Volconvo Debate Forums - View Single Post - Do Blind People 'see' anything when they dream?

L3T · Jan 20, 2005, 02:08 pm

Our world exists due our input devices. Mostly namely our eyes, ears, smell, taste, ears, feel. Our most meaningful of (or to which we receive the most useful information of our world) is definetely sight/sound. We prioritize the most useful and harness each as needed (eating = mmmmm taste). Having all the senses to work with we gather our basic experiences as combination and memory stores them appropriately.
We are soooooo dependant and conscious of our looks etc. it is over commercialised for this reason: TV, movies, fashion, beauty, shape, form and most ironically: feng shui.
A movie is probably the most informative way we as humans have discovered to capture/simulate a human experience. My guess memory encodes this in the same way capture/encode different formats and compression in digital video.
My dreams ( as i recall) seem to be bizarre little movies that dont always correspond to an experience but they still appear in a "movie" type form. Yes there is also emotions too but that is a whole other area binded, but not altogether related.

Now consider a blind person. Their main input is sound/touch. In fact, their enhanced sensitivity to touch (using braille ) is by far their most powerful.They feel touch, shapes etc.They feel a bump or not. On or off. A biinary 1 or 0. And they get damm fast at processing these cos their brain CPU prioritises this function. THey do it so quick they dont have to stop and think about it much at all cos our brains are so intelligent it starts to find a a more effective/efficient/resource friendly way to do this. It creates what programmers like to call an algorithm. Basically they have translated the input (almost binary) into a meaningful picture in their mind. This "picture" has meaning to them cos using their other most valuable sense - sound they have been told or learnt to render/picture what the braillle is telling them.

The Analogy
A computer Video Card. The input is binary. In fact it is in many forms, just like a blind person. It has one input which it translates that to show on our computer screens. (Someone could explain to a blind person an object in much the same way).
The other inputs a video card has is for rendering and drawing shape form (polygons).
A blind person can receive the same instructions from braille and like a 3DFX chip their more sophisticated and continually evolving/improving algorithm does the translation.

So YES I believe they can "see" in their dream, but it is only what THEY SEE made up by the info they are fed by other people, touch, sound an braillle. SAYING that (and this is where I think it get heaps interesting), Why should they HAVE TO (or try to picture) what a the majority of us all actually observe? In a way society expects them to. The commercial and materialistic world we live in is at a point in the evoluttionary cycle where THIS IS HOW WE LIVE.
We go to the movies, we judge appearances, we enjoy beauty , value and appreciate (not always) aesthetics.

Blind people may not/ or dont have to attempt to experience the world OUR way. Their dreams may take on a form of teir own. A pattern of 1's and 0's may make them happy.
They say our dreams play out experiences that only act to balance our emotions. If we are lonely we will often dream that in our dreams all our friends are just following us around andwont go away, stuff like that...

The analogy above and the sci-fi ideas from movies like the "MATRIX" are actually closely related. In the Matrix the dudes are connected via wires (or a single digital binary connnection) and fed information simulating the info we gather using our senses. The "matrix" or dream world is basically all just a digital world made up of 1's and 0's. It was also controlled by the master programmer so its physics laws could suddenly change.
But of course if they just had a whole lot of 1's and 0's flying across across our TV screen i'm sure none of us woulod be too happy (unless yur "incredecode" a super-hero i made up just then). So they were nice enough to compile the matrix binary world back into 3D time and space so we could watch the movie.
I'm sure a braille version is out with the original binary form...
(plaese know i'm kiddin but do consider the concept)

hey this is my first post so plaese comment or send me an email...

Jan 20, 2005, 02:08 pm	#38 (permalink) (top)
L3T Level 3 Thinking Location: Australia. Posts: 2	A Blind persons dream: How's this for an analogy...? Our world exists due our input devices. Mostly namely our eyes, ears, smell, taste, ears, feel. Our most meaningful of (or to which we receive the most useful information of our world) is definetely sight/sound. We prioritize the most useful and harness each as needed (eating = mmmmm taste). Having all the senses to work with we gather our basic experiences as combination and memory stores them appropriately. We are soooooo dependant and conscious of our looks etc. it is over commercialised for this reason: TV, movies, fashion, beauty, shape, form and most ironically: feng shui. A movie is probably the most informative way we as humans have discovered to capture/simulate a human experience. My guess memory encodes this in the same way capture/encode different formats and compression in digital video. My dreams ( as i recall) seem to be bizarre little movies that dont always correspond to an experience but they still appear in a "movie" type form. Yes there is also emotions too but that is a whole other area binded, but not altogether related. Now consider a blind person. Their main input is sound/touch. In fact, their enhanced sensitivity to touch (using braille ) is by far their most powerful.They feel touch, shapes etc.They feel a bump or not. On or off. A biinary 1 or 0. And they get damm fast at processing these cos their brain CPU prioritises this function. THey do it so quick they dont have to stop and think about it much at all cos our brains are so intelligent it starts to find a a more effective/efficient/resource friendly way to do this. It creates what programmers like to call an algorithm. Basically they have translated the input (almost binary) into a meaningful picture in their mind. This "picture" has meaning to them cos using their other most valuable sense - sound they have been told or learnt to render/picture what the braillle is telling them. The Analogy A computer Video Card. The input is binary. In fact it is in many forms, just like a blind person. It has one input which it translates that to show on our computer screens. (Someone could explain to a blind person an object in much the same way). The other inputs a video card has is for rendering and drawing shape form (polygons). A blind person can receive the same instructions from braille and like a 3DFX chip their more sophisticated and continually evolving/improving algorithm does the translation. So YES I believe they can "see" in their dream, but it is only what THEY SEE made up by the info they are fed by other people, touch, sound an braillle. SAYING that (and this is where I think it get heaps interesting), Why should they HAVE TO (or try to picture) what a the majority of us all actually observe? In a way society expects them to. The commercial and materialistic world we live in is at a point in the evoluttionary cycle where THIS IS HOW WE LIVE. We go to the movies, we judge appearances, we enjoy beauty , value and appreciate (not always) aesthetics. Blind people may not/ or dont have to attempt to experience the world OUR way. Their dreams may take on a form of teir own. A pattern of 1's and 0's may make them happy. They say our dreams play out experiences that only act to balance our emotions. If we are lonely we will often dream that in our dreams all our friends are just following us around andwont go away, stuff like that... The analogy above and the sci-fi ideas from movies like the "MATRIX" are actually closely related. In the Matrix the dudes are connected via wires (or a single digital binary connnection) and fed information simulating the info we gather using our senses. The "matrix" or dream world is basically all just a digital world made up of 1's and 0's. It was also controlled by the master programmer so its physics laws could suddenly change. But of course if they just had a whole lot of 1's and 0's flying across across our TV screen i'm sure none of us woulod be too happy (unless yur "incredecode" a super-hero i made up just then). So they were nice enough to compile the matrix binary world back into 3D time and space so we could watch the movie. I'm sure a braille version is out with the original binary form... (plaese know i'm kiddin but do consider the concept) hey this is my first post so plaese comment or send me an email...