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To someone who is born blind, how would you best discribe what seeing is? (lemm.ee)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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[โ€“] 15 points 3 years ago* (3 children)

Like hearing but with color.

No, seriously, it's impossible to accurately convey. You can talk about the mechanics, the use cases, what you can do with it, but you cannot convey "how it is", same as a bat cannot convey "how sonar is".

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 3 years ago

    Only good answer, really - can only answer in the terms of other senses, however, since colour is meaningless too: "It's like being able to hear the texture of things, even at a great distance."

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  • [+] [S] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)
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  • [โ€“] 3 points 3 years ago

    That's exactly the point. Nothing you say will have a meaning over what that person has experienced. You can't really convey what seeing means, and the "but with color" was meant to show exactly that.

    You can explain the technicalities, but that's trivial enough that there's no point in explaining it.

    Imagine explaining what it feels like to e.g. drive a really fast car to someone who has never been in a car. Yeah, you can say "it's really fast" or "it's exciting/fear-inducing" or "acceleration pushes you into the seat", but nothing you say can actually convey the feeling.

    Same with seeing. You can say, "with my eyes I can differentiate objects over long distances", but I am pretty sure every blind person already knows that. You can say, "Different things have different colors", but also they know that, but at the same time it has no meaning to them.

    But then try to explain a beautiful sunrise or a moving painting or something else that's evokes emotions and then it falls apart, because you cannot convey that.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 3 years ago*

    It really is, which is why I find videos like "Kids explain color to blind people" (which is an actual video that exists btw, it's the dumbest thing I've ever seen out of a clickbaity video trying to be smart, and one kid is even like "so you know what an apple looks like right?" or something) so dumb.

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