• TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I mean a can opener is very different, no? Or at least it is when I try to put myself in those shoes.

    A can opener can open cans but nothing more. Sure you gain one piece of functionality, but you lose others.

    Geordi’s visor was a bit different in that he could see the visible light spectrum, but also a bunch of other stuff.

    • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      bit different in that he could see the visible light spectrum

      he could not: https://i.imgur.com/dlVpyIo.mp4

      would you want to see like that? i mean if you were born blind and this was your only option, it is definitely better than nothing, but other than that, it is hard no from me.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        That’s a visual representation, in the visible light spectrum, of what he sees. He would see it differently than what appears on the viewscreen.

        There’s also nothing there that shows or says he can’t see the visible light spectrum.

        • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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          10 hours ago

          There’s also nothing there that shows or says he can’t see the visible light spectrum.

          there is, it is exactly there on the screen, his perception of visible spectrum is just one step above nothing. would you want to see like that? accompanied by occasional technical problems and pain? would you call that superior to your eyes?

          He would see it differently than what appears on the viewscreen.

          that is just unfounded assumption, if you want to argue like that, you can make up literally anything and the discussion loses sense (not that the level of sense was very high anyway 😆)

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            But that’s not how he sees, or how any of this works 🤦

            Things that see stuff in the (to us) non-visible spectrum don’t see it in the visible light spectrum.

            An insect that sees ultraviolet light doesn’t see it how we see it when we apply a camera filter to view it. That’s just the camera shifting it to our visible light spectrum, because we can’t see ultraviolet.

            A screen showing an image in ultraviolet light would not be usable to us.

            The viewscreen Picard was looking at wasn’t magically adding cones to his eyes and allowing him to see a wider range of the light spectrum. It was showing a representation in the visible light spectrum of what the visor can detect.