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What if we all see different colors?

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alaskakid
Posts: 5540 - Karma: 430
Wouldn't that be odd if poeple saw different colors, and were just raised to say that purple is purple, although they might see what someone else would call yellow. Think about it. We have no idea what others see, so this idea might be plausible though highly unlikely.
Apr 1 2008 10:41PM
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Lax_Bro40
Posts: 5166 - Karma: 18
ive thought about this many many many times... makes sense and there is no way to prove/disprove it
Apr 1 2008 10:45PM
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dave44
Posts: 11052 - Karma: 113
Imagine if you were blind from birth. Even if someone tried describing something to you, you wouldn't be able to picture it. How do you describe 'yellow' to someone? Red? There's no way you can describe colour to someone blind, just imagine having no colour in life.


Apr 1 2008 10:47PM
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.BaconatoR
Posts: 183 - Karma: 11
but color blindness tests also can tell whether you see the same colors as everyone else. so we all do see the same colors.
Apr 1 2008 10:49PM
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charmander
Posts: 10636 - Karma: 370
partial colorblindness, its real

my friend jimmys bike is green, he thinks its purple lol O_o
Apr 1 2008 10:50PM
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Lax_Bro40
Posts: 5166 - Karma: 18
no but he is saying that lets say u think blue is blue.... but he grew up thinking blue is really like yellow to you... kinda hard to explain just think about it.
Apr 1 2008 10:52PM
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pns513
Posts: 1966 - Karma: 12
I understand it and have thought about that before.  I don't think you can really prove that or test that though.
Apr 1 2008 10:53PM
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WikiWiki
Posts: 5584 - Karma: 426
woah- psychadelic
Apr 1 2008 10:53PM
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.BaconatoR
Posts: 183 - Karma: 11
i understand, but i'm saying that the color blindness tests can tell whether you see the same blue as i do. so your blue is my blue.
Apr 1 2008 10:54PM
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purplejumpsuit
Posts: 2208 - Karma: 157
my science teacher brought this up.
but when I think about it, it seems unlikely. When you mix two paint colors together, they often make another very distinct color, whats the likely hood that all the colors someone elts would see in the place of another person, would match up to combine and create the ones with the matching name.
I don't think that makes much sense... but oh well.
and also, what about warm colors and cool colors and what not, I just don't think it could all match up.
Apr 1 2008 10:58PM
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ben_southworth
Posts: 1063 - Karma: 447
how?

crazy idea though ive thought about it before.
i like questions like that.
Apr 1 2008 11:01PM
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phishfood
Posts: 2542 - Karma: 298
haha i can't believe other people have thought about that too

Apr 1 2008 11:03PM
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user098123
Posts: 6072 - Karma: 18
The light you see is based off of waves of light. Depending on the wavelength of the light is the color you see. Since what you are seeing is really just kind of like 'your brain visualizing energy levels' then I'm pretty sure everyone is the same. It's hard to put it in words, but at the cellular level the cones aren't going to perceive color differently, because they don't actually see 'colors' they just read wavelength energies.
Apr 1 2008 11:06PM
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BIG_SALTY
Posts: 574 - Karma: 34
Thats what i always think, what if my blue is someone elses orange? weird
Apr 1 2008 11:07PM
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shredwards
Posts: 417 - Karma: 68
yeah ive thought about this a lot too. but what if you say just spun the color wheel like two notches. So my red was actually your yellow, orange was actually green , yellow was blue...etc. Then the color mixing thing would still make sense and it would only really be the names that were different.
I have a friend that is red/green color blind and ive talked to him about this many times. I asked him what he though green looked like one time and all he could say was like "sort of an earthy natural color", which is sorta right but still, imagine not being able to know what trees or grass or weed actually look like.
Apr 1 2008 11:08PM
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eheath
Posts: 61604 - Karma: 123,122
I could see this being completely possible and true.
Apr 1 2008 11:10PM
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SteevJee
Posts: 1916 - Karma: 144
ahhhhh i have always thought about this. Also like if everyone saw the same kind of stuff. Such as, if the sunset or something looked the same to everyone
Apr 1 2008 11:12PM
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.BaconatoR
Posts: 183 - Karma: 11
exactly.

and with the color blindness tests, there are usually a bunch of dots of similar color, and in the background there is a number in a different color made of dots. if a person is blind to lets say red, the red number will blend into the other colors surrounding it. so, in terms of blending, each color must be the same, because if your colors were arbitrarily different from my colors then even if you were color blind they wouldn't necessarily blend in when they should.
Apr 1 2008 11:13PM
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GGreene
Posts: 993 - Karma: 42
i think about this all the time crazy shit
Apr 1 2008 11:19PM
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Malcolm
Posts: 15951 - Karma: 9,451
wow u guys r party poopers
Apr 1 2008 11:23PM
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melskiis
Posts: 180 - Karma: 6
whooaa! its cool to know other people think about this too. like its so weird and how it can never be proven for sure. justt crazy
Apr 1 2008 11:32PM
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wintersway
Posts: 5115 - Karma: 128
seriously deep shit man, but yeah i thought about it a while back and it kinda seems like it might be able to work but then the whole mixing colors thing screws with me when i think about it
Apr 2 2008 12:52AM
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spruitm
Posts: 2221 - Karma: 1,069
I think about this too.  One time I thought that mixing colors might prove we all see them the same, but even that really does not prove anything
Apr 2 2008 1:08AM
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pmills
Posts: 7162 - Karma: 59
Unfortunatly our hypothesis is wrong, it's assuming color is a subjective interpretation:



it's not, something that is 'red' reflects waves of light at 700 nm um were as something 'purple' reflects 400 nm um waves

if your associations were all different, then it would be possible for someone to see two contrasting colors and for another not to see a difference at all. we recognize that there is a 'normal' association with red and 700nm um waves and if you were to for some reason to perceive 6750nm as the opposite of red, where as most of us see it as about the same thing (albit bit more orange) you would be considered 'differnet'

if we had different associations of meanings with different words,  like when i'd say hello, you'd think pancake, language couldn't exist, same with sight, if it were compeltly subjective, you wouldn't be able to discuss colorcoherently at all, but we can.


one of those things you can't think too hard about.

Apr 2 2008 1:19AM
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eheath
Posts: 61604 - Karma: 123,122
Makes sense, but what if say you have one person, bob, and another, doug. Say bob looks at that chart and sees red as red to him. And then doug looks at it and sees the red as red. But, what if dougs red is different from bobs? What if really dougs red would be bobs blue? It's all how the brain processes. I mean im not a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, but i did take science classes in high school and know what you're talking about with the wave and such.
Apr 2 2008 1:29AM
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Abc567def
Posts: 8756 - Karma: 801
no becuase what if you just grew up calling it blue even though it wasn't blue, coulour blindness test for only if you can't see a colour
Apr 2 2008 1:53AM
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IcePointa
Posts: 1879 - Karma: 19
What if some person had a brain anomally that made a certain range of wavelengths a completely different colr than we percieve them. Not like color blind people seeing red and green as both grey. Like tsomeone percieving a color that doesn't exist on the standard rainbow. They could still tell that this alien color was different from others, so these colorblindness tests wouldn't pick up on it at all. What if that person only saw the alien color inside vaginas. Fuck.
Apr 2 2008 2:12AM
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Abc567def
Posts: 8756 - Karma: 801
well i had something simular to that happen to me but it was a phantom smell................and it was coming out of your moms vagina.............
Apr 2 2008 2:18AM
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pmills
Posts: 7162 - Karma: 59

well thats the point of color blindness, we do accept that SOME people see one color as something different than others, however this is not the norm.

if everyone had different ideas of what red was, even if they all called it the same word you'd expect that conversations about red things would end up like in the confusion that exists when talking to a person who is red color blind.

here you can visualize the same image from two points of view pretty well -- and map one color to another, and try to figure out how we could effectivly communicate if it was normal for everyone to have a different concept of color.. i think you'd find it'd be impossible.

i think the logic of this follows along the lines of donald davidson's, Pearce and wittgenstien's arguments for meaning and language, read up on them (but i wish you good luck, it's pretty fucking dense)

http://critiquewall.com/2007/12/10/blindness?page=2

Apr 2 2008 2:32AM
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TheWorst
Posts: 7883 - Karma: 17
i've that about that shit before too, its all perception and people to have different perceptions on things by the ways they were raised.
Apr 2 2008 3:43AM
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unchyll
Posts: 4554 - Karma: 96
haha yeah ive thought about that...
ecspecialy like young kids not knowing they are color blind and shit
Apr 2 2008 4:02AM
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charmander
Posts: 10636 - Karma: 370
hello massive headache
Apr 2 2008 4:14AM
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Mr_Bojangles
Posts: 2585 - Karma: 16
Is anyone planning to draw a distinction between sensation, and perception?
Apr 2 2008 9:11AM
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GnarBurger
Posts: 3215 - Karma: 43
yeah i dont even want to begin thinking about this cu its such a cray concept my head might explode
Apr 2 2008 10:18AM
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spruitm
Posts: 2221 - Karma: 1,069
that chart doesnt prove anything.  my red could be your blue and it would still reflect the same.

I had another thought.  What if when you were really young your parents completely messed you up by calling all the colors the wrong things.  Or these things we drive around are called bananas.  If you kept at it by the time they got to school no one would know what your kid is talking about.
Apr 2 2008 10:39AM
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t-roy
Posts: 4041 - Karma: 52

let's say 700 nm light is incident on our retinas. that stimulates a graded hyperpolarization of ganglion cells in one of the 10 layers in our retinas. the impulse is relayed through a few structures then synapses in the striate cortex or V1 area in our brains where that signal is perceived as a specific and constant color. color is only a perception. and the real world is much different than what we can actually see.

when we see a rainbow (in the sky or from prism diffraction/dispersion) we see all the visible wavelengths at once. that is constant. the only way two people would see "different" colors is if as a child they were just told the colors have different names. we all see and know what "red" is because that is what someone decided to call that color long ago.

i know what you are wondering about though. what i see as red, you might see as blue. but that is inconsistent with...just about everything related to optical theories.

Apr 2 2008 12:42PM
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pmills
Posts: 7162 - Karma: 59
You're really just falling apart, i mean if my 'red' was  the color red, and your red was my blue, and steve's red was my green,  you just wouldn't logically be able to talk about things. if things were completely subjective you'd have a lot of cases where some people would be able to see massive contrast and others would see no contrast, despite all the physical structures of the eye being functional.

how would it be if all things were subjective, you just oculdn't have language, you wouldn't be able to share a common experiance, but we do. 

Post above is pretty good at explaining things


again, read Davidson, Pierce, Wittgenstein,  their theorys of semantics, language and meaning, all deal with this sort of problem
Apr 2 2008 1:19PM
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doritos
Posts: 7368 - Karma: 53
Haha, I'm really surprised that other people have thought of this... I think a lot of the posts in here disprove it pretty well, good to know the answer now.
Apr 2 2008 1:58PM
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uni-corn
Posts: 13846 - Karma: 651
Me ytoo
Apr 2 2008 2:01PM
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tribefan226
Posts: 2122 - Karma: 209
wow i thought i was the only person whos thought this. what if thats why we all have different favorite colors?
Apr 2 2008 2:03PM
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Shorton
Posts: 2889 - Karma: 13

me and my friends always talk about this, theres really no way to prove that it isnt true

Apr 2 2008 2:04PM
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twix_182
Posts: 9248 - Karma: 27
but what if every color was changed enough the same way to make it still work even though ur seeing all different colors

im partially color blind
Apr 2 2008 2:16PM
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Mooose...
Posts: 1807 - Karma: 77
we had a half hour off topic discusion about this in physics.
Apr 2 2008 2:39PM
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Pisces
Posts: 905 - Karma: 13
my god i cant even count how many times ive pondered this growing up. theres really no way for us to definitely know but its pretty interesting.
Apr 2 2008 2:42PM
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MADmidwest
Posts: 1278 - Karma: 15
what if other people's colors are completly different from yours and don't look anything like yellow, blue, red, or any colors that your use to. They are just in a different spectrum that you can't comprehend because your brain hasn't been exposed to them yet. A Whole new set of colors but they are identified by other people's brains as colors that you already know like red, yellow, green. We can't test it though because we can't explain our colors to others. Imagine explaining what blue looks like to a completly colorblind person who only sees black and white.
Apr 2 2008 3:39PM
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mitchk
Posts: 678 - Karma: 19
wow. ive thought about this my entire childhood. iv thought about tons of other stuff to but i cant remember now.
Apr 2 2008 4:26PM
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ryan.c
Posts: 6592 - Karma: 14
this is correct
Apr 2 2008 4:35PM
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Nicholas.
Posts: 10905 - Karma: 60
its weird how you cant describe colors,they just sorta are what we call them. it could be possible but not really.
Apr 2 2008 4:51PM
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colin13
Posts: 2201 - Karma: 216
if someone moves fast enough they will change colors....true story
Apr 2 2008 4:57PM
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C+Thompson
Posts: 434 - Karma: 97
Ok, but what about light?  I mean if everyone sees colours different then they would see light diferent.  Light is what makes colours.  So it's highly unlikely that light to one person is bright, and to another its black, or dark.  And fire,  and orange or red fire.  It takes way too long to explain but if you think about fire and light, you might see that it's almost impossible for everyone to see different colours.
Apr 2 2008 5:01PM
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powderdrunkie
Posts: 2034 - Karma: 976
i'm colorblind. no lie
Apr 2 2008 5:27PM
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