3 ms·

Also since blindness is a lack of sight as we know it, it is a very large category of phenomenon. Someone who goes temporarily blind from a blow to the head ma

Also since blindness is a lack of sight as we know it, it is a very large category of phenomenon. Someone who goes temporarily blind from a blow to the head may experience something differently from someone with retinal damage. Someone who has never been able to see may experience things differently from someone who has recently suffered blindness as a result of injury or illness (and these themselves might have different experiences).

jtheory 12y ago
Right! I felt like no one was quite pointing this out. Your brain is expecting certain input in given situations, and you have layers and layers of habits based on those expectations. If you are accustomed to NOT having that input, you don't expect it. You don't fake it (imagining a black space of the size a visual field would be...), you just don't have it, and it's not a part of your interactions with the world. If the shape of your visual field changes suddenly -- you're about to pass out and you get "tunnel vision" -- it's obvious and startling. If it changes gradually, you don't even notice; you just start hitting your head on low beams more often, or bumping into table edges as you go by, until you adjust (this is from experience...).