It was a footnote in an article I read about a monkey using blindsight and that there had been several experiments with humans proving blindsight existed and that surprised me. As a footnote.
There have been several experiments that indicate people can see without using their visual cortex.
Also the name of one of the best sci fi novels ever written, which has references to the phenomenon
The trans humanist stuff was so cool to me. Designer vampires specifically designed for analysis and command. I love books where concepts are explained and you kinda get it, but definitely requires rereads. Anathem by Neal Stephenson is another one.
I read it earlier this year. Really interesting. Lots of commentary on what it means to have consciousness or intelligence, and on how we’re affected by language and communication. Not sure I’d call it enjoyable though. I’m glad I read it, but I’m not sure I’d put it high on my reread list other than to be able to read the earlier stuff knowing what happens in the later stuff.
Ha, cool, I came across that cover while I was searching for more information on it, it’s pretty good?
I’ve read it no less than 15 times, maybe more. I think I’m finally at the stage where I’m not picking up new stuff on rereads. Yeah. It’s wild.
Read the flyleaf at the library, sounded impossibly corny. Thought it was time for some cheesy science fiction, get off the serious stuff. I was wrong. I was so wrong.
I’m assuming you’re talking about the Peter Watts book, not the Robin cook book, right?
I used to read a lot of Robin Cook, and I was ringing a bell, but I’m assuming you’re talking about the Peter Watts blindsight?
Oh fantastic. Wow, I’ll read it, putting it on my list not
I think that this is pretty cool i didn’t know anything about it either. The brain is pretty amazing.
Isn’t that wild? They’ve tested people and a chimp so far over the last five decades, apparently investigation into the phenomenon started in the '70s.
V. S. Ramachandran’s “Phantoms in the Brain” book had a blindsight patient, many years ago ( he’s a neuro-researcher ).
He handed her an envelope, & asked her to put it in a mailbox ( which I think he held, at some angle, in some semi-random location, before her ), and she did, automatically.
He said she was absolutely dead blind, but could probably drive, without hitting any obstacles, or do archery, iirc…
SHE couldn’t see, but something in her unconscious-mind could see.
He called that something “the zombie”.
Interesting book, iirc ( it’s been a looong time since I read that one ).
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It’s a very long Royal Institution video, but the first section covers this topic with footage of Helen the monkey. The whole video is fascinating.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=9QWaZp_2I1k&t=880s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I have watched that footage, it was veryv interesting, I’ve read. I believe most of the available abstracts and watched the videos at this point
This video uses blind sight in the Intro as a hook for an hour long lecture on sentience.
Oh cool, I found out about blindsight reading an article about how warm-bloodedness, according to Nick Humphrey, I believe is the guy’s name, may have led to sentience and what that means; apparently that’s what his new book is about.
I guess that’s his jam
So what you’re saying is that Daredevil is a documentary?
Scientists seem confident that the visually blind people are actually somehow seeing rather than using their other senses to compensate, so not really, but in the spirit of the bit, yes.
