The talk of “what you want now vs what hypothetical future you would want” seems relevant to discussions I’ve participated in on whether or not blind people would accept a treatment that could give them sight. It isn’t really a question for people who have any memory of sight; every such person I’ve encountered (including me) would jump at such an opportunity if the cost wasn’t ridiculous. Those blind from birth, or early enough that they have no visual memory to speak of, on the other hand, are more mixed, but mostly approach the topic with apprehension at the very least. The way the brain develops, it probably wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world to adjust to (as numerous case studies on our rather specific treatment options indicate). Beyond that, most of the people that express a mostly negative view of the idea seem to be content with their blindness to some extent, or at least consider it an important part of their identity (one of the people I’m thinking of has made it very clear that he is aware of certain problems blindness causes him, mostly social ones—dating, employment, etc, but otherwise...).
I haven’t posed the hypothetical where adjusting to a new sense, learning to read print at a reasonable pace, learning to communicate via facial expression and gestures, driving, etc are included, since one of the common causes of vision loss among people participating in the discussion has recently had significant breakthroughs on associated treatment in experiments on mice (not that anyone seems to care/notice when I bring this up; after all, they still need to do more experiments and go through the FDA, which I doubt will be a quick process). I did provide a link to this page, though (so hopefully nothing I’ve said here would offend anyone I referenced too much...).
The talk of “what you want now vs what hypothetical future you would want” seems relevant to discussions I’ve participated in on whether or not blind people would accept a treatment that could give them sight. It isn’t really a question for people who have any memory of sight; every such person I’ve encountered (including me) would jump at such an opportunity if the cost wasn’t ridiculous. Those blind from birth, or early enough that they have no visual memory to speak of, on the other hand, are more mixed, but mostly approach the topic with apprehension at the very least. The way the brain develops, it probably wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world to adjust to (as numerous case studies on our rather specific treatment options indicate). Beyond that, most of the people that express a mostly negative view of the idea seem to be content with their blindness to some extent, or at least consider it an important part of their identity (one of the people I’m thinking of has made it very clear that he is aware of certain problems blindness causes him, mostly social ones—dating, employment, etc, but otherwise...).
I haven’t posed the hypothetical where adjusting to a new sense, learning to read print at a reasonable pace, learning to communicate via facial expression and gestures, driving, etc are included, since one of the common causes of vision loss among people participating in the discussion has recently had significant breakthroughs on associated treatment in experiments on mice (not that anyone seems to care/notice when I bring this up; after all, they still need to do more experiments and go through the FDA, which I doubt will be a quick process). I did provide a link to this page, though (so hopefully nothing I’ve said here would offend anyone I referenced too much...).