<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">My grandfather has “hysterical blindness” from a near death accident where his head was trapped in the blades of a peanut thrasher for three days before he was found. The blade of the machine stopped about an inch from his eye, while another part had stopped the machine because it couldn’t crush his skull. <div><br></div><div>Afterwards, he was in a coma 1-2 weeks, and doctors wrote him off. His mom drip fed his sugar water because he was her “baby”. </div><div><br></div><div>After this point, he has reported total blindness in this eye. However, he was recently diagnosed with, basically, a 100% cataract in his other eye. He cannot read with his “blind” eye, but it keeps him from running into walls and other similar things. He doesn’t seem to be able to see the TV, but does recognize objects and people (as much as you can expect from a 92 yo man). </div><div><br></div><div>There is not actual blindness in the eye, but the brain, in a post-traumatic response, blocks conscious knowledge of what is seen. <br><br><div dir="ltr">SR Ballard</div><div dir="ltr"><br>On Feb 15, 2020, at 7:37 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">O</span>n Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 12:36 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></span><i>people suffering from "blind sight" can catch a ball, even though there is no visual conscious awareness of that ball.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font><font size="4">People with that condition display contradictory behavior. Catching the ball indicates the ball has been seen. Making a noise with the mouth that sounds like "I don't see the ball" indicates something *might* not have seen the ball. You can lie about what you say but not what you do, you've either caught the ball or you haven't. So clearly something must have seen the ball, although not necessarily the same thing that controls the vocal cords. </font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4"> John K Clark</font></div></div></div>
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