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Comment by xamuel | Hacker News Reader

I find this kind of work interesting and important because, just like old CGA monitors, our own bodies are also a type of hardware that we have little ability to upgrade. Imagine finding hacks similar to this which would allow the human body to perceive things outside of what it's built to perceive.

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> Late in his life, Claude Monet developed cataracts. As his lenses degraded, they blocked parts of the visible spectrum, and the colors he perceived grew muddy. Monet's cataracts left him struggling to paint; he complained to friends that he felt as if he saw everything in a fog. After years of failed treatments, he agreed at age 82 to have the lens of his left eye completely removed. Light could now stream through the opening unimpeded. Monet could now see familiar colors again. And he could also see colors he had never seen before. Monet began to see - and to paint - in ultraviolet.

https://www.downloadtheuniverse.com/dtu/2012/04/monets-ultra...

I must admit I have never thought of Monet as a Cyborg Enhanced Superman - but that has changed today, thank you; the site itself also looks quite interesting!

I was born with cataracts in both eyes. One was removed when I was a toddler (including the lens), and the other (with better vision) was left alone until I was a teenager at which point I got an artificial lens implant. I can't see ultraviolet out of my eye without a lens as far as I can tell (or maybe I can and just never noticed).

You might be able to see a difference in flowers. Many flowers have markings that usually only bees are able to see.

https://photographyoftheinvisibleworld.blogspot.com/2012_05_...

It would be a very subtle tweak to your blue perception. UV sensitivity is quite low even without the lens filtering it out.

As cool as accidental historical biohacking is, I think the Monet-UV hypothesis should be taken with a grain of salt.

The argument in favor of it is that Monet was an exceptional trained painter, and one specialized in colors on top of that. He might have been extra sensitive to colors compared to most humans (both in the sense of biological sensory sensitivity, as well as trained ability to perceive colors).

It is possible, if somewhat unlikely, for men to also be tetrachromats.

Color vision is encoded on the X-chromosome, right? And human tetrachromatocy depends on having two X-chromosomes with different color vision genes[0]. So wouldn't a hypothetical tetrachromatic male need to be an XX-chromosome male[1], and on top of that have one of the X-chromosomes carrying the deutanomaly, protanomaly or tritanomaly mutation, and on top of that have this mixture manifest itself as having four color receptors instead of three? Or is there another theoretical way that I'm missing?

If my educated guess is correct then "somewhat unlikely" seems like quite an understatement to me! :D

(I have protanomaly myself, and never considered that men could hypothetically be tetrachormats as well. This was a fun through exercise)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Humans

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome

Myself, I've had ICL surgery (Implantable Collamer Lens) as vision correction in both eyes (I wasn't a good candidate for Lasik). With it includes 100% UVA/UVB blocking. It's basically a permanent contact lens implanted behind the iris and in front of the the natural lens. So, sadly, no ultrahuman UV vision for me. My only "bionic" ability is saving my natural lens and retina from UV exposure.

I bet your eyes do a cool robotic ‘shine’ when viewed in some lights (eg. in a dark room with a diffuse light behind the viewer) though.

I dobt know if other people can see it looking at my eyes, but on certain low light conditions, I do see a subtle elongated 'X' sorta looks like a mostly transparent '>---<' at the bottom of my vision. From talking with my Doc, its a small side effect of how they fold the lense implant when they insert it to minimize the size of the incision in the cornea. I dont normally notice it, and since its on the peripheral, it is pretty easy to ignore.

Edit: spelling

What is it like to have an eye with no lense. Does an image still form on your vision in that eye or is it just blur of colour?

It's just really really blurry. I can see colors fine, and if I zoom OSX all the way on my external screen, I can read text. If I only had that vision, I'd probably be able to move around in the world, ie walk to the store, but I'd have a hard time doing many things I take for granted.

I had cataract surgery. I can see the Pleiades at nighttime while most others cannot. Use that constellation as your test if you can.

In the spirit of "it's always the first time for somebody", here's how you can perceive colors you technically can't see, which is a fun moment's diversion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color#Chimerical_co...

That was fun, thanks

Vernor Vinge's Deepness in the Sky features an alien race which, because they evolved from genetically engineered spiderlike creatures, have an interesting condition: in addition to many eyes their retinas also have a fantastic range of spectrum response from infrared to ultraviolet, so that their visual input feed exceeds their visual processing capability.

The hack is that their visual cortex is multiplexed in a way that certain colors or color combinations might be interpreted as feeling like seeing "plaid" or "tartan" even though the color is solid.

(This is unrelated to the article, but given that Vinge is one of my favorite authors I couldn't resist replying to this.)

It's been a few years since I read "Deepness", but I don't recall that the Spiders were ever referred-to as genetically-engineered. I'll definitely look into that.

re: the perception of color - I took that to be the Focused translators' interpretation of the spiders' vision, rather than a literal description of the spiders' cognitive process. I've always read the portions of the book that take place on the spiders' world as being a narrative created by the translators, in which the incomprehensibly-alien spiders are made more "relate-able" by analogizing alien concepts with human concepts.

The on-off system itself was believed to be artificial in the story, which might imply that the residents were also.

Speculation on top of fiction:-)

I wouldn't do it myself, but I found the various compass implants pretty fascinating. They vibrate differently depending on what compass direction you're facing. Supposedly, after some time, you don't "think" about it, it just becomes more like an innate sixth sense.

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