I don't think that it is that the industry abounds with us, but it is natural that those of us who have strong opinions on aphantasia and/or feel affected are far more likely to post on stories about it.

That a larger proportion of HN users are aware of their aphantasia is another matter - the renewed research over the last 10 years got a lot of attention.

It is very clear that there is a spectrum - hence why the typical test goes from seeing nothing at all via various degrees of seeing blurry or monochrome shapes to full colour vision. Going by Ed Catmull's survey of staff at Pixar, you will also find it extending further into hyperphantasia: People (and there's at least one in this thread too) who can "watch movies" in their head and can rewind and fast forward.

> Or the way we are describing it leads people in the "1-2 out of 5" category to declare themselves aphantastic on HN when they aren't really properly so.

People at the lowest end of the scale absolutely have aphantasia, but there's no "official threshold".

but also, if I could see even the vague outlines that'd place me one level up, it'd be very obviously different to my experience. I score the minimum possible 32 on the VVIQ2 test:

https://davidfmarks.net/vividness-of-visual-imagery-question...

And the minimum 16 on the older VVIQ test.

https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq

The median score on VVIQ2 is 79. The median for VVIQ is around 60, and the thresholds used for aphantasia on the VVIQ test is 24 or 33 depending on who you ask.

I can very occasionally possibly see brief flashes of vague imagery, and as I've mentioned elsewhere, I have had a single experience of what was probably at hyperphantasia levels, so I don't think there's some inherent physical limitation preventing me from seeing more. But it is also very clear to me especially because of that experience that I do in fact not see more.