Cognitive diversity is real ... and it's spectacular. We have different minds, different predispositions, different realities. The best exhibition I saw in recent years was of a group of Aphantasiacs — people who have no mind's eye and can't visualise things on command. By some estimates this affects three percent of the population, but there is no standard ability to visualise in my the mind. Personally, I get involuntary memory flashes of faces and places but can't see them on command.
Scott Alexander highlights a number of cases on his blog, including the anosmiac who just assumed smell was a metaphor — people often don't know that they see things differently.
One thing that is common but not universal is the phenomena of having a pop song constantly playing in the jukebox your mind. At the moment mine is Rasputin by Boney M. When I turn my attention inward it seems to exist on a different plane from the thoughts that become these words. It is in the background, not quite thought, not quite hearing. It is quite annoying actually and I have no reliable way of making it stop.
I had an epiphany the other day: if you have a song in your head it's because you're not listening hard enough. I'm trying is to listen to what is going on in the world as intently as possile — discerning the distance of cars and birds and fridge noises and wind. With less cars on the road, the sonic diversity has increased and it is fascinating.
This blog - open to evolution - may become about the phenomena of listening. I have posted a couple of tracks on another tumblr that show the kind of things that I have encountered.
