Gloves Translate Sign Language to Speech

Clearing the Eye

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PrinceOfShapeir said:
Clearing the Eye said:
Part of me wonders if all we do as a species to alleviate the burden of the disabled is a good thing. While on the surface any bridge over the gap between mainstream society and those hindered in some way is a marvelous thing. But something makes me question the affects of, for example, keeping people alive when they should otherwise be dead. I'll go off on something of a tangent here, so skip my post if you're here purely for the OP.

I watched a documentary last night about a young woman (21) utterly crippled by a lung disease that rendered her incapable of living without the constant presence of her oxygen tank. The disease is almost always fatal and totally incurable--the only hope is a transplant. She had a few ups and downs during the filming of the doco, including her beautiful marriage to an amazingly strong man whom she loved dearly. Ultimately, after about six months waiting on the transplant list, two separate let downs when a set of lungs was available but unusable, knowing any day could be her last, her heart and lungs could both no longer keep her alive and she was hooked up to a machine to keep her alive in a coma like state. The machine could only keep her going for a maximum of ten days and on the tenth day, the machine was removed and she was manually kept alive by nurses. With minutes left to live and with her entire body virtually dead, a pair of matching lungs became available and she survived.

It was a pretty amazing story (how played up for the documentary it was, I don't know) and the family seemed pretty special in a seemingly never ending hour of darkness. They had a lot of love and no one ever gave up--least of all the poor woman going through it. It was nice to see it work out for them (thanks to the amazing doctors and a donor, R.I.P.) but I was left wondering how "right" it was for us as a people to do what we did--to let live those that should by all rights have died.

I guess right and wrong may well be defined by positive and negative affect on life (what better yard stick). But there's still something unnatural about it all that won't let the issue lay in my mind. As if the greater forces of evolution pester and hiss the technology we use to overcome its totalitarian rule. Ironic than that it is through evolution that we have access to these means, lol.

Funnily enough, I attempted suicide several years ago and was saved by doctors and take antidepressants every day. Fuck you, survival of the fittest, I guess.
Oh, dear God.

Nature does not have a course. Nature is not a sentient entity. Evolution does not have a mind. There is no 'should have' died. Whether you believe in God or not, the fact that she -did not- die proves that she obviously wasn't intended to die by any cosmic plan.
On a semi-related note, if we just let disabled people die, their genetic defects going with them, wouldn't we speed up the process of overcoming the problems all together? Removing defects from the gene pool should well decrease the number of cases said disability arises in children, meaning less people ultimately suffer.

I guess it's a soft eugenics.
 

Vrach

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InsipidMadness said:
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh, I feel there's a lack of cultural sensitivity on this. (Mainly because I hardly know any private/public school that offers education towards Deaf and Hard of Hearing Culture. So having to elaborate what a Deaf person is by using the example of a signing monkey...)

OT: That's great and all, but it'll just turn into more mainstreaming of Deaf kids and Deaf adults which is nice and all, but not the greatest. First, I'll admit that since it requires actual sign language to function, then it's not completely killing a culture (like ignorance and cochlear implants), but where's the device that gets us to talk to them? Hearing people rarely have the patience to cooperate and give equal communication and we look for the quickest ways to mainstream them. So, great, they can talk to us, now how can we talk to them?

To be blunt, to further explain my point, it's basically saying, "Hey, you know how you're a different skin tone from the majority, or a different gender, or a different economic level? Here's this device that lets you appear to be functional within the majority, all the while hiding a subconscious shame you might have while wearing big freakish technology that makes you stand out than you already would... aaaaaaand no there's not a reversal device that brings 'us' down to your level (Implied)."

See, kinda harsh.

-Opinions from a Child of a Deaf Adult attending college to be a Sign Language Interpreter/Transliterator.
Wow... so many things wrong with that opinion, not quite sure where to start. Let's do it top to bottom (oh and btw, I'm gonna refer to whoever's opinion that is by "you" since you seem to be quoting it):
- "Where's the device that lets us talk to them?" - in the same sentence as that question, it's called a cochlear implant and you're spitting on it.

- "Hearing people rarely have the patience to cooperate and give equal communication and we look for the quickest ways to mainstream them" - it's what happens when they're the ones who have a literal problem with communication and they're in a large minority. There's nothing abnormal nor wrong with that. It's not their fault they're deaf, but that doesn't make it ours either.

- "So, great, they can talk to us, now how can we talk to them?" - they can get a cochlear implant or we can make a device that makes hand motions or moves our hands. Have you considered the fact that all we need to "hear" them is a device that produces sound, while what they need to "hear" us is a device that produces hand motions? The latter is a lot harder and more expensive to construct, you need robotics for it to work (also, I believe it exists already, but I might be wrong). Alternatively, we can talk to them by means of using an application that translates our language into letters - the technology we've had for a long time now and are still perfecting, so I'm not sure what you're on about.

- The analogy -
Your analogy is so off base, it's ridiculous. Skin colour/tone, gender and economic level aren't handicaps. Deafness is. Being deaf is being handicapped, the fact the society sprung up a culture around it doesn't change that.
 

Ledan

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Clearing the Eye said:
Part of me wonders if all we do as a species to alleviate the burden of the disabled is a good thing. While on the surface any bridge over the gap between mainstream society and those hindered in some way is a marvelous thing. But something makes me question the affects of, for example, keeping people alive when they should otherwise be dead. I'll go off on something of a tangent here, so skip my post if you're here purely for the OP.

I watched a documentary last night about a young woman (21) utterly crippled by a lung disease that rendered her incapable of living without the constant presence of her oxygen tank. The disease is almost always fatal and totally incurable--the only hope is a transplant. She had a few ups and downs during the filming of the doco, including her beautiful marriage to an amazingly strong man whom she loved dearly. Ultimately, after about six months waiting on the transplant list, two separate let downs when a set of lungs was available but unusable, knowing any day could be her last, her heart and lungs could both no longer keep her alive and she was hooked up to a machine to keep her alive in a coma like state. The machine could only keep her going for a maximum of ten days and on the tenth day, the machine was removed and she was manually kept alive by nurses. With minutes left to live and with her entire body virtually dead, a pair of matching lungs became available and she survived.

It was a pretty amazing story (how played up for the documentary it was, I don't know) and the family seemed pretty special in a seemingly never ending hour of darkness. They had a lot of love and no one ever gave up--least of all the poor woman going through it. It was nice to see it work out for them (thanks to the amazing doctors and a donor, R.I.P.) but I was left wondering how "right" it was for us as a people to do what we did--to let live those that should by all rights have died.

I guess right and wrong may well be defined by positive and negative affect on life (what better yard stick). But there's still something unnatural about it all that won't let the issue lay in my mind. As if the greater forces of evolution pester and hiss the technology we use to overcome its totalitarian rule. Ironic than that it is through evolution that we have access to these means, lol.

Funnily enough, I attempted suicide several years ago and was saved by doctors and take antidepressants every day. Fuck you, survival of the fittest, I guess.
Actually, we are following evolutionary logic to this day. Keeping people alive, even when they might otherwise have died, keeps our gene pool large. In the long run, having a large gene pool and a large variation within a species ensures survival. What may seem to be defective to the species may let it survive past sudden changes in the environment.

For example, migrationary birds always have birds that don't fly south. They go the "wrong" way. This may appear stupid, but sometimes these "defective" birds will find new environments to live.
 

Clearing the Eye

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Ledan said:
I guess it won't even matter soon, with bio-engineering not too distant in the future. Eventually it becomes an issue of the poor being the only sufferers of disease and disorder and having a child with a disability will be a cardinal sin. Then we have to have to debate if it's fair to let deaf people even exist. If the answer is no, as I believe it is, we devalue the lives of the currently deaf.

Reminds me of a great band called Buried Inside (I'll use any excuse to praise them--geniuses). They've written many songs about the issue--about the role technology plays in our lives and of the increasingly intertwined nature of the two. It's quite interesting and easily applied to this topic.

II

Law-code and executive power
Architect's plan and builder's craft
Gene action is the prime mover, the great absolver
Mining green gold to spill black ink
To drink it from the troft and cut in on the sugar
Surrender the commons to the bootmarch of biotech
Served by back-pocket ivory towers and pump-priming federal courtesies

With science comes rhetoric
Couched in terms of life-maps and holy grails
Cybernetics and feedback transducers -- the language of sociobiology
All handmaidens for dangerous crossings and hand-wringing policies
Safeguards to thrash the parliament of defects and disposed workers to the scrap heap of oblivion

Give us perfection on polymer scaffolding
Give us ghetto walls bricked word by word
Give us eugenics in seasonal colours
Give us new life over telegraph wires
Inspired by Refiguring Life, by Evelyn Fox Keller;

The body of modern biology, like the DNA molecule - and also like the modern corporation or political body - has become just another part of the informational network, now machine, now message, always ready for exchange, each for the other."

VIII

Necessity is the plea for every extension
For every elaboration of the twin gospels of service provision and security restraint
The folded geographies that demarcate all worth

Called or not the arbiters will come
Called or not biometrics will come

Technologies do their definitive labour on wedding nights
Sensory organs meet calculating engines
Eurodac fucks Privium in the penthouse of Control Data
But be warned: when the body is the input
When the body is the witness
When the body is the passport
Inscribed and immobilized
Necessity will bring severed hands, forked-out eyes, and ripped-off limbs scattered along frontiers and abandoned in gutters as the dregs of desperation
Inspired by The Real World of Technology, by Ursula Franklin.

"The goal of technology is incorporated a priori in the design and is not negotiable."
 

Orinon

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have any of you seen that movie Congo? well if you haven't your lucky because it sucked.
but there was a glove like that for gorilla's, best part the scientists stated
"Its a talking gorilla this is not Mr. Ed"
but whatever I'm just bored. don't watch Congo, especially if you read the book.
 

InsipidMadness

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Vrach said:
InsipidMadness said:
Wow... so many things wrong with that opinion, not quite sure where to start. Let's do it top to bottom (oh and btw, I'm gonna refer to whoever's opinion that is by "you" since you seem to be quoting it):
- "Where's the device that lets us talk to them?" - in the same sentence as that question, it's called a cochlear implant and you're spitting on it.

- "Hearing people rarely have the patience to cooperate and give equal communication and we look for the quickest ways to mainstream them" - it's what happens when they're the ones who have a literal problem with communication and they're in a large minority. There's nothing abnormal nor wrong with that. It's not their fault they're deaf, but that doesn't make it ours either.

- "So, great, they can talk to us, now how can we talk to them?" - they can get a cochlear implant or we can make a device that makes hand motions or moves our hands. Have you considered the fact that all we need to "hear" them is a device that produces sound, while what they need to "hear" us is a device that produces hand motions? The latter is a lot harder and more expensive to construct, you need robotics for it to work (also, I believe it exists already, but I might be wrong). Alternatively, we can talk to them by means of using an application that translates our language into letters - the technology we've had for a long time now and are still perfecting, so I'm not sure what you're on about.

- The analogy -
Your analogy is so off base, it's ridiculous. Skin colour/tone, gender and economic level aren't handicaps. Deafness is. Being deaf is being handicapped, the fact the society sprung up a culture around it doesn't change that.
First things first, you've stated that my opinion is wrong, therefore the rest of your argument will hold no weight. Secondly, yes, yes I am spitting on the Choclear Implant. It's a device that ROBS the child the freedom of their culture, it destroys a culture by the ignorance of the parents, and it's genocide by the doctors who recommend this costly, invasive, and low successful procedure. A CI (Choclear Implant) basically states, "Oh, you're broken, here let me fix you." By forcing Deaf kids into a Hearing world, a world that they won't function 100% as a Hearing person, it ostricizes them from that culture, and the ignorance of never bringing them into a full Bilingual and Bicultural (Bi-Bi) school where they can learn American Sign Language and English, is a cruel and twisted way to leave a magnet buried inside someone's skull.

Now I have nothing against someone's choice, as an adult, to do as they wish to their own body. But forcing a child from six months old to two years old to go through this invasive surgery, just to fucking normalize them, is sick and twisted from a bigoted perspective. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing Culture is a beautiful and prosperous thing and here we are drilling into their skulls and taking away their natural language, sign language.

Let me make clear my point, WHERE'S THE DEVICE THAT LETS "US" TALK TO "THEM". Aka, where's the big bulky machinary that drills into our skulls or sticks a tube down our throats that turns our speech into mobile hands so what we say, we sign. None, there is none, people do not have the patience to learn a Sign Language to communicate with Deaf people, we instead pour money into more invasive surgies onto their bodies to "bring them up to our level of normalcy". For equal access communication, why are they the only people going through experimentation and trials?

Oh, oh oh oh oh oh I am so sorry that I typed all of this before reading your second point. "they're the ones who have a literal problem with communication..." I'm sorry Hitler, I didn't know handicapped people were a problem in this society. Here, I know, let's say you were born as a Deaf person, we can say that you're a problem in our society and we're going to drill a hole in your head to fix you. Oh, I'm sorry, were you born as a average white male? Then you have full 100% right to say who is right and wrong and what's a problem in this country, with the most empathetical and understanding reasoning, here's the podium, here you go.

Yes, I realize that a device for us would be expensive, but not nearly as much as a Cochlear Implant surgury, which exceeds $40,000 per ear. My question about technology is rethorical. Instead of getting technology to "fix" everything, why not add education and understading to our masses about how other cultures work, such as the Deaf and Hard of Hearing one, offer some signing classes, and we can get the lazy people relying on all the computer engineers for their flying cars to actually go and communicate with people on their own.

Laugh My Fucking Ass Off.
Your last line, oh my god, are you serious?
I've been trolled this whole time, whew, I can laugh it off, because if you're serious then this is why we can't have nice things, this is why America will be ruined.

You do realize that at one point BEING A DIFFERENT COLOR, A DIFFERENT GENDER, OR A DIFFERENT ECONOMIC LEVEL WAS CONSIDERED A HANDICAP! WE THEN PUNISHED AND ABUSED THESE CULTURE GROUPS FOR YEARS, FOR MILENIA, UNTIL THEY ROSE OUT OF IT, AND WE PULLED OUR HEADS OUT OF OUR ASSES! Hell, it's still considered a handicap to be born a woman in other countries. But by your sound reasoning, it's just a problem, that you don't have to feel responsible for, but we can fix it through corrective surgery.

"Your analogy is so off base, it's ridiculous. Skin colour/tone, gender and economic level aren't handicaps. Deafness is. Being deaf is being handicapped, the fact the society sprung up a culture around it doesn't change that."

*Shakes head*
 

InsipidMadness

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PrinceOfShapeir said:
Wow, Insipid. I take it you're also opposed to treatments that would allow the blind to see, and people in wheelchairs able to walk. I didn't think I'd ever run into someone who -actually thought- that making the lives of someone with a disability easier was a bad thing.

It's amusing that you say it's like being of a different economic level - what is so bad about a poor person -no longer being poor-?
Please, you're welcome to do some research. A Choclear Implant is not a magic device that lets people hear and understand language (At the price tag of a cool $40,000 per ear). In late Deafened adults the success rate is lower than half, and in children it's invasive and ruins cultures. Being Deaf isn't a handicap, and not a single person in that community would tell you as so. So hooray, another device that lets THEM talk to US. That means when they order fast food, we can hear them, now how do we ask them if they want fries with that?

Being Blind or being in a Wheelchair isn't an issue about communication equality, however the oppression that's always revolved around the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities states that they are a problem that should be fixed, from the perspective of the people trying to do so. Instead of building a better translator the bridge the gap between the hearing and the deaf, we've built another device that encourages them to leave their world for ours so we can ridicule them behind their backs. I'm being perfectly honest with that statement, imagine a little Deaf kid in a school with those gloves trying to ask a teacher a question, you really don't think the other kids will bully them for being different with obnoxious gloves? It's an issue of mainstreaming a culture without equality. Think I'm wrong? What happened when we no longer had segregation with colored and white people, you think all the issues around that just magically went away?
 

InsipidMadness

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jerushajen said:
Or the hearing could just take a cheap sign language course at their local JC instead of hearing impaired/Deaf people having to shell out $200 to make things easier for the hearing.

"Hearing impaired and Deaf people could use them to converse with people who don't know sign language, allowing them to lead more normal lives."

Hearing impaired/Deaf people already lead normal lives which don't require increased normalization, because they *are* normal.
Heyy, the guy with one post under his belt is the first person to prove he's got a head on his shoulders in this thread. *Applause*

Captcha: against the grain
 

PrinceOfShapeir

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Being Deaf isn't a handicap
Well, then the culture is wrong. Being deaf is quite literally defined as the INABILITY TO DO SOMETHING. Specifically hear. Which is a handicap.

In late Deafened adults the success rate is lower than half, and in children it's invasive and ruins cultures
Okay, so it doesn't always succeed, and it's invasive. Only one of those is actually a point against it, the invasive part. The 'doesn't always succeed' is just unfortunate. As for the ruination of culture, isn't that really Deaf Culture's fault for not accepting those with implants?

Man, Deaf Culture is a good name for a rock band.

What happened when we no longer had segregation with colored and white people, you think all the issues around that just magically went away?
Whereas you just want to keep the communities segregated with your persecution complex?
 

Goofguy

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jerushajen said:
Or the hearing could just take a cheap sign language course at their local JC instead of hearing impaired/Deaf people having to shell out $200 to make things easier for the hearing.

"Hearing impaired and Deaf people could use them to converse with people who don't know sign language, allowing them to lead more normal lives."

Hearing impaired/Deaf people already lead normal lives which don't require increased normalization, because they *are* normal.
Would you rather the use of the word 'common'? As in, it is less common to see hearing impaired/deaf people than those who can hear? No one is saying they lead abnormal lives, only that they have a condition that denies them the ability to live it as easily as the rest of us. I wouldn't get caught up on the wording, really.

Also, do you expect every single clerk, shopkeeper, vendor, salesperson to learn sign language? In an ideal world, absolutely. In our realistic world, not going to happen. This is a fantastic tool that enables the hearing impaired the ability to easily interact with anyone, be it to purchase a Starbucks coffee or converse with a person they just met.

Yes, $200 is not just change in the pocket. However, if it can drastically improve a hearing impaired person's quality of life, is it not worth it?
 

Vrach

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InsipidMadness said:
First things first, you've stated that my opinion is wrong, therefore the rest of your argument will hold no weight.
I'd beg to differ, opinions CAN be wrong (hell, you're arguing that my opinion on deaf people being handicapped is) and it obviously holds weight if you felt the need to respond to it. Oh and before we continue, I am not trolling you. I'll repeat this again later.

InsipidMadness said:
Secondly, yes, yes I am spitting on the Choclear Implant. It's a device that ROBS the child the freedom of their culture, it destroys a culture by the ignorance of the parents, and it's genocide by the doctors who recommend this costly, invasive, and low successful procedure. A CI (Choclear Implant) basically states, "Oh, you're broken, here let me fix you." By forcing Deaf kids into a Hearing world, a world that they won't function 100% as a Hearing person, it ostricizes them from that culture, and the ignorance of never bringing them into a full Bilingual and Bicultural (Bi-Bi) school where they can learn American Sign Language and English, is a cruel and twisted way to leave a magnet buried inside someone's skull.
It's not a culture, it's a disability. The culture sprung up around it. Yes, if you can't hear, you are "broken", there is something wrong with you, that's how you became deaf. Human beings are meant to hear, when we don't, it's because something is not working right somewhere in our body. That's very fucking simple, regardless of the fact it's not a debilitating disability and that you can live with it. I'm not hating on deaf people or anything, don't get me wrong here. If you wanna choose to accept your culture over medical procedures that might make you hear, that's fine with me. But it does not undo the simple fact that being deaf means you're missing something.

InsipidMadness said:
The Deaf and Hard of Hearing Culture is a beautiful and prosperous thing and here we are drilling into their skulls and taking away their natural language, sign language.
Taking away what? Does the CI procedure cut a child's arms off? You're going off on "people with hearing are lazy for not learning sign language" (tremendous bullshit in itself), but just because a deaf child has a CI is an excuse not to learn it?

InsipidMadness said:
Let me make clear my point, WHERE'S THE DEVICE THAT LETS "US" TALK TO "THEM". Aka, where's the big bulky machinary that drills into our skulls or sticks a tube down our throats that turns our speech into mobile hands so what we say, we sign. None, there is none, people do not have the patience to learn a Sign Language to communicate with Deaf people, we instead pour money into more invasive surgies onto their bodies to "bring them up to our level of normalcy". For equal access communication, why are they the only people going through experimentation and trials?
You don't fix people that are fine so they can communicate with someone that has a problem. You help them overcome the problem instead. CI is one way. It might not be perfect or the answer, but it's one option. I never said about forcing it on every single person and child, just said that if you're looking for a device that lets them understand us, there's one. And actually, there's another, completely noninvasive, that I mentioned that you suspiciously completely ignored. There's tons and I mean TONS of software, some very advanced now and getting better all the time that turns normal language into text. It's a perfectly easy way for any deaf person to understand a person with hearing, not that they actually need it, because due to necessity, they generally develop better lip-reading skills.

InsipidMadness said:
Oh, oh oh oh oh oh I am so sorry that I typed all of this before reading your second point. "they're the ones who have a literal problem with communication..." I'm sorry Hitler, I didn't know handicapped people were a problem in this society. Here, I know, let's say you were born as a Deaf person, we can say that you're a problem in our society and we're going to drill a hole in your head to fix you. Oh, I'm sorry, were you born as a average white male? Then you have full 100% right to say who is right and wrong and what's a problem in this country, with the most empathetical and understanding reasoning, here's the podium, here you go.
I'm Hitler because I'm saying someone's handicapped for missing one of the core senses? Do apologise, really. I never said they were a problem, I said they HAVE a problem. If someone's blind, are you gonna claw someone else's eyes out to bring them down to that level? Or are you gonna work on something that could replace/restore that person's eyesight? I honestly don't see where you're coming from.

Oh and stop the "drilling a hole in your head" bullshit. We're talking modern day surgery here, not pulling out a part of your brain through your nose with an ice pick.

InsipidMadness said:
Yes, I realize that a device for us would be expensive, but not nearly as much as a Cochlear Implant surgury
I think you oughtta look at robotics and pricing. Biotic arms don't come cheap. Or at all really, we've only just done the biotic hand recently...

InsipidMadness said:
Instead of getting technology to "fix" everything, why not add education and understading to our masses about how other cultures work, such as the Deaf and Hard of Hearing one, offer some signing classes, and we can get the lazy people relying on all the computer engineers for their flying cars to actually go and communicate with people on their own.
Because there are better fucking things to do with your life. In my life, I've met more French, Greek, English, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish and really all sorts of people than I've met deaf people and I haven't even moved my arse much out of my country. Why should I make it a priority to learn a language that less people speak over the one that more people speak?

There are multitudes of information in this day and age. Just because people aren't interested in some of it, doesn't make them lazy, not everyone can know everything, it's quite literally impossible. And if we can overcome a barrier through technology, why not do it? Why is technology evil for trying to offer a bridge for communication?

InsipidMadness said:
I've been trolled this whole time, whew, I can laugh it off, because if you're serious then this is why we can't have nice things, this is why America will be ruined.
Nope, not been trolled. Also not been speaking to an American, I'm Serbian.

InsipidMadness said:
You do realize that at one point BEING A DIFFERENT COLOR, A DIFFERENT GENDER, OR A DIFFERENT ECONOMIC LEVEL WAS CONSIDERED A HANDICAP! WE THEN PUNISHED AND ABUSED THESE CULTURE GROUPS FOR YEARS, FOR MILENIA, UNTIL THEY ROSE OUT OF IT, AND WE PULLED OUR HEADS OUT OF OUR ASSES! Hell, it's still considered a handicap to be born a woman in other countries. But by your sound reasoning, it's just a problem, that you don't have to feel responsible for, but we can fix it through corrective surgery.
So, by your logic, nothing is a handicap, because something that wasn't a handicap was labelled as one at some point in history and/or in certain nations? Gold star buddy, as useless an argument as you could pull off. You know what being deaf is called? Hearing impairment. Do I need to draw a clearer picture than that?

Note - I've nothing against deaf people. I pass them on the street, see them signing, it brings a smile to my face every single time. It's cool to see that culture in action and sign language is something brilliant that I wish I knew and have considered trying to learn a few times. However, I'm just stating facts here. There's nothing wrong with them making a culture around the issue, but it doesn't change the fact it's an issue. Not an issue in the terms of "oh god, deaf people, what a bother", but an issue in the fact that those people are missing one core sense and that they'd most definitely be much better off if we could help them fix it. Not because it'd make them more normal and easier to fit in with us, but because they could fucking hear. What's wrong with trying to help them do that? I have a number of friends, most are fans of music, hell a good number of them are even musicians themselves, they could not imagine their lives without it. Yet a deaf person will be deprived of this and you're saying that's fine because "it's a culture, not a handicap"? Bullshit.

I get your hate on the CIs because of how they work and how parents "force" them on children while they're by no means perfect devices. But here you are, hating on a thread where a group of students decided to give a translating tool to the deaf through technical innovation. You'll forgive me if I don't hold your opinion in high regard over something like that.
 

InsipidMadness

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Vrach said:
I've really not much more to say towards this particular conversation. We're about as opposite as it gets in terms of debating and nothing constructive will come from our back-and-forth.

I've grown up with Deaf parents and have been a part of Deaf Culture all my life, aside from going to school in Sign Language studies and culture. Clearly I have more fact backing my opinion about how Hearing parents of Deaf kids give them a CI (Which is a hole drilled in your head and magnets set in, you're welcome to look it up), and how that kid gets treated growing up not fully being a part of either cultures. Discrimination among kids runs high if you're "different" and late-deafened adults have no use of a CI from how their brains have already adapted, overcoming the loss of a sense.

Pieces of your argument may seem valid, but your choice of words is poor. Oh, by the way, there was a time when a man deemed Jews had a problem and he sent them to certain places to be fixed. While the details of the analogy may seem completely different, the main idea and ideology of it remains the same. Place yourself in a minority position for once and see if you'd enjoy living a life without pride, without showing what you're capable of doing, which is damn near everything, and constantly being malcontent about how you need to be fixed.

As for the technology you've mentioned, it's nothing but a faster method of passing a pen and paper back and forth, please, ask a Deaf person how much they enjoy doing that. Bridging a gap is called Interpretation, cultural mediation, and compensating that cultural awareness is nothing more than dressing up a monkey, giving it symbols, and laughing at it as it attempts to mimic one of us.
 

Vrach

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InsipidMadness said:
I've really not much more to say towards this particular conversation. We're about as opposite as it gets in terms of debating and nothing constructive will come from our back-and-forth.

I've grown up with Deaf parents and have been a part of Deaf Culture all my life, aside from going to school in Sign Language studies and culture. Clearly I have more fact backing my opinion about how Hearing parents of Deaf kids give them a CI (Which is a hole drilled in your head and magnets set in, you're welcome to look it up), and how that kid gets treated growing up not fully being a part of either cultures. Discrimination among kids runs high if you're "different" and late-deafened adults have no use of a CI from how their brains have already adapted, overcoming the loss of a sense.
Aye, I have the basic idea on what a CI is and how it works, I was just arguing your choice of words, saying "drilling a hole in your head" is just evocative of lobotomy and makes it sound primitive.

I know how being different sucks, but if I'm not wrong (and I think you just stated it in your post as well), you can't just let a child grow up deaf and then give them a choice of CI, the brain adapts by then and the CI stops being an option (or becomes less effective, in which case you might make your child's life worse by giving them the choice if they decide to do it themselves later and end up with the damn thing not working as well). If that's the case, you have to make a choice for your child either way. While you might see someone forcing a CI on a child as cruel, another might see denying them the option and forcing them into never having the option of one as just as cruel. Either way you're making a choice and neither is necessarily better. It'd be nice if the person themselves chose, but if they're at the age of 2 or something, that's hardly the option, so the choice has to be made by the parent.

InsipidMadness said:
Pieces of your argument may seem valid, but your choice of words is poor. Oh, by the way, there was a time when a man deemed Jews had a problem and he sent them to certain places to be fixed. While the details of the analogy may seem completely different, the main idea and ideology of it remains the same. Place yourself in a minority position for once and see if you'd enjoy living a life without pride, without showing what you're capable of doing, which is damn near everything, and constantly being malcontent about how you need to be fixed.
And your constant pushing that just because something else got called a handicap/problem at some point in history really proves nothing. You could argue the same way that a baby born without limbs is just fine, you know what, it's not, if you're missing something, it's called a handicap, it's plain and simple like that whether you like it or not. I'm sorry if that choice of words is offensive, but it's really just fact. As I've said, being deaf is not debilitating, I'm not arguing they can't function without CIs or whatever, but not being able to hear is an issue and if we can fix that issue, everyone will be better for it. Sure, a culture will die out because of it, but that culture arose to deal with the issue. If being born without arms was more common, you'd see a culture rising around that as well and people using their feet to overcome their loss of arms (I've seen this in reality, I'm not pulling it out of my arse). But if we could cure that from happening or help these people with functional bionic arms, wouldn't that be a good thing?

I'm aware we're not there yet with the CIs, as I've said several times, they're not perfect yet, but you seem to be arguing against any sort of progress in order to preserve a culture. And that's one topic that I'm very familiar with, living in this backwards arse country that does the same thing quite often.

InsipidMadness said:
As for the technology you've mentioned, it's nothing but a faster method of passing a pen and paper back and forth, please, ask a Deaf person how much they enjoy doing that. Bridging a gap is called Interpretation, cultural mediation, and compensating that cultural awareness is nothing more than dressing up a monkey, giving it symbols, and laughing at it as it attempts to mimic one of us.
Can you explain to me how interpretation by a human is better than one done by a machine? There's really no functional difference, the only thing different is the mediator. I agree, humans are for now, better translators and interpreters, but automatizing the process is not really a bad thing.

As I've said before, you can't expect from everyone that they should learn sign language any more than they should learn any other language. It's not dressing them up as a monkey, it's using technology to translate which is common as fuck these days. The same way one might use a Google translator (or the upcoming better technologies, heard Microsoft is working on something), we're using a translator here. The only thing different is the fact that since sign language works by hand motions, we have to read those hand motions instead of words and letters, so, in this particular case, they do it with gloves.