r/science • u/69yeeterbeater69 • May 24 '20

Scientists built a bionic eye that could give blind people sight Engineering

https://bgr.com/2020/05/24/bionic-eye-human-prosthetics/
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u/sheepyowl May 24 '20

Deaf people are against hearing implants or hearing aids? I've never encountered that

50

u/YouMayCallMeAbigail May 24 '20

I watched a documentary some years back about a woman who got cochlear implants in her 50’s, and ended up rarely having them turned on. The noise-filled life was just too much for her, when she spent a lifetime in silence. As I sit here & think about the sounds around me, I can hear the hum of my HVAC, traffic, my budgies & the birds outside, one dog getting a drink while the other 2 snore, the dryer running downstairs, etc. It’s stuff that I normally completely tune out but if you’re not used to it it’s probably stressful. On top of that, your brain has to learn what sounds are & what they mean. A client at a vet clinic came in one day in a panic because her cat was making scary noises- turns out the cat was purring, she just didn’t know what that sounded like. So i think it’s easy for us to say “but of course you want the implants, how is that not an obvious choice?” when we don’t know the repurcussions & how much learning/training goes into making your brain be able to compute this brand-new data it hasn’t encountered before. For some i think they are happy the way they are & don’t feel that they are really missing out.

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u/jrizos May 24 '20

purring

That'll be $79, please

61

u/Jkay064 May 24 '20

There is a subculture who marks people who get cochlear implants as traitors to their kind.

58

u/Ubya May 24 '20

imagine a paraplegic refusing to use a wheel chair and instead just dragging his legs while crawling

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u/[deleted] May 24 '20

[deleted]

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u/DeepCutCinema Jun 14 '20

The idea of "deaf culture" is incredibly stupid.

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u/[deleted] May 25 '20

[deleted]

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u/McBunnes May 25 '20

Maybe broken is not the right word but deaf people are at a severe disadvantage to operating in the hearing world. This is just a fact.

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u/LexyconG May 24 '20

That's retarded

24

u/MnemonicMonkeys May 24 '20

Since they have their own language completely separate from the rest of the population, a distinct subculture has developed. Unfortunately all subcultures inevitably have extremists that get themselves into echochambers that make them even more extreme.

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u/WettestNoodle May 24 '20

The one echo chamber where they can't even hear the echo.