A deaf girl who found her voice after brain surgery | Hacker News Reader

A deaf girl who found her voice after brain surgery

bbc.co.uk

94 pointsJonEllis21 comments

One day these implants are going to be so sophisticated that we may very well evolve to not have bio-hearing at all. I have friends with implants, and one of them regularly just keeps it switched off to focus on writing. I am deeply envious though of course, at present the bit-depth is not very good from what I understand about the tech, and his brain even after 20 years of having the implant isn't good at differentiating between background and foreground sounds, making conversation difficult for him in noisy places. It's great that kids are getting these early so they have a chance to learn how to adapt. I'm excited to see what superpowers they will glean from having powered-brains.

2045 hackernews headline: “Senses capable of spying should have hardware switches”

2080 hackernews headling. Google shut down hearing senses on half the population due to a software error.

2081: A hearing aid startup runs out of VC capital and shuts down the centralized server that everyone's ears are dependent on, and publishes a blog post titled "the next step in our hearing journey."

Not a software error, the person responsible for the Google Ears project got the promotion they were after and now no one cares to keep it running

2046: "Google will now let you pay for premium, ad-free hearing, in partnership with Spotify"

I mean, I too have trouble having conversations in noisy places, and my ears are all natural, just old!

How do you suppose we are going to evolve to not have bio-hearing at all given that their offspring is not born with these implants?

"...can finally tell her parents she loves them"

... and perhaps you have seen those teary videos on Youtube, too, where a toddler hears the first time after a surgery and reacts to sound?

I am afraid that these pieces are at least somewhat disingenuous.

Usually they avoid to put into primary focus two important things:

- that even with surgery the child needs lots and lots of speech therapy (BBC said at least "...years of therapy...")

- and that it doesn't always work out.

These failed experiments are truly tragic: these children never learnt to communicate in a human language and will be mentally limited for their whole life: it's an effect of language deprivation.

The best way to approach a deaf child to minimize risks is a two-pronged approach: The parents should accept that they need to learn a Signed Language and the child should grow up bilingually: both in a Signed Language and in a Voiced Language. This prevents language deprivation if surgery didn't work out optimally.

So, in short: the girl should have been able to tell her parents she loves them long ago!

Disclaimer: I am Deaf myself and opinionated about this subject.

How long can these implant last? Do they need replacement? Do they run on batteries?

It's remarkable how some people in life, were destined to be forever deaf and without any control about it. Yet people preach at any age how we have control instead of teaching how reality really is and where people wouldn't be labouring under delusion. /hard determinist

> how reality really is

Well the deaf girl can hear now, so it is clear that sometimes people do have control over natural conditions.

No, she was just was born into a time where enough suffering, has resulted in science progressing to the point and where her hearing can be fixed. The act doesn't change control over natural or personal. She was fated to get the surgery and whatever comes in life. She is no different than her reflection and similar to everything in reality. It's a shame people are so against understanding how things really are at the fundamental level.

so what's your point?

either we have control over our fate and can change it, or if me manage to fix the problems we run into we were determined to do so. the end result is the same. we can't tell the difference because we don't know what our fate is. as a result it is pointless to even try to tell a difference. because any attempt to say that we are not determined to solve a problem is defeatist. how can we know which problems we are determined to solve and which not? the only way we can find out is by trying. if we fail, then maybe we are not determined to solve that problem. but we'll never know, therefore we must not give up trying. and in this case we solved the problem, so we obviously were determined to do so, hence no delusion here.

you are deluding yourself if you believe that you can tell your determination. being able to do so would imply that you can see into the future.

because i can't tell the future, i can't tell what i am determined to, hence the whole point becomes moot.

I can't wait for headlines like these "CIA warns against using Huawei P-190(TM) ear implants".

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