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I love that this opens with a matter-of-fact statement that colors aren't real, just a phenomenon of perception. This has come up randomly in my life a few time

I love that this opens with a matter-of-fact statement that colors aren't real, just a phenomenon of perception. This has come up randomly in my life a few times and people always look at me like I'm stoned outta my mind.

meindnoch 1y ago
And what is not just a phenomenon of perception?
- matsemann 1y ago
  Mathematical proofs based upon axioms?
- magicalhippo 1y ago
  The light hitting our eyes is not a phenomenon of perception. Each photon hitting our eyes has a certain wavelength, but the resulting color we see is a perception. A related concept is sound vs psychoacoustics[1]. Sound is just pressure waves, but what we hear is a perception and has all sorts of aspects like masking[2]. The pressure waves contains two different signals but thanks to masking we might only perceive one. Personally I think color constancy[3] really drives home that color is a perception and not something fundamental like the wavelength of photons. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy
- Daub 1y ago
  The association of specific wavelengths to hue exists only in our perception, nowhere else. On the other hand, we perceive temperature yet its impact on the physical world is universal.
AlienRobot 1y ago
Fun fact: just like people have different heights, they have different perceptions of color!