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Sighted People Seem More Blind Than Blind People (self.Blind)
submitted by bscross32
I've had cause in my life to wonder about sighted people, and the things they seemingly pay no attention to, despite their better vision. I'm partially sighted, only having vision out of my right eye, and that being only somewhat useful. I have no depth perception and somewhat limited peripheral vision. I'd just like to illustrate a few things in my life that have caused me to wonder about fully sighted people who see infinitely more, but pay attention to less.
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When I was living with my dad, I'd generally get the mail in the afternoon. Since it was about 120 feet from the door to the mailbox, I asked him one time when he got home if he saw if the flag was still up, because I knew we'd sent stuff out, and I wanted to know if the mail had gone yet. He didn't know whether the flag was still up, yet he has to turn into our driveway, and the mailbox is right there at the end, so how is that even possible. I mean, in order to exit the road and enter our driveway requires a right hand turn, and the box is on the left. I can see across the width of the driveway even with my limited vision, and I could spot the box as a sort of dottish blob, but yet he couldn't tell me whether the flag was up? I don't get how that is possible.
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Again with my dad, I got him a big ass 12 cup coffee maker that took up more space than the smaller 4 cup one he had. You even had to pull it out to fill it up, since the lid would hit the button of the cabinet if you tried to open it where it was kept against the wall. I never said anything either, I never wrapped the present. I just took it out of the box, and put it in place of the old one and plugged in the new one, hiding the old one, but he never noticed until I had to tell him. Now, I think if I'd have left it until morning, he probably would have noticed, but he's in the kitchen, I mean, he would be making supper, so how is this possible that he wouldn't notice this coffee maker that was taller and bigger around than the old one.
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People will talk to me like I can hear them perfectly fine if I am wearing headphones that completely cover my ears. I'm talking about a wireless headset with a boom mic and programmable buttons, with a fairly substantial headband, and big cans that surround my ears. However, if these are on me, people will still talk to me like they're not. Now, I could see maybe yelling to cut across them saying like hey can you take those off I wanna talk to you or something, but using a normal speaking voice? OK, I could hear moderately well if I pause whatever's playing through them, but with content playing through them, forget about it, but people try to have normal conversations with me while I'm wearing these. I don't get this. Do they not see me wearing these? Do they assume I can hear normally through them? I mean what thought process is going on here, or is there just such a lack of one, I'm just not sure.
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OK, my dad is a running theme here and I can think of one more right now that he is involved in. Now, keep in mind my dad's intelligent, he is involved in a business, and has his own business working in home improvement. So, me and him and my brother are on a job one time, and he's building these wooden planters. The customer wants vinyl over the wood, so we have the stuff, but it isn't wide enough to go the whole way up the planter. So, my dad cuts out enough to wrap around the thing, and the width of it runs from the front bottom to about 3/4 of the way to the top. He then cuts out strips that will cover the remainder of the wood. He is in the process of screwing these down, and I notice one where one out of the four sides is put in backwards, so I take the screw gun and start fixing it, when he asks me what I was doing that for, I show him, and he just sort of shrugs it off like oops, yeah I guess I fucked that up, but for me, how can this happen? The stuff is clearly textured, there is a smooth side and a textured side, which is what you want facing out. Now, I know it's tactile, but I'm sure it's also visible as a texture you can see as well, so how could he have put that piece on backwards, when there is texturing on one side, and the other side is smooth.
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My dad and his wife have the same truck, same year, pretty much the same color, only really what options are on them are different. His has a ladder rack and tool boxes in back, and hers has a roll up cover. He always drives her truck when he's not working and she's not going anywhere, but if he comes to pick me up and we go somewhere, he'll inevitably try to use his keys in her truck. Now, once or twice, I can see. I mean, the keys are exactly the same for the truck, but his other keys are going to be different. I mean, he owns apartments so he's going to have keys to those. She works in a corporate environment as a manager, so she's probably going to have office keys and so forth. The differences should be such that he should notice. Plus, guys don't end up having 10 foot long keys with most of it being decorative stuff, it's just the essentials, and maybe a beer tab or something. The beer tab has a purpose, trust me. It stops you getting your ass zapped in my apartment building in the winter when the heat is on and the air is dry and the elevator buttons are all metal, touch the tab to that area and it discharges, anyway...
​
I'm sure this gets the point across, and I'm also sure there are more incidents I"m not thinking of right now. I'm just wondering about why this is, and how sighted people seem to be this way. also, feel free to share your experiences of things sighted people have done in your presence that have left you wondering why someone with good vision would do that. If you're a sighted person, feel free to comment as to why you feel you, or others may not always pay attention. Like, are you so overwhelmed with visual information that you can't deal with any more of it? And, if that is the case, then why is blindness such a fearful concept.
​
When I was living with my dad, I'd generally get the mail in the afternoon. Since it was about 120 feet from the door to the mailbox, I asked him one time when he got home if he saw if the flag was still up, because I knew we'd sent stuff out, and I wanted to know if the mail had gone yet. He didn't know whether the flag was still up, yet he has to turn into our driveway, and the mailbox is right there at the end, so how is that even possible. I mean, in order to exit the road and enter our driveway requires a right hand turn, and the box is on the left. I can see across the width of the driveway even with my limited vision, and I could spot the box as a sort of dottish blob, but yet he couldn't tell me whether the flag was up? I don't get how that is possible.
​
Again with my dad, I got him a big ass 12 cup coffee maker that took up more space than the smaller 4 cup one he had. You even had to pull it out to fill it up, since the lid would hit the button of the cabinet if you tried to open it where it was kept against the wall. I never said anything either, I never wrapped the present. I just took it out of the box, and put it in place of the old one and plugged in the new one, hiding the old one, but he never noticed until I had to tell him. Now, I think if I'd have left it until morning, he probably would have noticed, but he's in the kitchen, I mean, he would be making supper, so how is this possible that he wouldn't notice this coffee maker that was taller and bigger around than the old one.
​
People will talk to me like I can hear them perfectly fine if I am wearing headphones that completely cover my ears. I'm talking about a wireless headset with a boom mic and programmable buttons, with a fairly substantial headband, and big cans that surround my ears. However, if these are on me, people will still talk to me like they're not. Now, I could see maybe yelling to cut across them saying like hey can you take those off I wanna talk to you or something, but using a normal speaking voice? OK, I could hear moderately well if I pause whatever's playing through them, but with content playing through them, forget about it, but people try to have normal conversations with me while I'm wearing these. I don't get this. Do they not see me wearing these? Do they assume I can hear normally through them? I mean what thought process is going on here, or is there just such a lack of one, I'm just not sure.
​
OK, my dad is a running theme here and I can think of one more right now that he is involved in. Now, keep in mind my dad's intelligent, he is involved in a business, and has his own business working in home improvement. So, me and him and my brother are on a job one time, and he's building these wooden planters. The customer wants vinyl over the wood, so we have the stuff, but it isn't wide enough to go the whole way up the planter. So, my dad cuts out enough to wrap around the thing, and the width of it runs from the front bottom to about 3/4 of the way to the top. He then cuts out strips that will cover the remainder of the wood. He is in the process of screwing these down, and I notice one where one out of the four sides is put in backwards, so I take the screw gun and start fixing it, when he asks me what I was doing that for, I show him, and he just sort of shrugs it off like oops, yeah I guess I fucked that up, but for me, how can this happen? The stuff is clearly textured, there is a smooth side and a textured side, which is what you want facing out. Now, I know it's tactile, but I'm sure it's also visible as a texture you can see as well, so how could he have put that piece on backwards, when there is texturing on one side, and the other side is smooth.
​
My dad and his wife have the same truck, same year, pretty much the same color, only really what options are on them are different. His has a ladder rack and tool boxes in back, and hers has a roll up cover. He always drives her truck when he's not working and she's not going anywhere, but if he comes to pick me up and we go somewhere, he'll inevitably try to use his keys in her truck. Now, once or twice, I can see. I mean, the keys are exactly the same for the truck, but his other keys are going to be different. I mean, he owns apartments so he's going to have keys to those. She works in a corporate environment as a manager, so she's probably going to have office keys and so forth. The differences should be such that he should notice. Plus, guys don't end up having 10 foot long keys with most of it being decorative stuff, it's just the essentials, and maybe a beer tab or something. The beer tab has a purpose, trust me. It stops you getting your ass zapped in my apartment building in the winter when the heat is on and the air is dry and the elevator buttons are all metal, touch the tab to that area and it discharges, anyway...
​
I'm sure this gets the point across, and I'm also sure there are more incidents I"m not thinking of right now. I'm just wondering about why this is, and how sighted people seem to be this way. also, feel free to share your experiences of things sighted people have done in your presence that have left you wondering why someone with good vision would do that. If you're a sighted person, feel free to comment as to why you feel you, or others may not always pay attention. Like, are you so overwhelmed with visual information that you can't deal with any more of it? And, if that is the case, then why is blindness such a fearful concept.
AllHarlowsEve 8 points 4y ago
The headphones thing is something people do regardless of level of vision, but it doesn't stop it from being annoying.
As far as the mail flag and stuff like that, it's simply that visually, they're focused on other things. When you're focused on a bunch of stuff unrelated to a small detail, your brain kind of blurrs it out, to oversimplify it. Like how you might remember that music played in an elevator you walked past, but not the tune since it's not really an important detail at the time, or how you might not notice different textured carpet when you're somewhere you've been a million times before and you're just focused on landmarks.
The keys thing is absolutely an autopilot thing. You're used to doing one thing, so your brain tells you to do it again and again. Like if you go to plug in someone else's phone but they have a different type of charger, you might grab the braided one out of habit rather than the smooth one.
As far as the mail flag and stuff like that, it's simply that visually, they're focused on other things. When you're focused on a bunch of stuff unrelated to a small detail, your brain kind of blurrs it out, to oversimplify it. Like how you might remember that music played in an elevator you walked past, but not the tune since it's not really an important detail at the time, or how you might not notice different textured carpet when you're somewhere you've been a million times before and you're just focused on landmarks.
The keys thing is absolutely an autopilot thing. You're used to doing one thing, so your brain tells you to do it again and again. Like if you go to plug in someone else's phone but they have a different type of charger, you might grab the braided one out of habit rather than the smooth one.
toclimbtheworld 3 points 4y ago
Sighted person here. I am definitely guilty of similar things and its interesting to think of how being sighted or not could impact this. For me personally, I think these things generally happen when I'm in a hurry or have a lot on my mind. Also my eyes can be wrong, sometimes when i'm tired or overwhelmed, or extremely stressed my eyes don't act totally normal. It''s kind of like optical illusions where your eye sees your environment correctly but your brain gets tricked and confused. I don't know what it would be like to have impaired sight but I would guess that I would need to be more attentive to senses or things that I'd depend on daily and because of that making stupid mistakes like these would be less likely. As someone with sight I really don't use my sense of texture to make conscious decisions. Also if you are feeling what you are doing, these optical illusions wouldn't really be an issue. That said, I imagine for someone without sight that when they are fatigued, or stressed their brain can still mess up understanding sensory inputs. But in general I imagine you take a lot more care than I do, or than other sighted people do, at understanding the environment around you.
Also people are different. Some people, even incredibly smart people, are space cadets and by that I just mean that they kinda live in their own world and have a difficult time getting even some really simple tasks right because of that.
I'm sure there is some actual research about this kind of thing, if not it's a very interesting concept that should be studied
Also people are different. Some people, even incredibly smart people, are space cadets and by that I just mean that they kinda live in their own world and have a difficult time getting even some really simple tasks right because of that.
I'm sure there is some actual research about this kind of thing, if not it's a very interesting concept that should be studied
bscross32 [OP] 1 points 4y ago
That's me, and if I go too deeply, I will say, be holding ketchhup over cereal rather than milk, or want to put stuff in wrong places. I am generally fairly good at doing things on autopilot though. The weird thing is though, that if I reach up and hit the pause button on the headset to talk to them, and I sort of give straight answers to questions or just don't elaborate on things, you'd think that would be enough to sort of clue them in. It really isn't though.
MizzerC 2 points 4y ago
It has become habit that when someone can't find something, they ask me and I generally point it out immediately.
I never let them live it down.
I never let them live it down.
Sarinon 2 points 4y ago
You too huh?
WarriorPrincess31 1 points 4y ago
Blind person hear.
I have a really good one that is super annoying.
My mom sometimes will wash the dishes and hurriedly put them away. But sometimes when I go to reach for a spoon, or a cup, the dishes will still have food on them.
As a sighted person, how do you not realize you are doing this?
You still have to touch the dishes in order to wash them and make sure they are clean.
How do you not notice that you're putting away dishes that still have food residue?
This is baffling to me.
I have a really good one that is super annoying.
My mom sometimes will wash the dishes and hurriedly put them away. But sometimes when I go to reach for a spoon, or a cup, the dishes will still have food on them.
As a sighted person, how do you not realize you are doing this?
You still have to touch the dishes in order to wash them and make sure they are clean.
How do you not notice that you're putting away dishes that still have food residue?
This is baffling to me.
bscross32 [OP] 1 points 4y ago
yeah that's odd.
ukifrit 1 points 4y ago
This stuff is more related to paying attention than being blind or whatever.
bscross32 [OP] 2 points 4y ago
True enough, I should have made that more clear in the title.
jouleheretolearn 1 points 4y ago
Most of these I would put down to lack of attention or focus, and in the case of your dad pulling into the driveway, he is on autopilot since he does it all the time. Literally, there is a part of his mind that says okay we do this all the time so we'll go autopilot and not bother creating a new memory of this. I'm sighted, and I find it amusing because I see this all the time with other people. It usually happens to me when I'm sick or sleep deprived. I think it's the decades in customer service then massage, and now studying to be a sped teacher, along with being a new parent. All of this requires me to be constantly aware of my environment.
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It makes sense for the same reason that since you have limited peripheral that it requires you to be more aware as well.
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I don't get the headphones thing, it just happened to me at the grocery store tonight, and I have no good idea why it does.
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It makes sense for the same reason that since you have limited peripheral that it requires you to be more aware as well.
​
I don't get the headphones thing, it just happened to me at the grocery store tonight, and I have no good idea why it does.
sirBoazLeAwesome 1 points 4y ago
I'm a sighted person. Something as mundane as the flag would definitely go unnoticed because it has no bearing on what I'm doing. I go by the mailbox one hundred times and it means nothing to me unless it's my intended target. We get so much visual input our brains have to focus on what is needed. For example, if I'm driving my vehicle I really don't care about the mailbox flag because I'm looking for the neighbor kid who likes to zoom his bike out into the street without looking. It's the same thing for hearing. My VIP boyfriend can easily tell whether I'm sitting or standing and which room of the house I'm in when I'm on the phone with him. When I ask him how he knows he'll just say "because I use my ears!"
I'm a second-grade teacher and have had multiple students who were deaf. One little guy I taught had just received his hearing aids as a seven year old. He hadn't heard a lot of sounds and so every single little extra sound he would turn to because he couldn't filter it out and was curious about it. He absolutely loved the sound of running water. He stood by the sink and turned the water on constantly. Water fountains were even cooler, according to him.
TLDR: I think we have too much visual input that we have filter out what we need to function.
Edit: used the wrong form of “too.”
I'm a second-grade teacher and have had multiple students who were deaf. One little guy I taught had just received his hearing aids as a seven year old. He hadn't heard a lot of sounds and so every single little extra sound he would turn to because he couldn't filter it out and was curious about it. He absolutely loved the sound of running water. He stood by the sink and turned the water on constantly. Water fountains were even cooler, according to him.
TLDR: I think we have too much visual input that we have filter out what we need to function.
Edit: used the wrong form of “too.”
bscross32 [OP] 2 points 4y ago
I guess I do the same thing with hearing. My computer recently had a freak out where it wouldn't do much besides boot into the OS. I usually listen to it then, put my ear up against it. I heard the hard drive running slower than normal, and not right at all. It was skipping back and seemed to be reading the same area over and over again. I could even hear it from like 15 feet away at that point, but it isn't something I normally pay attention to.
matt_may 1 points 4y ago
I'm VIP and I've often wondered at why I'm better at finding things like roads or lost objects. I've decided it's because I scan to keep myself out of physical danger. I've just built up a skill set that sighters don't, but could, have.
Cattus_deam 1 points 4y ago
Some people are just less detail-oriented than others. I am definitely one of them. Why? Well, I think yes there is a lot of visual input to process and my brain does not do well at noticing "unimportant" details. It happens frequently when my husband asks me to describe what people look like and what they are wearing and I can't tell him, even if the encounter was recent. I have also read that men in general notice less detail than women, but can't vouch for that being true.
On the other hand, I've asked my blind spouse many times not to talk to me with the water running but to no avail. I know he can hear it!
On the other hand, I've asked my blind spouse many times not to talk to me with the water running but to no avail. I know he can hear it!
bscross32 [OP] 2 points 4y ago
Oh I get that too, don't talk to me when the water is running, why not, lol.
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