4 ms·

Wonder what the potential long-term psychological/physiological impact is... Your brain would essentially be forced to constantly process more visual data than

Wonder what the potential long-term psychological/physiological impact is... Your brain would essentially be forced to constantly process more visual data than it was used to... more data than human brains in general had evolved to process. Surely that has consequences.

leggomylibro 8y ago
Well, not necessarily - this treatment works by converting the near-IR light into green light which the eyes process normally. If this did work in people, I would let a few waves of early adopters go first. It's a big open question as to how confusing things might be if you were IR/green colorblind.
- bigiain 8y ago
  Part of me feels like "Gimme gimme gimme! I want it _now!!!" Another part of me is more thinking "I wonder what unexpected side effects we'll see when we have data from clinically controlled trials of large numbers of people using this technology over timespans of 40-50 years?"
  - leggomylibro 8y ago
    Let me put it this way. I was an early adopter of a simple sort of body modification - I had a small neodymium disc magnet sheathed in some inert material implanted in a finger. It was cool and all, but I eventually got it removed because it was sensitive and if the inert sheath ever broke, it'd be bad news. Bodies don't like rare earth metals. When I got it removed, the person who did it turned out to know the one who put it in (small world), and they told me that the new ones were tiny slivers which were almost impossible to feel, much less remove. And that wasn't exactly comforting. Mine practically popped out, but a tiny sliver? Nowadays, I think two or three times about those sorts of 'life hacks'.
roywiggins 8y ago
You can see into the ultraviolet today with a cataract procedure. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1455745 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1455745
downrightmike 8y ago
We can handle it. Think of it like color blind and not and all the variations. Just another variation. https://www.popsci.com/article/science/woman-sees-100-times-more-colors-average-person https://www.popsci.com/article/science/woman-sees-100-times-...
jaggederest 8y ago
Human sensorium is extremely flexible. The experiment I'm thinking of used subtle vibrating motors on a belt to indicate north, and people performed exactly as though they had suddenly acquired absolute directional sense with no awareness of the vibrations after a little acclimatization. The other classic is "reverse vision" glasses that flip everything upside down. Takes about 2-6 weeks to rewire your brain, then everything appears normal... until you take them off.
- dddddaviddddd 8y ago
  Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKUVpBJalNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKUVpBJalNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kohUpQwZt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kohUpQwZt8
buboard 8y ago
you ll still be receiving exactly the same amount of data from your photoreceptors, just more green than before. one thing i wonder, is what happens when you sleep
- pmontra 8y ago
  This is an augmentation that I'd love to use but I also wonder if it's going to affect sleep. Am I going to see my eyelids when I close them? That would be bad. I hope we're not so hot to be seen by those receptors. Btw, if we are going to see the cornea that would affect vision at any time.
yourHonesty 8y ago
While you probably have the right idea, about the possibility of there being downsides to something like this, I think you’re way off base with the detail you’ve opted to focus on. Physiologically speaking, maybe the excess biochemical signaling could lead to fatigued pathways, chemical exhaust toxicity, cell death... but I think that could be overcome with a control plane that permits deactivation, so that you only use it selectively, and that passes the buck, leaving the burden of responsibility with the patient. In practical use, I think subtle social consequences are a bigger accident waiting to happen, worth more attention than the subsequent, resulting inner well being (or lack thereof) of the post-op recipient. Little things like having the ability to observe otherwise silent flatulence, notice residual keyboard heat, see through clothing, and perhaps even walls, watching dinner cook, that sort of thing would change the sense of self, sure. If it’s truly harmless, you’ll see an alarming level of adoption. But it’s the arms race of being left behind, when seemingly the rest of the world gets something like this, and you can’t jump on the bandwagon, leading to an absurd amount of dangerous elective procedures that would likely become the bigger evil. Suddenly ordinary just isn’t good enough, so what happens next?
killjoywashere 8y ago
Not sure why you're downvoted. Not only that, but when everyone is saying "harmless" and "biocomatible", I'm thinking about the sharp, highly incompatible stainless steel needle (aka 4-faced knife edge so big you can put a pipe inside it) they're using to slice through my RETINA. No thanks. Not now, not ever.
cookingrobot 8y ago
Some small number of women are tetrachromatic, meaning they’re able to see 4 primary colors. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy

leggomylibro 8y ago

Well, not necessarily - this treatment works by converting the near-IR light into green light which the eyes process normally. If this did work in people, I would let a few waves of early adopters go first. It's a big open question as to how confusing things might be if you were IR/green colorblind.

bigiain 8y ago
Part of me feels like "Gimme gimme gimme! I want it _now!!!" Another part of me is more thinking "I wonder what unexpected side effects we'll see when we have data from clinically controlled trials of large numbers of people using this technology over timespans of 40-50 years?"
- leggomylibro 8y ago
  Let me put it this way. I was an early adopter of a simple sort of body modification - I had a small neodymium disc magnet sheathed in some inert material implanted in a finger. It was cool and all, but I eventually got it removed because it was sensitive and if the inert sheath ever broke, it'd be bad news. Bodies don't like rare earth metals. When I got it removed, the person who did it turned out to know the one who put it in (small world), and they told me that the new ones were tiny slivers which were almost impossible to feel, much less remove. And that wasn't exactly comforting. Mine practically popped out, but a tiny sliver? Nowadays, I think two or three times about those sorts of 'life hacks'.

roywiggins 8y ago

You can see into the ultraviolet today with a cataract procedure. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1455745 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1455745

downrightmike 8y ago

We can handle it. Think of it like color blind and not and all the variations. Just another variation. https://www.popsci.com/article/science/woman-sees-100-times-more-colors-average-person https://www.popsci.com/article/science/woman-sees-100-times-...

jaggederest 8y ago

Human sensorium is extremely flexible. The experiment I'm thinking of used subtle vibrating motors on a belt to indicate north, and people performed exactly as though they had suddenly acquired absolute directional sense with no awareness of the vibrations after a little acclimatization. The other classic is "reverse vision" glasses that flip everything upside down. Takes about 2-6 weeks to rewire your brain, then everything appears normal... until you take them off.

dddddaviddddd 8y ago
Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKUVpBJalNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKUVpBJalNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kohUpQwZt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kohUpQwZt8

buboard 8y ago

you ll still be receiving exactly the same amount of data from your photoreceptors, just more green than before. one thing i wonder, is what happens when you sleep

pmontra 8y ago
This is an augmentation that I'd love to use but I also wonder if it's going to affect sleep. Am I going to see my eyelids when I close them? That would be bad. I hope we're not so hot to be seen by those receptors. Btw, if we are going to see the cornea that would affect vision at any time.

yourHonesty 8y ago

While you probably have the right idea, about the possibility of there being downsides to something like this, I think you’re way off base with the detail you’ve opted to focus on. Physiologically speaking, maybe the excess biochemical signaling could lead to fatigued pathways, chemical exhaust toxicity, cell death... but I think that could be overcome with a control plane that permits deactivation, so that you only use it selectively, and that passes the buck, leaving the burden of responsibility with the patient. In practical use, I think subtle social consequences are a bigger accident waiting to happen, worth more attention than the subsequent, resulting inner well being (or lack thereof) of the post-op recipient. Little things like having the ability to observe otherwise silent flatulence, notice residual keyboard heat, see through clothing, and perhaps even walls, watching dinner cook, that sort of thing would change the sense of self, sure. If it’s truly harmless, you’ll see an alarming level of adoption. But it’s the arms race of being left behind, when seemingly the rest of the world gets something like this, and you can’t jump on the bandwagon, leading to an absurd amount of dangerous elective procedures that would likely become the bigger evil. Suddenly ordinary just isn’t good enough, so what happens next?

killjoywashere 8y ago

Not sure why you're downvoted. Not only that, but when everyone is saying "harmless" and "biocomatible", I'm thinking about the sharp, highly incompatible stainless steel needle (aka 4-faced knife edge so big you can put a pipe inside it) they're using to slice through my RETINA. No thanks. Not now, not ever.

cookingrobot 8y ago

Some small number of women are tetrachromatic, meaning they’re able to see 4 primary colors. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy