this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 87 points 6 months ago (3 children)

20 years ago I was injured in one eye. Without an operation it would have left me going slowly blind. The operation was invented maybe 20 years earlier.

Both my eyes had a cataract at a quite early age. Artificial lenses where invented AFAIK 50 years ago. The new lenses even correct my shortsightedness and astigmatism!

So if I had lived only 50 years earlier I would be blind on one eye and quite possibly without a lense or at least seeing really foggy on the other. Now I am sitting here with - 0.5/-1 and otherwise great eye sight.

There are no words how grateful I am for the wonders of modern eye medicine.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

I'm so glad you have your vision!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

The first successful organ transplant was in 1954.

Transplants weren't often super successful until the development of Cyclosporine in 1982.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

I think similarly whenever my airways casually close up.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Waking up when the weather changes:

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

You're nostrils do that as you sleep to keep the one closest to the bed/ground closed. Since people roll from side to side over the course of a night your nostrils swap which one's closed

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Everyone’s talking blocked sinuses but I took your comment to mean asthma.

While every other cave person is running down a mammoth my asthmatic ass would be dying because of pollen or dust.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

Mine is also triggered by animal dander so the mammoth could probably kill me by literally just standing next to me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I assumed sleep apnea. CPAP users of today are the past’s “dang he died mysteriously in his sleep, oh well!”

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

As a CPAP user; when I don’t use it I relate to ‘dying in my sleep’ way too much.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

imagine being an absolute beta and not mouthbreathing

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Personally, I tend to use my mouth to inhale other things.

spoilerIt's - it's dick. This is a sex joke.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Just use one of your nostrils for that.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I apparently threw my glasses across the room in my sleep last night. Spent a solid 5 minutes going full on Velma mode looking for them.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Do you wear your glasses in bed??

[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, I frankly don't have the slightest clue how I did it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

That makes this so much funnier

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

How else are you gonna see in your dream?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Ha, thats why I keep an old pair in the nightstand.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Natural selection hasn't really applied to humans for thousands of years. We beat nature when we created civilizations. Which is partly why some of these less than ideal genetic traits go unchecked now in the population.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Evolution and natural selection never stops, we've only changed what the selective pressures are.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

True. I was thinking of the selective pressures of nature, but there are absolutely still self imposed selective forces acting on our species.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

And even those self-imposed selective forces are ever-changing and vary quite wildly from context to context across the globe and across the socioeconomic spectrum. Modern human evolution is really fascinating.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I can't imagine having to live with my natural sight 24/7.

I definitely would not be driving. Probably not walking much either, might not see the bus coming.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (4 children)

its not like they had cars to drive before glasses were a thing

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Just a lot of dangerous animals. And dangerous humans. No cars though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Imagine being in a jungle. Just a blur of greens.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

It's that a snake or grass? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Remember, your only job as far as natural selection is concerned is to have offspring and have them survive long enough to repeat the cycle. Old people with bad eyesight just have to be able to keep the kids and grandkids alive.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Bad eyesight could have a positive effect on generating offspring because you can't tell how ugly your partner is. Or that about 30% of the time you aren't having sex with your partner but someone else with poor eyesight instead.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (4 children)

you know whats even weirder? Some dude somewhere realized that lenses were a thing, and realized that your eyes were also just a glorified lense. And that theoretically you could just put a lense over a lense to fix the bad lensing of the lense. And it fucking worked.

Natural selection my ass.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Some species members care for each other. Humans obviously (some anyways), even lions I think have been known to provide food when another has broken teeth or something.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

Apes feed and care for their elderly. When the old ape decides it's time, it will go off alone into the jungle to die

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (7 children)

I don't need it to be night to realise that. I have -13 on both eyes, near-sightedness (not sure about the correct terminology in English). I see clearly for about one centimetre right by the tip of my nose, everything closer or further than that is a blurry and fuzzy mess. To use my phone without glasses I have to press it against my nose and can only see about half of the screen width clearly.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I remember maybe a decade or more ago some enterprising gent made a glasses design with some kind of resin in the lens, so the wearer could adjust the lens thickness to fit their needs. Nobody would back his invention so he created a non-profit to fund these glasses for the developing world. I'd love to know what happened to it because its still something I care about supporting.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

I like to tell my Republican father we'd both be classified legally blind and on the welfare he hates so much if optometry wasn't around. Helps put it in perspective for him how some people just "lose" the life lotto and need help to live in the same world as able-bodied folks.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That and a bunch of reasons

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

but mostly the bunch of reasons

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

Yeah, I always get a warning message from zenni when I order glasses. It thinks my script is wrong cause it's such a weird one.

I know I'm half blind! Don't make me feel bad about it too!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

As someone with bad sight, all my other senses are tingling. So, while blind people might've been unable to hunt, they would have made great night guards, which is a boon for social groups wary of nocturnal predators.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Not that this would be the only thing I would be selected out for...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

My eyesight went to shit from sitting at a desk and staring at a monitor all day. I wonder if my eyesight would've remained perfect well into adulthood without computers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It wouldn't have, apparently. An optometrist friend says that sort of thing only makes slightly worse the things that were already going to happen to your eyes. Like, if you are nearsighted and didn't exercise your eyes looking at far away stuff enough, your eyesight will be slightly more myopic. But you were going to be nearsighted anyway. Like, people were awfully nearsighted way before the invention of the television and sedentary indoor lifestyles. We just hadn't invented optometry yet to note it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (8 children)

God made you that way, and she doesn’t make mistakes. Think about it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago
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