For several years, I knew I owed myself a visit to an ophthalmologist for an eye exam. Perhaps it was all the screentime finally getting to my eyes--transient symptoms that might be more than ocular muscle strain?
I decided to go to the best opthalmologist I knew in Portland, even outside my insurance network. The $180 self-pay would be worth peace of mind.
I showed up at the doctor's clinic, had my eyes numbed and pupils dilated by an assistant. When the doctor entered the examining room and sat down opposite me, I saw only a blurry shaved head, a middle-aged man. After a few perfunctory questions, he looked inside my eyes.
He had shocking words.
"You have well-developed cataracts in both eyes and your vision must be like looking through brown glass beer bottles." News to me. And then, "Because you're not reporting any symptoms, I'll let you put off the cataract surgery for two years, but no longer." And then he checked my insurance coverage and instantly realized my insurance would not pay his surgery fees. A few beats and he added, "There are a few good ophthalmologists at K.--(my insurance plan).
So with that summary judgement, I left the exam room and paid my bill. On the spot, I decided the ophthalmologist's opinion was nonsense. There's a fallacy with his professional opinion. All the equipment in the world does not allow him to see what I see through my eyes.
His granting me two-years clemency on cataract surgery was his silly assertion of authority in the absence of cataract-related symptoms like, say, poor vision in the dark. Any night I have insomnia, I'll get out of bed, go down stairs to the fridge on the first floor for a shot of oatmilk, then go back up. All in the dark. No missteps, ever.
So how could the doctor be so mistaken about my vision? How could he say I was looking through "brown glass beer bottles?"
His ignorance about adaptive optics.
See, I have an estimated 100 trillion to a quadrillion synapses in my brain and my AI agent* suggests the visual processing cortex is like some personal Photoshop software module that extracts the information I need in a highly adaptive, plastic way, upweighting some stimuli, using predictive networks to fill in gaps, adjusting contrast gain, and so forth. And I see clearly.
Adaptive Optics is a Cambridge, MA outfit that bought optimized math subroutines from one of my past employers. A physicist there memorably said with adaptive optics, "We take the twinkle out of starlight." Ummm, and how I see clearly.
* lumo.proton.meImage credit: alamy.com
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