tilthat: TIL a philosophy riddle from 1688 was recently solved. If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he, if given the ability, distinguish those objects by sight alone? In 2003 five people had their sight restored though surgery, and, no they could not.
nentuaby: I love when apparently Deep questions turn out to have clear empirical answers.
There’s another easy way to test this. Could you average person pick a picture of their own butthole out of a lineup?
That’s not an adequate comparison.
The original premise was based on general geometric shapes. Spheres and cubes. Your proposal is closer to asking them to identify somebody they know by photograph.
Even that’s assuming the average person could distinguish their own butthole from another butthole by feel alone. I don’t know if that’s true and I don’t like the idea of conducting experiments to find out.
Science is not always pretty, but it must be done!