8372049
Joined 5 years ago
Joined 5 years ago
In this way it is an apt analogy, since many deaf get CI. The implant process removes any residual hearing, so the moment they turn it off everything is completely quiet. It's nowhere near a fully qualified hearing, however, so it's useful as a supplement to sign language, not as a replacement.
I don't know of a good analogy for it, but sign language obviously also carries with it some advantages and disadvantages that vocal communication does not. You need a flashlight to talk in darkness, but you can talk (sign) as much as you want in a library, through a soundprood window or in a noisy environment.
The conversation dynamics are also completely different. Often everyone will sit in a big circle with multiple conversations going on at once, and you can "opt in" to the one you want by watching whoever is speaking.
No, it's not, and this claim just shows your ignorance and prejudice.
> If there was a cure for deafness, nearly all deaf people would take it
This is pure conjecture, and I frankly think you are wrong.
> almost no one intentionally seeks to become deaf
Do you genuinely not understand that this has more to do with culture, language, habits and the familiar, not to mention ignorance of what it means to be deaf/Deaf, than an accurate judgment of the qualities of hearing vs. silence?
This means that if you have a life that isn't worth living, you are not at risk of losing anything of value, and so the potential loss is still bounded. Sure, there is the potential that life can change in the future, but whether you have 10, 100 or 1000 years left of potential life, you don't really care much about that if your life is an agonizing living hell.
Don't ask me how I know.
I know this is a common trope, but just think about how far it is from the truth. And not just because of business secrets, classified information, privacy rules and so on—think of the signal to noise ratio, the vast quantities of "fake news", propaganda, misconceptions, not to mention how hard it is to find reliable and detailed information about niche stuff. Information is vastly more accessible than ever before, but we still have a very long way to go.
If you're deaf and live in a Deaf community (i.e. with sign language), you will function normally in virtually every way. If you're deaf and live in a hearing community with hearing aids, you'll be forever impaired. With hearing aids and/or CI you will still be hard of hearing, you will still struggle with group conversations, at the beach or in a swimming pool, in noisy environments and so on.
Secondly, the Deaf community strongly objects to the notion that lack of hearing is a handicap and instead consider it a cultural difference. Somehow, when (we) hearing people think of the deaf we consider it a disability to e.g. have to use a vibrating wakeup alarm, but we don't consider our own inability to fall asleep in a noisy place a disability.
(For reference, deaf=impaired hearing, Deaf=sign language user)
In other words, if 100,018 = x, then 100,000 can't be greater than x.