# No Such Thing as Color



## Sheilawisz (Jul 23, 2014)

As some of you know already, I have a profound fascination with everything about Color Vision.

I have researched for a long time about how our perception of color works, how different species experience colors and the problems that can arise in color vision, especially because I have a character in one of my stories that is fascinated by these matters too.

This character was born with black and white vision, even though her species enjoys a Trichromatic color vision similar to the one most of us experience... her eyes had all the cells necessary for the regular vision, but they lacked a special liquid that works by activating those cells.

She obtains the Trichromatic vision when her eyes are fully awakened at her seventh birthday, but this thread is more about a documentary that I watched recently and is called _No Such Thing as Color_.

You can watch the full, nine minutes documentary at Youtube:

[video=youtube_share;AUsups6Mk3I]http://youtu.be/AUsups6Mk3I[/video]

_No Such Thing as Color_ describes the life experiences of colorblind Musician Evans Forde. It helped me a lot to understand what color blindness feels like, and I was surprised to discover that the experiences of my character are quite similar to what Evans tells us about.

It seems to me that the color simulations featured in the documentary represent Deuteranopia (green blindness, which is very common), but there are other forms of color blindness, too.

I find it fascinating that Evans comes to the conclusion that there is really no such thing as color in our world. It does not exist out there, separated from our eyes... he believes that colors exist only inside our minds, an artifact of perception that is unique to every person.

What do you think of colors? Would the world be very different if we all had Dichromatic eyes? What does color mean to you, in your life?


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## CupofJoe (Jul 24, 2014)

Colour exists. It's a physical attribute of how light works... it can be measured, created and repeated.
Perception of colour - completely different matter. No two people see colour the same, let alone any 2 cultures or even species. I was amazed to find out that Greeks and Russians have very different definitions of blues from some other well research groups. Both have a light and dark blue division whereas most in the West do not. 
And then there are the Himba people of Namibia whose colour grouping seem very strange to me but works for them...
So you get cultures that don't have as many colours as we in the North/Western World do and some that have more.
Even if they have the same colour in front of them and ignoring what they will name that colour, someone around the Equator will see/perceive a different colour to someone closer to the Poles. Day light is different colours around the world and not just [more obviously] through out the day.
Apparently really young babies really like Yellow - at least in Western Europe...

Not the most rigorous of academic papers but I like this article...
You Only See Colors You Can Name


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## Sheilawisz (Jul 24, 2014)

Thank you for that interesting link, CupofJoe.

I agree that color somehow exists in the world outside of our minds, but that's just wavelengths of light. What is truly surreal is the personal experience and unique perception that we have of colors, and like you said, that is a completely different matter.

If we take an intensely red apple, I look at it and I declare that it's red. A person with Deutan vision would say that it's red too, but the colors that we experience while looking at the same apple are completely different. How do I know that the red I see is exactly the same that another Trichromatic person experiences?

There's no way to know for sure, it's all inside our minds...

I wanted to say that Dichromatic vision is not really a disadvantage. It's believed that in fact color blindness is an evolutionary advantage, because Hunting groups worked better if at least one Colorblind individual was part of the party.

They are very good at penetrating color camouflage that fools the Trichromatic vision easily, and this is also a potential advantage for soldiers in a war scenario in modern days. This happens because they pay a lot of attention to the shapes and texture of things, while we Trichromats are immediately distracted by the intensely vivid colors that we see.

The Dichromatic eyes also have an advantage when it comes to see in conditions of very low light =)

It's perceived as a disadvantage only because our world is Trichromatic, but like I said, colors are just an illusion. The same would happen to me if I was taken away to live in a planet full of Tetrachromats able to see colors that I cannot even imagine, but that does not mean that my eyes are defective.


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## ThinkerX (Jul 24, 2014)

This is starting to get into the difference between 'true reality' and 'perception of reality', something that drives philosophers and physicists insane.  Oldest example would be 'Plato's Cave':

Envision a group of people living in a large shadowy cave.  Their bodies are constrained so they can look in just one direction.  In that direction, illuminated by the sun behind these people is a shadow play, a weak, flawed imitation of reality.  Yet, not knowing any better, the entrapped people accept this display as 'true.'

That is the situation we are in:  we cannot perceive things 'as they are' but only 'as they appear to be,' which means any models we make of reality are incomplete or flawed from the outset.


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## CupofJoe (Jul 25, 2014)

Sheilawisz said:


> How do I know that the red I see is exactly the same that another Trichromatic person experiences?
> There's no way to know for sure, it's all inside our minds...


True but that is the nature of reality. We all could be inside the Matrix and never know it.
I work with someone [a world class mind on dinosaurs] that puts forward the [tongue in cheek] idea that some sauropods are just too big to work and their existence is proof that a god is testing our faith in him/her and/or science. He often talk about "errors in the code" of our Matrix lives... 



Sheilawisz said:


> I wanted to say that Dichromatic vision is not really a disadvantage. It's believed that in fact color blindness is an evolutionary advantage, because Hunting groups worked better if at least one Colorblind individual was part of the party.


I would love to see the proof of this. Having more than one option/point of view may certainly be an advantage for a hunting party [or any group involved in a critical event] but that isn't the same as saying dichromatic vision is an advantage to the individual... not being able to tell ripe from unripe will cause problems if nothing else.



Sheilawisz said:


> The Dichromatic eyes also have an advantage when it comes to see in conditions of very low light =)


I hadn't heard of this... it makes sense but they would have to be red-green colour-blind, if they were blue-yellow then flowers would look much prettier [as that is closer to how bees see them]. Insects and prawns vision is poly- and multi-chromatic and very different from our own. Some sea life  even have  polarised vision that they can rotate to improve sight in murky water!  We have no real concept of how these planet sharing creatures see our  world, we can only guesstimate how they perceive thing because of  our own limitations.



Sheilawisz said:


> It's perceived as a disadvantage only because our world is Trichromatic, but like I said, colors are just an illusion. The same would happen to me if I was taken away to live in a planet full of Tetrachromats able to see colors that I cannot even imagine, but that does not mean that my eyes are defective.


The human world is trichromatic because the vast majority of humans are... Having different vision to the majority will be a de-facto disadvantage [like being too tall or too short], it might not be a major one though...
I don't agree that colours are an illusion but our perception of them is illusionary. Maybe in most circumstances this is similar enough.

There have been attempts to remove the effect of colour from camouflage that were very successful. Dazzle Ships were very successful in using mono-chromatic schemes to disrupt a viewers perception.


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## Sheilawisz (Jul 27, 2014)

CupofJoe, it's not completely demonstrated that color blindness features certain advantages over Trichromacy.

There are theories that try to explain why evolution has caused Deutan and Protan cases to be so common in the species, and you can read more about them here: Nature Article, The upside of Color Blindness and The Benefits of Color Blindness.

I doubt that Dichromatic people would have an advantage when faced with the Dazzle Camouflage that you have mentioned, but they do notice many subtleties that our overwhelming Trichromacy does not allow us to realize.

There are also theories about possible cases of human Tetrachromats, but I'll talk about that in a different thread =)

ThinkerX, that's exactly the kind of thoughts that come to my mind when I think that colors do not exist. We take the reality around us for granted, we think that it's so solid and real but in fact it's just a lot of particles and energy that have taken certain order that we perceive as our reality.

As a firm believer in the existence of Dream Worlds (as the Warlyak world of my Joan of England series) the realization that there is no such thing as color has had a profound and positive impact on my life...

By the way, I wanted to recommend a Color Simulation Freeware to anyone interested in Color Blindness that might be reading this thread. It's called _Color Oracle_, you can read about it and download right here and it's very friendly and easy to use.

After having compared the work of Color Oracle with the results produced by other similar software, I can tell you that it's indeed the best color simulator available today. It produces by far the most natural and realistic simulations of color blindness, giving any Trichromat a very accurate experience of what it's really like.

Color Oracle provides instant and full screen simulations at any moment that you want, but sadly it cannot simulate while you watch a video or a movie.


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