Many people think they see ‘the world’.

This, of course, is natural and normal.

However, modern science tells us a different story.

If you ask most people, they will say that they ‘see’ light.

They don’t. In fact, none of us do.

Instead, packets of light called photons hit us and change us.

How so?

Light hits a molecule in your retina called retinal.

When light hits retinal, retinal changes its shape…ie. retinal is changed.

Restated: light does work on retinal.

I think of work as the ability to cause motion or the ability to create/change movement.

Retinal is connected to proteins.

These proteins are then changed by the change of shape of retinal.

So we have photon causing a change causing another change and so forth.

These changes start a cascade of events which lead to neurons firing.

Ultimately, a photon causes a neuron or neurons to fire.

Multiple photons hit us at any one instance of time on multiple retinals.

Thus, sets of photons at a single time cause sets of neuron firings.

Then, another set of photons hit us at the next instance of time and cause another set of of neuron firings.

Thus, sight is actually a set of neurons firing followed by another set of neurons firing followed by another set of neurons firing, etc.

Sight is not ‘OF the world’. Sight is ‘CAUSED BY the world’.

Sight is caused by the world hitting you and changing you.

These changes cause neuron firings.

Thus, sight is actually ‘the sequential EXPERIENCE of neuron firings’.

The experience of sight is ‘what it feels like’ for certain neurons to fire in sequence over a specified period of time.

We can see this in the case of hallucinations.

We remove the cause of photons hitting the retina and are only left with sets of neurons firing in sequence.

People still ‘see’ the hallucinations.

The causal story leading to neurons firing doesn’t matter as long as the proper neurons fire.

The main point is that the neurons fire in ‘sight related’ patterns.

Thus, a sufficiently powerful being could cause us to ‘see’ in a ‘photonless’ manner simply by activating the proper sets of neurons in the proper order.

Interesting.

I’ll have to ‘see’ if I can return to these ideas at a later time.

Why do I love bad puns? lol

LF Out.