Mentally handicapped vs Blindness
 

Another hypothetical situation that probably doesn't happen that often.



Situation; You're an average boy/girl man/woman living a normal life with no deforminites mental retardations and with perfect vision, now, Given the choice of having Down Syndrome, or being blind, which would you rather become?





/Discuss.

I'd probably choose blindness, as from what I understand losing one of your senses usually enhances the others, so it might end up being a somewhat fair trade off.

Then again, there are some things that I would really miss seeing.

Blindness definitely. With down syndrome all of my senses would be hindered instead of just one. You should just say mental retardation because you can't really aquire down syndrome you are born with it. I would miss being able to play video games but I would still have music and I wouldn't need as much assistance as I would if I were mentally challenged.

I suppose it would have to be blindness.

One thing I'd really miss, if I were blind, however, would be being able to read... though I guess one can always learn braille.

Still, at least medicine and science has reached the point where up to 75% of sight can be restored in a fully blind eye (they graft healthy retina cells onto the parts of the back of the eye which have deteriorated, casuing blindness).

Blindness. I can still "view" movies by listening to the action and imagining what's happening in my head. DS just takes too much away.

Yeah which is true, and you could always get audio tapes as well, as for me I'd hate to be either, I'm sure all of us have somewhat of mental retardation to an extent, but being blind would be better just because of the recent medical breakthroughs we've unveiled.

Personally, I think that every single audio book should be destroyed. With an audio book you don't even get close to the written word.

The advantage to audio books is that you can listen to an entire series on a roadtrip or something, that would be the only situation I would consider an audio book over a printed book.

As far as the OP is concerned, I'd take blindness. I could not live with DS, I'd rather die than suffer any inhibition to my ability to reason or learn.

blindness.

I guess no one wants to be retarded!! I suppose it makes sense because what good is sight if you can't even register what you are seeing?

I think this has turned out to be a dumb question.

More like a retarded question.

LOL U GET IT? lol

Obligatory 'I C WUT U DID THAR'

i would choose to have ass burgers

lets wikigroan

Blindness. Being able to think rationally is a great gift we have.

I think you mean it's a great gift MOST people have. Some people don't, at all, and it isn't due to mental retardation, it's due to mental dumbassness.

My aunt used to listen to audio books on her visits to see us (she's from WY, and we were in AZ), my parents just had me read to them on road trips lol.

Maybe I should edit it to "Autistic" or something.. they do say that some autism "sufferes" are slightly more intelligent than the common human. o_O

I've posted about it before, but there's this one guy who has autism but he's fully functional. He's got exceptional brain capabilities, but he doesn't suffer the negative effects of autism. It's pretty nifty.

Yeah I seen a commercial the other day saying like 1 out every 400 children born every week / month whatever are going to be diagnosed with autism within their lifetime.

It's pretty hard to say whether having autism would be a good thing or a bad thing. It has it's ups and downs, and we can't really know how it is unless we experience it(but I guess that goes for everything else, as well.)

I think the lighter forums of autism wouldn't really be that bad, but then again you have all of the drawbacks lingering around like you said, but then again blindness in my opinion is one of the worst things that could possibly happen, I would get the feeling of closterphobia if I was blind ...

Well, for instance, those people who are non-functioning autistic. The ones that we would consider near-braindead. How do we know what goes on in their head? They might not show anything going on, but for all we know, they might be solving the meaning of life and shit like that. Perhaps the less functioning the autism is, the greater the mind-power. Who knows. I personally think it would be cool to be in my own little world where I just absorb all knowledge and have an understanding of everything.

Yeah but what sucks is their inability to discuss and show us new ways of thinking, etc. I'm sure with advances in technology we'll be able to read thoughts, eventually. Which we can also use to see if people need to be taken off of life-support, etc.

haha. When i smoked I used to wish I had a way of recording my thoughts without having to write them...I'm sure its on the way.

Well steven hawking has that sort of thing where he can talk using brainwaves, not exactly how that whole setup works, though..

Doesn't he type what he wants to say?

Idk, I thought he couldn't move any part of his body, or something... but maybe so.

Quote:

He gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and is now almost completely paralyzed. The computer system attached to his wheelchair is operated by Hawking via an infra-red 'blink switch' clipped onto his glasses. By scrunching his right cheek up, he is able to talk, compose speeches, research papers, browse the World Wide Web, and write e-mails. The system also uses radio transmission to provide control over doors in his home and office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Illness

Same birthday as mine, he has.

How exactly can he talk by scrunching his cheek? I don't get how that would work.

Something to do with the infra-red blink switch, methinks. Maybe the scrunching up of his cheek sends out an infra-red pulse from the blink switch, to his computer?

Yeah, but how would you have that stand for different things? Like, I could see if scrunching his cheek made his wheelchair go forward, but how does it make different characters and click shit on his computer and stuff?

Haven't a clue. Could be done like Morse Code - different lengths and combinations of twitches do different things.

Don't they call him one of the greatest minds since Albert Einstein?

He's the cleverest fella alive, if that counts?

Mjordan told me his "A Brief History of Time" book is really good, I even ordered it but the delivery failed and got sent back to Amazon so I never re-ordered.

He's pretty much the most advanced Astrophysicist alive.

I constantly wish that, I have a poor memory and I have the problem of an overactive mind, so my thoughts fly much faster than I can write or type. I've thought of so many interesting things that I wish I could remember the details of...

The fully functional autistic guy is English also. He's some red-headed due that can recite pi to like 10,000 digits.

Blindness.