Post #2385608

2026-05-09 05:29 UTC

> that chunk (occipital lobe) of the brain isn’t necessarily just turned off, No it's literally just people blind due to issues with the brain not just the eyes, it says that in the article. But without ever having visual input, it can't produce a visual hallucination. The brain wouldn't have any frame of reference and it's not like a "dark room" where you're still trying to see and experience a blackness, with that kind of blindness from birth there is just nothing, not the absence of visual input, the complete ignorance that a visual field exists. That's why some blind people still "stare ahead" they were likely able to see at some point or have some functional vision. 100% blind from birth and the eyes move independently and randomly. That person never learned to coordinate their eyeballs as an infant, they've never had any feedback. (Pre-emptive edit: do not assume anything about someone else's ability, crazy fucking shit exists. Like, "blindsight" is real. Super rare, but sometimes someone just doesn't conciously have vision, but if you chuck a wrench at their head instinct takes over and they duck. That does not mean someone is "faking it") The brain isn't just going to let the occipital lobe gather dust, it's going to repurpose it to handle something else like how a split brain patient who was young enough for the procedure to retain the brain plasticity necessary to form a second language center on the other hemisphere. If anything *that* is where protection is coming from, the brain has a pretty big chunk to fill in defecinicies elsewhere.

Replies (1)

@Murse@slrpnk.net 2026-05-09 13:51

I understand the claim, what I'm saying is that it would be difficult to confirm. Not having a visual reference would mean their experience of visual input would be distinct from ours, but concluding that it doesn't happen at all is a stretch. As a hypothesis, my guess would be their experience of visual sensation of a hallucination would come as raw input - flashes of light or something. The problem would come with asking that person to tell you if they see flashes of light if they've never experienced real light. How their brain re-wired that chunk is a complete mystery to an outside observer. If visual processing is reassigned, it would be to something completely unrelated: like, light perception could now be tied to decision making, with good ideas feeling brighter vs risky ideas feeling dark. Or vice versa. But to them, that processing of visual feedback isn't a visual experience, so asking if they've seen flashes of light would be like me asking you if you've ever *tasted* an ethical dilemma or some other concept: the question wouldn't make sense, and we would have no way to make it make sense without knowing ahead of time that it's tied to decision making. And if it was, a visual hallucination could come as making them feel erroneously confident about a risky behavior simply because the visual cortex is giving the perception of brightness to literally every thought. So again, that would be really hard, if not impossible to assess, and claims to have done so would need a lot of evidence to back it up.

Open ##2385609