Observations on Mental Visualization
i find my mind can only visualize one concept at a time.
ex: i can imagine the texture of a wood desk in high fidelity. like a close up shot. its basically perfect.
but if i imagine the entire desk then i lose fidelity
it's like theres a lens. and within that lens you can see in high quality. eveyrthing else is blurry. or rather, it's like you get the impression that it's there, but you're not actulaly SEEING IT.
you can cahnge the size of that lens at will. ex: the lens can contain an entire person or just their face. the bigger the lens, the less yuo can see fine details.
it's maybe that the lens can only focus on 1 concept at a time. where a concept is like "shape" or "texture", etc.
i would assume you can focus on 4 things at once (working memory capactiy) but what is a "thign" and is the number even 4? it seems in my mind that i can not visualize 4 things at once. to me, it seems more like 1 thing, perhaps 2.
if i look at something hard and then close my eyes, i can imagine that thing vivdily. but i wont remembr all the details of it. ex: i cant look at a lined notebook page, close my eyes, and then count how many lines the paper had.
also anything not in that region of focus is blurry and broken into its general shapes and colors.
also if i did not realize something was there, it wont show up in my visualization.
if i look at something quickyl close my eyes. it basically recreates it from memory. this memory will fade soon.
if i dont focus on any objects sepcifically and instaed do an "everythign snapshot" (looking at eveyrthing. like takinga quikck mental snapshot freeze frame), then my visualization will be rough shapes and colors. if i do have any detailed stuff in my visualization i'ts likely because my brain is using a past memory of that object and inputting that here.
however when i focus on that detialed object, the rest of the visualization will fade away (leaving the impression that its there, but im not actually visualzing it)
then you can take each point of foucs and zoom in more if needed. however, if you zoom in, you will either be making it up from memory of other similar things, or you wont have anythign to latch onto and will struggle to visualize it.
when reading fiction, it's often hard to visualize characters unless i have a irl lookalike to latch onto (or drawing).
ex: a book will say "he had green hair, blue glasses, and a big nose"
that's too much to visualize at once. my brain literally cannot do it. it can focus on 1 or maybe 2 details at a time. (though it creates almost the feeling of being able to percieve them all at once, but in reality i don't think i am doing them all at once)
ex: i can see "big nose with blue glasses" as one "chunk". i can imagine those together. but any other combination and i cant do more than 1.
if i try to imagine it, it feels like i'm just rapidly switching between visualizing green hair, big nose, and blue glasses. but never all 3 at the same time.
whenever i struggle to visualize something (like when i'm trying to visualize two distinct concepts at once), everything fades away, and i am left with the impression that somethign is there. and it feels kinda just liek gray slush. if i try to imagine that person all at once, i will be left with the impression, but cannot actually visualize all 3 at once. i can do 1-2 at a time, thoguh.
i think the way my mind is able to build the impression of a detailed scene is by rapidly switching between detailes. ex: if i'm imagining someone runing through firey field, i'm switching between:
- semi-detailed person
- semi detailed fire
- a blurry "everything snapshot"
for things i've actually seen irl or in a picture, the fidelity is much better.
for an image ive seen. ex: that one famous image of barack obama. i can imagine his entire face, including his hair in great fidelity. or rather: i can imagine his entire "shape" of the haed (which includes hair, blurry facial details, etc). and i can imagine his face (not including hair) near perfectly. my memory of the photo does not include details about how his nose looked exactly, so i can't "zoom into" that. so if i try to do that, it's blurry. if i make it high fidelity, i'm not actually imagining his nose, i'm just recreating a semi-random nose from memory.
visualzing things i've seen in images is not more vivid than things irl. though sometimes i get the impression that that is the case.
the way to make something not feel blurry, and feel 4k is to visualize the closeup details. ex: scratches on a wood desk.
i know it's possible to imagine things as vivdly as i see them. i've never done it at will. one time as i was falling asleep, it was very vivid the visualization
observation:
was half-dreaming. it was vivid. i tried taking control over the dream a bit. it immediately went blurry/not that vivid.
i notice my lucid dreams are not as vivid.
