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But what you believe alters reality, there’s a feedback loop involved. I get your point that the color of your first car won’t change, but is there even an obj
by fipar 5y ago
But what you believe alters reality, there’s a feedback loop involved.
I get your point that the color of your first car won’t change, but is there even an objective color to that car? My dad is colorblind and sees some colors differently than me. What’s the real one? If the numbers were reversed and the majority of population perceived as colorblind people do while I would be the minority, would that change the color of the car?
I bet you’d say of course not because we can, say, measure the wavelength of the light deflected off the car at noon and agree on a color name based on the result. And I agree with that. But still, the color as perceived by someone can change reality. Just imagine a command such as “follow the red car” and whether the person carrying out the command is colorblind or not.
Of course, there are real-life examples where the collective perception of reality ends up changing the actual reality and that are far more concerning than a car’s color (enough people believing something has led to wars, stonings, etc)
- danbruc 5y agoOf course, there are real-life examples where the collective perception of reality ends up changing the actual reality and that are far more concerning than a car’s color (enough people believing something has led to wars, stonings, etc) I mean that is uncontroversial but one has to be careful. Perceptions and believes about one thing might affect the course of the future and things in the world, it will however not affect the thing you perceived. Your perception and believe about the color of the car can have all kind of effects in the world but they have no effect on the actual color of the car.
- tomlockwood 5y agoBlack and blue, or white and gold?
- danbruc 5y agoHow is that relevant?
- pjc50 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress : a viral tweet which triggered a huge discussion of colour illusion. Colour really is perceptual. There is, once you get sufficiently pedantic, no such thing as the "actual colour" of the car. You can say things like "spectrally within 1% of Pantone Red 032C under standardised lighting conditions", but the range of responses that will produce in traditional or digital photographs and then on screens and human eyeballs is much wider. I'm not clear whether tomlockwood is trying to define "real" as "consensus (perception of) reality"?
- tomlockwood 5y agoI'm not really trying to define anything - but yeah, unless we concretely set the pantone of the car by cross-referencing it or something, maybe that colour is still up for debate? The pantone thing would be the microscope equivalent in the post.
- danbruc 5y agoNo, the color of the car is never up for debate, what is up for debate are your believes about what the color is or how to best describe or quantify what you perceive or belief.
- tomlockwood 5y agoHow would you tell?
- danbruc 5y agoTell what?
- tomlockwood 5y agoThat the colour of the car wasn't up for debate. What would you measure to determine qualities like this aren't up for debate?