Yet Another Graphomaniacs Compendium
Monday, March 25, 2002

First Gedankenexperiment.


Consider one of the denizens of Heliopolis: the Night Treader. Their eyes are sensitive in the near infra red and ultra violet, somewhat like a Tetrochromat. Unlike the Tetrachromat in the article who notes her colour vision is different, this is a community that shares the difference. Hence it affects their langage; and behaviour for one thing, being able to interpret the differences in infra-red emmission of a human body makes it easier to read emotions. For another, seeing uv would lead to an enhanced perception of sunlight, and probably weather. They would have words for particular lights and shades that indicated different types of weather. They would have words for the sudden flush of heat that you see in a persons face and body when the flight or fight reaction is taking place, or the subtle play of colurs on the features that indicates a person is being less than sincere. We do not have words for these things, not because they do not exist and we cannot concive of them, but because we do not percieve them in our everyday life. Is this a limit of our perceptions, or our langauage? And are these people less limited than us for having these concepts in their language, or because of their perceptions?

posted by John Connors at
Monday, March 25, 2002

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A miscellany of topics that intersest me: deaf culture, game design, politics as soap opera, the cyborg condition and the experience of learning to hear again. Other topics presented are speculative fiction and imaginary cities. There are appearences of snippets of work in progress, public rants, pointless posts and Mish the Mouse.




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