Your last side comment made me think of people who cannot visualize in their mind. Like if you ask them to "picture" an apple they cannot at ALL, whereas average people can "picture" one in their mind to some level of detail. Also this ability comes in a spectrum of skill, going from completely unable like previously said, to overwhelming detail, color, beauty, and visceral enchantment of your attention. Some can imagine entire scenes, colors, objects in whatever placement, and movement of that scene. This can lead to basically an over day-dreaming syndrome if it doesn't have an outlet or be controlled and can be quite debilitating, as their mind's eye is so powerful and detailed it turns into an escape from the world.
This ability can be improved for those not born at 10/10 mind eye visualization, and for an amazing example, just go read Tesla's book "My Inventions and Other Writings", in it he describes in quite good detail how he "builds" and practices his ability to visualize items and parts and circuits and eventually machines inside his mind's eye. This essentially turns his mind into a self-controlled visual simulation/creation/artistic machine. I don't think I need to explain just how powerful having such high levels of control on a mental ability to conjure up machines or anything within your mind in astonishing detail, and run it in your head too. I mean that's the work of god-like brain power.One could pursue it for artistic reasons, or in Tesla's case give birth to him being able to literally simulate or "run" a machine he'd created only in his head, in his head. Of course one must already have a deep understanding of the behaviour of electricity, some scientific fields, and electromagnetic waves or whatever field of science to apply your mind's eye to it accurately within a scientific application. But yeah I think it's a highly under trained portion of the mind's abilities.
The people who cannot visualize (or are essentially blind in this ability) say they instead remember a list of characteristics of that object instead of an actual visualization. So like a checklist of descriptions it seems like. Many of them thought when a teacher said "Okay close your eyes, now picture a picnic table, or an apple on a picnic table in your head" that the teachers were kidding, or that it was just an expression for teaching purposes. They never thought others really were picturing images in their mind.
That is until the internet came about and I remember vividly on Reddit the huge debate raging on about "visualizing things in your mind". Those who were blind to it were absolutely flabbergasted, and would ask questions like "Do you see the image in the blackness behind your eyelids?" And we'd respond "no, you don't like, "physically see it", but you CAN see it in your mind, it's like, UP there, where your thoughts are, they're just transformed into a visual (or vision). It's like in the same place you'd "see" a dream. You don't see it behind your eyelids, you simply experience it. BUT picturing something in your mind is not really a world you inhabit like a dream with it's strange dream logic, it's an image you can construct just like a photograph or a video, with varying levels or detail, length of action, and precision/shharpness. It's your own personal simulation deck that gets better with practice/natural ability.
Anyway I think these are beautiful discussions and I really love this guys video on the levels of thinking/learning/understanding deeply. I'd always known that understanding was better than memorizing, and that creating was a better way to both understand and possibly expand your knowledge, but to have it all laid out in levels like this is great. But reading the questions of 4 and 5, the compare and contrast level and the judgement/justification levels really show the difficulty, I could feel my brain getting right to work even though I didn't understand the science being asked about.
So cool!