“Generalizing From One Example”, 2009-04-28 (; backlinks; similar):
[Alexander defines the “typical mind fallacy”: everyone reasons about their mental experiences as if they are universal. People with vivid visual imagery assume everyone can see things in “the mind’s eye” while ‘aphantasics’ assume that this is simply a poetic metaphor; people with color-blindness wonder why other people get so worked up about various shades of gray until they run into an Ishihara plate, and people with anosmia are puzzled by the focus on flowers etc. Further examples include maladaptive daydreaming, pain insensitivity, the prevalence of visual & auditory hallucinations in mentally-healthy individuals like ‘scintillating scotoma’, misophonia, hearing voices, inner monologues, facial self-awareness, trypophobia, Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory vs hyperthymesia, ASMR, face blindness/prosospagnosia, musical anhedonia, ‘the call of the void’/intrusive thoughts, hypnagogia, the nasal dilation cycle…
This phenomenon for visual imagery was discovered only recently by Francis Galton, who asked if the interminable debate between philosophers/psychologists like Berkeley or Behaviorists like Skinner, where neither could accept that there was (or was not) visual imagery, was because both were right—some people have extremely vivid mental imagery, while others have none at all. He simply circulated a survey and asked. Turned out, most people do but some don’t.
The typical mind fallacy may explain many interpersonal conflicts and differences in advice: we underappreciate the sheer cognitive diversity of mankind, because we only have access to our limited personal anecdote, and people typically do not discuss all their differences because they don’t realize they exist nor have a vocabulary/name.]
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