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-Daredevil is a really interesting character--
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a hero who is blinded at a young age
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by radioactive chemicals that peaked
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his other senses to superhuman levels,
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as well as granting him a radar sense.
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The question is how much can Daredevil
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"see" despite his blindness
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[MUSIC]
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Welcome to Comic Misconceptions.
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I'm Scott.
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And the Daredevil Netflix series has definitely
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been drawing more attention to the Man Without Fear.
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I, for one, am glad about that.
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Daredevil is a great character and not just
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because he definitely created the Teenage Mutant Ninja
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Turtles, as I've talked about before,
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but because his powers raise some interesting questions
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about the ideas of human perception.
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But first, a little background on the character.
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When Daredevil debuted in "Daredevil Number 1" from 1964,
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we see the accident that blinded him.
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A young Matt Murdock was saving an old blind man
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who was crossing the street from being
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hit by a runaway truck carrying containers
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of radioactive materials.
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A container fell out of the truck,
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and the radioactive chemicals washed into his eyes,
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leaving Matt blinded.
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But the story doesn't end there.
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As Matt grows up, he starts to realize that his other senses
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have become very sensitive.
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And that allows him to perceive and navigate
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the world in a different way than those who can see.
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And he uses these new abilities to fight crime as Daredevil.
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He can hear faint sounds, including people's heartbeats,
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and to tell if they're lying.
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His fingers have become so sensitive
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that he can read newspapers just by feeling the impressions
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of the ink on the page.
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And his sense of smell and taste have also
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been heightened, as well.
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And if we look at real life cases, this sort of thing
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is not too far off.
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Radiation aside, studies have shown
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that people missing one sense, like sight or hearing,
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actually do compensate with their remaining senses.
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Blind people, like Matt Murdock, can learn to process other
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information from hearing, touch, and smell in ways that seeing
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people can't.
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The reason for this isn't that blind people's ears and noses
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go through a physical change that allows them to hear
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and smell better.
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They're still working with the same hardware.
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They just haven't upgraded software in their brains.
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You're born with a part of your brain called
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the visual cortex that is responsible for processing
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all the visual information you take in.
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So if you are blind, what happens to your visual cortex?
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Does it just simply sit there, taking up room, not
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really doing anything valuable?
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Interestingly, no.
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Your brain will actually rewire itself
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to make use of the visual processing
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center in different ways.
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For example, studies have shown that blind people can recruit
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their visual cortex for other processes,
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like hearing, touch, and even vocabulary, which could come in
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handy with Daredevil's day job as a lawyer-- needing to throw
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around lots of big words.
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Essentially, the brain will restructure itself to further
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augment the remaining senses.
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And this phenomenon is known as cross-modal neuralplasticity.
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How's that for big words?
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Before I go any further, I feel the need
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to point out a few things.
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Number one, I am far from an expert in any of this,
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but I put links to where I've gotten this information
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from in the description.
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And number two, the research for this is still going on.
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So anything I say in this video could
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change as new studies are done and new information is
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discovered.
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But OK, back to how Daredevil can "see."
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So the part of his brain used for seeing
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is now being taken over to process
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other sorts of information through hearing and touch.
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And that's helping Matt Murdock navigate the world around him
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in a different way, but still a pretty effective one.
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There are a few caveats here, though.
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Firstly, for this sort of thing to happen to its fullest
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ability, you would need to be blinded young
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while the brain is way more plastic and still able
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to reorganize itself.
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With Daredevil, this is definitely
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the case since the accident that blinded him happened
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when he was a youngster.
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Another issue is that cross-modal reorganization
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could cause problems if Daredevil ever
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got his sight back.
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If this happened, he probably wouldn't
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know what to do with all that new visual information that's
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coming into his brain.
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He'd have to stop fighting crime and learn how to process it
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all-- and relearn how to fight crime differently
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than he has been doing for years,
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which could be frustrating.
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He would likely be worse off since his brain is so used
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to his blindness.
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Matt getting his sight back has happened
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a few times in the comics, but usually through magic
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so I guess we could just assume that magic also
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rewired his brain to that of a seeing person, as well.
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I don't know.
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Now, interestingly, cross-modal plasticity
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can also be a link to acquiring synesthesia.
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Synesthesia literally means joined perception and comes
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in all kinds of different flavors.
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Sometimes, literally.
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It's when two or more senses are perceived simultaneously,
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like hearing a sound and then instantly and involuntarily
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sensing a smell or taste or color
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or a physical feeling that goes along with it.
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Essentially, input from one sense
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triggers another automatically.
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For the most part, synesthesia is genetic.
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And you can't acquire it if you don't already have it.
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However, there is research to suggest that blind people do
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start to acquire a kind of synesthesia
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as their brain restructures itself
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due to the loss of sight.
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Some blind people say that they see flashes of light
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when they listen to music, for example.
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Daredevil definitely seems to be a synesthi.
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This one panel in "Daredevil Number 9" from 1999
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shows him playing on the piano and sensing the sounds
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from the different chords as colors, smells, and tastes,
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saying things like how C major smells like old boxing gloves,
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E major is a coppery taste, and E minor
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is the glow of neon in the dark.
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Whether he was born with it or acquired
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it due to his brain reorganizing itself,
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or maybe even that comic book magic that
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is the radioactive material he absorbed.
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It is unknown.
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But it's another little tidbit about the character
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that I find neat.
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So we've covered Daredevil's heightened senses
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that allow him to "see" the world around him
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in a different way and his apparent synesthesia that
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allows him to "see" sounds.
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But what about his most important power?
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His radar sense.
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The radar sense is possibly the most confusing part
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about Daredevil, in my opinion.
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Over the years, there have been many different interpretations
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of it in the comics that range vastly.
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And there has yet to be a truly standardized description
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and explanation for this power.
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In fact, there's a great seven part article
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I'll link to you below on theothermurdockpapers.com that
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chronicles the changes made to Daredevil's radar
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sense over the years-- things like how it works,
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what exactly is it capable of, and even different artists'
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renditions of it in action.
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I will give you the "Cliff's Notes" version, because it
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is incredibly inconsistent.
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Sometimes, it can see through walls and other solid objects.
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Other times, it gets obstructed by plants and gas clouds.
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Sometimes he sees extreme details,
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and other times it's more like basic outlines and shapes.
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Sometimes it's linked to his sense of hearing,
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like a form of echolocation.
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In "Daredevil Number 167," we see
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it described like that of a bat.
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It says, quote, "He emits probing, high frequency waves."
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Waves, which break against any solid object and breaking
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send back signals audible only to Daredevil.
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From these signals, his brain instantly
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forms silhouette images of everything around him.
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In this manner, he "sees" in every direction.
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Lots of air quotes today.
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Other times, he describes his radar sense
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like touch with a, quote, "sort of tactile facet to it."
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There have been a few instances where he relates it
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to feeling objects around him, saying
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that it's like reaching out and touching everything at once.
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And still other times, it's described
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as a completely new, independent sense that
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isn't affected at all by sounds or smells or touch.
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He once said that his radar sense
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allows him to be aware of his surroundings
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when all of his other senses fail.
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Now because of these and many other seemingly inconsistent
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qualities, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what is going
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on here with the radar sense.
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Though, it is probably safe to assume that it's not literally
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radar, but rather that's simply a metaphor that helps us seeing
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people understand it better.
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In fact, maybe that's the problem.
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Maybe the writers and artists and readers
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like us will always have a hard time determining
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precisely what the radar sense is like, because we
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don't have one.
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So we're left trying to make sense of it
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with vocabulary that doesn't exist.
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In his book, "Through the Language Glass,"
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author Guy Deutscher talks about the fascinating connections
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between language, culture, and thought.
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It's really interesting, and there's also
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a Radio Lab episode I'll put in the description
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if you want to listen to it.
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In it, they talk about how just having a word for something
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kind of unlocks your ability to notice
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or consciously perceive that thing.
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The example they give is the color blue.
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So most cultures throughout history
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didn't have a word for the color blue
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until very late in the game.
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And some cultures still don't have a word for it.
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So they aren't able to determine the difference
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between blue and green.
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Their eyes can still physically register the color blue,
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but their minds aren't aware that it's
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any different than green, because they
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haven't categorized their colors in the same way that we have.
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Homer, for example, never used the color blue
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when writing "The Iliad."
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Instead, he would describe this sea as, for instance,
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"wine dark."
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There simply wasn't a word for blue
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at the time he was writing.
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So describing it as wine dark is something
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that made perfect sense to the culture at the time.
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Now how this applies to Daredevil, I think,
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is that Matt Murdock-- and, therefore,
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the writers and artists telling the story--
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have to try and explain the radar sense in terms
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that we understand it, even though it might not be entirely
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correct or even satisfying.
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So Daredevil relates his sense to sounds and touch,
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and radar, obviously, so that we can
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try to understand it at least a little bit better.
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Think of it like an infrared camera.
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We can't see infrared with the naked eye,
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so special cameras have to take the data
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and turn it into visible light that we can see.
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In a similar way, the images that we
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see in Daredevil comics that show how the world looks to him
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might not be accurate, but is instead just
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an artist's interpretation of what it might be like.
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Interestingly, Stick, a blind master martial
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artist who trained Daredevil, explains
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that all humans have this radar sense naturally
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built into our brains, but we rely too heavily on vision
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and end up pushing it aside, never fully
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being able to access it without intense training.