Current Events > What if blue for me looks red for you? Is that possible?

(+) Yeah! (+)

For example we both agree that a color is yellow. Yellow for me looks yellow for you, but in your head, it's actually red.

However that red is what you've always known to be yellow. So we always agree that it's yellow.

Do all of our colors look the same to eachother? How do we know?

---

There's a philosophical debate on if that's the case.

Some argue that colours must be similar because they all evoke similar feelings (e.g. red means danger, blue means calm, yellow means happy, etc) but the common response is they only evoke those feelings because we've been raised from birth to equate them with that feeling.

---

What if someone named the colors wrong back then and the error never got corrected?
---

DK9292 posted...

There's a philosophical debate on if that's the case.

Some argue that colours must be similar because they all evoke similar feelings (e.g. red means danger, blue means calm, yellow means happy, etc) but the common response is they only evoke those feelings because we've been raised from birth to equate them with that feeling.

Sheesh yeah that's true o_o

I didn't know that this was a debate. I was hoping that I'd be proven wrong so this mindfuck would end lol.

---

Well some people think 30fps and 60fps look the same

---

mattymad posted...

Colour doesn't exist. It's a human construct from a sub set of frequencies.

Look up the term, 'Qualia'.

Don't fall for the we see red as angry etc. That's nurture not nature. Different cultures associate different colours to different things.

Agreed. I think all colors are neutral at the beginning. Blue to me is calming, but if we were born into a world where red soldiers saved us from fucked up blue aliens, the blue would be scary and mean. Not the red. Not the best example but you guys know what I mean. You attribute colors to mean and feel different things.

And I'll check them out. I'm surprised that this hasn't been scientifically proven wrong. Must I live with this mind fuck forever?

If color doesn't exist then wtf does everything look like? Do we live in a world of total darkness? Is it all white like a mannequin?

---

AzurexNightmare posted...

If color doesn't exist then wtf does everything look like? Do we live in a world of total darkness? Is it all white like a mannequin?

"Colour", as scientifically defined, is simply the length of time it takes light to reach our eyes, therefore altering how we perceive it.

It's kind of like running your hand over a carpet with different levels of softness. It's all the same material, but you can feel a difference. Imagine that, but for your eyes.

---

https://youtu.be/evQsOFQju08

---

DK9292 posted...

"Colour", as scientifically defined, is simply the length of time it takes light to reach our eyes, therefore altering how we perceive it.

It's kind of like running your hand over a carpet with different levels of softness. It's all the same material, but you can feel a difference. Imagine that, but for your eyes.

So nothing truly looks like anything? It's all the same "color" in reality, that our eyes can't see?

---

AzurexNightmare posted...

So nothing truly looks like anything? It's all the same "color" in reality, that our eyes can't see?

Entirely possible. We would never know.

More likely it's the opposite, and the world is actually made up of countless colours we can never see because of how our eyes are made. I say this because our eyes have three colour receptors that allow us to see colour (think like red/blue/yellow for paint, or RGB for computers). Dogs and cats only have two receptors. But there's some species of butterfly that have five. And the mantis shrimp has sixteen.

In the carpet analogy, imagine us feeling the carpet, but something else is capable of feeling every individual follicle.

---

The color of the pen is red.

---

This is all pretty incredible, and I agree that we definitely don't know, but I figured that we shared that unknowingness as a species.

I figured you could dissect an eyeball and find a way to see the perceived spectrum somehow.

---

Ever heard of color blindness?

---

DK9292 posted...

Entirely possible. We would never know.

More likely it's the opposite, and the world is actually made up of countless colours we can never see because of how our eyes are made. I say this because our eyes have three colour receptors that allow us to see colour (think like red/blue/yellow for paint, or RGB for computers). Dogs and cats only have two receptors. But there's some species of butterfly that have five. And the mantis shrimp has sixteen.

In the carpet analogy, imagine us feeling the carpet, but something else is capable of feeling every individual follicle.

I've heard of the mantis shrimp and that's always fascinated me.

And sixteen is a LOT compared to us, but sixteen is also such a pussy number compared to say a billion. Colors we can't even begin to dream of, just how there are more stars out there than grains of sand on the planet, and we can't fit all of that into our heads and imagine it.

---

Lots of poisonous things are colorful

---

AzurexNightmare posted...

And sixteen is a LOT compared to us, but sixteen is also such a pussy number compared to say a billion.

Remember that it's three receptors that let us identify the entire colour spectrum as we understand it. All the millions of colours we already see are due to differing combinations of those three.

Now imagine how many combinations SIXTEEN would give you.

---

Well there are kind of universal danger colors in animals

Like brightly colored frogs let their predators know they are poisonous

---

DK9292 posted...

Remember that it's three receptors that let us identify the entire colour spectrum as we understand it. All the millions of colours we already see are due to differing combinations of those three.

Now imagine how many combinations SIXTEEN would give you.

Jesus. And they live in total darkness wtf lol.. Like they don't even care.

---

AzurexNightmare posted...

Jesus. And they live in total darkness wtf lol.. Like they don't even care.

It's only darkness for us. It might be like fucking Mardi Gras for them.

---

Man we truly know nothing about the world.

And you know whats nuts is that we all go back to our normal life routines and we aren't aware of this constantly. We may even forget for a time until we remember and we're like "oh yeah. Damn that's crazy!" again.

And I thought darkness was universal too. Shit lol. I thought since the "bottom" of the ocean has no light that it was total darkness for all the creatures down there. Wow.

---

AzurexNightmare posted...

And you know whats nuts is that we all go back to our normal life routines and we aren't aware of this constantly. We may even forget for a time until we remember and we're like "oh yeah. Damn that's crazy!" again.

Maybe you do. I have a part of my brain dedicated exclusively to going "Mantis shrimp. Holy shit." constantly.

AzurexNightmare posted...

And I thought darkness was universal too. Shit lol. I thought since the "bottom" of the ocean has no light that it was total darkness for all the creatures down there. Wow.

Not quite. Since those creatures live in such darkness their eyes have evolved to take in as much light as possible so they can see their surroundings better.

In fact, the darkness might be a factor in WHY it can see so many colours in the first place.

---

Life is nuts x_x I feel like Homer Simpson now.

---

mattymad posted...

Want a fun experiment to see just how bad humans are at imagining large numbers?

I want you to picture a cat infront of you. Imagine what it looks like, what colour it is, any distinguishing features? What's the cat doing?

Okay same again but now there's two cats. You can see them both right?

Three? Yeah, okay I can still see three.

Okay now try 10. At once, what are they all doing, can you imagine them all active? You should suddenly find it like a mental blind spot. Where you cannot see them all at once and barely even the original you saw.

This is because we evolved to only focus and track small numbers of things.

I usually use this analogy when trying to explain to people how rich billionaires really are.

We cannot even remotely begin to understand and comprehend the size of the universe. Even a fraction of it is overwhelmingly large.

But I have cats, 5 at one point so picturing that is incredibly easy.

---

mattymad posted...

A thing, that as far as we know, does not emit or interact (in anyway) with the electro magnetic spectrum. So we and our technologies are 100% blind to it. We only know it exists because we can model things like gravity and for the number's to line up, something has to be there accounting for some hidden mass.

Which surprises me why we haven't been slaughtered by some predator-like aliens yet if everything is this vast and undetectable.

Like.. We are as vulnerable as lobsters at a Red Lobster.

---

Many animals have red markings as a warning sign to other animals. A majority of cultures view red as danger, those that don't are an exception and nurtured against nature. We are all humans with similar enough genes to assume we mostly all see colors the same.

---

mattymad posted...

There's a concept called The Great Filter. Soemthing that aims to explain why alien life hasn't contacted us yet.

It's basically saying, if life exists elsewhere, it has to pass a stage where they become interplanetary.

Humans may be first, known as being ahead of the great filter.

The other side is that we haven't hit the filter yet.

The filter could be anything. Home planets not having enough resource to kick start the next phase. Species too self destructive to focus on current goals. Disease/natural disasters keep things in check, etc.

To get back on point. Some people like to imagine the filter is indeed what you say. Something watching, waiting, that we can't see, that waits for lifeforms to reach a certain phase in space and then just go nom.

We could easily be fish jumping out a river to some higher level being and we're just their dinner.

Death could be what's eating us. It claims us all.

---

DK9292 posted...

"Colour", as scientifically defined, is simply the length of time it takes light to reach our eyes, therefore altering how we perceive it.

It's kind of like running your hand over a carpet with different levels of softness. It's all the same material, but you can feel a difference. Imagine that, but for your eyes.

It absolutely isn't. There are three primary photoreceptors in the cone class, called the Long, Medium, and Short wavelength cones. They have peak spectral wavelength sensitivities that differ from each other and this information is then used to construct opponent hue categories (look up opponent process theory).

---