I did this years ago, in the 80's, because a classmate challenged me to after we were talking about all the challenges he had as a blind student. On his advice, I never left my apartment :-). I went for more than 24 hours, closer to 40, from Friday night to Sunday around noon when my roommates returned.
I had a basement apartment and my bedroom was totally dark without lights on, and the rest of the apartment very close to totally dark, so that really helped compared to the author as I only had to don a blindfold before leaving my room.
I tried to replicate the experience of being blind and did a whole bunch of stuff; I cooked 4 simple meals (very, very, carefully) did the dishes and put everything away each time, tried to clean my place, showered and shaved, drank a few beers, played music on my roommates CD stereo system, practised karate. I reorganized the cupboard after the first breakfast.
Maybe I have better balance than the author, but I had no trouble moving around my apartment and certainly never crawled anywhere. Heck, I became quite adept at simply walking to my roommates room, going through their CD collection and putting something on every hour (their collection was alphabetically sorted so I was sort of able to find what I was looking for with a few tries).
Mostly, I was bored. I never became lethargic on anything like that, maybe because I was getting up and moving around all the time. Maybe the karate kata and other exercises helped.
I lucid dreamed for the first time. I experienced the flashes he talked about as well. I learned to be careful where I put things as I spent the first morning constantly trying to figure out where I had set things down. I gained an appreciation for how it would be to totally blind (my classmate had zero vision).
Mostly, I was surprised the author didn't DO anything. Didn't try to make meals (ants? wtf?). Basically just sat and listened to music. No wonder he got lethargic.
i have extremely good object permanence for a sighted person. i often say i can “see in the dark” when my partner asks me how i found something in our pitch black bedroom, but it is really that i remember where exactly in physical space the end of the qtip is on my nightstand because i can’t actually see anything.
my partner finds this incredibly perplexing and is not able to do this. the dark is impenetrable to her. if she cannot see it, it no longer exists, so she will not even attempt to reach out blindly for her glasses in the dark, for instance.
i think we are on extreme ends of this spectrum, but you seem closer to me than my partner or the author. humans are so weird and cool.
I'm a coin flip. Either I have no clue where I left something or I'm like you and can walk over to it with my eyes closed and pick it up without having to fumble for the handle. Being blind folded just made me have to take the time to remember where I was putting something ... it didn't take long to become good at.
I have this to some degree -- my eyes are blurry in daytime by default, so I dont really notice the details of things even when my eyes are open.
However I do have a good concept of the gist of objects learned through muscle memory, and I frequently reach for things without looking whilst not knowing what lies between me and it (e.g. I know that I can get to my sofa in a single jump, but I would never walk to it because I have only a rough idea that there is a coffee table somewhere in between)
I do also frequently cycle back from work late at night through in starless/moonless countryside, so I have a reasonably developed sense of confidence and caution when manoeuvring without sight (i.e. 95% of the time there is nothing to worry about, you only have to surrender yourself to the notion that you might get injured in that 5%)
> For the bathroom, I (a man) peed sitting down. I’m not ashamed to admit it.
I've never understood why it is considered un-masculine for men to pee sitting down. Or even if it is, why so many men pee standing up just to play along. It's one thing to use a urinal in a public toilet, but at home it's potentially messy and probably not hygienic to release a partially aerosolised stream of urine just below waist height.
For somebody who is nearly 2m tall peeing without sitting down means uniformly coating my legs and the immediate surroundings with pee droplets of high velocity.
I consume most news in a day when I’m sitting on the toilets.
Sitting down not only makes it more practical to handle my phone at the same time, it’s also an excuse to make my pee break a few minutes longer, thus being more informed on what’s going on in the world and the HN realm.
The only issue I see with this routine is that I can’t pee standing up anymore without making a mess 3 times out of 4.
In Germany it is the normal way to pee (I am not German but all my German friends told me so).
I also do it at home (I am French so this is not a typical thing to do here) and noticed that one of my kids (two boys) spontaneously does it too (at home).
I hope that everyone pees sitting when going to the toilet at night, without switching on all the lights...
Not to mention that if you're sharing a household with someone who prefers to sit, you either a) leave the seat up, which is inconsiderate or b) keep raising and lowering it every time, which seems like it's more work than sitting down in the first place.
I'm amused how people considering raising or lowering the seat a lot of work. I don't understand why it is an issue. You should anyway close the lid when flushing to prevent toilet water and fecal matter from spraying around.
I said it's more work than sitting down. Both is not a lot of work. A relative increase in a value does not imply an absolutely high value. I imagine if you enjoy peeing while standing up, it's worth the effort.
I don't mean to offend but this is ridiculous and I say this as a woman. Just leave the damn seat the way you used it, if it's inconsiderate for you not to leave it lowered for me, it's inconsiderate of me not to leave it up for you. Turns out able adults are perfectly capable of operating a toilet.
I always got the impression that this is a predominantly US cultural thing to fret about. I mean, women have the lift the seat as well when the toilet brush has to come into action.
Because you are moving a not completely dry object to and from a porcelain bowl with the express intent of brushing away faecal matter. Chances of dripping something (water probably, filth possibly) on the seat are non-negligible.
Everyone in my house closes the lid after they've used the toilet because I don't want a great big open funnel perfect for accidentally dropping things into. Also it conveniently stops any petty arguments about seat up/down before they even start.
I have never in my life considered closing the lid because of a fear of dropping things in it.
The only time I have my hands anywhere over the toilet bowl with anything in them is when I'm doing home improvement chores, or bleeding the radiator mounted there.
Urine is sterile. Toilets are not. I'd say it's much more hygienic to urinate standing. We don't sit down because we don't have to. It's really as simple as that.
Urine isn't sterile, though[1], and there's good reason to believe that the toilet seat is one of the least concerns when it comes to sources for bacteria[2].
I can buy the argument for "I prefer not to sit", but I'm not convinced about the hygienic aspects.
On the eighth day, God came down with his bag of tricks and offered to both Adam and Eve some goodies.
Heard from the heavens: First In The Bag, Pee Standing Up
Adam immediately gets excited. "Oh, that would be so useful as I'm in the fields toiling all day. I wish for that ability to be bestowed upon myself". And so it was, that Adam could now pee standing up.
Heard from the heavens: Second In The Bag, Multiple Orgams
Life would be hell for a man with multiple orgasms. Imagine an itch that won't go away no matter how much you scratch it. The male urge to mate is very strong, but goes away the instant the act is completed. Sex does indeed mean everything to men some of the time, but it means very little most of the time. Without that relief and absolute end to the act it would be more like a never ending drug addiction than something worthwhile pursuing.
Someone actually blind here. The sleepiness is most likely because of the scarf and keeping their eyes closed. Use blackened goggles next time and drop the curtains to decrease the light pollution in the apartment. Also, check how Voice Over works on the IPhone if you want some productivity.
Something I've been wondering is, how do you enable accessibility features like voiceover on a new iPhone or generally just a computer? There seems to be a catch 22 of sorts from what I can tell?
On activation, both IPhone and Android phones offer to turn on accessibility and people turn it off. Windows does not have accessible installation as far as I know, but it also has some basic screen reader on activation. Don't take my word for Windows though because usually I try to put a better screen reader as fast as possible.
I can't say for Macs or Linux, though I've heard that now some distros also come with a screen reader and it could be switched on at some moment.
On iPhone, it's a triple press of the home button, there's something else for the new devices. If that doesn't work for some reason, you must do it via iTunes.
On Android, it depends, sometimes it doesn't work at all, usually it's pressing and holding both volume buttons at the same time, I believe there was also something involving double tapping and holding with two fingers in some older Android versions. It's especially bad when you want to do the setup in something other than English and your manufacturer doesn't include the tts for your language, which might leave your device in a half-broken state. Fragmentation is a huge problem here, and the general guideline is to have a sighted person handy, or get an iPhone and be done with it.
Windows 10 has ctrl+Windows+enter. For older versions of Windows, you either needed someone sighted for first install, used a special Windows PE image donwloaded from god knows where, or prepared your own unattended installation media if you knew how.
MacOS has Command+f5, not sure about the new ones with the touchbar, but they have something too.
On Linux it depends, usually Super+Alt+S for distros that boot straight into a GUI. For other distros, it's either a special image that talks (Arch), or a certain action you need to do in the boot menu, (s then enter in Debian). There are also special distributions for the blind that talk on boot.
Older devices of any kind usually required sighted help for setup. For a long time, WIndows didn't have any usable free screen reader for example, nevermind a built-in one, so you had to find a sighted person to do the setup and launch the screen reader's installer.
The methods for Android, Windows, MacOS and Linux work both on first install and during normal usage, the method for iOS works only on setup and needs to be manually configured later.
If the carrier hasn't fucked with the defaults, you should be able to launch VoiceOver with a tripple-press on the home button. I don't know how it works with the new home-button-less devices, I dont have any of those.
I'm a conscientious objector. For justice reasons we had to be treated equally to the guys (and it was only guys back then) doing military service. That meant not only that we had a right to our service banana[1], but also that, at least a percentage of us, had to go through boot camp.
It was only a small percentage, but of course, I won the lottery ticket and was sent off for six weeks of conscientious objectors boot camp.
Apart from the usual indoctrination, which I suppose was similar to military boot camp, we had to do things that were supposed to prepare us for our jobs in hospitals and homes for the elderly.
One of these things was the Wheel Chair Experiment. Groups of three: one guy in a wheelchair, one guy playing the nurse, third guy observing how people react. To make it interesting, we made a day trip by train to a nearby tourist town - and coincidentally place of pilgrimage. Of course, we were given stern warnings not to pull off what some of our predecessors allegedly had done:
Roll into the sanctuary, jump out of the wheelchair and shout: "I am healed! I am healed!!"
Apart from the joking and fun young people have together, it was a very chilling experience. Going up, only a slight rise is strenuous, and for steeper rises, the pivoting front wheels of the chair always turned crosswise.
Entering the train in the morning we cheated because we were overburdened with the task. That made our instructor really mad because we couldn't stay in character for not even half an hour. I never dared to lift the front wheels because I was too afraid of falling backward with my head hitting the ground. When it comes to people, most just look away from you, which made me very uncomfortable.
It was an experience I will never forget. I have the deepest respect for anyone managing life in a wheelchair.
[1] Service personnel on ships had the right to receive a part of their pay in fruit or vegetables for historical reasons. For equality, this was extended to every soldier and later to conscientious objectors too. Humorously this was called the service banana. I only know this because it was part of our boot camp curriculum.
>[1] Service personnel on ships had the right to receive a part of their pay in fruit or vegetables for historical reasons. For equality, this was extended to every soldier and later to conscientious objectors too. Humorously this was called the service banana. I only know this because it was part of our boot camp curriculum.
what country is this? I searched around on google and couldn't find anything relevant except this comment.
Late 90s Germany. Here is what German Wikipedia has to say about it (my own translation):
"In addition, the Zivildienstleistende had a claim to non-monetary benefits [..] the food allowance (maximum 7.20 Euro/Day = double food rate) was granted if the service office and the ZDL agreed to waive the right to non-monetary benefits in form of natural produce
at the beginning of the time of service." [1]
Benefits in this context are strictly non-monetary claims (Sachbezüge) in contrast to monetary benefits which are discussed in the preceding paragraphs.
I couldn't find the text of the original law from that time. It could have been Ersatzdienstgesetz, Zivildienstgesetz, Wehrsoldgesetz or any of the associated administrative regulations. The changes to these laws are all publicly available but I couldn't find complete older versions. There are many changes and they always contain lots of modifications to other unrelated laws. Changes from the relevant timeframe are published as scans of paper documents and not searchable. Unfortunately this makes the relevant paragraph really hard to find. Maybe someone reading this could give a hint...
Also this would not answer questions about the history of the law but it would be a start to know the exact name and date of the law and more so the number of the paragraph.
Skimming through the old documents reminded me of another curiosity: The law regulating alternative service talked a lot about death of the ZDL. Again this only makes sense when you know that the law was derived from the law governing military service. The law defined several levels of disability for service and death was just the highest level.
[1]
"Darüber hinaus hatte der Zivildienstleistende Anspruch auf Sachbezüge [..] das Verpflegungsgeld (maximal 7,20 Euro/Tag = doppelter Verpflegungssatz) wurde gewährt, wenn Dienststelle und ZDL bei Beginn der Zivildienstzeit einvernehmlich vereinbarten, auf Naturalien zu verzichten."
It is not easy to find the right balance between not looking and looking too much, while keeping this natural.
I worked for years with a disabled colleague and it took me some time to actually not see the wheelchair anymore, and to wamk next to him in a normal, casual way (for lack of better words)
We did that too, and indeed, very memorable. Not in Barth by any chance? - wonder if that was something done in different places or a thing for that specific school.
If your interested in this and in the area of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) I can recommend going to muZIEum (https://muzieum.nl/).
They have (among things) an indoor recreation of various day to day scenario's (a home, a supermarket, a street, etc.) in a pitch black environment. You go in there with a group under guidance of someone who is blind (or strongly visually impaired) and try to make sense of these situations. It's a really interesting experience.
Be aware that this does not represent the life of a blind person at all.
If an American goes to Beijing, they might have a very hard time communicating with other people, but that doesn't mean everyone in Beijing has a hard time communicating with other people, most Americans just don't know the language.
It's a similar situation here, if you're used to using sight for everything, you haven't learned how to use the white cane well, never actually learned where your stuff is, don't know how to use VoiceOver etc, obviously you're going to have a hard time. That still doesn't say anything about the experience of actual blind people.
To actually get some idea how it's like, I suspect you'd need a couple years and some good teachers.
If you have the opportunity, post-Covid19, I recommend checking out one of these places that allow visitors to experience being blind.
In Germany one such place may be found in Frankfurt, it's called DialogMuseum. I believe similar setups can be found in other countries too, someone mentioned the Netherlands.
For me this visit was a bit of a revelation. The way it works is you book a guided tour, at that time they had 60 and 90 minutes options. You get there and are handed off a white cane and then enter through a corridor as a group led by a visually impaired guide who will take care of the group.
From that point on, the place becomes professionally(!) pitch black, there is no slight source of light, the eyes cannot see anything wide open even even after the few minutes it would normally take to adjust, this actually triggers a feeling of uneasiness, and the guide carefully checks if anyone goes into a panic attack - there are actually exits you can be guided to if you can't follow the tour for any reason.
The place is split into "rooms" which simulate different environments: you go to a park where you need to avoid hitting trees, then a boat ride that is a bit of a challenge to board, then trying to cross a street with a high curb and traffic light that you need to figure when it's safe and in the end we went to a bar where I just handed my wallet to the bartender since I could not figure out how to prepare the right amount of money - got the wallet back and actually they took just the right amount of money!
The environments are built authentically at least feel that way to the touch or bump, and there's also sound effects for completion.
That tour gave me a lot of insights and respect towards the everyday challenges a visually impaired person encounters, that I otherwise only theoretically had.
"A possible use of phosphenes as part of a brain to brain communication system has been reported. The system called BrainNet, produces phosphenes using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The goal of the research is to connect thoughts brain to brain using a system where signals are detected using electroencephalography (EEG) and delivered using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). An experiment was conducted with 5 different groups, each contained three people. The subjects were split into two groups. Two subjects functioned as the senders, and were connected to EEG electrodes, and a third person functioned as the receiver, who wore the TMS helmet. Each person was stationed in front of a television screen with a Tetris-style game. The senders had to determine if there was a need to rotate the falling blocks, but without the ability to rotate them – only the receiver was able to perform this operation. At the edges of each screen, were two icons with two flashing lights in two different frequencies, (one at 15 Hz and the other at 17 Hz). The sender focused on one icon, or the other to signal that the block should be rotated to the right or the left. The EEG produced a unique signal, which was transmitted to the TMS helmet of the receiver, who perceived phosphenes which differed for the 15 Hz and 17 Hz signal, and rotated the block in the relevant direction. The experiment achieved 81% success.[27] These results could eventually lead to mind-to-mind communication technology"
Does anyone know if other research into this method has been explored yet?
I have ophtometrist in the family, and the constant "do not rub your eyes" is burnt into my brain. Be gentle with your eyeballs, they do not like pressure.
I get phosphenes from brain signals, most of the time sound triggered.
I build my sites mostly at night, when kids are asleep and the house is completely dark. I am the ghost of this house as I can navigate every nook and cranny without making noise or turning on lights by this point. When she turned 2 my little one asked that I lay next to her crib as she falls asleep. Laying on the floor in the pitch black dark with some lullaby music has helped me do some of my best thinking - problem solving, new ideas, all flow right in and the only reason I get up is because I can’t contain all of them in memory and have to run to dictate or type them down without waking the kids. Darkness is focus. Your brain stops worrying about anything else and focuses only on the task at hand. I even built a new type of notepad/daily logging tool for myself to capture all the thoughts that come in with the lowest possible latency.
Seriously? I am blind, and I find this article pretty pathetic.
If you dont attempt to interact with your environment, this is no challenge. I know people who have done a similar thing for 24 hours, however, they went to the uni cafeteria and even tried to prepare food at home. And guess what, they didn't write a "rich kid is having fun" article about it.
This is a clear case of aiming far too low. Next time, try for real.
This is tangential, but a friend of mine did a kind-of (but not really, obviously) similar exercise with her classmates in her MFA program.
I think they called it an empathy exercise or whatever. I don't recall but it seemed like they had good intentions.
My friend suggested people try a schoolday as simulated type 1 diabetics. The prompt was pretty simple: Simulate blood glucose checks, generate a random blood glucose number (within reasonable range and adjusted for food intake), make a note of it, keep track of nutritional facts of the foods they intended to eat, pretend to take some insulin by just making a note about their "dose" and base their food intake decisions based on BG value and timing concerns.
Literally, just limit what you eat and when based on a number that you can't directly and instantly control. The whole exercise was designed (by a diabetic!) to be as incredibly easy and approachable as possible. It was the absolutely training-wheels version of an experiment that intentionally left out a lot of the more difficult problems when it comes to managing T1D. Their program did all of their work in one classroom all day, and my friend was there to help with number generation and to help in general, the whole time.
The whole thing fell apart by lunch for literally every student other than the only other T1D in class.
I think 1. People probably aren't great at designing these things for themselves. And 2. Even when somebody else can give them a tiny actual approximation of constraints, it tends to break down because people don't actually want to stray too far from their baseline state of comfort, no matter what.
It's always better to start your experiments at a low intensity in a controlled environment before ramping them up. As we've seen with the bird box challenge, a ton of people have been injured for attempting to live ordinary days with blindfolds on. Also the isolation and sensory deprivation aspects are actually more intense with reduced activity.
Each person has different limits and each experience outside of your comfort zone pushes their own personal limits further. I think it's good that people want to learn about what their limits are as well as challenging those limits.
Guess what? A ton of blind people is being injured daily while trying to life alongside a bunch of mostly ignorant spoiled brats.
Nobody writes a newspaper articles when I trip over a badly placed bicycle and ramm a part of it into my gut.
But CEOs with a blindfold on sitting on their couches get to write about their experiences like it was something.
That's true, and also unfair, however if believe if we are supportive rather than dismissive or aggressive towards these experiments regardless of who they come from then we can create a culture of encouraging people to try things. Many people may read his article and be inspired to try their own experiments, and even if they're low level they will increase empathy and consideration for blind people. We can't go from ignorant to perfect in a day, I believe we need to create a culture that leads in the direction that we want to go.
> Each person has different limits and each experience outside of your comfort zone pushes their own personal limits further. I think it's good that people want to learn about what their limits are as well as challenging those limits.
That's not what the OP said he was doing. He said he was wanting to find out what it was like to experience blindness.
You could, for instance, try to get your daily dose of reddit with your iPhone. Switch on VoiceOver, and enjoy the wonderful world of accessible mainstream media.
And definitely try crossing a few streets. Grab a cane, and off you go.
But never ever try to sell staying at home with a blindfold on as a challenge.
You are taking it too seriously. The fact that you and me feel the bad parts of it, does not mean that we have to be sour about it.
The guy doesn't do it for money or fame, so there is no reason to bring his experiment down. Next time they might challenge themselves some more, or maybe not. Not our issue.
You call going to a cafeteria a hard challenge? Wow, that is really aiming low. Lets list a few hard challenges:
* Read a book with your fingers. At least 300 paperback pages. That will be about 2000 braille pages.
* Cross a road which lacks pedestrian lights. Use your ears to find out if you are going to die.
* Write a 2k+ lines program, pick a language of your choice. For extra points, use a speech synthesizer only, no braille.
* Go to the groceries store and buy the food for a week. Go with whoever you get assigned as assistant. If their IQ is likely not above 80, continue and try to explain to them what you need.
I would recommend swimming goggles with semi transparent paper tape. It does not touches the eye lids and does not cause irritation. It blocks enought light for sensory deprivation, but leaves enough hint not to bump into walls. Person needs to feel safe to be able to "let go".
I would not work, listen to podcast etc. It as an information detox. Maybe single playlist in loop, with an option to pause. Part of detox is to remove decision process.
And have some food ready that does not require preparation.
We used to play Marco Polo a lot as kids. It turns out everyone peeks when they play this game. We learned this the hard way by deciding that too many people were cheating so we took a pair of goggles and spray painted them. We made sure there was no way to see anything and whoever was "it" would wear the blacked out goggles. Immediately people started slamming their head into the wall or the bottom of the pool. It was crazy just how obvious it made it that everyone cheats in Marco Polo.
The way this relates to the blog post is that I hope the author reads this comment and considers spray painting goggles as a way to replace the scarf. I imagine swim goggles for 24 hours would be terrible so I would recommend finding a pair of ski goggles that could easily be blacked out. This is probably the most comfortable way to black things out and it would be very hard to "cheat".
Interesting that when they finally checked the time, it was just five minutes after the alarm.
If you consider they were trying not to look at the time (and so probably spent a while deciding whether or not to finally "give in"), I'd take that as a strong piece of evidence that humans have an extremely accurate internal chronometer, and that we are just bad at consciously accessing it.
This is a bit like closing your eyes and seeing how many steps you can take in a large empty (safe) parking lot before you just can't take it anymore. This matches the author's first listed goal of "Do I have the willpower to get through the experiment?"
The previous owner of my apartment must have been a shift worker because every single window - even the small ventilation window in the shower! - has a black out blind. It would be the perfect place to try this experiment.
I had a basement apartment and my bedroom was totally dark without lights on, and the rest of the apartment very close to totally dark, so that really helped compared to the author as I only had to don a blindfold before leaving my room.
I tried to replicate the experience of being blind and did a whole bunch of stuff; I cooked 4 simple meals (very, very, carefully) did the dishes and put everything away each time, tried to clean my place, showered and shaved, drank a few beers, played music on my roommates CD stereo system, practised karate. I reorganized the cupboard after the first breakfast.
Maybe I have better balance than the author, but I had no trouble moving around my apartment and certainly never crawled anywhere. Heck, I became quite adept at simply walking to my roommates room, going through their CD collection and putting something on every hour (their collection was alphabetically sorted so I was sort of able to find what I was looking for with a few tries).
Mostly, I was bored. I never became lethargic on anything like that, maybe because I was getting up and moving around all the time. Maybe the karate kata and other exercises helped.
I lucid dreamed for the first time. I experienced the flashes he talked about as well. I learned to be careful where I put things as I spent the first morning constantly trying to figure out where I had set things down. I gained an appreciation for how it would be to totally blind (my classmate had zero vision).
Mostly, I was surprised the author didn't DO anything. Didn't try to make meals (ants? wtf?). Basically just sat and listened to music. No wonder he got lethargic.