I am reminded that the Deaf have their own mythology. American Sign Language is distinct; it's not English. Accordingly it has its own culture, including its own myths. Many of them are fables and stories from the western tradition slightly adapted. But some are original.
One common theme in American Deaf mythology (but I'd bet it's told elsewhere too) is stories about a world which is visually oriented. There's an ASL word for this world but English doesn't have one. Sometimes it's translated as Eyeth a.k.a. "Eye-Earth".
It's more than just a world where everyone is deaf or where everyone communicates in ASL. It has something like spiritual meaning to some of those who tell stories about it; in that world the Deaf are not disabled, not in the social way that matters.
The point is that disability exists within the context of the world we live in, and the society we've built is one that largely assumes people have both sight and hearing.
Implying that they wouldn’t be detrimental if the world was “oriented” differently.
I have never had to deal with a giant cat stalking me and being unable to hear it. I do routinely have to deal with intercom systems which I cannot hear, though.
The world most humans inhabit is human-made. And the human-made environment can be remade.
For a simplified example, imagine two government buildings, one with and one without an accessibility ramp. A person in a wheelchair is able to access the former, even if going up the ramp takes longer than the stairs. Not having the option to take the stairs is still detrimental to the person, but they're still able to access those services. The second disables the person, as they're no longer able to access important services because they are unable to take the stairs.
Accommodations help keep "detrimental" from meaning disabled. The voice at the street crossing that says "walk", curb cuts, and closed captioning all help people participate in daily normal life, despite having those sensory disabilities.
There are other designs that are more holistic as well - for example, if those same government services are accessible online, or the agent makes house calls, it naturally makes the services more accessible to more people. (Note: I'm not saying that this specific example is a good idea - just as an example of "how we design our society affects how people can participate in it.")
So what we consider to be a disability does seem to be a function of what we consider to be normal.
Obviously? How could it be based on anything else? People are just much more uncomfortable with making normative statements than they used to be.
The point is that the capability is measurable but the capabilities we consider to be essential are based on normalcy and thus effectively arbitrary. Eugenicists make the argument that evolution demonstrates that the classification is not arbitrary because deafness and blindness confer measurable fitness disadvantages, but they don’t actually bridge the gap of deriving an ought from an is.
> Obviously?
If the answers to these problems are obvious to you, perhaps you’d consider writing a book instead of participating in a discussion forum. I would encourage you to review the site guidelines.
But wait, you do sense electromagnetic fields in the 380 to 750 nm wavelength range, and remarkably well, to great profit.
The only fitness advantage that matters for evolution is whatever gets you to pass down your genes, versus someone else not passing down theirs. If sensing low-frequency electromagnetism, or static magnetic fields, were advantageous in the context of everything else that you are, for passing down your genes, you would have it by now.
Migratory birds can sense the Earth's magnetic field for navigation; if you needed to migrate thousands of kilometers every year (due to lacking other advantages to make that unnecessary), you might evolve that.
Eg, the laryngeal nerve in giraffes is ridiculous — but having gone down that path before their current form, there’s little way to fix it. They’re now stuck in a local optima of long necks (good) with poor wiring (bad).
Hearing has evolved numerous times independently, at least six times in major vertebrate groups (mammals, lizards, frogs, birds, crocodiles, turtles) for airborne sound and at least 19-20 times in insects
Vision and hearing have evolved so many times because they give an absolutely huge survival advantage.
To my knowledge, photosensitivity has arisen a few times independently and eyes again a few times from shared photosensitive receptors in animalia but I'm fairly sure hearing in the groups you mention is a tetrapod synapomorphy.
Light is EM fields. A possible scenario is a battle at night with others having night vision equipment and you don’t. You can absolutely be described as disabled or being at a significant disadvantage.
Because, like you say, what we consider normal in that scenario is to have a proper night vision equipment.
In the land of the blind, why would anyone pay attention to this weirdo's ramblings about "rain-clouds"? Obviously they're just feeling changes to temperature, pressure, and humidity. Oh, and they know what shapes things are? Wow! So does everyone else who's touched the things. Sure, that "how many fingers am I holding up?" party trick is pretty neat (probably cold reading), but not something we should make policy decisions on the basis of.
You underestimate the extent to which humans are social creatures. See also: H. G. Wells's story The Country of the Blind. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Blind
Then again, just throwing rocks might be pretty effective.
You're still thinking in terms of "sighted society versus blind society", which is not what we are discussing. (Unless you're thinking "sighted and superintelligent", in which case I'd say sight is probably redundant.)
The main advantage in an urban combat environment, I think, would be the ability to detect quiet people at a distance. Not needing to see makes it easier to hide yourself from visual inspection, but why would anyone develop this skill if nobody can see? Then, if the only person to practice with is the enemy you're trying to hide from… Also, you'd be able to dodge projectiles by watching the person throwing them, who might not telegraph their throws audibly, but would probably do so visually. This would let you defeat a single ranged opponent, possibly two – though I doubt your ability to dodge the rocks from three people at once for long enough to take one down.
But what do you gain from winning fights against small numbers of people? (I doubt very much you could win against a group of 30 or 40 opponents, with only sight as your advantage.) You would run out of food, shelter would be hard to come by, and every theft of resources would risk defeat: and one defeat against a society means it's over. Either you're killed, imprisoned, or they decide to do something else with you, presumably depending how much of a menace you've been. Your only options are to attempt a self-sufficient lifestyle (which you probably won't survive for long), to flee somewhere they haven't heard of your deeds, or to put yourself at the mercy of the justice system (and hope it isn't too retributive).
They sure suck at aiming.
But the best way to exploit the ability to see when everyone else is blind is to provide a service blind people can't. You could be a much better doctor and diagnose diseases based on site and perform surgery much better.
In any case, I'm not sure this even survives transposing to other senses that humans are weak in, such as smell (like prey animals) or magnetic direction (like migratory birds). A human who randomly had these would indeed be seen as superpowered, but that wouldn't become a statement that all regularly-abled humans are now disabled for missing the "critical" long range sense.
Deaf predators must have a field day sneaking up on deaf prey.
As life evolved on Earth, so did the senses that life forms possess, and that happened for a reason. If you hare missing some senses, there is a sense in which you are set back millions of years of evolution.
It's not just about human society, but biology.
Someone with no sensory disabilities, sent into the wilderness, has better chances of survival than someone with such disabilities, other factors being equal. That has nothing to do with society, which is absent from that scene. Civilization is the best place for people with disabilities, even if it is geared toward those without. For that matter, it's better for animals with disabilities. People help disabled pets lead quality lives; wild animals with disabilities don't live long.
I wouldn’t read too much into the logic of mythological worlds and realms.
Their purpose is narrative, not scientific. They don’t even need to be internally consistent.
No one expects Greek mythology to make scientific sense. Other mythologies should be seen from a similar perspective and understood that they are narrative, not logical.
Applying a scientific viewpoint to such mythologies results in a new narrative. The scientific view is always wrong unless scientific correctness is part of that world’s narrative.
I add this because a lot of people don’t know narrative purpose.
To put it briefly:
Other peoples worlds aren’t wrong when they don’t match “what makes sense in the real world”.
The whole purpose of the world they are describing is to imagine a place where they are not limited.
The fact that this place doesn’t make sense or can’t exist is irrelevant.
It was made to be aspirational, not realistic.
Also ableism and othering are very much a thing that disables peoples' ability to function in a society and come exclusively from the social environment rather than from the disabled themselves.
One common modern version of the fable is told with an astronaut who finds that they've landed on a parallel Earth where everyone is Deaf and sign language is the norm.
The book A Study of American Deaf Folklore by Susan D Rutherford is a bit dated now but interesting in exploring the functions and roles of myths here.
It’s about a guy who finds his way into a valley in a mountain range where everyone has been blind for generations. At first he thinks that he’ll have “a superpower“ because he’s sighted. Instead the people of the valley view his sight as an illness.
If he had kept quiet in the face of scepticism he would have had a huge advantage.
I see it as a story about people's unwillingness to believe in something that is outside their own experience and that of their society.
2x6: white
2x4: blue
2x2: grey
This makes interesting patterns, since you are more likely to use certain bricks in certain positions.
Through user groups, I’ve had access to direct ordering. I could order off the same list as Lego Store managers see. It truly was a random hodgepodge. Manager said sometimes they don’t even get to choose. Somewhere are warehouses of stockpiled parts, some of which are surplus after a set is retired.
For example, I chose a box of sand blue 1x2, and a box of 2x2 low slope red roof peaks. Imagine those languishing in a Pick a Brick wall. Myself, I had a lot of roof to build but I still have a thousand unused.
If Lego took consumer or store orders at random, it would complicate their planning which allocates production for sets, months in advance. Only the Model Shops got anything they asked for.
Originally designed for architects etc, it's still going. https://youtube.com/watch?v=I_OUxVuoxjk
If each bangle had 40 or so pixels, you’d get 80 pixels with one on each arm.
vunderba•1mo ago
I assumed it was about someone who took a huge number of standard rectangular LEGO bricks with the 6/8 raised studs, then laboriously shaved them off to create all the necessary braille patterns, and used them on large LEGO boards to quickly assemble messages/notifications for blind readers.
Reality - it's about using lego to help "visualize" architecture.
EDIT: Apparently this already exists!
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/play-with-braille-english...
tdeck•1mo ago
https://evengrounds.com/about/
ctoth•4w ago
I'm a blind guy. I have a distinct interest in starships -- I have every Eaglemoss model, and many many more.
If I click this link I am totally going to get sucked into having people design and print me starships -- I need another project like I need another hole in my head.
UltraSane•4w ago
bell-cot•4w ago
toast0•4w ago
I blame my childhood. Everyone always said the Pacific Ocean is to the west. So naturally the direction I went to go to the beach on the pacific ocean should be West. Especially when the north/south freeway crosses the street I take to the beach at a pretty good angle (well it's more like 45 degrees). Turns out I actually go south to go to the beach, the freeway is roughly parallel to the coast and north/south freeways sometimes travel due east/west and I have a real hard time with cardinal directions, and even if I understand where the directions are when outside, when I enter a building, especially if I go up stairs or an elevator, my sense of where the cardinal directions from inside the building is likely to be way off.
Thankfully, there's not a big impact from not knowing where room walls are relative to each other. :P
bell-cot•4w ago
Let me tell you about the friend-of-friend, who was cutting holes in his dining room wall to install [whatever], oblivious to the bathroom on the other side, and the water pipes for that bathroom...
toast0•4w ago
coryrc•4w ago
UltraSane•4w ago
tdeck•4w ago
http://see3d.org/
vunderba•4w ago
https://evengrounds.com/3d-tactile-maps
I'm not at all confident in my ability to take an unknown object, run my hands over it, manipulate it, and even get close to being able to describing / recreating it though it does sound like this has the makings of a fun Cranium board mini-game.
abeyer•4w ago
https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Modulex