
Thanks To Gene Therapy, Monkeys See In Full Color - iamwil
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112897277&sc=fb&cc=fp
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skolor
We have been discussing this article on our work ListServ since it came out on
Wired this afternoon
(<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/>). The conversation
turned rather quickly to whether or not those of us who were color blind would
take the treatment if it was available.

The three of us (out of ~20 people) who were color blind had rather different
answers. One guy fell in the middle, he wasn't quite sure one way or the
other. The other guy is leaning towards the treatment, primarily because art
plays a large roll in his life.

I feel that I would not take the treatment. From what I can tell, being color
blind seems to be more of an advantage than a disadvantage for me. While color
is nice, it doesn't seem particularly useful in my life. On the other hand,
the tendency to notice textures and patterns over the color they are in has
frequently been useful to me. I notice movement faster (due to the texture
changing, but not the colors), and I notice small differences easier.

I would really like to see how other people weigh in on the issue.

~~~
nopassrecover
Heh interesting argument for color blindness as an optimisation rather than a
disability.

Does anyone know if short-sightedness/long-sightedness results in a
corresponding benefit to the opposite-sightedness?

~~~
skolor
You have to figure: Color Blindness is a recessive trait (at least in humans,
I don't know about other species). In order for it to survive, and even
increase in expression over the course of human evolution, it has to carry
with it some benefits (admittedly, it is also carried on the X chromosome,
which has found to be highly linked to IQ). You also find color blindness in
several species of animals, particularly those that are predators.

To be honest, it isn't an optimization. Its a trade off, that has benefits. An
example would be being able to see infra-red light. You would be able to see
more colors, which comes with all sorts of advantages (distance the color
carries, how well it reflects, what it reflects off of, etc), but the trade
off would be you would be even worse off when looking at a pattern. For
whatever reason, the human brain (at least, this may be true for other
species) considers color to encode quite a bit of information, and it is quite
high up on the list of things to process.

~~~
scott_s
It doesn't have to have a benefit to survive. It just has to not be enough of
a hindrance to prevent successful procreation before death.

Think of things which are obviously genetic and also obviously not beneficial,
such as near-sightedness or teeth mis-alignment.

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mhb
It would be interesting to find a latent visual ability in humans which could
be turned on and allow us to see things in new ways. Like infrared or
synesthesia, but maybe something for which we don't have a name.

~~~
holygoat
Tetrachromacy?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy>

<http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06256/721190-114.stm>

~~~
nopassrecover
I saw something on this recently.

I have to assume that Y chromosomes have one colour-sensing cone otherwise by
this logic all men would be dichromatic?

I'm also struggling to understand how if one X chromosome has these two genes,
having two X chromosomes (so more of the same 2 genes) would result in
different colour-sensing cones.

Finally, it's interesting that the identified tetrochomats cannot see things
in the ultraviolet (or otherwise infrared) spectrum, only increased colour
differentiation. Perhaps, they really are but the brain interprets them as
related to our existing colour map, in the same way that regular trichromats
identify a connection between red and violet.

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gjm11
I wonder whether they had a control group, to eliminate the possibility that
their "red or green target" wasn't _absolutely_ invisible to a colour-blind
monkey but was close enough that it took five months of practice for "Dalton"
to work out what he was supposed to be looking for.

(Doesn't seem _likely_ \-- I'd have thought that if he were doing that, he'd
have learned much faster.)

------
Tichy
"Neitz says both monkeys have seemed pretty pleased with themselves ever
since."

So cute!

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10ren
Impossible is an opinion.

Empiricism 1, Rationalism 0

~~~
10ren
> "I went out and asked all my neuroscientist friends, 'If I do this in an
> adult monkey, will this give them color vision?' " Neitz says. "And everyone
> said, 'Absolutely not.' "

> Neitz and his team tried the experiment anyway.

Doing the experiment is empiricism; relying on a conceptual theory is
rationalism. Theory is effective for predicting the logical consequences of
what is already known; it cannot predict anything else. Whereas empiricism can
discover things which are not dreamed of by a particular theory.

Even the famous examples of rationalism, such as Einstein's theory of
relativity, and Maxwell's equations which predicted radio waves, were based on
empirical observations: that the speed of light appears to be constant in all
directions (inconsistent with an _ether_ ); and Faraday's observation that a
magnetic field can affect the polarization of light, respectively.

Excessive rationalism is popular in software researchers, but it is not
appropriate for any software that interacts with reality - as all useful
software does.

~~~
scott_s
I think you're suggesting a dichotomy where none exists. The scientific method
depends on both.

~~~
10ren
When people say "absolutely not", as here, theory attempts to exclude
experiment. It's quite common. I agree both are necessary for healthy science.

~~~
scott_s
I don't think people mean "Don't even try" when they say "absolutely not."
It's a colloquial expression, not a scientific expression.

~~~
10ren
The article has more on this issue than I have quoted.

I don't know exactly what those individuals meant by "absolutely not", however
I'm not seeing a conflict between individuals, but between attitudes (which
also exists within an individual.)

When conducting research, individuals vary in their attachment to theory; even
within the one researcher, there are conflicting tendencies to follow theory
or to test it. I say tendencies, because there isn't a strictly rational way
to know when to begin or stop a particular line of experiments. It is, by
nature, unknown.

When established theory says that something definitely won't work, one is less
encouraged to try the experiment. Therefore I think it's important to
celebrate each new discovery - especially when it undermines a theory.

I think you have misinterpreted my comments, especially the longer one.

