
Sky-blue-pink. A colour never before seen? - rglovejoy
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/479563-sky-blue-pink-a-colour-never-before-seen
======
ryandvm
I hate when I'm reading an article and become completely distracted with an
irrelevant detail.

In this case, his traffic violating cyclist was full of shit. Even the color
blind know _which_ light in the arrangement is the stop light, regardless of
its apparent color.

EDIT: Removed bonus apostrophe

~~~
furyg3
[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3071/2519282653_737a56be03.jp...](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3071/2519282653_737a56be03.jpg)

I was riding shotgun with a colorblind friend when he approached one of these
somewhere around Pleasanton, CA. He started freaking out a bit as we
approached, asking what color the light was.

Turns out that the standard is that red goes on top or on the left, but he
didn't know that since he had never come across a horizontal stoplight before
(neither had I).

So saying "I'm colorblind" is usually BS, but it is possible (especially if
some designer went and got all cute with the stoplight).

~~~
julius_geezer
A few horizontal lights remained in the small towns of my state when I got my
license, so I did have to learn this. I've long forgotten, though. A color-
blind guy I worked with said that he worried about forgetting.

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tbrownaw
Some people have seen that sort of "impossible" color:
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=seeing-
forb...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=seeing-forbidden-
colors)

Basically if you have areas of different incompatible colors next to
eachother, and they're the same subjective brightness, and you use fancy eye-
tracking equipment to make the border stay in exactly the same place on your
retina, then your brain gets confused and shows you some impossible
combination around the boundary.

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rada
I am surprised Dawkins did not touch on the connection of language and color.
Aside from physical ability, people "see" colors simply based on the language
they speak. As someone who grew up speaking Russian where light blue and dark
blue are 2 separate colors as different as green and yellow, I've often been
surprised by English speakers' inability to distinguish between those colors.
Similarly, some languages do not distinguish between blue and green, or blue
and black, or have no purple, etc.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Univer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution)

So the question is, even before physical ability, what part of the difficulty
in recognizing a color can be attributed solely to lack of prior experience?
In other words, if you subject a color-blind patient to brain stimulation,
might they _still_ not see a color simply because they haven't been
acculturated to it?

Incidentally, I _have_ seen sky-blue-pink, at sunrise on the Haleakala volcano
on Maui.

~~~
Gormo
There must be a psychological component of processing color that can be
influenced by language. But is there an actual psychosomatic effect to the
extent that the actual neurological processing of color is influenced by the
mind, whether consciously or subconsciously?

I remember as an infant perceiving blue and green as being two "shades" of the
same color, and being surprised that no one else thought of them that way. My
early intuitive understanding succumbed to habit, and I no longer make that
association, but my physical perception of the colors has never changed.

~~~
stcredzero
This is precisely why L and R are hard to distinguish for Asians, or why
Americans are confused by the Korean distinction of more than 2 phonemes in
the D to T spectrum and G to K.

~~~
gojomo
My American-English ears also can't hear certain distinctions along a S-Sh-
Sch-Tsh spectrum that at different times Hebrew and Japanese speakers have
tried to highlight for me.

So I don't buy Dawkins' conjecture there are unused 'qualia' waiting to be
stimulated; the brain adapts itself to the sensory ranges available from its
body and environment, discarding those distinctions rarely needed. Perhaps
years of exposure would slowly grow back the sensitivity -- but there'd be no
surprise moment of new experience.

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10ren
The 'label' would have likely atrophied.

Kittens raised in an environment without vertical lines don't develop the
ability to perceive vertical lines. These sensing cells would have developed
in the retina, but it seems reasonable for the same effect to occur on any
cells that are tightly connected with vision - such as colour _qualia_. Though
I doubt that many neurobiologists take that philosophical term very seriously.

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mquander
There's an easy way to experience a small range of colors you haven't seen
before.

[http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/illusions.html#Ecli...](http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/illusions.html#Eclipse%20of%20Titan)

Documentation on the physical phenomenon behind this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_color#Perception_of_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_color#Perception_of_imaginary_colors)

------
po
Well, he's not a Tetrachromat so he can still volunteer for a study:

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

~~~
stcredzero
Yes, and if only a small minority of the population has this mutation, then
words for the other colors they perceive would never become part of the
language. In fact, it would be almost impossible for Tetrachromats to discover
others like themselves.

~~~
po
I think the standard way a tetrachromatic person would discover they are that
way is they walk around all day wondering why everyone is wearing mismatched
colors and nobody seems to notice or agree with them.

~~~
stcredzero
Don't a lot of women already wonder about a lot of men in this way?
(Tetrachromacy gene is on the X chromosome, and seems to express more often in
women.)

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noonespecial
I like Dawkins quite a bit, but I like him most when he sets aside his
"mission" and just thinks (and writes) interesting thoughts.

~~~
rikthevik
He's a smart guy with an intense passion for science and he writes very well.
We need more scientists like him and Sagan. Their curiosity is infectious.

------
olefoo
The assumption being made here is that the labels are fixed categories,
immutable and the same from person to person; and yet we know that's not
always the case. It seems to me that we have the capability of deriving labels
from experience, but don't (especially in the case of the colour-blind) all
have the same experiences. I know there has been a fair amount of research on
colour names in cross-cultural contexts and that for the most part there is a
pretty clear similarity between the colour names employed in different
cultures, but that not all cultures distinguish between blue and green for
instance.

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spearson
Like so, so many arguments in philosophy of mind, the argument requires there
to be a distinction between subject and object. Without this distinction, the
argument is not disproven, but its semantics completely break down; i.e., not
"Without this presupposition, Dawkins is false when he says X" but rather
"Without this presupposition, Dawkins has said nothing at all when he says X;
he may have said 'blippity bloo blah bleem bam' instead."

Without a strongly reasoned argument for subject-object distinction, one may
as well be proving things with the presupposition that God exists.

------
10ren
Some people can see infrared, due to their cornea being replaced by an
artificial plastic one which does not block infrared as the natural one does.
However, this isn't an entirely new colour, but just a more red red.

~~~
chronomex
I've heard that some patients with artificial lenses in their eyes can see
slightly into the UV range, as the natural lens filters it out. The drawback
to this is increased possibility of damage to the retina, so I wouldn't be
surprised if most artificial lenses were designed to filter as well.

------
shadowsun7
As a child I wondered what it would feel like to 'discover' a brand new
colour. I'm was delighted to find that I'm not alone in that impossible quest.
=)

~~~
telemachos
If you like this sort of thing, you should check out David Hume's thought
experiment about a theoretical "missing" shade of blue.

Wikipedia has a decent-looking article, as a start:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Missing_Shade_of_Blue>

------
abeppu
Apparently there is a colorblind synesthete somewhere who 'sees' colors
(triggered by numbers) in his mind that he cannot see in the real world.
<http://j.mp/9I6XwH>

~~~
ars
Don't use URL shorteners here. That link points to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%27s_room#Ramachandran_and_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%27s_room#Ramachandran_and_Hubbard)

~~~
abeppu
My bad. Initially I tried using the straight link, but HN automatically
removed the apostrophe in "Mary's", breaking the link.

------
tricky
nice thoughts. Now, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but i imagine the
brain of a red-blind person wouldn't have a fully developed pathway to "see"
red. I'd guess that after being exposed to a new stimulus, the pathway would
slowly develop, but I don't think the patient would immediately see a new
color.

Does anyone know what happens to a deaf-from-birth person gets a cochlear
implant late in life?

~~~
ars
They can't make any sense of the sound. They can mange to hear sound, but not
understand language. Those pathways close during childhood and don't open back
up.

There are no "unused tags" like he imagines. The brain is not pre-programmed.
It gets programmed based on how it's used. You give it a sense that is
distinct from other senses, and it finds a way to use it. If you don't then
that sense simply doesn't exist in that brain - there are no unused spots.

If you have ever used a tool, or played a game to the point that when you
think "do this" the tool or game just does it, without you consciously
thinking of the actions, then you have experienced this. The tool becomes a
part of you. The brain simply opens another "channel" for that. Or the sounds
a game makes. You don't think "this kind of beep means this", no, you just
"know" that the game is doing something based on the sound.

The brain is very flexible, and unlike a computer it does not have fixed
input/outputs.

Another example is someone who wore a belt that always vibrated on the side
that pointed north. After a while he had a new sense! He just "knew" where
north was. He did not feel "oh a buzz on my front left". No, he just knew
north is there. He brain integrated this new sense with the visual sense, and
he experienced that a particular street points in a particular direction.

Just like you would tag a house with a color "red", he tagged it with a
direction. What did this "northiness" look like? I don't know - I guess it
looked like north.

~~~
nooneelse
The extendability of our sensory modes does not disprove that we and other
animals come pre-programmed in various ways in both our input and output. I
went into a developmental neuro-biology course thinking much as you seem to
be, trying to tear all the "it's inborn" B.S. away from the functionally
super-flexible neurons. But the experiments and scientific observations just
don't support that project in all cases.

To name two: brain regions fully formed for spatial management/processing of
visual signals in the absence of any signals from an eye being allowed to ever
reach them, transplanting the song/chirp patterns from one species of bird to
another by splicing neurons from a developing embryo of the first to the
developing embryo of the second. How are these to be explained if not by
something that clearly qualifies as some form of "pre-programming" of the
neural substrate for sensation and behavior?

Extendability and plasticity are not necessarily defeaters to innateness. They
can coexist.

~~~
joeyo
What you say is true, but it's worth noting that, as a rule, phylogenetically
"higher" organisms do tend to have more plasticity and (perhaps as a
consequence) less ability to regenerate neurons).

Your songbird example is a good one. There are many species of birds that
develop near normal song repertoires in the absence of con-specifics (or even,
in some cases, hearing!) but trying to extrapolate that to human speech
processing, or even mammalian auditory processing, is fraught with problems.

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naner
This reminded me of the incredible feeling of epiphany from reading _The
Giver_ in elementary school.

<http://www.amazon.com/Giver-Lois-Lowry/dp/0385732554/>

