On Mon, 13 May 2024 18:02:36 -0400, Richard Aiken - raikenclw at gmail.com
(via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote to Freelance Traveller:

>Question: does this biological night vision have the same quirk as
>mechanical night vision (eg converting an image into differing shades of
>one particular color)?

Sorry, accidentally hit send too soon...

There is no way to answer that question; an entity that has night vision as
an inherent biological process also has a brain that can handle the
processing of that vision. (Note that the answer would be the same if you'd
asked about IR vision or UV vision.)

More, the mechanism of 'night vision' isn't specified, so there's no way of
knowing whether it's implemented as a higher sensitivity to lower levels of
electromagnetic radiation within a specific spectrum, or whether it's some
other mechanism, such as the sort of thermal sensitivity that some snakes
have, or something else entirely that isn't really "vision" but is
connected to the eyes or the same region of the brain that processes the
entity's vision.

The reason that mechanical night vision converts an image into false color
or shades of a single color is because it needs to feed the data into a
biological subsystem that isn't actually set up to accommodate it. If one
were to get implants that fed directly into the vision center of the brain,
without any conversion, eventually the brain would learn to handle it, but
_how_ might vary from person to person. There's actually a sound reason for
night-vision goggles to convert into shades of a single color; the human
eye has two classes of sensors, called rods and cones. Cones have
responsiveness that makes it possible to see color and fine detail, and
this requires a fairly high level of input; rods are what give us the
ability to see gross shapes and movement, which requires a lower level of
input. By converting to shades of a single color, night-vision goggles
"play" to the rods, which is what you're going to want if you need the
night vision enhancement.

There have been experiments done; if you put inverter lenses in front of a
person's eyes, and don't take them off for any reason, eventually the brain
adjusts, and the person sees through the lenses as being "right side up".
If you then take the lenses away, the brain has to go through the
readjustment all over again - but it does happen. Night vision implants
would be the same.

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