back in those days computers were deterministic.

A certain action caused a certain reaction, and always the same reaction (given the same context).

Anyone could learn that, as long as they bothered to read the screen (a surprisingly rare talent, to be fair).

Now, at least on windows, it’s anyone’s guess what random mayhem a certain action might cause, or where the interface to perform that action has gone after the last update, supposing it still exists and the system survived the update.

No one can learn that. And anyone foolish enough to try will certainly be driven insane.

Correct.

Therefore selling it as something capable of reliably correctly answering questions is a criminal scam.