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> The first known human tetrachromat, an English social worker identified in 1993, sees 10 distinct colors looking at a rainbow, whereas the rest of us see only
by crazygringo 1y ago
> The first known human tetrachromat, an English social worker identified in 1993, sees 10 distinct colors looking at a rainbow, whereas the rest of us see only five.
What does this even mean? It's setting off my BS detector.
I can see as many colors in the rainbow as I want, since colors are culturally determined. Cyan is prominently there in the rainbow, even though most people don't include it in the traditional "Roy G Biv" -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Speaking of which, where did 5 even come from in that quote? I mean, the fact that we can argue over how many colors the rainbow has just shows how unscientific such a statement is.
If there's anything potentially scientific here, you could say that humans see three primary colors associated with the three cones -- red, green, blue -- and therefore three intermediate colors -- yellow, cyan, magenta. A fourth cone between red and green means that it might be possible to see 8 primary and intermediate colors instead of 6. But it also might not do much of anything at all, if it's then mapped to our existing opponent process [1] that is fundamentally based on red vs. green and blue vs. yellow. In other words, it would just be a redundant or ignored sensory input to our conceptual color processing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process
- tom_ 1y agoYou're quite right. How could this possibly be worth investigating? There is nothing useful that we could discover here.
- crazygringo 1y agoWhat? Nowhere did I say it wasn't worth investigating. How did you come up with that? I'm complaining about a seemingly non-scientific statement that sounds absurd at first glance. If you want to do rigorous testing of different combinations of wavelengths to see if anything can be distinguished and how that fits into our current frameworks of color interpretation, then great! But saying someone can see twice as many colors of the rainbow sounds like nonsense unless you have a rigorous scientific framework for that, and the article sure doesn't provide one.
- david-gpu 1y ago> But it also might not do much of anything at all, if it's then mapped to our existing opponent process [1] that is fundamentally based on red vs. green and blue vs. yellow. In other words, it would just be a redundant or ignored sensory input to our conceptual color processing. A click away: https://imjal.github.io/theory-of-tetrachromacy/ https://imjal.github.io/theory-of-tetrachromacy/
- tom_ 1y agoEverybody has their own BS detector, and mine happened to go off in this case. But you're quite right.
- metalliqaz 1y ago> If there's anything potentially scientific here, you could say that humans see three primary colors associated with the three cones -- red, green, blue -- and therefore three intermediate colors -- yellow, cyan, magenta. By this measure, a rainbow would be 3 primary colors and 2 intermediate colors: red-green=yellow, green-blue=cyan. That's five. Magenta could be described as "not green" and thus does not appear in a rainbow.
- moralestapia 1y ago>I can see as many colors in the rainbow as I want, since colors are culturally determined. Yeah man, tell that to a deuteranopic person. "You're lacking cuhlshure", mega-lmao, the things one reads here.