tilthat: TIL a philosophy riddle from 1688 was recently solved. If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he, if given the ability, distinguish those objects by sight alone? In 2003 five people had their sight restored though surgery, and, no they could not.

nentuaby: I love when apparently Deep questions turn out to have clear empirical answers.

  • @agent_flounder
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    21 year ago

    Interesting. I hadn’t considered art might have no effect on some. Interesting that autism could play a role there.

    My kid usually draws from a picture or something. I do that sometimes too. (Well I don’t draw much anymore).

    My wife can’t draw. She has tried numerous times. I infer there’s some capability of looking at a pic and abstracting it into lines or shades or whatever and then putting that on paper. Well, she doesn’t have that.

    She does not have aphantasia. So she can see a cat, say, in her mind’s eye but can’t translate that onto paper I guess?

    I suppose the more detailed you can picture something the easier it would be to draw it if you have the ability to translate pic to paper.

    I read once an exercise where you have people draw a bicycle without using a picture. The results are often laughably inaccurate. I guess because some folks think they know how the thing works but don’t. Or haven’t paid enough attention. But presumably if, like me, you have had bikes for years, worked on them, know how they work, and paid attention to all the details you can make a very accurate drawing.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      That is interesting. There is undoubtedly some learned skill involved regardless of mind’s eye.

      I can draw a bicycle correctly, for the same reasons as you, but it will not be pretty. The frame will be 2 parallel lines all over and it will be drawn from a perfect side angle. I could draw a derailleur the same way, or the insides of several types of steering column.