I'm an artist in many forms and one happens to be painting and drawing. In my experience with this, colors set tones and moods. This means that we can describe color. For example, the Yellow Banana to me is a very bright color and it sets a happy mood. If somebody were to look at the banana and see "blue", but learned that it is called "yellow" how would we know? Ask him/her to describe the color of the banana. If he/she says it is a darker color with a gloomy mood then we know he/she sees differently color wise. So you see there are ways to know if we see differently, otherwise we wouldn't know "color-blind" exists.
I wasn't agreeing or disagreeing or making my own theory, I was just adressing the question of how could we know if somebody sees differently i.e. color-blind people. If two people looked at the same thing and one said it was a bright and vibrant color and the other said it was a dark and dead color then we would know they see differently. I don't know how this wouldn't be evidence of them seeing differently.
I think we have misunderstood each other. I completely agree with you, but for you to disagree with me means you don't believe that color-blind exist. Object do have specific colors that are given off, but people's eyes some times see them differently. Take vision for example, my vision is very poor and without aid I see objects as blurry. The objects aren't blurry that's just how I see. Same thing with color.
Again, I think we may have misundertood each other, so tell me what you think I'm saying.
Msorter/awoken/awokenForver> (For you NEXT alias) Sorry your theory on women (as seen the Girls and the Matrix) doesn’t hold through, as I AM a scientist. So DOH!
DarkCore> Okay look: YOU are obviously NOT a scientist, and too lazy to pick up an actual book on how the world works. It’s then fine that you make up your own personal hypothesis (a theory has been proven by experiments, so your fantasies are not even THAT), but don’t come here claiming it is the truth, when you have ZERO proof.
See: The ONE who makes a positive assertion (such as, say, the orange coding is the truth) has the burden of proof. It’s not MY job to disprove you hypothesis. It’s YOUR job to prove YOUR hypothesis. Your “teacher” should know that.
So it is with everything. It’s not my job to disprove God, it’s the job of the religious to prove the existence of God. If I say, reindeers can fly, it’s my job to prove they can. Not yours to prove they cannot.
I’ll try again for the perceptionally impaired: Our eyes all work in the same way. They absorb the light emitted or reflected by other objects. Each colour in the visible spectrum corresponds to a specific colour. So the colour red can be DEFINED as light with THIS wavelength (around 700 nanometres). Blue is 450 nanometres, and this is actually a tiny part of the SPECTRUM of electromagnetic radiation (aka light at ALL possible wavelengths from the smallest gammaray wavelenths, to the long radio wavelengths. MIND you, the radio-wavelengths are NOT sound. But the wavelengths with which we TRANSMIT radio as EM radiation. SOUND is a disturbance in objects such as air, metal etc – the reason why there are NO sounds in empty space).
Can someone give me ANY reason why nature should go to such trouble to DESIGN our eyes so they perceived colours differently? What would be the purpose? Why not simply used the same system for ALL eyes instead of making billions of differently working ones?
I have hesitated to make posts lest I say something stupid about the Matrix movies (I have SO much to learn), but this particular discussion needs the perspective of a biologist.
Different people CAN perceive the same colors (wavelengths) differently, and the reason that this is true lies in the mechanism used by the eyes to perceive color. We perceive colors because the retinas of normal (not color blind) people contain three different variants of a protein called an “opsin”. Each of these opsins is tuned to respond to different regions of the spectrum – one responds to red (peak of absorbance at 560nm), one responds to green (peak response at 530), and one responds maximally to blue light (peak response 420 nM). To quote a classic college level biochemistry textbook, (Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry) “We discriminate colors and hues by integrating the output from the three types of cone cells, each containing one of the three [opsin]photoreceptors”. Though most people have identical versions of these three receptors, some people have slight variants that cause sensitivity of that particular rhodopsin to shift towards the red or the blue end of the spectrum. This causes their perception of the color of a particular wavelenth to vary relative to the average person. For example, if someone has a “blue” opsin that is abnormally sensitive to “green” light, they will see a wavelenth that is between green and blue (and thus blue-green) as closer to blue. As a real-life example, one of my labmates perceived a particular wavelength we used in lab to be “yellow” while the rest of us called it “green” (I assume that this was due to a mutation in one of her opsins, but we haven’t yet sequenced her opsin genes!).
To get back to the discussion of the “reality” of our perceptions: this aspect of our physiology is the origin of the “primary” colors red blue and green – the fact that a mixture of these three colors makes black ( or white, depending on if you are mixing light or pigment) is completely an outcome of our physiology and is NOT an outcome of physics. For example, a bee (which can see UV light) can perceive a UV-reflective-but-otherwise-black surface as “bright”. TO US this same surface would seem black (because we can’t see UV light). If you ever get a chance, look at picture of flowers made with a UV camera!!! It is amazing what bees see! The extra patterns are all completely invisible to the vast majority of humanity, but would be visible to a person with a (hypothetical) blue opsin that was unusually sensitive to UV light.
I am grateful to you all for existing and writing in this forum – everyone I know thought that Revolutions was rotten. I have been trying to explain that “You can’t understand James Joyce the first time you read it”, but to no avail….
BioLogos> Welcome onboard – and if you need Revolutions FANS to discuss the movie with, you came to the right… hrm… board 😄
Don’t worry about saying something “stupid”. If in doubt just ASK or post an opinion, check out the FDT thread or use the search feature.
Thank you for the nice essay on eye-perception. You’re right, but I’m sure you wouldn’t say our eyes WORK differently from person to person. That there can be slight variations in the receptors – as I see it – is not different than that some people are more sensitive to certain tastes (why some people HATE coriander(? The spice) and others LOVE it), others have longer fingers than others.
Our eyes still have three cone cells, with the photorecptors that are sensitive to certain wavelengths of light.
The example you give of one persons “yellow” are everyone elses “green”, shows that the “yellow” person had an “abnormal” perception. The rest of you saw green, and as we know, yellow and green are right next to each other. 🙂
It would’ve been something else if the ‘”yellow” person had claimed she saw red!
I’m a physicists, so of course I discuss the colours in terms of their wavelengths. And I’m sure you’ll agree that there is a difference between receptors that are a little too sensitive to a certain wavelength and the ability to see UV-light (as the bees you mention).
Thanks for the welcome! I feel at home!
Omega > …I’m sure you wouldn’t say our eyes WORK differently from person to person.
Yes, I agree. The basic machinery is certainly the same. But in the context of a discussion about “The Matrix”, it is important to realize (as everyone writing here does – I’m preaching to the choir) that we in the “real” world are limited by the ability of the “machinery” of our bodies to perceive this world. Differences in this machinery can lead to differences in our perceptions, as well as differences in our ability to manipulate this world. Basically, we all have a computer interface between us and the world… The (partial) failure of this computer interface is obvious when you look at an optical illusion (for example, one of those 3-D pictures – obviously, it isn’t 3-D, but it sure looks it).
As for humans seeing UV – it would in fact be “theoretically” possible to engineer a human who could see UV by replacing their blue opsin with a genetically engineered version sensitive to UV. Thankfully, such genetic engineering is not legal, but researchers are actively working on engineering “simpler” organisms to detect and respond to “unnatural” stimuli such bioterrorism agents. I’m not arguing that this is or is not a good idea, but it is happening…
Ok, I’ve gotten far enough off topic. Sorry! It is just that the underlying similarities between the way our minds naturally perceive the outside world and the way machines control humans in The Matrix that makes The Matrix so plausible and so interesting (I’ll ignore the bad thermodynamics…). Of course, there are other reasons that it is great as well...
i stopped reading Dork-core after a while...didnt bother w/the rest of you guys ridiculing him. Um.. im in high school, n i've talked to a bunch of you...do i sound that stupid ever? cuz i dont want y'all to think thats how all high schoolers are. i jus dont think dorky listened very well in chemistry, or maybe he just never got in...
DorkCore, did u fail ur TOK classes? your making some very haphazzard theories, and um, science does prove things, if you can qutoe from Scientific American, you should know that.
dont come here thinking your all high and mighty, cuz u sound like a stuck up prick to me, and if you want to know the god-honest truth, if your teacher is laughing at the posts against your ridiculous idea of BLUE BANANAS then i think you go to a pretty stupid school. You try to bring up fact, then try to turn it into theory, what kind of moron are you?