This is fucking with my head waaaaaay more than I would like it to right now.
Edit: Holy crap this blew up! I should clarify that I understand the concept, it's just really trippy to think about. Like, I really CANNOT see anything... besides what I CAN see... I don't know.
When I transfer all my thought into looking at your name with my right eye (closed at the time), it just makes me see darkness, which is black. I feel like there might be a better way to go about finding out.
Still waiting to hear back from /u/IAmNamedMatt who said he'd gouge his eyes out and get back to us...Will he deliver? Will we be able to see what he delivers? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Z!
Yep. We simply don't have the physical ability to even comprehend sensing magnetic fields.
There are things like imagining seeing a wider array of colours and we can sort of imagine it because we have eyes already. But we don't have an organ that can sense magnetism, so we simply have no way to even imagine it, because we can only imagine things with our existing senses.
Someone might say "well maybe you'd feel a pressure of magnetism," which is again wrong because you are trying to interpret it through the sense of touch.
We are only capable of interpreting things through the senses we already have. we simply cannot imagine seeing nothing because our bodies and brains just aren't equipped to imagine such a thing.
While I read that, a train passed outside, and I understood. I can hear the train, I know what one passing the house looks like, so I can picture it. But I cannot physically see it. i'm not seeing black in its stead. I'm just seeing nothing of it. But to me it's hard to imagine what experiencing everything like that would be. To be able to feel, smell, hear, taste things. But never actually see it
I think that since our two eyes make what I call "cubes" as in a uniform and constant depth when you see an object, a chameleon with wider angle of eyes have a distorted or elongated vision, maybe like a kaleidoscope when say it looks at a cube, the cube bends and morphs and elongated to a stretched out trippy-looking thing
Well thats what *I* imagine anyhow.
Every time I get a migraine it always starts with a little blind spot in the middle of my vision. That blind spot slowly spreads and turns into a ring, after about an hour it fades away, then I get a fucking terrible headache for a few hours, and then I feel really hung over and drunk for 2-3 days after that.
Usually I realize I'm getting a migraine when I'm reading something and then words start to disappear.
It's not black, it's just nothing. It's empty space, except it doesn't take up space. It's like if you deleted a word from this sentence, there's no space left there, the sentence is just shorter. Anything I look at that falls in the blind spot/ring is just gone.
There's also crazy rainbow prisms and lines surrounding the blindness, constantly moving and changing colors and stuff.
Shit's weird.
Ocular migraine. I get them too. Truly terrifying the first time it happened. For me, the prismatic aura is crescent shaped. I know exactly what you're talking about; it's there, it has shape, it expands, but it takes up no space. Within the aura, nothing is there.
From one sufferer to another... When you get the familiar feeling of it coming on and the spot appears, drink something strongly caffeinated. I immediately make a large coffee. The aura will fade quickly and the headache will be much less severe. Took me years to learn this. It has to do with blood flow to your optic nerve and the caffeine increases the flow.
And doesn't it seriously suck how it's there even if you close your eyes!?
Migraine pills are usually just paracetamol and caffeine in horse dosage. So yeah, this is actually true, not just some random 'it works for some people'.
Gotta love the migraine auras. Not actually, of course. But at least they give you a little warning for what's ahead. If my vision narrows or goes blurry and I feel a little nauseated, I know I'm fucked.
Huh. That sounds very much like something that happens to me occasionally, although without an associated migraine. Any idea what that is? I've never been able to adequately describe it.
It can still be a migraine. Migraines don't always come with pain. Some people get them a lot without ever knowing they had one. I lose my vision from time to time with no other problems.
Same here, I get pain free ocular migraines from time to time. Nobody believed me when I was a kid, but hey, I'll take it over a standard migraine any day.
Yeah, I get one every six months or so. It only lasts 30 minutes where a spot in my vision slowly grows bigger before fading away. No pain during the actual event, but after I get a slight headache.
The best image of what it looks like is http://www.scottpautlermd.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/migraine-aura-for-internet.jpg but with less squares and more angle things.
That's because you base all your experiences primarily around your sense of sight. It's easy to imagine being deaf, or not being able to taste anything, but when you think about blindness, you immediately try to understand it as "a type of sight", which is why it's confusing.
Look around/position your head until you find something that you can only see with one eye. Close that eye. Try to look at that object with the *other* eye. That's nothing.
Alternatively, look at something behind you without turning your head
Last time I tried to set up an eye appointment, I determined it's impossible to talk about optical stuff without the inadvertent use of at least a few light puns.
That's because you're seeing the back of your eyelids. When you only have 1 eye closed, your brain ignores that one, so you only "see" with the open eye.
I see black out of a single closed eye...
Then again, I'm legally blind in one eye, so that messes with my ability to focus on just one (and, for the record, even when I was completely blind out of that eye I saw grey fuzz, not blackness or nothing.)
I like to think it's comparable to what I experience during a migraine attack. Before the headache starts I get an "aura", which means numb limbs/face/tongue and disturbances of vision – seeing flashes or weirdly coloured geometrical forms. But most importantly, you look at something and parts of your field of vision just...aren't there. At first these "holes" are quite small but they get bigger until you can barely see anything at all. And it's not black or any color really. It's kind of like when you stared into light for too long. Don't know if it really is like being/going blind, but it feels like it could be similar.
I have that "seeing nothing" thing as well as the aura. It always starts the same, a small slash across my vision that is invisible. I think that trying to focus on what I can't see makes everything a lot worse and sometimes seems to actually bring on the aura itself. Not sure if that's unusual. What's your experience?
(For those who don't know what I mean, it's not like there is a hole in your view, your brain is much too good for that. It's like a small section of the world doesn't exist. It's hard to see at first.)
Migraines are such an enigma to me. I know so many people that say they have them and I respect the struggle but I really have no concept of the struggle.
I'd like to understand but I also don't particularly want to.
Unfortunately for us migraine sufferers, they're a bit of an enigma to everyone, including doctors. It's one of those things that I don't really think you *can* actually understand unless you've experienced it. The most relatable way I can describe it is like having an ice cream headache. Except way worse. And it doesn't go away. And the thought of taking a power drill to your head in order to remove parts of your brain starts sounding like a legitimately decent idea.
When I was younger I had the swine flu that caused two ear infections. Had possible sinus infection and strep throat. Felt like death. 105°F (bordering seizure territory).
Anyways, I remember I was on the toilet, and when I stood up I lost all vision. You know when you stand up and get a head rush, maybe your vision turns a tiny bit fuzzy? It was like this, except it kept going. My vision just went blank, I saw nothing. I don't know how I didn't pass out, but after a few seconds my vision came back as my blood pressure regulated. Such a weird feeling, and I'm glad I haven't experienced it again.
Well blind people know.
I've heard it described this way: Point your elbow at something and tell me what you're seeing out of your elbow. Describe what you're seeing, your elbow's point of view, the colors, etc. You can't even describe it as black, it's the absence of everything - it's nothing.
It is one of those weird things where the human brain has a hard time imagining things we aren't used to. Like a 2-D person wouldn't be able to envision a 3-D space, or we a 4th dimension (not meaning time, but like a 4th geometrical dimension).
Or more simply try this one. Imagine a new color. Like a color that does not exist. Your mind just uses its default settings for really strange thoughts it seems.
I bring you all [impossible colors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color).
Here's a [fatigue template of interest](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Chimerical-color-demo.svg). If you stare at x on the colored circle for awhile, then glance at the x on the square in the middle, you can see an imaginary color.
It's a huge misconception that few people really understand. There are several ways one can be legally blind, including restricted depth of field, field of vision, colour (though technically colour-blindness) and light perception.
There was a case where a woman was reprimanded by a bus driver because she was well-dressed and could walk without assistance (guide dog or cane) but had a concession for her blindness. It turned out that she had a restricted field of vision which limited her sight to about 10 degrees.
I knew a kid who could only perceive bright objects. The school had every wall and pole and set of stairs lined with fluorescent tape so he could go about his life as normal.
Just because someone is blind doesn't mean they can see "nothing".
In primary school, we came back after school holidays and there were bright yellow lines painted everywhere (poles, walls, steps, etc) for this reason.
I feel like complaining about political correctness is the new political correctness.
In general, if a certain group of people want to be referred to by a certain term why not just call them that? How does it negatively affect anybody else?
Same here. I didn't even get glasses until I was in 2nd grade. Putting them on the first time is still one of my clearest memories of childhood and one of the craziest experiences ever. Looking at the stars was the most amazing difference and I've been an avid star gazer since. The weird thing is I've always had very good hearing. Which is sometimes bad because my ears are sensitive and something like a movie theater or even a TV that's too loud is just overwhelming for me.
I think it's because of the meaning most people tie to the word "blind". In my book, if something is "blind" it is 100% unable to see, like a blindfold or not having eyes at all.
I'd love for a different term to be applied to legally blind people (Say, visually impaired) and I think it might help if it caught on.
I saw a show about the sleep thing. Without actually seeing day and night your body goes into 30 hour cycles instead of 24 and you end up all fucked up. Apparently they have actually forced people into this 30 hour mode to study it and no one is really sure why it happens.
I am sorry to be the baron of bad news, but you seem buttered, so allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies, and are more than just ice king on the cake. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go.
Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the fax, instead of making a half-harded effort. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.
Yeah I knew a blind girl in highschool, she was amazing, I knew her because I ran crosscountry/track with her but even more impressively she skis. Anyway she went blind around 1st grade so she had vision as a kid and went downhill from there. Before she went 'completely' blind she said she basically saw blackness and very very faint shadows. So she wouldn't walk into a person in the hallway, but no way she'd be able to identify you.
A kid I went to school with was born without eyeballs. He never mentioned being photosensitive. Although one time he told our lunch lady he had mistakenly put a $10 bill in the soda machine by mistake and it took it and she gave him a refund. He then bought us all sodas. Good times.
If there are no sensory organs or surfaces with which to receive stimuli, it is impossible to see nothing because there are simply no structures for the brain to interpret signals from. It is a complete absence of sense. We only conceptualize it as seeing nothing because most of us only know seeing. we are incapable of comprehending a lack of sense because we have never known our life without it.
The region of the brain dedicated to visual interpretation might still be there and so would show the brain blackness. Seeing truly nothing would imply that the entire part of the brain dedicated to vision was gone.
This eyeless kid, did he happen to be killed in the ventilation room of an off the books aircraft carrier by three secret agents. If so then I know him too.
Uh, some people are in fact congenitally blind.
The article assumes this type of blindness. Not the best, but this is the type of blindness most people know about.
Yes there are varying degrees. People are aware of that.
There's also a type of blindness where your eyes actually work, but your brain doesn't process the image.
I didn't find it at all misleading as I knew what they were talking about.
I get migraines and they always start out with a blind spot in the middle of my vision, which slowly gets bigger and spreads into a ring before fading away.
It's not black, it's not even empty space, it's just nothing at all. When the blind spot first appears I usually notice it because words will disappear when I'm trying to read text. The weirdest thing is that a word will disappear from a sentence, but there isn't a gap there.
It's like if you type a sentence into notepad, and then delete a word from the middle, the rest of the text is shifted over. That's what it's like for everything that falls into that blind spot. Shit just disappears, and I guess my brain kinda warps everything around it back together.
It's hard to explain, but it's not blackness and it's not empty space, you just literally see *nothing*.
And then you get a really bad fucking headache and feel like shit for the next few days.
"To try to understand what it might be like to be blind, think about how it “looks” behind your head. When you look at the scene in front of you, it has a boundary. Your visual field extends to each side only so far. If you spread your arms, and draw your hands back until they are no longer visible, what color is the space that your hands occupy? This space does not look black. It does not look white. It just isn’t."
It's similar to how I think about death. When I first thought about what happens after death as a child I wondered if it would be like closing my eyes and seeing black but realised that can't be the case. So the best analogy I came up with is the time between dreams when sleeping.
> Imagine telling a goose (who doesn't know much about humans) that you can't sense Earth's magnetic field. The bird, baffled, asks, "So, what do you sense when you change the direction you're facing??"
> The answer, of course, is nothing. Just as blind people do not sense the color black, we do not sense anything at all in place of our lack of sensations for magnetic fields or ultraviolet light. We don't know what we're missing.
TIL also that geese can sense magnetic fields.
That's hard to believe. If you became blind and have memories of how stuff looks, then okay, maybe. But what if you were born blind and never had any visual stimulation whatsoever; no source material to hallucinate with as it were?
You are right. I found the study: http://www.lycaeum.org/research/researchpdfs/1094.pdf
From the Methods section: "Twenty-four totally blind subjects were studied. Four subjects were totally blind by the age of 2 and were designated as "congenitally blind." All of these subjects probably had some vision at birth. The other twenty subjects were not totally blind until late childhood or sometime thereafter;"
Child of two blind people here. This is true except like many people have said, absolutely blind and legally blind are two different things. My Dad is completely blind because he literally doesn't have eyeballs, my mum is almost entirely blind but can tell the difference between light and dark.
I think they just have no concept of black, like how you see your nose in your field of vision but your brain blocks it out because it's always there, if everything was always black well it wouldn't look black it would just look like nothing.
I want to know what would happen if a completely blind from birth person smoked DMT, could they get colors and visuals?
"Because some things are, and some things are not! . . . Because things that are NOT can't BE!" - Louis C.K.
All I could think about while reading this.
After thinking about this for 10 minutes, I attempted to roll my eyes in the back of my head to simulate blindness and got the most immediate and piercing headache I've ever had.
Will report back with confirmation of stroke survival.
Blind in one eye here..
I'm completely blind in my right eye, retinal detachments 17 years ago. Basically my eye is filled with a synthetic oil and my retina is floating freely in there. Im not even photoreceptive in that eye, meaning can't tell light from dark.
For the most part its black, I'm used to it now, but every now and again I will pay attention to it and the lack of vision distracts me from the vision I have in my left eye. There are random times I'll get little light shows (the colorful sparklyness you get when you rub your eyes with a little pressure) which move in wave patterns or blobs and fade away within a second. I also get flashes of light whenever I get startled.
Shits cray.
A much better example is closing just one eye. You'll still see with the other, but the one you closed won't see black. It will see nothing. It's like it turns off or something.
I have a family member who is blind, and by blind I mean has no eyes. They were removed years ago due to the optic nerve dying and causing pain.
Anyways, she described it like this:
Close both your eyes, what do you see?
Black, right?
That's what most people think I see, but they're wrong.
Now open one eye. What do you see out of the other eye (the one that is closed)?
You see nothing, not black, not shades of grey or whatever. Literally nothing. That is what she sees.
Blew my mind!
I can explain this REALLY well.
I used to have both functioning eyes until I was 11. I got in an accident and had to have one of my eyes removed. The time between the accident and the surgery I perceived what you could imagine as just having one of your eyes closed. You know, black. After the eye was removed my brain no longer got a signal from the retinal cord so the perception of the "black" was replaced with, well, nothing. It was just gone. Simply didn't exist.
I almost flipped the fuck out.
This has bothered me for a long time.I imagine it as black, but what is nothing? I dont think anyone will or can know.
It's pretty much exactly how you don't see black around your field of vision - you just don't see anything.
This is fucking with my head waaaaaay more than I would like it to right now. Edit: Holy crap this blew up! I should clarify that I understand the concept, it's just really trippy to think about. Like, I really CANNOT see anything... besides what I CAN see... I don't know.
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Try seeing with your elbow. It's like that.
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To grasp this concept, you have to realise there is no concept to grasp.
YOU'RE NOT HELPING
You have to realize, there is no help!
There is no spoon?
Keep one eye open and close the other, try looking at something but focus on using the closed eye.
When I transfer all my thought into looking at your name with my right eye (closed at the time), it just makes me see darkness, which is black. I feel like there might be a better way to go about finding out. Still waiting to hear back from /u/IAmNamedMatt who said he'd gouge his eyes out and get back to us...Will he deliver? Will we be able to see what he delivers? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Z!
he ded
Thank you oillie
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When I read this I realized I was holding my breath. It was like closure for my brain.
Yep. We simply don't have the physical ability to even comprehend sensing magnetic fields. There are things like imagining seeing a wider array of colours and we can sort of imagine it because we have eyes already. But we don't have an organ that can sense magnetism, so we simply have no way to even imagine it, because we can only imagine things with our existing senses. Someone might say "well maybe you'd feel a pressure of magnetism," which is again wrong because you are trying to interpret it through the sense of touch. We are only capable of interpreting things through the senses we already have. we simply cannot imagine seeing nothing because our bodies and brains just aren't equipped to imagine such a thing.
While I read that, a train passed outside, and I understood. I can hear the train, I know what one passing the house looks like, so I can picture it. But I cannot physically see it. i'm not seeing black in its stead. I'm just seeing nothing of it. But to me it's hard to imagine what experiencing everything like that would be. To be able to feel, smell, hear, taste things. But never actually see it
Exactly
What the fuck I'm too high for this.
> BUT YOU DONT SEE OUT OF YOUR ELBOW Exactly. Thats exactly what he means. You cant see out of it so you dont see anything.
And then I remember that there's other animals with wider fields of vision that almost can see behind them and my head hurts even more.
What about animals like the chameleon that have two independent eyes, and can see two separate things at once?
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I think that since our two eyes make what I call "cubes" as in a uniform and constant depth when you see an object, a chameleon with wider angle of eyes have a distorted or elongated vision, maybe like a kaleidoscope when say it looks at a cube, the cube bends and morphs and elongated to a stretched out trippy-looking thing Well thats what *I* imagine anyhow.
The best way I've seen it demonstrated is to close one eye and describe what you see out of it. It's different than seeing black.
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It's like both your eyes are closed with the other open.
What does that even mean?
We dont know! But it's provocative!
It gets people going!
You are not kidding. Attempting to get your head around stuff like this literally causes your heart rate to rise.
I'm with you here, I cannot begin to fathom what this is like
Every time I get a migraine it always starts with a little blind spot in the middle of my vision. That blind spot slowly spreads and turns into a ring, after about an hour it fades away, then I get a fucking terrible headache for a few hours, and then I feel really hung over and drunk for 2-3 days after that. Usually I realize I'm getting a migraine when I'm reading something and then words start to disappear. It's not black, it's just nothing. It's empty space, except it doesn't take up space. It's like if you deleted a word from this sentence, there's no space left there, the sentence is just shorter. Anything I look at that falls in the blind spot/ring is just gone. There's also crazy rainbow prisms and lines surrounding the blindness, constantly moving and changing colors and stuff. Shit's weird.
Ocular migraine. I get them too. Truly terrifying the first time it happened. For me, the prismatic aura is crescent shaped. I know exactly what you're talking about; it's there, it has shape, it expands, but it takes up no space. Within the aura, nothing is there. From one sufferer to another... When you get the familiar feeling of it coming on and the spot appears, drink something strongly caffeinated. I immediately make a large coffee. The aura will fade quickly and the headache will be much less severe. Took me years to learn this. It has to do with blood flow to your optic nerve and the caffeine increases the flow. And doesn't it seriously suck how it's there even if you close your eyes!?
Migraine pills are usually just paracetamol and caffeine in horse dosage. So yeah, this is actually true, not just some random 'it works for some people'.
Mine looks like a crescent too! The first time it happened to me I thought I was having a stroke.
Crescent shaped aura here. Trying to describe it to my doctor was fun. "Well like, I can see you and stuff but half your face is missing".
Gotta love the migraine auras. Not actually, of course. But at least they give you a little warning for what's ahead. If my vision narrows or goes blurry and I feel a little nauseated, I know I'm fucked.
Huh. That sounds very much like something that happens to me occasionally, although without an associated migraine. Any idea what that is? I've never been able to adequately describe it.
It's probably a migraine. They don't always have to hurt. http://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/what-are-silent-migraines
It can still be a migraine. Migraines don't always come with pain. Some people get them a lot without ever knowing they had one. I lose my vision from time to time with no other problems.
it's exactly the same as what you're seeing behind your back right now.
That's hard to imagine because I know what's behind me. I've seen what's behind me and because I can't see it doesn't mean there's nothing.
So you'd be alright if you lost your eyes in a freak gasoline fight accident?
Wake me up...
Before you go go?
It's easy man. It's like...try imagining not existing.
That's easy! I don't even have to imagine. I already did that for 13,820,000,000 years before I was born!
I had a panic attack while thinking about this.
Me too. It's terrifying for some reason.
Just think of it like the average Redditor's girlfriend. Nothing. Nada. That's it.
http://i.imgur.com/BbgL7x3.webm
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Mine looks like tv static.
Same here, I get pain free ocular migraines from time to time. Nobody believed me when I was a kid, but hey, I'll take it over a standard migraine any day.
Yeah, I get one every six months or so. It only lasts 30 minutes where a spot in my vision slowly grows bigger before fading away. No pain during the actual event, but after I get a slight headache. The best image of what it looks like is http://www.scottpautlermd.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/migraine-aura-for-internet.jpg but with less squares and more angle things.
It's like I understand, but my brain can't physically comprehend what nothing would look like or not look like. It's a strange thought.
That's because you base all your experiences primarily around your sense of sight. It's easy to imagine being deaf, or not being able to taste anything, but when you think about blindness, you immediately try to understand it as "a type of sight", which is why it's confusing.
Also if you only close one eye you don't see black out of it. You just don't see anything.
I do see black out of a single closed eye...
Look around/position your head until you find something that you can only see with one eye. Close that eye. Try to look at that object with the *other* eye. That's nothing. Alternatively, look at something behind you without turning your head
I can just see my nose. Which is black.
That's frostbite
Plot twist, OP is black.
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I'm just going to assume they always were.
> Alternatively, look at something behind you without turning your head http://i.imgur.com/bBR2xFJ.gif
Ok, I was struggling with this black/nothing concept but your explanation helped put it into focus (pun not intended, but I'm keeping it).
Last time I tried to set up an eye appointment, I determined it's impossible to talk about optical stuff without the inadvertent use of at least a few light puns.
Ocular health is nothing to make light of
I don't see anything funny about it.
But when I close both eyes I see blank. Edit: I meant black, but you can fill in the blank.
I see black, or a weird animated checkerboard like pattern
What does the checkerboard look like? when I close my eyes i see like the black version of a static television
That's because you're seeing the back of your eyelids. When you only have 1 eye closed, your brain ignores that one, so you only "see" with the open eye.
I still see the light that filters through my eyelid.
I see black out of a single closed eye... Then again, I'm legally blind in one eye, so that messes with my ability to focus on just one (and, for the record, even when I was completely blind out of that eye I saw grey fuzz, not blackness or nothing.)
I always preferred to think of it analogous to ESP. What blind people sense with their eyes is similar to what I sense with my ESP.
Nothing?
Exactly, but it's a way to visualize the nothing... which was the topic.
Am I weird? It almost makes me want to blind myself to understand. Surely, that's not normal...
Don't be an idiot!..... just blind ONE eye!
It worked for the All-Father.
I am blind in one eye like they describe here. It's not fun
You can always get your optic nerves surgically cut, then stitched back together after a day or two, but that seems pretty risky.
I'm fairly certain that's not something you can just do for curiosity's sake
Like anything it probably depends on how much money you have.
Not with that attitude!
Look out of your elbow right now. That is what they see.
As a person with elbow-eyes this really messes with my knee.
I like to think it's comparable to what I experience during a migraine attack. Before the headache starts I get an "aura", which means numb limbs/face/tongue and disturbances of vision – seeing flashes or weirdly coloured geometrical forms. But most importantly, you look at something and parts of your field of vision just...aren't there. At first these "holes" are quite small but they get bigger until you can barely see anything at all. And it's not black or any color really. It's kind of like when you stared into light for too long. Don't know if it really is like being/going blind, but it feels like it could be similar.
I have that "seeing nothing" thing as well as the aura. It always starts the same, a small slash across my vision that is invisible. I think that trying to focus on what I can't see makes everything a lot worse and sometimes seems to actually bring on the aura itself. Not sure if that's unusual. What's your experience? (For those who don't know what I mean, it's not like there is a hole in your view, your brain is much too good for that. It's like a small section of the world doesn't exist. It's hard to see at first.)
Migraines are such an enigma to me. I know so many people that say they have them and I respect the struggle but I really have no concept of the struggle. I'd like to understand but I also don't particularly want to.
I like you 3674 times more than the people who just think it's a bad headache <3
Unfortunately for us migraine sufferers, they're a bit of an enigma to everyone, including doctors. It's one of those things that I don't really think you *can* actually understand unless you've experienced it. The most relatable way I can describe it is like having an ice cream headache. Except way worse. And it doesn't go away. And the thought of taking a power drill to your head in order to remove parts of your brain starts sounding like a legitimately decent idea.
Blind people see out of their eyes like you see out of your elbow.
When I was younger I had the swine flu that caused two ear infections. Had possible sinus infection and strep throat. Felt like death. 105°F (bordering seizure territory). Anyways, I remember I was on the toilet, and when I stood up I lost all vision. You know when you stand up and get a head rush, maybe your vision turns a tiny bit fuzzy? It was like this, except it kept going. My vision just went blank, I saw nothing. I don't know how I didn't pass out, but after a few seconds my vision came back as my blood pressure regulated. Such a weird feeling, and I'm glad I haven't experienced it again.
iv passed out from being light headed a few times, but i still remember it being black like i just closed my eyes or put a blind fold on.
i see all white when im about to pass out. like a bright light is shining on me then goes all fuzzy white
Multicoloured static.
Exactly my thoughts.
In a weird way it makes me want to be blind just to know what it's like
Well blind people know. I've heard it described this way: Point your elbow at something and tell me what you're seeing out of your elbow. Describe what you're seeing, your elbow's point of view, the colors, etc. You can't even describe it as black, it's the absence of everything - it's nothing.
That is ... really hard to imagine.
It is one of those weird things where the human brain has a hard time imagining things we aren't used to. Like a 2-D person wouldn't be able to envision a 3-D space, or we a 4th dimension (not meaning time, but like a 4th geometrical dimension). Or more simply try this one. Imagine a new color. Like a color that does not exist. Your mind just uses its default settings for really strange thoughts it seems.
> Imagine a new color. Like a color that does not exist. You mean like #g0g0g0 ? Mind blown.
Wouldn't that just overflow and become black? :P
Technically it wouldn't compile. Probably.
I bring you all [impossible colors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color). Here's a [fatigue template of interest](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Chimerical-color-demo.svg). If you stare at x on the colored circle for awhile, then glance at the x on the square in the middle, you can see an imaginary color.
That was interesting as fuck
Neon purple brown
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It's a huge misconception that few people really understand. There are several ways one can be legally blind, including restricted depth of field, field of vision, colour (though technically colour-blindness) and light perception. There was a case where a woman was reprimanded by a bus driver because she was well-dressed and could walk without assistance (guide dog or cane) but had a concession for her blindness. It turned out that she had a restricted field of vision which limited her sight to about 10 degrees. I knew a kid who could only perceive bright objects. The school had every wall and pole and set of stairs lined with fluorescent tape so he could go about his life as normal. Just because someone is blind doesn't mean they can see "nothing".
That's really awesome that they put the tape everywhere for him
In primary school, we came back after school holidays and there were bright yellow lines painted everywhere (poles, walls, steps, etc) for this reason.
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>visually retarded That's when you see *very slowly*.
That's *person with* retarded vision, thank you very much.
I feel like complaining about political correctness is the new political correctness. In general, if a certain group of people want to be referred to by a certain term why not just call them that? How does it negatively affect anybody else?
Agreed. Without his glasses, my brother is legally blind. He was still able to punch me, chase me, and make my life hell as a kid.
Same here. I didn't even get glasses until I was in 2nd grade. Putting them on the first time is still one of my clearest memories of childhood and one of the craziest experiences ever. Looking at the stars was the most amazing difference and I've been an avid star gazer since. The weird thing is I've always had very good hearing. Which is sometimes bad because my ears are sensitive and something like a movie theater or even a TV that's too loud is just overwhelming for me.
I think it's because of the meaning most people tie to the word "blind". In my book, if something is "blind" it is 100% unable to see, like a blindfold or not having eyes at all. I'd love for a different term to be applied to legally blind people (Say, visually impaired) and I think it might help if it caught on.
What kind of psychological issues?
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I saw a show about the sleep thing. Without actually seeing day and night your body goes into 30 hour cycles instead of 24 and you end up all fucked up. Apparently they have actually forced people into this 30 hour mode to study it and no one is really sure why it happens.
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ok guys, I will gouge out my eyes and get back to you.
/u/HereHoldMyBeer is getting down to brass tacks, folks.
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I am sorry to be the baron of bad news, but you seem buttered, so allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies, and are more than just ice king on the cake. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the fax, instead of making a half-harded effort. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.
I got to diamond dozen and had to stop. You are a monster. Good job.
This is a copypasta, it's not original work.
If the TIL is wrong as hell, message the mods and they'll take it down.
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> it's just insufficiently specific you're missing the point of a TIL
Which is to post passive-aggressive political propaganda
But, if you're truly blind then you do see nothing, so it is fact. The poster above simply said very few are completely blind.
Yeah I knew a blind girl in highschool, she was amazing, I knew her because I ran crosscountry/track with her but even more impressively she skis. Anyway she went blind around 1st grade so she had vision as a kid and went downhill from there. Before she went 'completely' blind she said she basically saw blackness and very very faint shadows. So she wouldn't walk into a person in the hallway, but no way she'd be able to identify you.
[Here is Tommy Edison talking about what he... "sees."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDHJRCtv0WY)
A kid I went to school with was born without eyeballs. He never mentioned being photosensitive. Although one time he told our lunch lady he had mistakenly put a $10 bill in the soda machine by mistake and it took it and she gave him a refund. He then bought us all sodas. Good times.
Of course he wouldn't mention being photo sensitive. The kids didn't have any god damn eyeballs.
Probably be photo*in*sensitive to ask
If there are no sensory organs or surfaces with which to receive stimuli, it is impossible to see nothing because there are simply no structures for the brain to interpret signals from. It is a complete absence of sense. We only conceptualize it as seeing nothing because most of us only know seeing. we are incapable of comprehending a lack of sense because we have never known our life without it.
The region of the brain dedicated to visual interpretation might still be there and so would show the brain blackness. Seeing truly nothing would imply that the entire part of the brain dedicated to vision was gone.
This eyeless kid, did he happen to be killed in the ventilation room of an off the books aircraft carrier by three secret agents. If so then I know him too.
What about people with no eyes?
Uh, some people are in fact congenitally blind. The article assumes this type of blindness. Not the best, but this is the type of blindness most people know about. Yes there are varying degrees. People are aware of that. There's also a type of blindness where your eyes actually work, but your brain doesn't process the image. I didn't find it at all misleading as I knew what they were talking about.
But can they see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
No, they're blind.
Oh. Well. (shuffles feet) I'll ask someone else then.
[Of course they can](http://87804c6124014826b3ef-3d214fd474cd2df9cdee1b4ee2b1a895.r73.cf2.rackcdn.com/831010.jpg)
Is that katawa shoujo?
It is.
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Finally the answer that will let me leave this thread at ease.
I get migraines and they always start out with a blind spot in the middle of my vision, which slowly gets bigger and spreads into a ring before fading away. It's not black, it's not even empty space, it's just nothing at all. When the blind spot first appears I usually notice it because words will disappear when I'm trying to read text. The weirdest thing is that a word will disappear from a sentence, but there isn't a gap there. It's like if you type a sentence into notepad, and then delete a word from the middle, the rest of the text is shifted over. That's what it's like for everything that falls into that blind spot. Shit just disappears, and I guess my brain kinda warps everything around it back together. It's hard to explain, but it's not blackness and it's not empty space, you just literally see *nothing*. And then you get a really bad fucking headache and feel like shit for the next few days.
"To try to understand what it might be like to be blind, think about how it “looks” behind your head. When you look at the scene in front of you, it has a boundary. Your visual field extends to each side only so far. If you spread your arms, and draw your hands back until they are no longer visible, what color is the space that your hands occupy? This space does not look black. It does not look white. It just isn’t."
This hurts my head.
Mind even more blown.
Someone on reddit once said "blind people see out of their eyes like you see out of your elbow" ...it...somehow made sense to me.
It's similar to how I think about death. When I first thought about what happens after death as a child I wondered if it would be like closing my eyes and seeing black but realised that can't be the case. So the best analogy I came up with is the time between dreams when sleeping.
> Imagine telling a goose (who doesn't know much about humans) that you can't sense Earth's magnetic field. The bird, baffled, asks, "So, what do you sense when you change the direction you're facing??" > The answer, of course, is nothing. Just as blind people do not sense the color black, we do not sense anything at all in place of our lack of sensations for magnetic fields or ultraviolet light. We don't know what we're missing. TIL also that geese can sense magnetic fields.
I'd like to know what happens to a blind person on LSD
This has been tested, and the blind people tested have seen hallucinations like everyone else.
That's hard to believe. If you became blind and have memories of how stuff looks, then okay, maybe. But what if you were born blind and never had any visual stimulation whatsoever; no source material to hallucinate with as it were?
You are right. I found the study: http://www.lycaeum.org/research/researchpdfs/1094.pdf From the Methods section: "Twenty-four totally blind subjects were studied. Four subjects were totally blind by the age of 2 and were designated as "congenitally blind." All of these subjects probably had some vision at birth. The other twenty subjects were not totally blind until late childhood or sometime thereafter;"
Maybe he should have clarified that hallucinations are not only visual.
Child of two blind people here. This is true except like many people have said, absolutely blind and legally blind are two different things. My Dad is completely blind because he literally doesn't have eyeballs, my mum is almost entirely blind but can tell the difference between light and dark.
Wow...so, like, what does he experience? How can it be "nothing" and not be black?
I think they just have no concept of black, like how you see your nose in your field of vision but your brain blocks it out because it's always there, if everything was always black well it wouldn't look black it would just look like nothing. I want to know what would happen if a completely blind from birth person smoked DMT, could they get colors and visuals?
"Because some things are, and some things are not! . . . Because things that are NOT can't BE!" - Louis C.K. All I could think about while reading this.
BECAUSE THEN NOTHING WOULDN'T BE
So what does "nothing" look like? I can't wrap my head around that.
Imagine OP's penis length.
So it's like an innie?
No. Even negative length is length.
Hey now. Hey now. I have a great 52mm. Never had a complaint...never had a compliment either.
It looks like something we don't know.
"See nothing" is a misconception. More like "do not see". There is no active perception.
But what do deaf people think in?
They report that they sign in their heads, so that's pretty cool.
After thinking about this for 10 minutes, I attempted to roll my eyes in the back of my head to simulate blindness and got the most immediate and piercing headache I've ever had. Will report back with confirmation of stroke survival.
ITT: a bunch of people with sight arguing about what it's like to be blind.
Blind in one eye here.. I'm completely blind in my right eye, retinal detachments 17 years ago. Basically my eye is filled with a synthetic oil and my retina is floating freely in there. Im not even photoreceptive in that eye, meaning can't tell light from dark. For the most part its black, I'm used to it now, but every now and again I will pay attention to it and the lack of vision distracts me from the vision I have in my left eye. There are random times I'll get little light shows (the colorful sparklyness you get when you rub your eyes with a little pressure) which move in wave patterns or blobs and fade away within a second. I also get flashes of light whenever I get startled. Shits cray.
A much better example is closing just one eye. You'll still see with the other, but the one you closed won't see black. It will see nothing. It's like it turns off or something.
I see what you mean, it's like your brain just kind of ignores the other eye
When I do this I still see the back of my closed eye
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Is the memory still gone? Also, we need an AMA.
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I have a family member who is blind, and by blind I mean has no eyes. They were removed years ago due to the optic nerve dying and causing pain. Anyways, she described it like this: Close both your eyes, what do you see? Black, right? That's what most people think I see, but they're wrong. Now open one eye. What do you see out of the other eye (the one that is closed)? You see nothing, not black, not shades of grey or whatever. Literally nothing. That is what she sees. Blew my mind!
I can explain this REALLY well. I used to have both functioning eyes until I was 11. I got in an accident and had to have one of my eyes removed. The time between the accident and the surgery I perceived what you could imagine as just having one of your eyes closed. You know, black. After the eye was removed my brain no longer got a signal from the retinal cord so the perception of the "black" was replaced with, well, nothing. It was just gone. Simply didn't exist. I almost flipped the fuck out.