h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

interesting idea to be walking around as holeless blobs...do you think we would learn to sense and perceive in different ways?

britt

I haven’t got a clue, but probably yes. If I was going to write a sequel to this then the title would be “As one hole closes another one opens”. – Mainly based on the fact that besides the sense of touch all our other senses are clearly based on some sort of opening.

This line of thinking would also rule out telepathy unless a “hole” appeared somewhere in our bodies that was able to emit and receive thoughts, maybe an extension to our ears or in a more tradition (sci-fi view) developing antennas.-

Hence all those humans who actually claim to be telepathic are lying (unless they have a new hole in their bodies that is..). You could say they are talking through their a*s… Actually on second thoughts that proves my theory so in fact they are telepathic after all…

Anyhow I could go on for hours imagining things which have probably already been said a million times before in sci.fi and fantasy novels. – The thing that I or anyone else (I think) cannot imagine is another sense. Just think if our sense of smell didn’t exist… how could you imagine it… and even if you could how could you explain it…”Objects give out signals which float in the air and a special part of our body picks up…”… ummm yes but, that’s true for anything… even a mobile phone.

Anyhow, this piece wasn’t so much trying to push an idea of a holeless society, it was just a bit of fun trying to look at something (and nothing) from a different angle… and hopefully have some fun… besides we are on h2g2 where they are trying to rename Thursday thingy….

I would be interested to hear some of your views on holelessness. In my opinion it is something that people have not considered much - even though the simple action of shutting off just one small hole could solve some of the worlds biggest political and social problems.

As an exercise: Take one human hole at a time and just try and imagine the social and political impact of what that closure would mean.

Ciao
Deeety

Speaking in my professional capacity as a medical student, Um...don't women have 10?

Thanks, I’ll take your professional word for it. But even then some would argue that eyes are not actually “holes”, I assumed they were, well openings at least. Women have 10. Men have 9. Ok I think that I may need to update the piece with this information. – Oh, well, just goes to show what a puritan life I have led.

But isn’t it surprising that most of us don’t know or can’t really agree on a number. I bet if you take 100 people the answers would range between 7 and 10 with 9 being the medium.

Ps: If you know of a good medical site which I can link to which explains these openings (why or Why not can eyes be considered holes, etc) I would be grateful. I have searched the internet but there is very little out there.

Thank you again for the update I will be pay more attention in the future.

Um, I think if you tackle this one medically the world is just going to get WAY more complicated, - cause there's millions of microscopic holes, (just on the medium scale, think hair follicles, glands, et C), then there's some big holes just inside some of the other holes, and at this point, most biologists give up and make statements like "consider the body is a tube within a tube" and most physicists give up and make statements like "let us start with the assumption that all cows are spherical".