It has been a lot of fun talking to those who are Aphantasiac. I am the complete opposite to the point where I think almost exclusively in imagery and when talking to folks I translate visuals to words on the fly. For a long time when people said that they saw black when they closed their eyes I assumed that meant that they choose to "see black". This is less about being able to see and more how we utilize that.
So whenever I chat with someone with is Aphantasiac being able to compare and contrast has been a treasure trove. Hobbies, careers, romance/relationships, what we like to read/watch, what we are good and bad at. Having our two extremes allow us to do rapid research see what is opposite and what isn't.
And then in the same way I will describe smells by how they look like they will describe stuff to me that I struggle grasping without visualizing it and that is a joy.
Thanks for the comment - I love the assumption about choosing to see black. I find it a very amusing reversal of the usual Aphant confusion about whether people are "literally seeing something with their eyes closed or not".
I'm fairly sure I used to commonly see things with my eyes shut when I was a kid, and now don't. That may seem like something that someone really couldn't be unsure of, yet I am!
I do see when I dream, although I'm not sure how vivid it is. I can occasionally see things vividly when falling asleep, and there was a period where I was practicing, and I felt I could visualise things more often. Sometimes I was literally seeing them with me eyes (closed), and other times it felt more like picturing with my mind's eye. I'm still confused about whether people are literally seeing with their eyes or not.
"...choose to see black" :)
Actually, I've just remembered Tolkien writes from the point of Dwarves, about Elves' memory being more like waking than dreaming. I don't know what I thought when I read it before I had heard of Aphantasia, but now it reminds me of the spectrum of mental imagery.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/w5g9iq/the_mem...
High five brother, I find these threads fascinating, because even within the group of people who have hyperphantasia like this, our experiences differ wildly.
"Describe smells by how they look" - that's synesthesia maybe! A bridge too far for me - I'm more likely to describe what the situation I was in when I smelled a given scent most memorably, rather than how the scent looks.
I also explain things verbally by referencing an internal picture and describing it, and find tacit knowledge very difficult to express in that vein.