The word “synesthesia” tastes like a purple triangle.
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???? ?????? (unfitz2@universeodon.com)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:52 JST ???? ?????? -
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Valerie Aurora (vaurora@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:24 JST Valerie Aurora @seldo @mentallyalex @Pineywoozle @helplessduck @isaacs @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak arrrgh so envious of you people with built-in font-lock. I had a little synesthesia as a kid in which three words had an object associated with them, colored light blue, and I see light blue objects in my head when I do proofs. Other than that I just have some kind of subconscious parallel processing of all the words and numbers on the screen which is not nearly as fun
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Laurie Voss (seldo@alpaca.gold)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:25 JST Laurie Voss @mentallyalex @Pineywoozle @helplessduck @isaacs @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak now that you've suggested it I'm going to ask the rest of my team on Monday how many of them are synaesthetic.
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Alex (mentallyalex@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:26 JST Alex @seldo You're a Wizard - you speak a language of magic. How you envision it is up to you. I'm mostly Ops. :blobcatgiggle:
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Laurie Voss (seldo@alpaca.gold)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:28 JST Laurie Voss @mentallyalex @Pineywoozle @helplessduck @isaacs @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak yeah doing data viz for a living is kind of cheating when my brain does all the viz automatically! I'm mostly just drawing pictures from my head.
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Alex (mentallyalex@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:29 JST Alex @seldo That is amazing! A HA! I clicked your profile. Data Scientist. I knew it.
I have no evidence other than anecdotal. Almost every one of you have SOMETHING in this vein. One of the aphants I'm talking about is a DS.
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Laurie Voss (seldo@alpaca.gold)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:31 JST Laurie Voss @mentallyalex @Pineywoozle @helplessduck @isaacs @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak nobody asked, but yes that's exactly what debugging is like for me ?
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Alex (mentallyalex@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:32 JST Alex @Pineywoozle I can't speak to the duck therapists. Mine have mostly been qualified to work with humans.
Regarding the synesthesia - I don't know why it is so tantalizing to me. I am very familiar with aphantasia. I'm not afflicted with either of these, I don't believe, but aphantasia is something I can see/understand and let go.
But synesthesia, I think it is jealousy. The idea of looking at a string of numbers and seeing or hear the hidden meanings... that would be amazing.
I would imagine programmers specifically would benefit. Debug must be like sifting through clouds and cascading rainbows!
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helplessduck (helplessduck@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:33 JST helplessduck @Pineywoozle @isaacs @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo
You have no fuckin' idea just how expensive...
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@pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS (pineywoozle@masto.ai)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:33 JST @pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS @helplessduck @isaacs @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo I’ve known a duck or two, we talk…
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@pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS (pineywoozle@masto.ai)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:34 JST @pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS @helplessduck @isaacs @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo I’d in a book or twelve, duck psychologists are motherfucking expensive these days.
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helplessduck (helplessduck@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:35 JST helplessduck @Pineywoozle @isaacs @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo
*curtsies* I did not m'lady.
I guess I just like to be able to compartmentalize things? Which is a whole hell of a lot to unbox in itself. -
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helplessduck (helplessduck@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:36 JST helplessduck @Pineywoozle @isaacs @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo
Right? We totally get off on being withholding. I took most of it yesterday, anyway. ?
I'm conflicted about the art thing. As an artist, I want to see all the relationships between colors and shapes in a scene, so I can reproduce that. But, I can't bear to think how that would be all the time. I want to be able to shut it off.
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@pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS (pineywoozle@masto.ai)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:36 JST @pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS @helplessduck @isaacs @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo I understand what you’re saying, but for me art is kind of amazingly zen. That whole trite one with the universe thing really does exist when you’re creating. I don’t think you’d feel the need to turn it off. It’s not an intrusive thing.(I bet you didn’t see that serious shit coming.?)
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@pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS (pineywoozle@masto.ai)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:37 JST @pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS @helplessduck @isaacs @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo You are a giver… for a duck. And it was generous of you to offer to share the LSD. I just don’t think we require it to get to the same place you do.?
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helplessduck (helplessduck@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:38 JST helplessduck @Pineywoozle @isaacs @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo
Okay, you know what?
I'm keeping the LSD for myself and all y'all can sit around and talk about it....you try to share with people. Christ on sale...
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@pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS (pineywoozle@masto.ai)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:39 JST @pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS @isaacs @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak @seldo As an artist I’m actually mildly jealous about that and I legit can’t remember if I had that prior to my head injuries which makes me suspect I probably didn’t.
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isaacs (isaacs@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:40 JST isaacs @Pineywoozle @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak Yeah, same, not at all.
I had gotten confused/concerned looks from people when I tried to relate with them about those weird shapes and colors that happen when there's a sudden noise, and was super excited to learn about synesthesia when I was 12.
But aphantasia, I always just thought "picturing" something in your mind was understood to be a metaphor, until @seldo told me about all the wild stuff he sees while programming. -
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@pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS (pineywoozle@masto.ai)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:41 JST @pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS @isaacs @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak Did you realize you were aphantasic before you heard it described. I didn’t realize other people didn’t see images until I read about it. My synesthesia is the same. It’s a sense of a color and sometimes a taste rather than an actual visual. I can’t see images in my mind, but I can mentally draw their construct, so that I “see them” without an actual visual.
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isaacs (isaacs@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:42 JST isaacs @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak I'm also somewhat aphantasiac, which maybe is why I don't "see" the color, and just sort of feel the association? I also don't usually think in words (unless I'm writing words), it's more like a proprioceptive sense, like the object graph of a system is a limb or something I can't see, but can sense in space. Putting this stuff into words is so trippy and difficult lol
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Alex (mentallyalex@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:43 JST Alex @isaacs Oh wow - perhaps. :blobcatgiggle:
Funny, I literally don't have a corollary for those. Numbers are numbers and objects are usually built on demand.
I've known others who were aphantasic? Someone with Aphantasia. They don't 'draw' pictures in their head, they literally carry around an archive to pick and choose from.
When prompted, they had all sorts of different ways to solve problems. Kind of cool.
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isaacs (isaacs@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:44 JST isaacs @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak And really, idk why I picked "3" and "red" when 3 is obviously orange (5 is red), so maybe I have more of that sort of synesthesia than I recognize?
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isaacs (isaacs@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:45 JST isaacs @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak You assume correctly (I'm the npm guy), and yes, that's a good way of looking at it.
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Edit: Er, actually, wait, no. "3" isn't associated with "apple", they just both have a reference to the "red" tag. (Maybe that's what you meant?) -
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isaacs (isaacs@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:46 JST isaacs @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak (This isn't the sort of synesthesia that I personally have, at least not in a very strong way, and everyone is different of course. I have the sensory-wires-crossing hallucinating trippy patterns whenever there's a sharp unexpected noise, which imo is different enough that it should really have a different name, but I've heard the neurological mechanisms are similar.)
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Alex (mentallyalex@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:46 JST Alex @isaacs Okay, I'm technical and you come from FOSS so I'm going to assume you are as well.
Essentially what you're describing are like meta-tags on data, right? So when someone like yourself interacts with an object - your meta-tags are sometimes just not standard tags for the object.
Like, I would see an object using your example "apple" and say -
* Fruit
* Sweet
* Love Gala over others
* Sharp
* Tart
* etc.and your brain might also add
* 3
* specifically the letter - C
* etc.I know these are examples, but words are incomplete to thought transfer.
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isaacs (isaacs@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:47 JST isaacs @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak So it's not like you literally hallucinate the color red whenever you see or think about an apple, but "apples are red" is just a feature of that particular concept that kind of rides along with it.
Well, "3" is also red. ? -
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isaacs (isaacs@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:48 JST isaacs @mentallyalex @helplessduck @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak
The best way to explain it I've found is like this:
You know how apples are red, right?
Even though many particular apples aren't actually red, might be green or yellow or some kind of mix, the "apple" concept is (for most people) kind of associated with "redness" in our mental model.
It's that, but instead of the concept of "apple", it's the concept of "the number 3" or "the letter C" or whatever. -
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helplessduck (helplessduck@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:50 JST helplessduck @mentallyalex @UnFitz2 @TazPoltorak
I have some LSD in my freezer.
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Alex (mentallyalex@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:50 JST Alex @helplessduck
:blobcatgiggle:but from what I understand, the experience is entirely unlike psychotropics.
My previous friend had certain words and sounds that would trigger smells and colors. He wasn't very articulate about the experience -- but from what I gathered, in his perception of self... a word, thought, object, *something* would flag in his mind as if he were experiencing the color/etc. It was entirely consistent... the purple didn't change and would grow in intensity/less intensity around the topic.
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???? ?????? (unfitz2@universeodon.com)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:51 JST ???? ?????? @TazPoltorak Right?
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Alex (mentallyalex@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:51 JST Alex I hate to break the fourth way, but I am truly fascinated by this phenomena.
Was this in earnest, or in jest? Does it really? I knew someone who was like this and it blows my mind in absolutely the most fun ways. I'm not trying to be 'weird' so I understand if you don't want to discuss it, but like... serious.
I and absolutely fascinated by synesthesia and would love to know more about it.
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Taz Poltorak (tazpoltorak@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 14:49:52 JST Taz Poltorak @UnFitz2 it's most definitely purple
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