Partially to help reduce the typical mind fallacy and partially because I'm curious, I'm thinking about writing either an essay or a book with plenty of examples about ways by which human minds differ. From commonly known and ordinary, like differences in sexual orientation, to the rare and seemingly impossible, like motion blindness.
To do this, I need to start collecting examples. In what ways does your mind differ from what you think is the norm for most people?
I'm particularly interested in differences - small or large - that you didn't realize for a long time, automatically assuming that everyone was like you in that regard. It can even be something as trivial as always having conceptualized the passing of years as a visual timeline, and then finding out that not everyone does so. I'm also interested in links to blog posts where people talk about their own mental peculiarities, even if you didn't write them yourself. Also books and academic articles that you might think could be relevant.
Some of the content that I'm thinking about including are cultural differences in various things as recounted in the WEIRD article, differences in sexual and romantic orientation (such as mono/poly), differences in the ability to recover from setbacks, extroversion vs. introversion in terms of gaining/losing energy from social activity, differences in visualization ability, various cognitive differences ranging from autism to synesthesia to an inability to hear music in particular, differences in moral intuitions, differences in the way people think (visual vs. verbal vs. conceptual vs. something that I'm not aware of yet), differences in thinking styles (social/rational, reflectivity vs. impulsiveness) and various odd brain damage cases.
If you find this project interesting, consider spreading the link to this post or resharing my Google Plus update about it. Also, if you don't want to reply in public, feel free to send me a private message.
I have 5 distinct experiences of vision. They are each qualitatively very different.
When my eyes are open, Static is still present, but in most cases my brain edits it out and reports only Seeing. When I am looking at a solid color or just paying careful attention it is clear Static is still present. I did not realize this before making an effort to investigate what I am actually Seeing.
Until I read Yvain's Generalizing from One Example post I believed that what I'm calling Imagination is what everyone did when they said they were visualizing. I only have Mental Imagery rarely: sometimes when on the boundary of sleeping and waking or after minutes of effort during meditation. These images are distinct and lasting enough to, say, read about half a line of text from a Mental Image of a page of a book. My memories of the experience of Mental Imagery and of the experience of images seen while dreaming seem to feel the same. I have not been able to focus on these long enough to tell if they have background Static, as paying much attention to them leads directly to their disappearance and the realization that I am now seeing Static and Eddies while looking at the back of my eyelids.
Your descriptions of 'static' and 'eddies and afterimage' match my younger experiences, and I just realized that I no longer have these visual phenomena. I used to see them as vivid blue and red dots when I closed my eyes.