51–60 of 111 posts
This article reminds me of how it felt to be on the internet as a child. It seemed like this magical place where around every corner there was hidden an alchemic recipe to achieve something magical, if only you knew how to search in the right places.
This article reminds me of how it felt to be on the internet as a child. It seemed like this magical place where around every corner there was hidden an alchemic recipe to achieve something magical, if only you knew how to search in the right places.
I do like the commenting on this site but is there a way to collapse comments without downvoting? The fact that I have to scroll halfway down the page to find comments actually relevant to the article is a major flaw with HN's threading system.
This article reminds me of how it felt to be on the internet as a child. It seemed like this magical place where around every corner there was hidden an alchemic recipe to achieve something magical, if only you knew how to search in the right places.
I do like the commenting on this site but is there a way to collapse comments without downvoting? The fact that I have to scroll halfway down the page to find comments actually relevant to the article is a major flaw with HN's threading system.
I’ve been practicing this for years and it’s quite useful. It’s not like seeing of course, but I’m able to get an idea of a room size and material hard/softness. Useful for not walking into walls in the dark or finding something when I don’t want to wake my SO. In general I’ve always been into sound and I think a lot of people have better hearing than they think, but never learned to hear well. I find it odd that we…
Situational awareness goes way down when people walk around with headphones with loud music. I notice it on a lot of people and how they behave in traffic. Just listening to things around you can be quite interesting as you move around. I never wear headphones for this reason. On interesting thing is to open the windows (and sunroof) in an electric car, whilst driving in built up areas < 20 mph/35 km/h, you hear a lo…
Windows down in a quiet (electric) car is pretty amazing too, even in a traffic jam.
The fact that blind people make decisions based on active echolocation without realizing that's what they're doing is IMO one of the great arguments against the idea that we're particularly knowledgeable about our own conscious thought processes. How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Human Echolocation by Eric Schwitzgebel and Michael S. Gordon http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/E…
There is one example in the book, I believe, where a person is consciously blind, and is completely convinced they're blind, but when asked to walk through a hallway filled with junk and obstacles, the person passes through the hallway without a problem. When asked, "how did you avoid those obstacles?", they answered "luck", "small obstacles", etc...
It almost seems to me as if consciousness serves a social function. The mind's eye is blind, but the unconscious eye isn't. Yet, they communicate as if they were blind.
I wonder if there are more cases like this one, whether they lose their ability to communicate in all/most similar cases.
I noticed that I could make a continuous sound and it would correspond roughly with the distance and gave me a one-dimensional relative distance detection from my head. A 'hissing' sound worked best for continuous reading while being subtle. It was pretty easy for me but it might have to do with being on the autistic spectrum and hypersensitivity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is false. Bats are not blind. No bat species are blind. Microbats have poor visual acuity but their vision is on par with a human's. Reference: Tuttle's work
And that's what I get for relying on "blind as a bat" folklore without checking it. Thank you. I must now ascertain the veracity of the “as poor as a church mouse” trope.
For anyone wanting to see a master example of echolocation see this short video: https://youtu.be/TeFRkAYb1uk