Carbon blindness

[YOhio]

Okay. I have a thought. Humans are blind to certain things. We can’t see uv, x-ray, radio, ir, and a host of other things. We really didn’t know these signals existed until the past couple hundred years. A minuscule percentage of human history. We’re likely to discover more.

So what if someone was carbon blind? To this being, Carbon based life forms were completely invisible to them. No organic molecule structures, metabolic heat structures, or biochemical motion scales. They can’t see it in the same way I can’t see a radio wave. If I were to tell them of carbon based lifeforms they’d react the same way someone 400, 4000, or 40,000 years ago would respond if I told them about WiFi, radio, or 5G. How does it exist if I can’t see it with my eyes?

So if someone with carbon blindness looked at earth from space, it would look quite barren. Almost like the moon or mars looks to us. If they were on earths surface they might see some buildings. But no people. No plants. Grass. Trees. Just a geologically rich, biologically empty planet.

So let’s take it a step further. What if this carbon blind observer could only see electromagnetic frequencies emitted by humans? They could see humans interact, live, sleep, discover, stress, love, work, run, argue, hate, accomplish, envy, ruminate, fight, hoard and share resources, explore, steal, pray, starve, feast, cry, teach, murder, serve, learn, explore, laugh, judge, repent, and everything else in the human experience. But only through electromagnetic pulsing and emitting from the body. The electric beating of the heart. The generation of brain function. The dense neurons communicating with miles of the nervous system. No words, no faces, bodies, or anything of what we know as our world. Just the energy we emit. That energy which we know occurs, but to which we largely observe through the limited sensor network of our physical bodies. The five senses provide us some insight, but it’s limited . As any man who didn’t notice his wife’s haircut can attest. We miss signals because we’re sensor impaired. Those signals are perhaps more unique than the shape of a nose, sound of a voice, or patten of a fingerprint.

How would that view change our interactions with each other? Let’s say all mankind could toggle to that view for a few minutes. Like clicking from satellite view to transit view on maps. What would that to do us? I think it would help us see each more like God sees us.

[Bo Diddley]

I like that. The idea that we’re limited by what we can perceive, and that there’s far more happening beneath the surface than we can see, is profound.

It made me think about how we interact online. In forums, we’re basically carbon blind to each other. We don’t see tone, facial expression, stress, or sincerity, just text. A very narrow signal band. We tend to fill in the gaps with our own assumptions.

If we could see even a little more of each other’s internal signal, I suspect we’d respond with more patience and empathy. In a space where we’re all partially blind, maybe grace is the corrective lens.

[chrisrenrut]

Okay. I have a thought. Humans are blind to certain things. We can’t see uv, x-ray, radio, ir, and a host of other things. We really didn’t know these signals existed until the past couple hundred years. A minuscule percentage of human history. We’re likely to discover more.

So what if someone was carbon blind? To this being, Carbon based life forms were completely invisible to them. No organic molecule structures, metabolic heat structures, or biochemical motion scales. They can’t see it in the same way I can’t see a radio wave. If I were to tell them of carbon based lifeforms they’d react the same way someone 400, 4000, or 40,000 years ago would respond if I told them about WiFi, radio, or 5G. How does it exist if I can’t see it with my eyes?

So if someone with carbon blindness looked at earth from space, it would look quite barren. Almost like the moon or mars looks to us. If they were on earths surface they might see some buildings. But no people. No plants. Grass. Trees. Just a geologically rich, biologically empty planet.

So let’s take it a step further. What if this carbon blind observer could only see electromagnetic frequencies emitted by humans? They could see humans interact, live, sleep, discover, stress, love, work, run, argue, hate, accomplish, envy, ruminate, fight, hoard and share resources, explore, steal, pray, starve, feast, cry, teach, murder, serve, learn, explore, laugh, judge, repent, and everything else in the human experience. But only through electromagnetic pulsing and emitting from the body. The electric beating of the heart. The generation of brain function. The dense neurons communicating with miles of the nervous system. No words, no faces, bodies, or anything of what we know as our world. Just the energy we emit. That energy which we know occurs, but to which we largely observe through the limited sensor network of our physical bodies. The five senses provide us some insight, but it’s limited . As any man who didn’t notice his wife’s haircut can attest. We miss signals because we’re sensor impaired. Those signals are perhaps more unique than the shape of a nose, sound of a voice, or patten of a fingerprint.

How would that view change our interactions with each other? Let’s say all mankind could toggle to that view for a few minutes. Like clicking from satellite view to transit view on maps. What would that to do us? I think it would help us see each more like God sees us.

Did you grab the wrong bag of gummies?

[Northwestcoug]

Did you grab the wrong bag of gummies?

LOL. Either that or he forgot the 'micro' in his microdosing.

YO, that is an interesting concept. I read somewhere (maybe on Bluesky!) that preying mantis shrimp have the ability to see way past the UV and infrared limits of our vision spectrum. They have like 16 kinds of photoreceptors, whereas we only have 3. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest that there are many senses out there outside of the human experience, and if we had an inkling of what we are missing we would be crushed and debilitated under an intolerable weight of despair and regret.

[Pelado]

LOL. Either that or he forgot the 'micro' in his microdosing.

YO, that is an interesting concept. I read somewhere (maybe on Bluesky!) that preying mantis shrimp have the ability to see way past the UV and infrared limits of our vision spectrum. They have like 16 kinds of photoreceptors, whereas we only have 3. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest that there are many senses out there outside of the human experience, and if we had an inkling of what we are missing we would be crushed and debilitated under an intolerable weight of despair and regret.

Again?

[wally]

Did you grab the wrong bag of gummies?

Probably shrooms. Those are in nowadays.

This reminds me of when I was 12 and I used to wonder "what if we are all seeing colors differently, but have been conditioned to identify them as the color which we see, and maybe what I call red, might actually appear blue to someone else and yet they call it red." That really effed me up for a while.