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The blind man who taught himself to see

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Re: The blind man who taught himself to see

#81

He's Daredevil!

For those who don't know - Daredevil is a comic book character who is blind but has trained his other senses to compensate. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daredevil_(Marvel_Comics) Not an amazing contribution to the thread but relevant and hardly worthy of punishing with downvotes.

Filtering non-contributions with downvotes is part of how Hacker News is supposed to work. Punishment is beside the point.

Re: The blind man who taught himself to see

#82
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably the only all-in-one-page version of the article. Although I do agree the dialog popping up at the beginning is annoying, it's only one click (or key) to dismiss it; I prefer that to having to click on several "next page" links.

Then surely it makes sense to link to the root page which has a (single-click) link to the print page?

Which then opens the print dialog, so actually two :P

Re: The blind man who taught himself to see

#83

How do you "explain" to someone who was born blind that he is "blind"?

Possibly too late to be seen now, but I've been wodering about this too; for instance how do you talk about windows?

A blind person who has a sense of the size of a room, have they any idea that windows are transparent and have a view over a vast area of cityscape/fields/oceans/length of road/etc?

Standing on a hilltop or in a viewing tower, you can see people in the landscape, but too small to see their faces or identify them - still identifiable as people by shape and gait.

I often automatically turn to Google images for an idea of what something I'm unfamiliar with "is", having to revert to a dictionary and textual description would feel like a step backwards, and that's a very recent (last 5 years) development.

Re: The blind man who taught himself to see

#84
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why won't we be able to practice echolocation? There's nothing stopping you (apart from the fact that it's not very useful when you can see)...

Well when you grow up without any vision, your other senses develops at a much faster rate, especially the hearing. Because we grew up with vision, we know what it is to see and our ears will never have the capability to develop the same way.

The article mentions that he has successfully taught echolocation to someone that lost sight at 14 years old, so you seem to be underestimating the powers of the human brain.

Re: The blind man who taught himself to see

#85
post #20

Kish figures it would require $15 million to prove whether or not his idea is feasible. He fears he’ll never get the opportunity. Sounds like he needs some real angels, those who measure the success of their investment in something bigger than dollars. How does one go about finding and pitching to them?

Peter Thiel? He's a transhumanist, and this seems pretty doable. Anyway, if he hasn't pitched Thiel yet, he should do it, the worst thing that could happen is that Peter says "no, that's not how I want to spend my money", and that'd be fine.

Re: The blind man who taught himself to see

#86
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well when you grow up without any vision, your other senses develops at a much faster rate, especially the hearing. Because we grew up with vision, we know what it is to see and our ears will never have the capability to develop the same way.

The article mentions that he has successfully taught echolocation to someone that lost sight at 14 years old, so you seem to be underestimating the powers of the human brain.

Then it is a field that we must take advantage of. We are barely using the full capacity of our senses; we're too lazy with our eyes. It's something we should consider in the future, try to develop the human senses.... I'm sure there's a little budget for that in the 3 trillion they spend on military ventures!

Re: The blind man who taught himself to see

#87
post #20

Kish figures it would require $15 million to prove whether or not his idea is feasible. He fears he’ll never get the opportunity. Sounds like he needs some real angels, those who measure the success of their investment in something bigger than dollars. How does one go about finding and pitching to them?

Peter Thiel? He's a transhumanist, and this seems pretty doable. Anyway, if he hasn't pitched Thiel yet, he should do it, the worst thing that could happen is that Peter says "no, that's not how I want to spend my money", and that'd be fine.

The Bill&Melinda Gates fundation might be interested too. They are interested in medical & technology. That would be a good fit.
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