
Human Retinas Grown in a Dish Reveal Origin of Color Vision - gumby
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/10/11/656560767/human-retinas-grown-in-a-dish-reveal-origin-of-color-vision
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asveikau
I am color blind. I fail a bunch of dot tests and have had minor social
embarrassment over the years talking about colors - I will be in a discussion
about color and say something nobody relates to when I misidentify a color.

However, an aside, I am not red-green color blind. I have had several
conversations with people who think red-green is the only type of color
blindness, or that red-green color blindness and color blindness are the same
thing.

Anyway, it sounds weird to me to "cure" color blindess. It causes no problem
for me other than minor social embarrassment when talking about colors. I
start to fear a world in which it's "corrected" \- are the things I have seen
all my life "incorrect"? Would I find it weird to see some familiar objects
"corrected"?

Based on my conversations with people I would also have to be suspicious that
any "cure for color blindness" would focus 100% on red-green and not do
someone like me any good.

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whatshisface
> _Anyway, it sounds weird to me to "cure" color blindess. It causes no
> problem for me other than minor social embarrassment when talking about
> colors._

Sure, but wouldn't we all like to have better senses? We probably don't need
more than black and white vision, and a narrow audio bandwidth centered on
human voice, in order to functional completely normally in modern society.

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asveikau
Well, I wonder about memories and associations formed around colors. After
reading the article I was passing a tree lined street, thinking of what
_green_ has meant to me over more than 3 decades. What if it's not "real"
green? What if it changed some day?

Also, I don't know, some people seem content with flawed senses. Eg. A lot of
people with glasses seem to shrug it off and accept it. It doesn't cause them
existential crisis. And that is a much more practically troubling problem than
color blindness.

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Yaa101
I personally think you should be not affraid, the time to get used to things
is mostly not long. See it as an enrichment similar to "I am used to see VHS
video and now I am looking at the rich details and colors of Blueray". The
experiences stored inside you concerning your lack of vision will in part stay
and some of it that is not important for the function of your system later on
will be lost.

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jwilk
Text-only version:

[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=656560767](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=656560767)

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CraneWorm
this should be the default when linking from npr

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enriquto
that should be the sane default for most of the web, actually

it is so readable it hurts

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CraneWorm
this is why I automatically go into reader mode if I don't need to interact
with the site

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bdz
Reminds me to Monet who had a cataract removal surgery and after that he was
able to see ultraviolet wavelengths

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samstave
This should be a scientifically studied endeavor. Imagine when you can go into
a Lasik place and get the UV upgrade.

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war1025
The lens of your eye is what filters out UV light. When the lens is removed
because of the cataract, there is nothing to block the UV light, so you can
see it.

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adtac
what is the range of vision without the lens? Is it expanded just on the blue
side or do we also start seeing infrared?

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simcop2387
It'll probably only expand to the UV side of things, the lens doesn't really
filter out IR at all and you can see some of it already without any changes to
your eyes. But your eye isn't very sensitive to it, so you have to block out
all other light to be able to see anything.

edit: quick way to do this [https://www.wikihow.com/Build-Near-Infrared-
Goggles](https://www.wikihow.com/Build-Near-Infrared-Goggles)

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anonytrary
This was posted yesterday...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18204637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18204637)

