Being Blind
 

What do blind people "see"?

My first thought would be just straight black, similar to normal vision people closing their eyes. But then I realized that black is in fact something to see and it can't be like closing our eyes because we're just seeing the inside of our eyelids. Right? Does it make a difference whether you're born blind or if you become that way through life?

Hopefully I worded my question correctly and didn't confuse many of you.

If you're blind, you can't see light. Darkness is the absence of light. Therefore, blind people "see" what we would call pitch black.

Although some claim to have developed echolocation and other ways of "sight."

we didn't have time to go to this in Israel, it would have been pretty cool to experience. They also had a program for deaf.

sounds pretty cool cyn.

i was thinking about something similar the other day, whether blind people actually see anything in their dreams

Blind people dream about what they experience... sounds, tastes, smells, touch. People who lose their sight dream of images and colours. Whether or not people blind from birth do is moot, because they cannot say if they do or not.

One of the most telling stories I know is from my cousin. His best friend's father was blind. The father was, however, an accomplished wood worker. Now I've seen blind people using power equipment and it amazes me they don't injure themselves more often. But one day my cousin went over to his friend's place, and just walked in as usual. He called for his friend, but no one answered. He heard the sound of the woodworking equipment in the basement workshop, so he headed down there.

The basement was completely dark... pitch black! Now, I KNOW that the father didn't need the lights on, but as a sighted person, his running a power saw in the dark is so much more impressive than doing it with the lights on. Stupid of me, I know, but when my cousin told me that story, somehow the concept of blindness became a little clearer.

Great story Wolf. My heart skipped a beat for a quick second when I read the lights were off before I realized how different being blind really is.

Would it be easier or harder to learn braille if one is not blind?

I have a classmate this term who is blind. Getting to know him has taught me a lot about a profoundly blind person's experience and perceptions. He is very frank and funny about his disability, and often shares what he perceives with the rest of the class so we understand where he is coming from. He sees nothing and has never had any visual input, and so he operates in a complete absence of visual input; his other senses must make up for that deficit. On the first day of class, he asked us to describe ourselves, and then made a joke about how it didn't matter anyway--he doesn't know what brown hair looks like or what blue eyes look like.

I would assume it would be harder because we would naturally want to cheat and look at what the braille is. If you have excellent self discipline, I guess it would be easier.

This reminds me of an article I read a few weeks ago about whether blind people on LSD have visual hallucinations. basically it depended on if the person had been blind from an early age/always or if they became blind later in life.

Mind Hacks: Do blind people hallucinate on LSD?

I don't really know if this pertains or not, but as a profoundly deaf individual I go back and forth from hearing virtually nothing to hearing moderately with my hearing aid.

With the aid out ... its not quiet the same way its quiet with my hearing aid in. There's no noise at all, because there's nothing to hear, if that makes any sense at all. Its like watching someone clapping their hands, and knowing in your head it should make a sound, but then its on mute instead.

I always think about this!! I recently became friends with a blind girl, and it's kind of an awesome experience. She's really funny and really straight up about her blindness. I'm not sure what they see, but I assume it would be something like pitch black. But I do wonder, especially for blind / vs blind from birth.

For a blind person that's never had sight, asking if their lack of sight is "black" is like asking any of us whether our sense of magnetism is black. There is no context, therefore there is no "lack". A "never sighted" blind person can intellectually understand sight and light the same way I can understand magnetism or gamma rays - they can experience radiative heat, and understand that this energy form has a detectable presence to the sighted.

The "once sighted" presumably know that it's black.

I took a tour of a cave once and while we were in the heart of the cave, they turned the lights off. It was pitch black. There was no adjusting to the dark that goes on when one turns off the lights at night - no moon or streelights or passing cars that barely illuminate things. It was pretty unnerving. I can't imagine losing my sight.

/threadjack

I read a story once about a sighted kid who regained his sight as an adult after having been a champion blind-mogul skier. He never did really manage to make use of his sight, having lost it at a very early age (if you don't have it as a child, you don't develop the necessary neural pathways to use sight functionally).

He ended up skiing with his eyes shut because he couldn't process the visual cues. He decided that vision (quoting as best I can from memory) "has a certain entertainment value, but really doesn't have much practical application!" I loved it.

I dont know that ive ever been in pitch black.
Sort of like a blind person might never have seen light.

The times that Ive been in very dark places
I remember being rather afraid, sort unbalanced or unsure.
Spelunking would be my worst nightmare (I love to read about it).
Boy, I sure do rely on my sight.

I wonder if the same holds true in the reverse fashion.
If a blind person were to have successful surgery
and be able to see, would they perhaps feel a bit off balance,
a bit too heightened, or brightened? Blinded, so to speak?
I can imagine that and it makes me sort of nauseous.

I don't know how true it is, but I heard an ad on the radio about some guy who lost his sight, then he had surgery to fix it. From the time he lost it to the time he had the surgery was 20 years. He had grandchildren in that time period and he talked about how his wife hadn't changed from the last time he saw her and how speechless he was when he saw his grandkids for the first time.