Your idea already fails here. Photodiodes is not something you cam make without already knowing a lot about making electronics. You can’t explain technology being possible with an explanation that already requires more advanced technology to exist. I didn’t find an exact invention year, but it seems they are silicon based (for ones that detect visible light) meaning that they require similar technology to early transistors.
Any idea has to first pass the first step hurdle before it is useful at all.
really any diode that light can reach the junction between the p type and n type semiconductors or just the basic semiconductor since that’s where the electrons are(as far as i am aware, i might be wrong) can work, photodiodes are just better at detecting light.
That still leaves the question of how a blind civilization can get semiconductor technology without being able to see before getting to that technology level.
Life on earth proves the efficiency of light sensors(eyes),so that multiple kinds of eyes evolved independently. I find it difficult to imagine other better sensors replacing it except in a dark environment.
But nobody is trying to make a touchless civilization. Yet.
Really, what’s the point of discussing civilization without a sense. Especially in the context of thrive. What’s the point of ADDING a restriction. For underwater civs, plant civs, etc those make sense to discuss because they would involve novel game mechanics, this discussion has no impacts on thrive if it goes either way.
Chemoreception (such as scent) and mechanoreception (such as hearing and touch) can replace sight. Sight is certainly good if the color and distance range is good enough, but having both of those senses together can do pretty much anything that sight can.
except detect wires small enough that touching them would break them but hearing and the brain parts for advanced echolocation(look to sonar tech for how it works) can fix that
chemoreception and mechanoreception wouldn’t be able to detect wires that are thin enough to almost be microscopic without breaking them because mechanoreception requires touching things and chemoreception requires molecules escaping from an entity
But you could go without wires that small long enough to find a way to translate light into a sense that you do have, the main problem seems to be outcompetition by another species.
you would also need echolocation to sense predators before they smelled you without dying so it would basically be required if you have even a single predator or are not an ambush predator
that is because you are using an organ that lets you feel vibrations extremely efficiently, AKA, An ear or a microphone. also i forgot that hearing generally uses mechanoreceptive cilia, but if you want to go the biocomputer route you can use pure graphite
What about a small planet in the habitable zone of a star, but it has very little atmosphere that only exists in canyons, so the plantlife blocks out all light by completely covering the tops of them?
But if you eat brains it becomes a predator prey relationship. There would always be preys remaining and with eyes intact.
They can use the brain region they used for echolocation/magnetoreception etc. They could have created a map of their enviroment in their brain with other senses. We can look at space photos taken in the xray spectrum and grasp it. If they haven’t seen any colors before, they can imagine colors as being something like a different texture that they could have felt if they had xray touch.
Getting the visual information from a camera doesn’t require connecting the camera to the brain.
