Imagine you’re part of an experiment. A device is placed on you that completely removes your ability to see. You might be able to make out shadows at best, but for the most part, you’re effectively blind.
You won’t be paid for the hours you sleep. During your waking hours, you’re expected to live as normally as possible. That means doing your own grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and anything else you would usually handle. You can’t just sit at home and have others do things for you.
The experiment is to see how quickly you can adapt to the loss of sight and how long you can function before the frustration or difficulty makes you want to quit.
You’ll have an “off” switch you can press at any time to end the experiment and regain your sight. But once you press it, the experiment is over, and you won’t be able to earn any more money.
Would you try something like this? How long do you think you could (or would) last?
NOTES
If the experiment would prevent you from doing your job, you’re guaranteed to have that job waiting for you once it’s over. You won’t be fired or penalized for participating.
You don’t get time to prepare. The blindness comes on suddenly, as if it were a real-life medical event.
You would receive some basic assistance, similar to what someone newly blind might get. It won’t be extensive, but someone will help you learn how to navigate your home and provide you with a few essential tools to get started.
Comments
Copy of the original post in case of edits: Imagine you’re part of an experiment. A device is placed on you that completely removes your ability to see. You might be able to make out shadows at best, but for the most part, you’re effectively blind.
You won’t be paid for the hours you sleep. During your waking hours, you’re expected to live as normally as possible. That means doing your own grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and anything else you would usually handle. You can’t just sit at home and have others do things for you.
The experiment is to see how quickly you can adapt to the loss of sight and how long you can function before the frustration or difficulty makes you want to quit.
You’ll have an “off” switch you can press at any time to end the experiment and regain your sight. But once you press it, the experiment is over, and you won’t be able to earn any more money.
Would you try something like this? How long do you think you could (or would) last?
NOTES
If the experiment would prevent you from doing your job, you’re guaranteed to have that job waiting for you once it’s over. You won’t be fired or penalized for participating.
You don’t get time to prepare. The blindness comes on suddenly, as if it were a real-life medical event.
You would receive some basic assistance, similar to what someone newly blind might get. It won’t be extensive, but someone will help you learn how to navigate your home and provide you with a few essential tools to get started.
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So you’re telling me to be paid less than my current job and I lose my housekeeper and gardener? Wtf deal is this.
50 dollars ain’t enough, probably a few hours at best
No thanks
I don’t believe I’d want to even do this for one hour. Hard pass
So 800 a day too lose my sight?
That’s 292k a year. I dno doesn’t seem enough tbh
I make more money regularly this ain’t worth it
I’d do it for a week just to see how I deal with it. Maybe longer. It’d be decent pocket change
I’m very poor, and $50 for every waking hour for even one month – at least $24k – would change my life right now.
Yeah, I’d do it. I think I’d adjust better than average, and once I’d adjusted, it would become much easier. I would go for a year and then see how I felt about continuing.
Roughly 800 a day for a year. Im retired i don’t do much anyway. This would make retirement better with the extra 300k
Not enough for me to do this. Make it like $500 an hour and I might go a few weeks
I’d do it for a week. It’s less of a money thing, and more of a curiosity thing. I would be interested to know what those that truly suffer from blindness deal with.
1 week = $5600, 2 weeks = $11200. I’m going for two weeks easy. Get someone to set me up with a screen reader for my sams club order, I couldn’t do my work so this is two weeks of music, audiobooks, and slowly doing house chores for me. I don’t get out much so this is pretty easy tbh.
yes, at worst id get a quick ~weeks worth of $$$ doing nothing, if i cant figure things out then id tap out
Would we still receive payment from said job while we participate?
At least a week. I like audiobooks, and I have groceries for at least that long.
Maybe every minute
A few months
So if you’re blind, the choice is between getting paid an extra $800/day to live your life, or pressing an off switch and becoming sighted?
Nope. Need to pay me more. $150/hr minimum.
Right up until the first time I have to wipe my ass.
50 bucks an hour isn’t worth losing my sight.
I would probably take a week just because I’m curious. One of my favorite superhero is Daredevil so I’m always curious what it’s like to depend on our other sensors to function.
Hey OP, you do know that blind people exist, don’t you? They’re not a thought experiment, and they can lead ordinary, fulfilling lives just like everybody else.
This post isn’t great.
I’m already legally blind at 31 so I wouldn’t mind doing this a few times a week. It will help me get a better grasp of my life potentially in the future
All of us over in r/ blind would make bank. 😅
I wouldn’t do it for one minute. There’s boobies to be seen and I can’t miss any.
As I drive a bus for a living, I don’t see any benefit from this.
Help, I’m blind and I can’t find the off switch!
I’d try it at home. We have water and some ready to eat food products. I know the layout of the living area and it helps that some rooms are carpeted. I have a bidet sprayer for the toilet so the TP situation should be ok. I “want” to go like a week ($8400) but realistically I think I can only go for a few hours.
I have a blind brother so I feel pretty comfortable navigating that world. I haven’t practiced for a long time but I even learned braille. It wouldn’t be life changing money but I really need a new vehicle. I’ll go 3 months.
If I am making $50 an hour and don’t need to leave my house, I will be listening to audiobooks/podcasts like I already do most of the day, and ordering a lot doordash bc I will not be very able to cook and will want yummy food at least, if I’m being deprived of one of my senses. I bet I could make it a year knowing it means a 325Kish payday.
Do I get a dog to help me? Bc I’m all in then lol
I would consider the deal if I could move back in with a parent and still retain a degree of autonomy while having them assist me. I live in a rural area, It would be impossible for me to complete this challenge for any meaningful amount of time because it’s a 3 mile walk just to the gas station let alone in a grocery store.
I do almost everything with my wife wouldn’t be too hard and it’ll get me to the front of the line at Disney.
With no advance prep time, I might make it 24 hrs. Possibly 48. If that went ok, maybe a week. I think I could manage make sandwiches until I ran out of cold sandwich items, then to open cans and microwave some food. I could feed and water my dogs, I think. Showering, brushing teeth, and using the toilet I think I could do ok.
I don’t think I could even answer my phone without seeing the screen, much less navigate to get audio books from the library, which I do often, now. I don’t see how I could navigate to play podcasts without seeing the screen. I could turn on the tv and listen to random shows, maybe find Radio Paradise for music.
If I had screen reader already enabled, and voice controls, I could, but I don’t currently have those on. I don’t think I could navigate to set up anything like that, without either seeing the screen, or having help from someone else.
I live in a remote rural area. Without being able to drive, I couldn’t grocery shop, and there’s no food delivery out here. I’d run out of food I could find and prepare entirely by feel and memory, pretty quickly. There’s no taxi or Uber out here, so I’d be on my own, isolated, with no way to get anywhere, or get anything delivered.
Still, if I could muddle through a couple of weeks, that would be a nice bonus to have.
ETA: If the starting help included setting up my phone for voice control and navigation, I might be able to go a month. I have my own washer and dryer, so I could manage laundry. With those, I could order canned foods, plus things like peanut butter, and dry food ingredients, just nothing fresh. Or I might be able to order a meal service, one of the ones that ships meals to microwave. I’d be able to listen to podcasts and audio books. So maybe a month. I don’t think I could go longer without damage to my mental and physical health.
It’s not enough. Maybe I’d try to take a week or two off of work to double dip on cash, but I’d have to go back to work, and wouldn’t be able to ramp up fast enough to do it while blind.
A few hours. I gotta walk my dog and no way I’m taking the safety risk of not walking her with my eyesight. Maybe if I can get someone to come over to walk her a time or two I could last longer. Other than that, probably 6-8 hours awake before I would need to walk her (she won’t poop at the house). I pick my work hours so I can still work later in the day after my few hours of blindness are up.
If it wasn’t for my dog, I would probably try it a bit longer as I have exercise equipment at the house, instacart, and no other huge hurdles I can think of I would need to overcome. $50 an hour for 16 hours a day gives me more than I make now. Plus, I think it would be super cool to understand visual impairness from a personal perspective and test adaptability. However, I can’t realistically take care of my dog doing this for more than a few hours, so going to have to pass long term for that reason.
I’d last a solid amount of time. I’m disabled at home, and I love music. Can navigate my house pretty well, and I live with friends and my fiancé. I could put my art projects on hold for a little bit. Maybe close to a month before I got sick of not being able to see my fiancé smile.
I have terrible eyesight I’ll do this. Honestly some parts would be easier. No driving, or constant screens. I’m a.d.d af tho so listening could be an issue
I’d be ok, I have very poor eye sight and I often practice doing my life without my glasses. Taking it that last step and adding darkness could prove challenging but also exciting to over come. Still scary as shit tho.
Bruh I’d forget what my own face looks like. I’d do it so fkn long that I’d forget I wasn’t actually blind.
I was born blind and gained enough sight in childhood. It better be backdated.
NNNNNNNNNNNNOPE, hard pass. Been there, done this, didn’t get any money for it, never again.
My main issue is the “you have to do everything yourself part” I don’t live next door to a grocery store, I can’t drive, blind people don’t drive, so I have as long as I have food in my fridge? I can’t have other people do things for me, as if blind people don’t use delivery services or any other form of aid even including friends. So I’m just wondering, do I cross the street blind and walk for 3 hours to get food or does this last me like… 1 month if I ration my food and shopped the day before?
I would use my sick time at work as my job involves reading a screen and typing and interacting with a computer.
I have enough food prepped at any given time for about a week. I have a mental map of my apartment, and I can enable voice assistant on my phone if needed or call a friend over.
I’m pretty sure I could last at least a week. That amount of money would honestly change my life and I could pay off some debt.
I mean, I’m already disabled, I dunno that also being blind would affect my day to day life that much.
That being said, most of how I keep myself occupied is very visual in nature. Video games, art, board games, etc. Plus, I like being able to see my partners.
It also depends on if it would affect my SSI eligibility. If it would, I’d probably only do a day or two. If I could put all of it into my ABLE account and not have it count as income otherwise, I’d probably go around a year?
Looks like I am blind now. Off switch? Don’t worry about it.
Do I get any neurological impairment due to the time I was blind?
time to listen to a lot of podcasts
I’m already mostly blind I could manage at least 6 months or longer
I’d take it. I’ll never adapt to it, but for that money, I’ll make it work. 2-4 months is more than enough. There will be a lot of takeout when I’m frustrated, though.
I’d have to quit like 20 min after waking up when my dog tried to drag me into the street on our walk.
So, it would be just a bit worse than when I had my cataracts, and both eyes at once? I could see blurred colours, but that was it.
I’ll do it for about a month, maybe two, providing it comes with a perfectly plausible explanation for taxes.
It was scary, going from an absolute bookworm, to struggling to read the huge price tags in a store. I couldn’t read books, not without straining whichever eye was “good” so to speak, so Audible was a god send.
But the strange thing was how much louder things were. The train seemed louder, the cats (Either tiger or boo) upstairs sounded like humans walking around.
I do live in a better place now, no stairs, my bathroom is simple to navigate, my shower…I think I could handle it. I’d miss talking to my LD BF and his family for a couple of months, but for 50 dollars an hour, I think we could all make due.
150 hours if I take a week off work.
I’m (27m) already going blind, I have been since I was in kindergarten. I see this scenario as an absolute win. I don’t have to slowly watch my world slipping away and I make 328k a year for the rest of my life.
288k a year not worth it
Im already disabled and unemployed, might as well. Am just going to figure out accessibility aids
No thanks, my time alone is worth more than 50 an hour
Absolutely would take. I could probably last a month before wanting to quit, but by that time I’d have over $20,000.
Honestly I’d do it until I can retire. I hate working, and being blind honestly sounds WAY better than legitimate work, and I’d be paid like 5x as much.
I’d do it for a week to try it. If I was ok with it, I’d do it for a year. 300k usd. Maybe even 3 years to get almost 1m.
Not a bad life. Would learn to play an instrument, listen to audio books, learn history. Maybe learn a new language. Try good foods everyday.
I think a lot more people would do a year for 1m.
I’d do it until I have to goto work class Monday, I got finals coming up and can’t miss that
I was blind for a month once I can do this. It was years ago I would only go back to that for a week. I hated it honestly I’m so happy I got my sight back. My husband helped me so much and I hated him helping me having to help me.
Given I keep my job and have an out, I’ll try it. But I dont think I’d last long. If it came down to losing one or both legs or arms, my hearing, speech, or sight–sight is probably the worst one to lose.
If I knew for sure that I could bring it back whenever, I’d go a week or two, trying to sleep only 4-5 hours a night for optimal money making.
10 days would bring 9500. That’s more and enough to get my shit together
Most of the stuff we do with partner together (like stuff at home. Food, laundry, trash, cleaning , etc) so I would just need to ask bit more help with some stuff. I guess this would be easy money. Not sure how long I would like to do it. Possible at least a year.
The knowledge I can quit anytime nd my phattening bank account would carry me for a long time.
I would take this for a year maybe. While I enjoy most of my entertainment through my eyes I am a avid enjoyer of books and sound books are a thing, I isolated alone and don’t mind being bored but I would press it for ad long as possible. The money would be life changing for me and if I can ride out 1 year it could set me up for life
No way. I would probably die from an anxiety attack within the first hour.
there are services you can pay for that help the blind so hello audible.
This is lower than my hourly rate, so I wouldn’t do it for the money. I might try it for a few hours to see what it’s like.