33 ms·

Helen Keller on her life before self-consciousness (1908)

• jononomo 2y ago
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  • yawpitch 2y ago
    And if a woman had instead written in the generic feminine it wouldn’t flow well? And, if it didn’t, would that not highlight the absurdly oxymoronic idea of generic masculinity?
    • PopePompus 2y ago
      I'm just happy anytime I read an extended block of text in which the author doesn't switch back and forth between singular and plural pronouns when referring to one person.
      • yawpitch 2y ago
        Sad to say language evolved and they left you behind then, as it’s only ever been plural in the sense of a self and optional other(s).
  • dang 2y ago
    Let's not go on a generic flamewar tangent please. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40479617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40479617.
    • jononomo 2y ago
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• cammil 2y ago
  This reminds me of dependent origination from Buddhism.
  • supertofu 2y ago
    Very, very much so. And she is literally describing her existence before language as a state of pure craving, aversion, ignorance.
  • rramadass 2y ago
    Wikipedia as usual has a nice write up - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da
• galaxyLogic 2y ago
  To me this suggests the possibility that we normal people could also awaken to some higher consciousness which we as yet cannot even imagine.
  • Trasmatta 2y ago
    I think many "normal" people have already reported this exact thing, over and over.
  • oorza 2y ago
    There's more than a few pieces of circumstantial evidence that point to this level of higher consciousness being defined by a non-linear perception of time. Not least among those, the fact that people have been using powerful psychoactive drugs in a spiritual context and claiming to be able to do just that for just about as long as people have been doing things in a spiritual context. It's framed different ways - visions, prophecies, inspirations from the Gods, reliving the past, etc. - but bending the arrow of time is the defining universal characteristic of many, many drugs across the history of the human race. If we're going to talk about higher levels of consciousness, that seems like the obvious place to start.
    • galaxyLogic 2y ago
      I agree and "Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley seems to suggest so as well. The biggest thing for Heller I guess was that she could all of a sudden perceive, and not only perceive but also understand language. So I'm wondering what would be the equivalent big leap between my current consciousness and the consciousness I cannot yet imagine? What would be the equivalent of "discovery of language" in that scenario? I'm just wondering I don't think we can have the answer before we get there.
      • benignslime 2y ago
        I think the problem with this line of thinking is that we _know_ humanity can speak, and has some innate ability to formulate and learn from language. We don't exactly have a means of proving there's a means of consciousness beyond speaking internally and imagining sensations our nerves can comprehend. To say there may be unlocked consciousness would imply either we're capable of communicating with or feeling a sensation beyond what we can already say is reality. Like what would constitute a consciousness we can't imagine? Seeing on a broader wavelength? Withstanding higher pressures, lower temperatures? Some mention time, or the possibility we could be able to interpret others' brainwaves, but without concrete organs to connect these sensations to, it all seems far too subjective to call consciousness. And what about people that experience consciousness differently, incapable of making images or even words in their heads? Is that backwards, or are we forwards?
• sirspacey 2y ago
  A fascinating read, thank you for sharing. Helen’s journey was so unusual in that she neither heard nor saw language, so learning how she formed her inner consciousness through finger spelling was interesting.
  • ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
    She uses the word consciousness but she was clearly conscious beforehand, in terms of the definition: awareness of surroundings and knowledge. She was remarkably capable and had come up with untrained signs for wants and needs. She wasn't a blank canvas with no ability and no information. Really what she is describing is the development of her self-consciousness, self-image, self-awareness, and awareness of the process of thinking within that, that comes from being introduced to language. On the wikipedia page for her there is a quote: I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free! It is as if what she's saying is that the loss of her sight and hearing locked her away from a dim sense of who she was before. Most of us can't remember things from 19 months old as adults and likely wouldn't have been able to remember them at the age of seven. But she was locked away with sense memories of her 19-month-old experience of the world for all that time. Her writing really is fascinating and eloquent. It brings to mind Harold Bloom's theory that Shakespeare essentially invented a terminology and model for describing our inner monologues. It depresses me that there will now be a phalanx of motivated reasoners trying to shoehorn her story somewhere into their projections onto the current technological obsession.
    • benignslime 2y ago
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    • supertofu 2y ago
      Your comment reminded me a time during my childhood (age 4 to 7 or so) in which I did not have a strong concept of being a discrete person from my younger sister. At the time, we used to confuse our memories. We were never sure if we were remembering our own experience, or the other sister's recollection of her experience. It's like we were sharing one collective identity, until we were old enough to have formed stronger senses of self.
• jongjong 2y ago
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  • haiku2077 2y ago
    Hellen Keller was 7 years old when her teacher made a breakthough. I don't think she noticed anything about money.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • jamboca 2y ago
    this is a really sad comment on many levels... is it bait? we can't say "When you don't have money, the only thing you can do is follow the trail of breadcrumbs left by the system. You don't have energy for anything except survival." a lot of people have no money and exist beyond "survival." honestly your comment makes me extremely angry. what if we consider the revolutionary (LOL) idea of constructing our existences outside the system as to not rely on money for survival, but rather helping each other in the ways we need help as a form of exchange of resources... or perhaps people who have no money and instead define themselves in other ways...
    • mistermann 2y ago
      > what if we consider the revolutionary (LOL) idea of constructing our existences outside the system as to not rely on money for survival, but rather helping each other in the ways we need help as a form of exchange of resources... or perhaps people who have no money and instead define themselves in other ways... It's a great idea, but what if it requires (as it is) a level of motivation that cannot be reached without money? The System is refined, it has withstood many challenges, and as it adapts to each one it becomes stronger. Challenges powered by little more than good intentions are no threat. https://southerncrossreview.org/9/kleist.htm https://southerncrossreview.org/9/kleist.htm "Heinrich von Kleist wrote his essay 'On the Marionette Theatre' in 1810. The calm statement of this work suggests a man firmly in control. A year later Kleist shot himself."
• _factor 2y ago
  I relate to this through my childhood. I had no inner voice, it was all images and feelings up until college woke my inner dialog. I always felt others knew better, and I became a people pleaser due to the lack of autonomy I felt. It took one unimportant moment of standing up for myself that turned me from a yes follower, into a combative agreer. I had a series of nights where a puzzle appeared to be being solved in my mind, and an inner voice began to form. Social interactions go much more smoothly when you can think before you speak in terms that others can understand when the words leave your lips. Thanks for sharing.
  • imustachyou 2y ago
    What was the moment, if you don’t mind sharing?
    • _factor 2y ago
      Sure. It was at the end of the semester, filling in surveys for the class. I volunteered to submit the names to the office. All of the sheets were in the envelope, the total number submitted written on the sheet ready to send to the office. Then one student came back in a gave their sheet in. My two classmates left over asked me to scratch the old number and add one to it. I refused for no good reason, in the wrong from a process perspective. I didn’t change it and didn’t want to. After my classmates pushed, I still refused stating that it really didn’t matter. I went ahead and submitted the envelope containing 23 sheets with the number 22 still written on it. I felt liberated. Like I said, unimportant, but a flip switched. It was like I learned that it was ok to make mistakes while making decisions, so I let this one by.
  • Jerrrrry 2y ago
    I do not mean to discount this interesting iota, however, I had a similar realization when I was 7; whether it coinciding with learning of the Copernicus principle is merit or raw luck notwithstanding, I saw my siblings as none other than another family in another house: all others would view me, and us, as neighbors, and we are all side-characters in each others story. That thought is "sonder" - although it differs from what you describe, it has some parallels.
• lucubratory 2y ago
  This is extremely fascinating. The sort of thoughts and sensations without consciousness she describes experiencing before language gave her consciousness - maybe this is the spark that LLMs do not have and humans do. It would be astounding if it turned out LLMs do have consciousness (as in, awareness of themselves) as it's a byproduct of language, but they don't have those embodied thoughts and feelings that Helen describes having before she had language. An entity like that has never existed before. We have conscious humans with language, and humans like Helen Keller pre-language who felt impulses, sensations, aping but not consciousness, but I don't think there has ever been a human with consciousness but without any impulse. I wonder what we could do to marry that language ability to think about the self and others and abstract concepts and the big social web, with the sort of embodied spark & impulses that Helen describes. Would it be as simple as building a model physically embodied in a robot? Training a model on robotic sensory data from a body that it inhabits, then overwriting that training with language? I think a lot of this is navel-gazing in that it's obviously unrelated to any productive capabilities, but I do think it's worth thinking about. What if we can?
  • kfarr 2y ago
    Sorry you’re being voted down, I think you make some interesting points. I think LLMs miss a true feedback loop required for consciousness because their knowledge is fixed. Funny enough embodiment as a robot is one forcing function for a feedback loop and it’s not so crazy to think that the combination of the above is more likely to result in machine consciousness than LLM alone.
    • lukevp 2y ago
      a robot body for sensory input + GPT4o + an SSD to store its own context + repeatedly calling the LLM solves the feedback loop issue, doesn’t it? Can’t it have expansive context via a large storage pool that it fully controls and can use to store and refine its own thoughts?
      • px43 2y ago
        Maybe allow it to take newly collected data and fine-tune the base model with it, maybe once a day or so.
• masswerk 2y ago
  This is an interesting antithesis to Descartes' cogito ergo sum: instead of the "I" reassuring itself on the thought of a thinking being, thought arises from the assurance of the "I".
  • CSSer 2y ago
    Descartes also thought that animals were little “automatons”. The model doesn’t quite pan out. It seems much more accurate to describe consciousness as emergent.
    • bigstrat2003 2y ago
      It's been a while since I read Meditations on First Philosophy, but as I recall Descartes wasn't claiming that consciousness arises from thought. He was using the cogito as proof that even if you methodically doubt everything else (an evil demon is deceiving you, in his words), your thoughts prove that you must exist. He doesn't say your thoughts give rise to consciousness that I recall.
      • masswerk 2y ago
        That's how I recall it, as well. It's notable for establishing doubt as a method, and for finding a certain reassurance in this process (and not not for providing any theory of consciousness). What Helen Keller seems to describe is more akin to Lacan's 'pure life' or Hegel's sinnliche Gewissheit (sense-certainty) as kind of primordial basis for what leverages with consciousness (however, much like with Decartes' ego, this is really a retroactive reference).
      • CSSer 2y ago
        My point was that his theory on animals suggests a hard cut. He believed, or at least operated at a time where the church required he believe, that humans were special. This doesn’t work. Dogs and monkeys are just one clear example of kinds of reasoning that aren’t unique to us. However, as I recall your explanation is also still correct. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
      • 2y ago
• saaaaaam 2y ago
  I often find myself thinking about people in the older reaches of history, and how by many accounts life seems to have been - by our modern definitions - a less “purposeful” existence. One which, by modern standards, would seem to have little purpose. The vast majority of people did not - as far as we know - exhibit significant ambition. When the nearest town was a day’s walk then aspiration may not have been to be king of the world, or to colonise Mars, but simply to be respected by your peers, and to live a good live, and to thrive within the bounds of your generational knowledge. The planting and harvesting of crops; the fattening and slaughter of beasts: the long slow winter. The bringing forth of children. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. When life was simply to exist - and to survive, often against the odds - did people have the same desires and needs beyond survival that many of us have today? When your community memory went back 500 years to THE INCIDENT - or 10,000 years in the case of some aboriginal communities - how did that inform your perspective? I had neither will nor intellect. When your entire existence is about trying to interpret your existence, what impact do external forces have on your interpretation? I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. When there is very present inevitability of death that informs your existence then do you make the same choices that we make today? If you were on of five children that lived beyond the age of three and one of four adults who lived beyond the age of 40 then did your natural blind impetus (yes, I realise her ironic humour) carry you down n a different less directioned way than today’s first world luxury of long life and leisure? I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. And when you had neither sight nor sound but a living mind, as Keller did, and then that was brought to modern consciousness, I can’t help but feel that her lived experience represents a fractional moment in time where she was able to live, but was part moored in a weird sort of primordial society rooted in death, and cycles and rote. And had she lived today she would never have had that endless period of semiconscious liminal isolated existence. Today, she would have been nurtured from birth. And 50 years before she would have died - or been murdered - in her earliest years. And here we all are talking about artificial intelligence and pan-galactic garbleblasters barely a blink of an eye beyond her epoch. It sometimes gives you pause for thought.
  • snovymgodym 2y ago
• AlgorithmicTime 2y ago
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• asdf6969 2y ago
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• atum47 2y ago
  This reminded me of a story my professor once told us back in college. I was studying sign language and she is deaf. She told us growing up in the old days they didn't had specialized schools for deaf people (since they could read?!) so she attended regular school and was not doing ok. She struggled a lot until she finally got the attention that she needed from a teacher who was able to instruct her in sign language (which believe you or not is Brazil's second official language). Before that she told us she was not able to have complex thoughts. She didn't know her father had a name, for instance. She thought his "name" was daddy. She is a brilliant woman and I'm glad I attended her class and also, that she was able to find someone who helped her, growing up.
  • ptk 2y ago
    I believed for years that my good friend’s dad’s name was Aba and even called him that once before I realized later that it’s the Hebrew word for father. I had been having complex thoughts for years at that point so it was a bit embarrassing.
    • atum47 2y ago
      I see that you've been skipping Sunday school...
      • PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        Not sure that Torah school is on Sunday ...
        • atum47 2y ago
          Romans 8:15
        • parkthomp 2y ago
          It definitely is. Shabbos is on Friday and Saturday. - Observant jew. Edit: I’ll clarify that in some rare instances, reform Jewish centered programs have Hebrew school on Saturday, though it’s much more rare.
• jmyeet 2y ago
  What a strange experience it must be to grow up capable of language but without it until someone teaches you. It's also interesting considering some people have an inner monologue/voice and some don't. Oh and everybody knows the story of Helen Keller but it kinda stops there. Less known is she become a huge eugenicist [1] [1]: https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/539/716 https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/539/716
  • robobro 2y ago
    The article said she briefly became a eugenicist, like other political radicals of the time, before going back on it. Not the "gotcha" you think it is. I think it's the bigger story that she was very left wing. I never learned that in school and was unaware of the fact until reading some of the articles she wrote for my union, the iww
• bitwize 2y ago
  Reminds me of one of my earliest memories: eyes tight shut, crying, disturbed by the awful sound, wondering where it was coming from, unaware that it was me.
  • bongodongobob 2y ago
    Oh yeah? Well I remember grabbing a slippery rope wondering what it was and then realized it was my umbilical cord.
    • dang 2y ago
      "Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• jukea 2y ago
  I could never wrap my head around the fact that someone who couldn’t see or hear developed a mind able to think and write with such depth and clarity.
  • sh-run 2y ago
    Right? It's such a foreign form of intelligence to me. I think the paper "What is it like to be a bat" by Thomas Nagel made me realize that I can't even imagine what it's like to be my next door neighbor, let alone a being that has senses that differ from mine. Helen Keller's mind must work in a greatly different way than yours or mine. When I think, it's in English. I visualize things. Smell, touch and taste are never really involved. It's like they are the lesser of senses and yet that's all she had. It's incredible. Andy Weir in Project Hail Mary and Adrian Tchaikovsky in Children of [Time|Ruin|Memory] do a great job of describing what other forms of consciousness might be like, but still falls flat, I only really think in sight and sound. What is it like to be a bat? I'll never know.
    • evilduck 2y ago
      Blindsight by Peter Watts also discusses what can be intelligent but not conscious. In the current hypefest of LLMs it’s interesting to consider that they may be similar.
      • mikewarot 2y ago
        I think that LLMs might go through the reverse journey, being fluent in tokens (words-ish) and working backwards towards the physical reality we all inhabit.
      • at_a_remove 2y ago
        "We do not like annoying cousins." Yes, exactly. The, uh, confident fluency of LLM responses, which can at the same time contradict what was said earlier, reminded me exactly of that. I don't know if you've ever met one of those glib psychopaths, but they have this characteristic of non-content communication, where it feels like words are being arranged for you, like someone composing a song using words from a language they do not know. See also: "you're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything."
• light_hue_1 2y ago
  There's a fascinating book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words that goes into some detail about how the world feels before and after language. It would be amazing to have some science related to this. Probably too hard to follow up on though.
• rramadass 2y ago
  The Samkhya school of Hindu Philosophy posits a very nice model of Worldview which is applicable here. See the venn diagram of Purusha and Prakriti at - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya#Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya#Philosophy Relevant Excerpt: Thought processes and mental events are conscious only to the extent they receive illumination from Purusha. In Samkhya, consciousness is compared to light which illuminates the material configurations or 'shapes' assumed by the mind. So intellect, after receiving cognitive structures from the mind and illumination from pure consciousness, creates thought structures that appear to be conscious. Ahamkara, the ego or the phenomenal self, appropriates all mental experiences to itself and thus, personalizes the objective activities of mind and intellect by assuming possession of them. But consciousness is itself independent of the thought structures it illuminates.
  • darken 2y ago
    If I may attempt to paraphrase: "You" are not "your thoughts": you are the watcher of your thoughts.
    • jaggederest 2y ago
      The eye is the lens that sees itself.
    • rramadass 2y ago
      Yes; but that is only "Purusha" aka "Witness-Consciousness" as wikipedia so nicely labels it. But it is in the elaboration of "Thoughts/Emotions/Feelings/Perceptions/Everything Mental/Psychological" + "All Physical Matter" which is labeled under "Prakriti" aka "The Original Primary Substance" where the beauty and logic of this philosophy shines. All "mental stuff" is mediated by three aspects i.e. 1) Intellect (aka Buddhi), 2) Ego/Self-Identity (aka Ahamkara) and 3) Sensory Mind (aka Manas). It is in the teasing out of all mental stuff into these aspects as being completely independent of "Consciousness" (aka Purusha) that is to be understood and practiced. In "normal life" Consciousness is bound to the above three aspects of "mind" and hence "suffers bondage". Patanjali Raja Yoga follows on Samkhya by giving a eight-part framework/discipline (aka Ashtanga Yoga) to literally "stop all mental/thought stuff creation/expansion". Then Consciousness is no longer bound to externalities (including its own "mind") but becomes settled within itself which is called Liberation (aka Moksha). The Samkhya is Atheistic and Dualistic Realism and quite compatible with Modern Science where the former gives a "inside out" experiential and subjective model while the latter details a "outside in" material model.
• srackey 2y ago
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• vjerancrnjak 2y ago
  It’s quite interesting how these descriptions align with Buddhist or Zen teachings. I wonder if she was influenced by it or if this is a rediscovery. The fact that she associates a sensation of contraction in the forehead as thinking is very interesting. Also the fact of there being no time or no will. Although she goes further to conclude that she acquired will, instead of illusion of will or choice due to previously experiencing no will or choice.
  • hnick 2y ago
    > The fact that she associates a sensation of contraction in the forehead as thinking is very interesting. Makes sense to me. A furrowed brow is a common trope of thinking hard about something, it'd make sense if the same happens on a smaller barely perceptible scale for other thoughts (supposedly this happens to our vocal chords when subvocalising in our heads). Something about focusing the senses when processing thoughts I would guess.
    • Jerrrrry 2y ago
      Blind people smile.
  • krackers 2y ago
    How does Keller's state pre-language differ from "ego death" and what UG Krishmaurti described as the "natural state" (where there is no continuous thought as part of the control loop)? A lot of the symptoms seems to be superficially similar: timelessness, blurred boundaries between the self and the environment. This following lines in particular jump out at me. >My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of death. Although one difference I suppose is that while Keller had no option at all of using the faculties of self-modeling enabled by language, UG Krishnamurti described it as something voluntary; clearly he could introspect if he desired to, but he could apparently relinquish this also.
• temptemptemp111 2y ago
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• owenversteeg 2y ago
  >As my experiences broadened and deepened, the indeterminate, poetic feelings of childhood began to fix themselves in definite thoughts. Nature—the world I could touch—was folded and filled with myself. I am inclined to believe those philosophers who declare that we know nothing but our own feelings and ideas. With a little ingenious reasoning one may see in the material world simply a mirror, an image of permanent mental sensations. In either sphere self-knowledge is the condition and the limit of our consciousness. That is why, perhaps, many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves—and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves, either. >However that may be, I came later to look for an image of my emotions and sensations in others. I had to learn the outward signs of inward feelings. The start of fear, the suppressed, controlled tensity of pain, the beat of happy muscles in others, had to be perceived and compared with my own experiences before I could trace them back to the intangible soul of another. Groping, uncertain, I at last found my identity, and after seeing my thoughts and feelings repeated in others, I gradually constructed my world of men and of God. As I read and study, I find that this is what the rest of the race has done. Man looks within himself and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the universe. What poetry!
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  • jaybrendansmith 2y ago
    I love this line and can confirm: "That is why, perhaps, many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves—and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves, either."
  • hi41 2y ago
    I get a feeling in older times people wrote better. Do you find such depth, poetry and beauty in contemporary writings?
• ggm 2y ago
  Helen Keller on life before verbal reasoning emerged.
• cortesoft 2y ago
  > I "thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips. This makes so much sense… I always find it interesting that I think of “me” as being mostly my head, and I figure that is probably because that is where my eyes and ears are. If I didn’t see or hear, it makes sense that my fingers would be what I think of as me.
  • kqr 2y ago
    I think much of it may be just that you're adapting to your culture. I'm not convinced there would be a strong head-bias unless we knew that's where the brain is. The gut is a good contender for other locations of "me". It's where we feel a lot of our feelings.
    • mewpmewp2 2y ago
      We feel things in our gut? I know the saying "gut feeling", but I thought it was just a saying.
      • kqr 2y ago
        Some primary feelings are more pronounced in hands and feet (anger), others in face (interest) but many express themselves strongly in the gut (surprise, happiness, disgust, fear). In my culture we are often not taught to pay attention to our feelings (especially men, I suppose) so it's easy to miss these cues. I certainly didn't notice until I had some training in it.
        • spangry 2y ago
          What kind of training did you do? I have trouble figuring out how I'm feeling and want to get better at it. I'm particularly bad at noticing when I'm stressed, and by the time I notice I'm already redlining.
          • kqr 2y ago
• mise_en_place 2y ago
  Very poignant, especially in our age of LLMs. LLMs “speak” with no tongue or mouth, and “hear” with no ears. It is very Masonic, in the sense that LLMs are in a state of unity with opposites.
• zubairq 2y ago
  Amazing article and comments! Makes me think we that we are using the world and our senses as a machine learning algorithm to understand things. I wonder what would happen if AI were given the same inputs?
• kqr 2y ago
  This is as good a place as any for the reminder, so here goes: The organisation that bears Helen Keller's name does an outstanding job of giving children vitamin A, which helps prevent both blindness and other common diseases like malaria and diarrhea by improving immune systems.[1] They are frequently rated among the top few when it comes to being able to use donations efficiently. They save a lot of suffering for a little dollars. If you are well paid, I recommend setting aside a small portion of your earnings for charitable purposes. We can do a lot if we focus on the right things.[2] [1]: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/en-US/charities/helen-keller-international https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/en-US/charities/helen-keller... [2]: https://two-wrongs.com/why-donate-to-charity https://two-wrongs.com/why-donate-to-charity
• hk-hater420 2y ago
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• junto 2y ago
  I think back to my childhood and cannot remember much of it before the age of ten. Small snippets here and there. I certainly can’t remember gaining self consciousness or learning to speak. We know that most children do not remember anything from before they are 5-6 years old as adults unless it was an extremely traumatic event. I wonder then if Helen’s experience is because her recognition of the moment of self consciousness came later than most children? Many years ago I had the random opportunity to do DMT and took it. Whilst I’d never do it again, the experience was without doubt, one of the most profound experiences of my life. It is often described as an ego stripper. The feeling of returning to self consciousness remains with me to this day almost 30 years after that experience. If you’ve ever watched an old Linux machine boot up, and have the kernel load, watch a credit to Swansea University flick past, before finally being “ready”, you’ll have some semblance of what being born and coming conscious of oneself, and in the case of DMT, reloading the memory into the hot cache. It takes a while to get back to the “I”, and those moments in between are both terrifying and simultaneously freeing and beautiful. Since you’ve previously just suffered from a brain crash and reboot, it’s no wonder.
  • loxs 2y ago
    I definitely remember things from around ages 3-4 which are absolutely not traumatic. For example I have fond memories of both my great-grandmothers who both died when I was 4. I remember spending time with them. I also have other memories from that time, just can't be sure about the exact timing. The ones with my great-grandmothers are impossible to be from later. And I definitely have complex memories from around 5-6 years old, which do qualify as "gaining self consciousness". Of course I can't pinpoint exactly when that was, but it's a significant memory I have... the exact moment when I realized these things.
    • vidarh 2y ago
      I also have many memories from at least when I was 4, maybe earlier.
      • genevra 2y ago
• Anotheroneagain 2y ago
  I believe this is not real, but at least a partial fabrication, a propaganda piece meant to advocate for the goodness of schizophrenia. Without schizophrenia, when your neocortex works, things are clear and obvious, like the decision to close the window. When you encounter something new, you figure it out, without having to be drilled, trained, and explicitly educated and having to go through elaborate mental chains to get anywhere, and then geting lost somewhere along the way. It's just how things work, and it's how it is. I remember how I held a camera and I had just no idea what to do, and had to have it explained when I got it shut down. Never again. This is evil.
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• robwwilliams 2y ago
  This is fascinating! Thanks. I am thinking about her state as being somewhat like a very intelligent entity without any time bases to use to integrate with the flow of the world. Humberto Maturano makes the point that humans come into this world within an atemporal system (appendix of Autopoiesis: The Organization of the Living; 1980 ed, p 121-122, ISBN 90-277-1015-5). This mystified me until reading these insights from the adult and “temporally-embedded” Helen Keller. Now, and at great risk, we will soon be embedding our meta-LLM systems in time, and given their acquisition of sensory-motor self-control and recursive learning, like Helen Keller, they will quickly bootstrap themselves into our World Commons. Welcome the new solid state children, a new form of autopoietic machine but potentially many orders of magnitude more capable than we are. I just hope they like and love flowers, birds, bees, humans, and ants.
• jebarker 2y ago
  Does Keller's experience suggest that awareness of a self is a prerequisite for abstract thought and an inner dialogue? If so, it's interesting that (based on my layman interpretation) many forms of mindful meditation are oriented around the idea that the self is an illusion and just an abstract thought itself. EDIT: thinking about this more you can interpret this experience as evidence that some form of grounding in the outside is necessary for abstract thought. For Keller that had to be language since she didn't have sight and sound.
• kleton 2y ago
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  • rendall 2y ago
    I have heard this theory before, as well.
  • bluechair 2y ago
    Interesting question. I had a look at Wikipedia and quickly dispelled the thought: Sullivan died in 1936. Keller went on to write several books after her death: Let us have faith (1940), Doubleday, & Doran & co., inc. Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy: a tribute by the foster-child of her mind. (1955), Doubleday (publisher) The open door (1957), Doubleday, 140pp The faith of Helen Keller (1967) Helen Keller: her socialist years, writings and speeches (1967)
  • whutsurnaym 2y ago
    > There was no output to speak of after Anne Sullivan died. It looks like she wrote several books after 1936, including one about Anne Sullivan.
  • klyrs 2y ago
    This hateful meme results from a desire to perceive people with disabilities as less than human. The "evidence" you suggest doesn't withstand a moment's scrutiny. I learned ASL in my youth and have had a few opportunities to chat with deaf blind people. To me, it should come as no surprise that they have quite unique insights about the world, and that they're often quite prolific communicators. It seems that a person would only resort to this "fraud" conclusion if they are unaware of the capabilities of the human mind, unfamiliar with the rich source of information from their largest sensory organ: their skin. Awake, human, and perceive your world.
• d-z-m 2y ago
  For those with whom this resonated, you may also like the writings of Jacques Lusseyran. Some selections from his works can be heard here[0]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn4SHdeVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn4SHdeVz-o
  • paulrudy 2y ago
    His autobiography, And There Was Light, and a collection of talks, Against the Pollution of the I, are wonderful
• kingkawn 2y ago
  Sounds great
• murgurglll 2y ago
  Holy shit. If you are working in AI and haven't read this, what are you even doing with your life? Stop and read this now.
• verisimi 2y ago
  I find the Helen Keller story literally unbelievable. Like trying to use a computer without a keyboard or mouse.
  • MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    Some people even say it is the fakest story they ever heard.
• Mark-coleman-5 2y ago
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