4 ms·

What if there’s a software bug and you see blue as red and red as blue? How would you even know?

by hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago

ianlevesque 3y ago
Plot twist: everyone's favorite color is the same, to them.
rafaelmn 3y ago
You know what things are what color so you'd notice instantly ?
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
  If you call the sky blue and I call the sky blue, that doesn’t mean your interpretation of what is blue matches my interpretation of blue, it just means that we have both agreed linguistically that whatever colour we each see the sky as is blue. Colour is a construct of the mind based on how we perceive light frequencies, not a tangible thing we can touch.
  - rafaelmn 3y ago
    Nothing you said is unique to colour. Touch is a sensory interpretation as well - your interpretation of sandpaper is not the same as mine. There is no "red" other than what we've agreed on to be red - so there's no way to swap it with "blue".
    - hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
      My red could be your blue, and vice versa.
robbiep 3y ago
This is a deep philosophical question that gets to the heart of what it is to experience - when it comes to the brains perceptions around colour however we can be relatively confident that the wetwear processing results in the same result, assuming the same input capabilities. (Side note - I spent a lot of time arguing this with my medical school ophthalmologists and neurologists, which is why I have confidence in this particular result) This is because it isn’t a single photoreceptor picking up, say, 320nm light. Instead you have a range of essentially analog responses across the red, green and blue spectrums, that the brain reconstructs into true colour as we perceive it. Those with different receiving capabilities (on the one extreme: tetrachromia - those with 4 different colour sensors, who are exclusively women, because they’re on the C chromosome - and on the other end, those with cataracts - witness monet’s later life paintings) help to demonstrate the consistency with which the brain is able to achieve a similar qualia from the underlying stochastic impulses
pdonis 3y ago
You're looking at it backwards. The actual question is, how do you know what "red" and "blue" are to begin with? And the answer is, you learn what the colors of things you see are called. You learn that stop signs are red and the sky is blue. And that's how you calibrate your own experiences of color. Whatever you experience when you see a stop sign, that's what you call "red", and whatever you experience when you see the sky, that's what you call "blue".
- xattt 3y ago
  This may apply to single colours, but doesn't explain the fact why certain colour combinations are universally pleasing to the eye.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    What is "pleasing to the eye" is a separate question from how we name the colors we see.
  - calamari4065 3y ago
    Color theory is about the ratios between frequencies of light. That's what our brains respond to, along with cultural connotations. Because color theory works on pretty much everyone, we can be sure that we all perceive the relative difference in colors the same way. But what green is is a figment of your consciousness. What you think color, sight, and all your other senses mean exists only in your mind. Not as a physical process in the brain, but purely as a part of whatever metaphysical process that results in consciousness. A color is not a real, tangible thing. It's just the way your brain perceives light of a certain frequency. There is no way to describe what that experience is because there's no universal reference. You can't describe color to a blind man, after all.
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      Unless you believe in some kind of transcendental mind/soul, experiences such as color can't be anything other than physical processes in the brain (and/or the rest of the body). The fact that we can't identify them with our current level of understanding of the workings of the brain is not very surprising - it is an extremely complex organ and our tools for understanding organs are very primitive in the grand scheme of things.

What if there’s a software bug and you see blue as red and red as blue? How would you even know?

ianlevesque 3y ago

Plot twist: everyone's favorite color is the same, to them.

rafaelmn 3y ago

You know what things are what color so you'd notice instantly ?

hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
If you call the sky blue and I call the sky blue, that doesn’t mean your interpretation of what is blue matches my interpretation of blue, it just means that we have both agreed linguistically that whatever colour we each see the sky as is blue. Colour is a construct of the mind based on how we perceive light frequencies, not a tangible thing we can touch.
- rafaelmn 3y ago
  Nothing you said is unique to colour. Touch is a sensory interpretation as well - your interpretation of sandpaper is not the same as mine. There is no "red" other than what we've agreed on to be red - so there's no way to swap it with "blue".
  - hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
    My red could be your blue, and vice versa.

robbiep 3y ago

This is a deep philosophical question that gets to the heart of what it is to experience - when it comes to the brains perceptions around colour however we can be relatively confident that the wetwear processing results in the same result, assuming the same input capabilities. (Side note - I spent a lot of time arguing this with my medical school ophthalmologists and neurologists, which is why I have confidence in this particular result) This is because it isn’t a single photoreceptor picking up, say, 320nm light. Instead you have a range of essentially analog responses across the red, green and blue spectrums, that the brain reconstructs into true colour as we perceive it. Those with different receiving capabilities (on the one extreme: tetrachromia - those with 4 different colour sensors, who are exclusively women, because they’re on the C chromosome - and on the other end, those with cataracts - witness monet’s later life paintings) help to demonstrate the consistency with which the brain is able to achieve a similar qualia from the underlying stochastic impulses

pdonis 3y ago

You're looking at it backwards. The actual question is, how do you know what "red" and "blue" are to begin with? And the answer is, you learn what the colors of things you see are called. You learn that stop signs are red and the sky is blue. And that's how you calibrate your own experiences of color. Whatever you experience when you see a stop sign, that's what you call "red", and whatever you experience when you see the sky, that's what you call "blue".

xattt 3y ago
This may apply to single colours, but doesn't explain the fact why certain colour combinations are universally pleasing to the eye.
- pdonis 3y ago
  What is "pleasing to the eye" is a separate question from how we name the colors we see.
- calamari4065 3y ago
  Color theory is about the ratios between frequencies of light. That's what our brains respond to, along with cultural connotations. Because color theory works on pretty much everyone, we can be sure that we all perceive the relative difference in colors the same way. But what green is is a figment of your consciousness. What you think color, sight, and all your other senses mean exists only in your mind. Not as a physical process in the brain, but purely as a part of whatever metaphysical process that results in consciousness. A color is not a real, tangible thing. It's just the way your brain perceives light of a certain frequency. There is no way to describe what that experience is because there's no universal reference. You can't describe color to a blind man, after all.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    Unless you believe in some kind of transcendental mind/soul, experiences such as color can't be anything other than physical processes in the brain (and/or the rest of the body). The fact that we can't identify them with our current level of understanding of the workings of the brain is not very surprising - it is an extremely complex organ and our tools for understanding organs are very primitive in the grand scheme of things.