This is a pretty common question / thought excersice. Normally I laugh at the people who ponder the question, mainly becuase they think there really IS a question about if something REALLY is a color you think it is. Of course it is. Objects reflect certain light waves regardless of what you think they are(more on this later).
However recent exposure to certain material and personal reflection has changed my view somewhat on the subject. To put it simply: you make your own reality and a given object is every color it can possibly be until you observe it then the object settles on one color, which more often than not happens to be the same color everyone else sees. Lose you? hope not, obviously there's a lot more to it than that but that's the simple short version of how I've come to beleive how things are. There is a lot of interesting science out there that supports this view too, string theory, wavefunction collapse, schroedingers cat, etc. Each and of themselves the all sound like nonsesne(defintely don't try to understand the math part heh), but if you put everything together and then try a few simple exercises on your own you may see as I have come to see that it just makes sense and there's no reason to make it any more difficult than it needs to be. I.E. go back to doing fun stuff rather than pondering weather or not that red apple is really not blue.
re: lightwave reflection. Objects reflect light, it's how we "see" them. Each object reflects a certain wavelength of visible light the frequency determines what color we "see". Human eyes are comprised mainly of two types of receptors. rods and cones. one is for detecting color the other is for light/dark. The average human has a pretty wide range in which they can see both the object and what color it is. However once you drop below a certain threshold all you'll see is that there is light and any further you wont see anything becuase you aren't able to see thermographic or heat (btw i'm simplying heavily here to save on keystrokes) anyway regardless of the light level an object tends to reflect the same light no matter who's observing it. Here's an easy experiemnt to try that will illustrate it:
Take red lightbulb, 3 tiles. a red one, a blue one and a green one. and set them next to each other in a small room. Put the red lightbulb(A red LED keychain in a closet works really well) into a lamp or fixture, turn off all other lights and make sure no other light besides the red one illuminates the room. Now look at your tiles. If done correctly, you should see the red tile nice and brightly, the blue tile will be black or nearly so and the green one will be a slightly lighter shade of black. You are only supplying red light therefore that's all that's available to reflect off the objects. If you really want to have some fun throw in some other colored objects and different light sources.
This concludes tonights science and philosophy lesson. I have an answer about the pole too but that's a lot more text than I'm willing to type right now and probably a lot more than you're interested in reading... that is if you even made it past the second paragraph way up yonder in the first place ;)
Posted by Fred on February 1, 2007 - Thursday at 12:15 AM
Anyway, I know that each color is its own wavelength, and that each component of the eye responds in a mostly uniform way. What I occasionally wonder is the part directly behind the eye. If I were able to take a test drive in your mind, directly experience your vision of the world. Would your brain's translation of that color be confusing to me? Try for a moment to describe a particular color without referencing an object that looks like it, or the frequency of the light.
Really, its not a big deal, just a random thought I have every now and then.
Posted by MaterRelic on February 1, 2007 - Thursday at 5:01 PM
I tend to think that a terrorist attack would be the perfect place for the Penis game. But I'm weird like that. We have two more cons here in Orlando in the next three months.
Posted by Eight Cylinder Super Hero on February 1, 2007 - Thursday at 7:33 AM
Oh boy... here we go.
ReplyDeletere: question aboout color perception.
This is a pretty common question / thought excersice. Normally I laugh at the people who ponder the question, mainly becuase they think there really IS a question about if something REALLY is a color you think it is. Of course it is. Objects reflect certain light waves regardless of what you think they are(more on this later).
However recent exposure to certain material and personal reflection has changed my view somewhat on the subject. To put it simply: you make your own reality and a given object is every color it can possibly be until you observe it then the object settles on one color, which more often than not happens to be the same color everyone else sees. Lose you? hope not, obviously there's a lot more to it than that but that's the simple short version of how I've come to beleive how things are. There is a lot of interesting science out there that supports this view too, string theory, wavefunction collapse, schroedingers cat, etc. Each and of themselves the all sound like nonsesne(defintely don't try to understand the math part heh), but if you put everything together and then try a few simple exercises on your own you may see as I have come to see that it just makes sense and there's no reason to make it any more difficult than it needs to be. I.E. go back to doing fun stuff rather than pondering weather or not that red apple is really not blue.
re: lightwave reflection. Objects reflect light, it's how we "see" them. Each object reflects a certain wavelength of visible light the frequency determines what color we "see". Human eyes are comprised mainly of two types of receptors. rods and cones. one is for detecting color the other is for light/dark. The average human has a pretty wide range in which they can see both the object and what color it is. However once you drop below a certain threshold all you'll see is that there is light and any further you wont see anything becuase you aren't able to see thermographic or heat (btw i'm simplying heavily here to save on keystrokes) anyway regardless of the light level an object tends to reflect the same light no matter who's observing it. Here's an easy experiemnt to try that will illustrate it:
Take red lightbulb, 3 tiles. a red one, a blue one and a green one. and set them next to each other in a small room. Put the red lightbulb(A red LED keychain in a closet works really well) into a lamp or fixture, turn off all other lights and make sure no other light besides the red one illuminates the room. Now look at your tiles. If done correctly, you should see the red tile nice and brightly, the blue tile will be black or nearly so and the green one will be a slightly lighter shade of black. You are only supplying red light therefore that's all that's available to reflect off the objects. If you really want to have some fun throw in some other colored objects and different light sources.
This concludes tonights science and philosophy lesson. I have an answer about the pole too but that's a lot more text than I'm willing to type right now and probably a lot more than you're interested in reading... that is if you even made it past the second paragraph way up yonder in the first place ;)
Posted by Fred on February 1, 2007 - Thursday at 12:15 AM
Wow.
ReplyDeleteHi Fred.
How's it goin?
Type Much?
hehe
Anyway, I know that each color is its own wavelength, and that each component of the eye responds in a mostly uniform way. What I occasionally wonder is the part directly behind the eye. If I were able to take a test drive in your mind, directly experience your vision of the world. Would your brain's translation of that color be confusing to me? Try for a moment to describe a particular color without referencing an object that looks like it, or the frequency of the light.
Really, its not a big deal, just a random thought I have every now and then.
Posted by MaterRelic on February 1, 2007 - Thursday at 5:01 PM
I tend to think that a terrorist attack would be the perfect place for the Penis game. But I'm weird like that. We have two more cons here in Orlando in the next three months.
ReplyDeletePosted by Eight Cylinder Super Hero on February 1, 2007 - Thursday at 7:33 AM