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Comment by ay | Hacker News Reader

Do you notice any difference in thinking when you are “left eye active” vs “right eye active” in front of the screen or reading ? Asking because I have a much milder version of the situation that you describe (still within the boundaries to make it work without the glasses almost all the time), but I notice a weird “not the same” feeling when I am using not the eye I am used to.

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Interesting, I hadn’t thought about that, and I haven’t noticed different thinking. But I switch back and forth all the time. Like writing this I’m using my nearsighted eye, but if I look across the room my vision switches to my farsighted eye (more or less instantly).

The thing other people notice is after I’ve had a long day of screen time and am physically tired (long day, late night), and I’m out with friends, my farsighted eye does all the work and my nearsighted eye gets lazy and wanders. It’s got nothing to do and can take a break! I’ve heard many a good-natured joke about it over the years.

Same here - but I can switch my vision for screen tasks to either only near-sighted (by being about 25cm away), or to far-sighted (by being about 70cm away). If I am doing that in the middle of the task, it feels a tiny bit “strange”.

Ah I see what you mean. For me I don't think there is any distance where both near & far eye could each have focus -- it's always too blurry in one or the other. I could see how being able to consciously switch would feel weird!

I'm curious -- if you held a stereogram at the right distance, could you see the 3D image? Or is it also like me, only one eye at a time?

I had to do a little bit of “cross-eyeing” and then I can see something that does look like 3D. That said, my eyes are a little weird this way - back in childhood I trained to move them separately as well - a great party trick to freak out the people ! :-))

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