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Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

Glasses to correct/improve colour vision have existed for decades, though I don't know how these differ.

As a kid, my parents took me to try out a pair (maybe 25 years back)... but I just didn't like it. Everything seemed so much more colourful, and bright. It was almost like sensory overload.

Everything was also more confusing; I didn't actually feel like I could differentiate colours any better - colours were different, sure, but I still didn't know what they were.

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I experienced something very similar when presented with glasses to slightly correct my vision as a child. I found the world too sharp and distinct. When I looked at a tree each leaf stood out, while my experience had been that there should be no individual leaf, it should be blended.

I decided not to use the glasses and since my vision wasn't that bad I stumbled through. I realize as an adult now if I had just waited I likely would have acclimated to the situation.

I never saw leaves on trees either until I finally got glasses at 18. I was told constantly as a kid that I needed glasses, but I just brushed it aside because I couldn't imagine things being better. If only a doctor would've told me to put on a pair and walk around before refusing, I think my life would've been quite different.

Then again, when I finally did get glasses, I refused to wear them more than a few minutes a day for my first month. They just made me uncomfortable, visually and mentally. It seems like people are always most comfortable with what they know, even if it's objectively worse.

I still vividly remember the day I walked out of the opticians at 9yo with my first pair of corrective glasses (myopia). It really freaked me out because I literally saw the sidewalk ride up the side of adjacent building walls as I walked along the street. I wanted to immediately take them off. But after a few hours that feeling just went away.

When I got my first pair at age 9, I froze to a complete stop on the sidewalk outside the optometrist's office, exclaiming to my mother about how I could read signs all the way at the other end of the street! I rode home with my face pressed to the car window, exclaiming and marveling about how I could see individual leaves on trees, and interrogating my mother about whether she had always been able to see the individual leaves from far away. It was mind-blowingly magical, like having a movie camera zoom lens suddenly, instead of being limited to close-ups only. Or like finally being given some bionic super power that I never knew everyone else had.

I remember when I first got glasses as a kid. I was thrilled with how crisply I could see all the little branches in the trees when I looked up. It was a total blessing for me, but I can see how it could feel overwhelming for someone, too.

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