Some people believe that sometimes myopia or short sightedness is due to the fact that there might've been a particular lesson at school or soforth that you had trouble with, a "Everyone else understands but I don't" moment which then leads the brain into dimming our eyesight so that it makes the situation more bearable. It seems like a logical theory but one thing that contradicts it is that I know people that simply wouldn't be considered as "bright", the less intelligent beings that aren't able to understand things as easily as other people and who are aware of it but somehow ALL of them ahve 20/20 vision.

So does this theory only relate to some types of people or is it simply wrong?

The contradiction you point out doesn't truly seem to be a contradiction. Look at it this way.... your brain would only "dim" your vision if you cared about "not getting it." If you don't care that everybody else understood, then it is a non-issue for you and no self protective measures by the brain are required. It is only when your not understanding becomes an issue for you that a decline in visual acuity might occur.

The "less intelligent" to whom you refer don't have a brain induced acuity issue because they don't care if they get it or not. As a side note, there are many "intelligent" people who may not get it as well, but since they do not allow it to become an issue for them, no reactive measures are taken by the brain.

Seems self perception is a hard mistress.

be well,

jim

Hard to say, but I would like to point out that the more usual stereotype is that the "smart" people usually are the ones with poor eyesight. Some attribute that to lack of sunlight (since many are indoors all day studying), but in the end, I think that there are likely many possible reasons for a person's defective vision.

It's a complex issue. Obviously the stereotypical glasses-wearing nerd persona is often correct. Sometimes it isn't. So it isn't as simple as one statement. It's a whole chain of events that occur to bring about these types of things. People have tried for a long time to draw pictures like this, but it's never complete. Even if you try to recognize differences by categorizing people as different "types" of myopes, for example, it's still done without knowledge of the whole chain of events. But I don't know the answer either.

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