Comedian Neal Brennan uses Vivid Vision for his lazy eye

Whoa... this kind of knocked my socks off when listening to the conversation between Joe Rogan and Neal Brennan on Joe's podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience. He talks about it around 1 hour 20 minutes in episode #1823.

Neal Brennan, for those who don't know, is a famous comedian/writer, who's done a lot of writing for Dave Chappelle on Chappelle's Show.



You may recognize him if you're familiar with the comedy business. Significant exotropia aside, he's a pretty weird looking dude. It's a good argument for being funny if you want to be successful with the ladies.

I've always noticed this about him when looking at his pictures. I was like, 'yeah, that guy does not have 3d vision. No way.'. There are a lot of famous people who have this condition. I think he's maybe had it his entire life, because that's the only way I've ever seen him.

But in the podcast he began talking about it, and talking about doing vision exercises with an Oculus Rift, and doing exercises which involve picking fruit, and which force you to use both eyes. When he said that, I was like 'Crap! I know exactly what game he was talking about!'. I remember playing that game (along with a number of others) doing some QA work for Vision Vision. Crazy the reach those guys at Vivid Vision have. Famous amblyopes are using Vivid Vision. So interesting.

Neal talked about his experience of stereoblindness and thinking that everyone saw the way that he saw, but when his condition was described to him by an eye doctor he was like 'That's what I have!'. Same. Then he described the exercises, and how he's seen improvement already. He talked about how he's got like 1.5 eyes, and how his exercises are effectively turning on his lazy eye. Yup. And then he described that as he continues, the two images will eventually fuse. Yup. Just interesting seeing a famous public person talking about what I've been talking about in this blog for the past ten years.

Man. Vivid Vision. They were definitely pioneers. James Blaha invented virtual reality-based vision therapy. He's a great example of what Peter Thiel recommends about entrepreneurship in his book Zero to One: try to have a monopoly. Don't do what everyone is doing. Do something completely different, create a new arena, and then dominate that arena. I'm guessing James and Vivid Vision is now balling out of control. And if they're not, they're certainly poised to be.