by surprisetalk on 6/14/25, 2:53 PM with 38 comments
by crazygringo on 6/17/25, 10:25 PM
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.
by lizknope on 6/18/25, 2:07 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/30/im-really-ju...
https://munsell.com/color-blog/tetrachromat-artist-concetta-...
Many flowers have patterns only visible in ultraviolet. Many pollinators can see ultraviolet and these patterns on the flower direct them to the pollination areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_coloration_in_flowers
http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_ANGE_SYL.html
The lens in our eye filters out a lot of UV.
After Monet had cataract surgery his color perception changed so his later paintings have a different color balance.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullartic...
by IAmBroom on 6/20/25, 1:01 PM
Tetrachromats are not seeing four well-separated colors. They are seeing the exact same blue-area and green-area colorrs, with two different cones responding slightly differently to red-area light.
So, instead of a color looking RGB(200,100,100) to them, it might look (200.26,100,100).
The very slight difference is why it's so hard to detect in people, and frankly, doesn't affect much (which is why there's apparently very little evolutionary "pressure" on the color genes).
by TomMasz on 6/18/25, 11:06 AM
by sublinear on 6/18/25, 12:44 AM
by oofbey on 6/17/25, 9:16 PM
by _vaporwave_ on 6/17/25, 9:25 PM
by supermatt on 6/18/25, 6:12 AM
by spondylosaurus on 6/17/25, 10:54 PM