I just finished the 2nd book of the Stormlight Chronicles by Brandon Sanderson. Sadly I have had aphantasia all my life and therefore I can not visually imagine things - I do have a very loud inner monologue though and can imagine the voices of the characters.

I just tried out the new version of ChatGPT to generate images for the main characters in a concept art style and for me it makes the story come to life a bit more.

I also run a Pathfinder Campaign every other week and have found great pleasure visualizing scenes in this way for myself. Sometimes I share them with the players and so far the feedback on that has been very positive.

I wish I could picture things in my mind but at least now I have something that can help me with my handicap!

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Then reading a book is outsourcing imagination or enjoying it's illustrations by someone else, as you rely on the others for imagining stories

We’ve outsourced everything else.

Why is that such a bad thing? Imagination is not truly useful for anything without skills to complement it, at least not in my experience.

About 300 million people literally can't imagine.

Outsourcing re-imagination.