Aphantasia Hyperphantasia Myths |
The old game named Chinese Whispers helped children to learn that few people are able to accurately repeat what someone else says. The game would begin by one person whispering something into a second person's ear, the second person would then whisper into a third person's ear what the second person had heard, and so on until ten to thirty people had been whispered to. When the last person was asked what the first person said, almost always the last person's reply was not so much as similar to what the first person said. The game proves that the typical person is not capable of accurately interpreting and repeating what another person says.
An event within a junior high school class was of a teacher having been speaking about a topic when the principal made an announcement over the P.A. system. The principal's announcement happened to relate to what the teacher had been talking about, but the principal's descriptions of the topic were very much different and conflicting of what the teacher had been saying. When the principal ended his announcement, the teacher returned to speaking about the topic, but she changed her wording to agree with what the principal had said. A boy sitting at the back of the class was surprised that the other students were going along with what the teacher was then saying. The boy commented to another boy that the teacher was contradicting what the class had been discussing earlier, but the second boy replied that the class had been talking about the same thing all along. The event illustrated how easily people can believe one thing one moment, and for the people to then believe the opposite the next moment, all while the people not remembering nor knowing what they had said moments before.
Before the Internet was invented, many individuals enjoyed chatting on Bulletin Board Services (BBS). Amongst the first things to occur within BBSes was for some users to voice opinions of topics that were not in agreement with what is real within Nature, nor so much as being rational. One fellow is known to have actually stated that he knew the mind of his god. Too, the people would read what someone else had written, but the people would 'Chinese Whisper' a different version of what had been written. BBSes further illustrated Chinese Whispers and the junior high event.
In October of 2007, the television series Ghost Whisperer had an episode named Don't Try This at Home. The humorous portion of the episode was of how people on the Internet had latched-onto the term "Bloody Mary", and the people had quickly begun to create popular new websites and forums about "Bloody Mary", all of which invented new versions of 'facts', and also invented multiple "Bloody Marys". When the "Bloody Mary" myth was finally proven to be false, very quickly the Internet users closed their forums and websites, and the popular topic died. The television episode was, of course, fictional, but the plot was based on real life and of how real people behave on the Internet.
Near the same time, I had written a book about the myth of William Sidis, who was believed by numerous individuals to have been the smartest man on earth. The people had read another author's book about William Sidis, but almost no one fact-checked what the author's book claimed. The author's book purposefully twisted historical facts to create the fantasy of William Sidis' intellectual abilities, but even many people within high IQ societies believed in the book, regardless of the fact that no IQ test on earth has ever been able to score as high of an IQ as what the book claimed for William Sidis. Too, the Internet had been growing with new websites and forums that were inventing new 'Chinese Whispers' claims about William Sidis, but when I began posting articles like Myths Facts and Lies about Prodigies : Historiography of William Sidis, the popularity of the websites and forums began to wane. Unfortunately, after I closed the website that my articles were on, the Internet public quickly returned to creating more and more websites and forums that have invented wildly crazy claims about William Sidis that could not possibly be true. Unfortunately, like the junior high event and the 'Bloody Mary' story, the public has accepted the websites and forums to be factual, and the Internet public once again believes imaginary fantasies about William Sidis to be true truth.
An interesting experience of the time was for an individual to say that they did realize that the other author's book was an invention of false facts, but still the individual said that he believed William Sidis to have been the smartest man on earth. There, even when some people are given irrefutable facts, and even when the people recognize that their previous beliefs were false, still the people will believe what they want to believe, even when the beliefs have already been proven to be false.
Similar to the "Bloody Mary" episode, the aphantasia topic rapidly gained popularity on the Internet. Similar to Chinese Whispers, most all of the information about aphantasia has been invented, and is fully incorrect. Similar to the William Sidis myths, so also are there now many myths about aphantasia. Human behavior never changes, and it is expected that the myths of aphantasia will continue to grow until when the 'aphantasia' topic is finally discarded as having been invalid.
Never in the history of mankind has anyone publicly written an adequate description of what beauty is. No scientist, academician, philosopher, theologian, nor ideologist is able to describe what beauty is. Never has happened, and never will happen.
The ability to intricately describe beauty relies upon intricate self-observations, of which is an act that almost no one will exert the self-effort to achieve. All attempts to mathematically measure brains will not describe what beauty is (nor what aphantasia is). All attempts to philosophize will not discover what beauty is (nor what aphantasia is). The knowing of what beauty is, is beyond the capabilities of science.
Without knowing what beauty is, neither can a person know the causes and behaviors of aphantasia, hypophantasia, phantasia, and hyperphantasia.
Two common words are ample enough to prove that all theories of aphantasia, hypophantasia, phantasia, and hyperphantasia are incomplete, and thus invalid. The two words will not be publicly spoken because the public would memorize the words and then recite the words while believing that knowing the words is the knowing of what the words mean, and thus the people would birth more myths.
It is a very wrong belief that a person can know the mind of their god, or to so much as to know the mind of anyone else. All '-phantasia' theories claim to know the minds of everyone.
It is the hope of HHAP to help slow or to fully stop the rapidly escalating myths about aphantasia and the other '-phantasias'.
Related articles are on the HHAP Home Page.