Seeing Different Colours...

This is going to be REALLY hard to get your head around so bear with me.

If I asked you what colour snow was, most of us would say white. Some would be gay and say actually, it is...I dunno...cream or something like that but most would agree on white.

What if, what I saw as white was what you saw as say...green. We both call the colour we see "white" because we are taught that snow, flour, paper etc is called 'white'.

But what we see as white in our own eyes may be different to another person but as I say, we both call that colour "white" because that is what we have been old.


If more than 5 people write back saying "WTF? Get the Hell out of DV, Ducky" then I'll delete the post. If yo get what I'm saying the let me know...please!!!

colour blind?

I kind of see what your saying? Your saying that it would be "white" regardless of what others really see it as. Because of the universal label of colours?

WTF? Get the Hell out of DV, Ducky :bigteeth:

ah no that will only take you so far, say you see what we see as red yellow, you call it red but when your told to draw red, you will pick up the red crayon, build it will seem red to you, so no problems yet.. But when you are told to draw yellow, you will most likely use the same crayon, that will tell them your seeing both colours as yellow.

But i guess with the right colour sequences, then yeah nobody would know... shit your scaring me!! :shock:

That's a really obvious point. However, colour blindness doesn't work like that. It often means that people with colour blindness have trouble telling different shades of colour apart and also sometimes different colours e.g red and green. A fun fact for you: boys are more likely to be colourblind than girls... I think 1/10 boys are colourblind.

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Originally Posted by joey11223

ah no that will only take you so far, say you see what we see as red yellow, you call it red but when your told to draw red, you will pick up the red crayon, build it will seem red to you, so no problems yet.. But when you are told to draw yellow, you will most likely use the same crayon, that will tell them your seeing both colours as yellow.

But i guess with the right colour sequences, then yeah nobody would know... shit your scaring me!! :shock:
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I think you may be missing what Super Duck is saying. For example, in your mind, everything is concrete: THIS IS RED, THIS IS YELLOW, etcetera. Every single thing you see that is the concept of red (as in color) is 'Red'.

Now, to continue, we must label an objective set of colors for the point of clarity (heh, kind of breaches the philosophical argument here, but bear with me). All colors are the colors that you normally see.

Say an observer hands you three spheres of different colors (Objective Red, Yellow, and Blue), and says, "Point to the red sphere". Now imagine that in your mind, objective red is yellow in color, and objective yellow is blue in color, and objective blue is red in color.

However, you have been taught that objective red, whilst being seen as yellow, is named 'Red'. Therefore, you would still 'correctly' choose red, and the observer would mark you correct.


I am sure there are some flaws that could be noticed that allow this to be impossible, albeit neurologically. Say, color blending tests and such.

Nononon, this is an age old rather itnersting theory
Before the divide between philosiohy and science, this was a philospiphacal question

but science asnwered the question
the asnwer is quite simply this is impossible
To do with rods and cones i nyour eyes i bleieve, biology teacher told me when discussing philopsiphy

If yo uwant 2 no the science behind it youl;l ahve 2 research
Imran

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Originally Posted by Super

But what we see as white in our own eyes may be different to another person but as I say, we both call that colour "white" because that is what we have been told.
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Oh My God , Oh My God .... OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!
I can't Believe I'm actually reading this. It's like you've read my mind, and decided to use my thoughts to post a topic here and surprise me!!
I've been thinking about the EXACT same thing for about 2, 3 months now. about 2, 3 months ago , I just randomly thought: "what if humans all see colours differently".
In simple words: "what if MY RED is YOUR BLUE, YOUR GREEN is MY YELLOW , X's WHITE is Y's BROWN. etc , but we just don't realize this because whatever we do , our brains have ACCEPTED the fact that the colours WE see are TRUE and REAL"
And I thought: "that would be cool."
Then eventually I started extending the thought.
I thought : "what if MY COLD is someone else's WARM , My SWEET is someone's SOUR" etc. You know , the same principle , involving all our senses.
If you've understood what Super Duck is saying , u'd understand what I'm saying too. But if you DON'T understand this, you'd probably think we're just a bunch of crazy people talkin' crap. lol.
But I think SUPER DUCK knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Super Duck , It's weird that we've been havin the exact same thought , specially something THIS COMPLICATED. and it's even more weird that we're both into Lucid Dreamin, and both members of this Forum.
Damn this is creepy... let me do some reality checks , maybe I'm just dreaming :P .

hahaha :bigteeth:

I used to ponder on this a lot when I was ten

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Originally Posted by virtuozo

Oh My God , Oh My God .... OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!
I can't Believe I'm actually reading this. It's like you've read my mind, and decided to use my thoughts to post a topic here and surprise me!!
I've been thinking about the EXACT same thing for about 2, 3 months now. about 2, 3 months ago , I just randomly thought: "what if humans all see colours differently".
In simple words: "what if MY RED is YOUR BLUE, YOUR GREEN is MY YELLOW , X's WHITE is Y's BROWN. etc , but we just don't realize this because whatever we do , our brains have ACCEPTED the fact that the colours WE see are TRUE and REAL"
And I thought: "that would be cool."
Then eventually I started extending the thought.
I thought : "what if MY COLD is someone else's WARM , My SWEET is someone's SOUR" etc. You know , the same principle , involving all our senses.
If you've understood what Super Duck is saying , u'd understand what I'm saying too. But if you DON'T understand this, you'd probably think we're just a bunch of crazy people talkin' crap. lol.
But I think SUPER DUCK knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Super Duck , It's weird that we've been havin the exact same thought , specially something THIS COMPLICATED. and it's even more weird that we're both into Lucid Dreamin, and both members of this Forum.
Damn this is creepy... let me do some reality checks , maybe I'm just dreaming :P .
[/b]

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yeah, i had the same dillema some time ago.
Here's what i think: if people see different colours for "red", "blue" or whateva, i think MATCHING them would be impossible. Matching colours is a really sensitive thing.. and no matter if all your life you were taught that "RED" matches "BLUE", your eyes an dyour neurological system will tell you "No, they not match". And because we all agree that "Yellow" matches "Green" and so on, i believe this is a proof that we all see the same colours. And one more argument: it is a well known fact that "Red" and "Green", when put aside, they cause calustrophobia. Of course, maybe not people are susceptible to this, but mostly are. So i guess this is another proof that everybody sees the same color for "red" and "green".
Regarding cold and warm, this is nonsense, as everyody gets a cold when they are cold. And everybody sweats when they are warm; it would be a nonsens to sweat when you're cold, as it would be useless for the organism.
Regarding "sweet" and "sour" it's again nonsense, as kids wouldn't love candies if they would be sour.

~Vox.

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Originally Posted by goldney

That's a really obvious point. However, colour blindness doesn't work like that. It often means that people with colour blindness have trouble telling different shades of colour apart and also sometimes different colours e.g red and green. A fun fact for you: boys are more likely to be colourblind than girls... I think 1/10 boys are colourblind.
[/b]

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Are you about girls, i have hard from many sources, 3 biology teachers, both parents( they are scientists) and a few books about certain gene defects and stuff.

From that i hear that girls cannot be colourblind, it is passed on the Y chromosome. Correct me if im mistaken.

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Originally Posted by Super

WTF? Get the Hell out of DV, Ducky
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lol

When I first thought about this, at like, 11 years old, the idea seemed amazing. Now, well, it's kinda old and not so exciting. But good try! Like, woooo!

I would guess that most people see the colors the same way, and this could be proven with experiments as stated above.
However, it is very possible that a small amount of people actually see the colors differently, and they have no idea that this is the case.

Hmm, I'm not sure I understand this properly, your red could be my green? It all depends on how you learn it, if you label another color as red other than what we know as red that that could be your red, but to us it might be out green because that's how we learned it, but to another it could be yellow because that's how they learned it...Yes this makes my brain hurt as well

Yeah the whole "Oh my, maybe people see red as green! Oh no!" is a really old, cliché philosophical thingy.

I came to the conclusion it doesn't matter shit. Colors are relative. Everyones agrees on colors. And people generally have the seem reactions to colors. Few people find red to look more 'refreshing' then blue.

Thus, it really doesn't matter shit. Everyone sees the same thing, we see what we are used to. That is what we see.

-

(edit: It isn't a bad question by the way, I just heard it a bit to much.)

"WTF? Get the Hell out of DV, Ducky" lol


umm i see what your saying, interesting, but wouldnt that make the whole crayola crayons back fire.

Oh boy. I'm away for a few days and I come back with this thread marked as "HOT" and 14 replies. I'm glad most of you get it.

virtuozo got it 100%...and I know that most of you also got it 100% too but the way virtuozo says it is exactly the same as I think about it in my mind:

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Originally Posted by virtuozo

Oh My God , Oh My God .... OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!
I can't Believe I'm actually reading this. It's like you've read my mind, and decided to use my thoughts to post a topic here and surprise me!!
I've been thinking about the EXACT same thing for about 2, 3 months now. about 2, 3 months ago , I just randomly thought: "what if humans all see colours differently".
In simple words: "what if MY RED is YOUR BLUE, YOUR GREEN is MY YELLOW , X's WHITE is Y's BROWN. etc , but we just don't realize this because whatever we do , our brains have ACCEPTED the fact that the colours WE see are TRUE and REAL"
And I thought: "that would be cool."
Then eventually I started extending the thought.
I thought : "what if MY COLD is someone else's WARM , My SWEET is someone's SOUR" etc. You know , the same principle , involving all our senses.
If you've understood what Super Duck is saying , u'd understand what I'm saying too. But if you DON'T understand this, you'd probably think we're just a bunch of crazy people talkin' crap. lol.
But I think SUPER DUCK knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Super Duck , It's weird that we've been havin the exact same thought , specially something THIS COMPLICATED. and it's even more weird that we're both into Lucid Dreamin, and both members of this Forum.
Damn this is creepy... let me do some reality checks , maybe I'm just dreaming :P . [/b]

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Stalin says it the scientific way, which I lacked at the time of starting this thread so my thanks goes out to you my Communist friend:

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Originally Posted by virtuozo

I think you may be missing what Super Duck is saying. For example, in your mind, everything is concrete: THIS IS RED, THIS IS YELLOW, etcetera. Every single thing you see that is the concept of red (as in color) is 'Red'.

Now, to continue, we must label an objective set of colors for the point of clarity (heh, kind of breaches the philosophical argument here, but bear with me). All colors are the colors that you normally see.

Say an observer hands you three spheres of different colors (Objective Red, Yellow, and Blue), and says, "Point to the red sphere". Now imagine that in your mind, objective red is yellow in color, and objective yellow is blue in color, and objective blue is red in color.

However, you have been taught that objective red, whilst being seen as yellow, is named 'Red'. Therefore, you would still 'correctly' choose red, and the observer would mark you correct.
I am sure there are some flaws that could be noticed that allow this to be impossible, albeit neurologically. Say, color blending tests and such.[/b]

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Wow. Most of you don't think I'm a lunitic. What's the opposite way of saying "The story of my life"? Because thisis exactly what it is...everyone else thinks I'm crazy!!!

:)

Woohoo!

lol

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Originally Posted by juroara

hahaha :bigteeth:

I used to ponder on this a lot when I was ten[/b]

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Nicely said. : )

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Originally Posted by mmv

yeah, i had the same dillema some time ago.
Here's what i think: if people see different colours for "red", "blue" or whateva, i think MATCHING them would be impossible. Matching colours is a really sensitive thing.. and no matter if all your life you were taught that "RED" matches "BLUE", your eyes an dyour neurological system will tell you "No, they not match". And because we all agree that "Yellow" matches "Green" and so on, i believe this is a proof that we all see the same colours. And one more argument: it is a well known fact that "Red" and "Green", when put aside, they cause calustrophobia. Of course, maybe not people are susceptible to this, but mostly are. So i guess this is another proof that everybody sees the same color for "red" and "green".
Regarding cold and warm, this is nonsense, as everyody gets a cold when they are cold. And everybody sweats when they are warm; it would be a nonsens to sweat when you're cold, as it would be useless for the organism.
Regarding "sweet" and "sour" it's again nonsense, as kids wouldn't love candies if they would be sour.
~Vox.[/b]

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Okay, when it comes to matching colors, it would not be impossible for the same reason that Stalin said. If your red was actually green, you would still think of it as red b/c you were told it was red. As for the warm and cold debate, I have to say you're right about that. There is no way that you could think you were cold when you were warm. Eventually, there would be some other sign that you had to be warm. Though, even if the color phenominom was occuring, no-one would know. There is no way to prove that my red is everyone else's red. Though it is a good question, it is has no answer.

WTF? Get the Hell out of DV, Ducky .....

Though I get your thoughts....only it would never be verified

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Originally Posted by imran_p

Nononon, this is an age old rather itnersting theory
Before the divide between philosiohy and science, this was a philospiphacal question

but science asnwered the question
the asnwer is quite simply this is impossible
To do with rods and cones i nyour eyes i bleieve, biology teacher told me when discussing philopsiphy

If yo uwant 2 no the science behind it youl;l ahve 2 research
Imran[/b]

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But what if people's brains interpreted the light differently? No I did not do the research if my question is already answered by it.

I know what you mean and had the same idea ages ago.

The only way to test it would be to transplant the cells at the back of the eye into another persons eye.

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Originally Posted by NeAvO

I know what you mean and had the same idea ages ago.

The only way to test it would be to transplant the cells at the back of the eye into another persons eye.[/b]

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hmmmmmm. A possibility for the future.

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Originally Posted by Super

This is going to be REALLY hard to get your head around so bear with me.

If I asked you what colour snow was, most of us would say white. Some would be gay and say actually, it is...I dunno...cream or something like that but most would agree on white.

What if, what I saw as white was what you saw as say...green. We both call the colour we see "white" because we are taught that snow, flour, paper etc is called 'white'.

But what we see as white in our own eyes may be different to another person but as I say, we both call that colour "white" because that is what we have been old.
If more than 5 people write back saying "WTF? Get the Hell out of DV, Ducky" then I'll delete the post. If yo get what I'm saying the let me know...please!!![/b]

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I think it's a really interesting idea. I also think it actually is how things are. I don't know if you see red the way I see yellow, but I would bet that we don't see any color exactly the same way. My right eye and my left eye don't even see exactly the same color when they look at the same object.

i was talking about this same thing in the IRC chat a week ago. but i would consider it false since most people know that red and green look good together and etc.

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Originally Posted by Universal

I think it's a really interesting idea. I also think it actually is how things are. I don't know if you see red the way I see yellow, but I would bet that we don't see any color exactly the same way. My right eye and my left eye don't even see exactly the same color when they look at the same object.[/b]

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Could be because of their difference in location, or that one is better quality than the other.

I think our eyes are all the same, unless something is wrong with them. That's genetic. Of course, genetic things don't have to be the same for everyone.

The Wikipedia article on cone cells tells me that eyesight is the same for most people. However, I think this only applies to the eye. In the brain, every color is most likely mapped to a different location in every person, and it would probably be difficult to find two people who mapped one color the same way, let alone all colors. Of course, the location of set of neurons in my brain that tell me what red is could easily be the location of the set of neurons in your brain that tell you who your dad is. (or some of them, since you probably need more neurons to identify your dad)

On the other hand, that article mentioned tetrachromacy, which is a rare condition in women that makes yellow a completely separate color from green and red. This would mean, among other things, that she would see a color in real life that the computer would not be able to represent. This is testable by showing her a pure yellow object vs. showing her a mixture of green and red light - she will be able to tell the difference, while normal people won't.

:roll: Thank God for that. :bowdown: Most of you understand. Yeah, there is no way to prove it except maybe cell transplants.

Even so, the way that the genes adapt to each body may affect that person's color perception differently.

On a philosophical perspective this is certainly plausible, but the problem is more or less solved when thought of with a scientific perspective, by understanding the process by which colors are created and furthermore how the eyes pick up colors and how the brain percieves them. Clearly, we pretty much consider reality to be a constant and therefore, colors have specific wavelengths (remember that color is a result of the type of light that reflects of an object), which is a constant. This is assuming that different people pick up the aforementioned wavelengths differently. However this generally results in pretty clear color blindness, which we can test for (for the most part).

An analogy for people who don't understand what he is saying...
Say that this is true, and what he is saying is true between two people. Notice that everytime I reference a color here I am talking about what "your" version of the color is, i.e., what you see.

You can look at a picture of a barn during the day. The grass is green, the barn is red, the sky is blue. The hay is yellow, etc.

Now, say you suddenly "switch bodies" with someone who has this changing colors thing going on. YOU might see a purple barn, a yellow sky, red grass, and green hay. You think "what is wrong with his colors?" However, he thinks that your yellow is actually his blue. Remember that because the words are really just associations that you form, he forms them to different colors because he sees them differently.

But generally you can't extend the idea too much further. I'm not doubting the possibility of it, because I don't know, but if perceptions just "switched" (i.e., your hot was my cold), then survival of the fittest wouldn't have worked so well, right? I would have put on a coat in the summer and passed out from heat stroke. Jumped in a pool during winter. Etc.

by the way I am just coming off a caffeine high and that post might not have made any sense, in fact I don't know why I posted. Just FYI

Your scientific explination concerning wavelengths was sound.

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Originally Posted by ataraxis

On a philosophical perspective this is certainly plausible, but the problem is more or less solved when thought of with a scientific perspective, by understanding the process by which colors are created and furthermore how the eyes pick up colors and how the brain percieves them. Clearly, we pretty much consider reality to be a constant and therefore, colors have specific wavelengths (remember that color is a result of the type of light that reflects of an object), which is a constant. This is assuming that different people pick up the aforementioned wavelengths differently. However this generally results in pretty clear color blindness, which we can test for (for the most part).

An analogy for people who don't understand what he is saying...
Say that this is true, and what he is saying is true between two people. Notice that everytime I reference a color here I am talking about what "your" version of the color is, i.e., what you see.

You can look at a picture of a barn during the day. The grass is green, the barn is red, the sky is blue. The hay is yellow, etc.

Now, say you suddenly "switch bodies" with someone who has this changing colors thing going on. YOU might see a purple barn, a yellow sky, red grass, and green hay. You think "what is wrong with his colors?" However, he thinks that your yellow is actually his blue. Remember that because the words are really just associations that you form, he forms them to different colors because he sees them differently.

But generally you can't extend the idea too much further. I'm not doubting the possibility of it, because I don't know, but if perceptions just "switched" (i.e., your hot was my cold), then survival of the fittest wouldn't have worked so well, right? I would have put on a coat in the summer and passed out from heat stroke. Jumped in a pool during winter. Etc.[/b]

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Originally Posted by ataraxis

by the way I am just coming off a caffeine high and that post might not have made any sense, in fact I don't know why I posted. Just FYI[/b]

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no no no. it was good...

but did you actually say that or was it the caffine talking?

(Has anyone replied an absence of color? I did not see it.
)
▲There is text. :bigteeth:


If you get sick of thinking about it make your own. :wink: Make your own color ◄here
Snow white