What does red look like?

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by Brutha

The brain cells that normally do the "red"-task, aren't needed in your brain and do something else instead like hearing.

Perhaps those red cells set upon the task of blogging.

[Michael Chui]

I'd hereby like to point out to everyone that there is virtually no red on Steve's entire site.

[Terumoto]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

I'd hereby like to point out to everyone that there is virtually no red on Steve's entire site.

lol, nice observation.

Blues are a lot more ______ than red, anyway.

[oakspringer]

I had a thought.

I "read" somewhere that some people have the ability to feel colors with their hands, specifically their fingertips. That with this feeling they could discern the color or 'see' with their hands.

It was probably on some psychic board or some site, I wish I could remember where. But they had developed this sense so acutely that when someone tried to touch their hands, they would respond, "What are you trying to do poke my eyes out?"

So while you may be colorblind in your eyes, maybe your hands aren't?

[BladeRunner]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Since I was born colorblind, I've never actually seen the color red. With some testing Erin tells me that what I perceive as red, she would label as gray.

That's interesting.

Where are the boundries of perception.

You see red, but it's grey to everyone else, so your default color rendering program is faulty. I can see a white wall, but via choice can see it in any color I choose. I will always accept it's white, but it could be a different color when I perceive it, if only if a few seconds of acceptance.

Are our accepted states of visualisation constant across all of humanity?

I may see love and bestowal in nature, someone else might see annoying trees and wildlife taking up space.

Visual sense is always the highest order of acceptance within humanity. Acceptance (judgment) is always based on the primary sensory organ of sight.

I wonder if being color blind is a choice for a reason.

Dex

[peacelily64]

Hey Steve ..... When I close my eyes while laying in the sun I see bright RED.... What do u see? Just wondering .... thanks Jane

[freshwala]

i got a friend that sees green as a maroonish colour, and confused sky blue with light pink before also.

what i thought before is perhaps people percieve things differently asin all of us see different things?

say i see green, but to my friend it is actually orange, but it is a unique colour to him and is known as blue to him all his life, and i see blue, which is actually red to him and also a unique colour which is similar to orange [green which is similar to blue in my eyes]
by similar i mean they can be, because they are close on the colour spectrum, what im getting at is, what if our eyes percieve things in a different order of the spectrum [sorry i know i dont make much sense] obviusly colours cant be jumbled up in all our eyes because they are comparable with other colours that we see.

peace

[bwb]

(Some of?) the genes for color receptors are on the X chromosome, which is why red/green colorblindness is much more common in men than in women: women have a backup! Another consequence of this arrangement of genes is that because of X-inactivation and a certain genetic mutation, it's possible for some women to have FOUR types of color receptors. They are tetrachromats; most of us are trichromats, and Steve is a dichromat.

Researchers believe they've found at least one tetrachromat. They mixed colored lights together to create two colors that trichromats see as identical, yet she could tell them apart.

Much as Steve has wondered what the heck red looks like, I've always wondered what ultraviolet and infrared look like (some people with eye damage are able to see near-UV or near-IR due to loss of filtering), and what the heck it would be like to be a tetrachromat. What would it be like to "see" microwaves, like Geordi LaForge from Star Trek TNG? Bright spots wherever some has a WiFi access point or a cordless phone, surely, but what color would they be?

-Brian

[Trezker]

I think it's pretty sad that someone can't enjoy the beauty of purple. The blue color that is filled with love. My favourite of all colors.

Hey, this smiley is purple. It makes it look concerned, or like it's about to barf.

[Mark Lapierre]

Originally Posted by Bruce Achterberg

But then I don’t think our eyes are mostly just vibrational interpreters, so I wouldn’t rule out seeing aura with your eyes.

We're able to examine the biological structure of our eyes in very fine detail. It doesn't seem as if there is any unaccounted for activity going on at that level. Therefore it's most likely that if auras are seen with the eyes then they are seen in exactly the same way as the visible spectrum, or auras are not seen with the eyes. It would be fairly easy to demonstrate, if someone were willing to allow a neuroscientist to measure the activity in their visual system while they observed an aura. Bit of an ethical hurdle to overcome first tho, even if you could convince someone to let you poke their brain

Originally Posted by Brutha

The brain cells that normally do the "red"-task, aren't needed in your brain and do something else instead like hearing.

Possibly, though they're more likely to be involved in the processing of other colours.

Originally Posted by oakspringer

I "read" somewhere that some people have the ability to feel colors with their hands, specifically their fingertips. That with this feeling they could discern the color or 'see' with their hands.

The term for that sort of experience is synaesthesia, which is a multi-sensory experience triggered by stimulation of just one sense. A common form is associating colour with sound or language. For example some words or sounds might be blue, others green. It makes sense that those would be the most common associations because vision and hearing are our strongest senses, taking up the largest area of our brain for processing, and thus it's more noticeable when things don't work as expected.

Originally Posted by bwb

...and what the heck it would be like to be a tetrachromat.

Apparently there are some who have extra receptors sensitive to the high end of the spectrum, so they're able to discern blues more accurately than most people. So where we might only be able to define three distinct shades when shown a specific part of the spectrum, those tetrachromats might be able to define 12.

[Frans]

There is an objective criterion to describe the color "red": the wavelength of red is in the range of 625-740 nm (frequency: 480-405 THz).

Steve, if you would have an instrument that can read the wavelength of visible light by pointing it to a target color and then translates that wavelength into the name of the matching color, it would be possible for you to "see" what kind of veggies/fruit are red.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

The term for that sort of experience is synaesthesia, which is a multi-sensory experience triggered by stimulation of just one sense.

No, that is not what Oakspringer is referring to. Synaesthesia is one thing, Oakspringer was referring more to something like this:

In 1964, while in hospital recovering from a nervous breakdown, Nina spent a lot of time sewing. According to published accounts doctors were amazed when they saw that she was able to reach into her sewing basket and choose any colour of thread she needed without looking at it. Local parapsychologists were contacted and the following year, when she had fully recovered, she agreed to take part in various experiments. Kulagina was tested and it was found that she could apparently ‘see’ colours with her fingertips, bringing to mind Rosa Kuleshova, a school teacher from the Ural Mountains, who also claimed to possess this talent.

[swansong]

Although a bit beyond me, I thought this was interesting (off of wikip. description of the thought experiement "Mary's Room.")

The thought experiment was originally proposed by Frank Jackson as follows:

“ Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? [1] ”

In other words, we are to imagine a scientist who knows everything there is to know about the science of color, but has never experienced color. The interesting question that Jackson raises is: Once she experiences color, does she learn anything new?

I am also interested in hearing what you see when you look at the sunset w/eyes closed...is the color red as we know it? Hm.

swansong

[Acting Like Godot]

That is ze difference between knowledge and experience.

It is a bit like watching porn movies while you are still a virgin. You still wonder what it is really like to have sex.

[Brutha]

Perhaps those red cells set upon the task of blogging.

Then you might have got the better deal

Possibly, though they're more likely to be involved in the processing of other colours.

Also a possibilty. I once new a girl with colorblindsness you claimed it boosted her hearing. Because people who are totally blind are significantly better at hearning than people who can see, I find that theory plausable.

It would be fairly easy to demonstrate, if someone were willing to allow a neuroscientist to measure the activity in their visual system while they observed an aura. Bit of an ethical hurdle to overcome first tho, even if you could convince someone to let you poke their brain

On the other hand the high magnetic fields inside a fMRI could also have a few interactions with the aura

In other words, we are to imagine a scientist who knows everything there is to know about the science of color, but has never experienced color. The interesting question that Jackson raises is: Once she experiences color, does she learn anything new?

They other question is whether she is able to experience the color. Cognitive conditioning to seeing the world as black and white could prevent it.

[jeff3]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I dream in color and can visualize in color too, but I don't recall dreaming in different colors than I see with my eyes.

Shouldn't it be possible to dream different colors than my eyes can see? Why would I still be colorblind in my dreams? That seems very odd to me. Maybe there's some kind of multi-dimensional aspect to colorblindness, and the defect in the eyes is just a projection of a deeper limitation.

On the other hand, I read an article that colorblind people actually perform better on some visual tasks because we can perceive detail that others don't.

The light spectrum our eyes perceive is just a particular frequency band of EM radiation. It seems that in our imagination we should be able to imagine perceiving a wider band. Has anyone been able to do this?

Have you ever been in an isolation tank? I have not, but a few friends told me that they experienced a "runaway" mind after several minutes and all sorts of bizarre kaleidoscopic images began dancing through their mind, very vivid and uncontrolled.In a similar fashion I have on a few occasions while meditating entered a state where very vivid "kodachromatic" images began flashing through my mind's eye, this was very different from dream images or the images that appear while visualizing, they seemed to glow against a dark background and had a surreal appearance to them. Since your color-blindness is because of input problems I see no reason why you could not experience colors, except, that since have never seen them you have no frame of reference,but, like in the case of archetypal dreams where people dream things they have never seen it should be possible to dream in color if the dreams come from a source other than your own mind.

This is a puzzle I'll have to read up on.

[RTF671]

Ever try losing the constraints of your body? Try an astral projection and sampling colors. Lay out lots of fruit and see if your perception is any different. I have heard of blind people seeing while out of body, I see no reason while you would be colorblind during an OBE.

[Joely]

I'd describe it with a sound - I'm the opposite to you. I have synaesthesia and I hear in colour, see in sound. Life is like a perpetual acid trip, only much more fun.

Every aspect of the way we perceive the world is defined by the make-up of the brain, and I would guess that the colour-blindness exists in your eyes, not your visual cortex, which can quite happily define different colours when you imagine them. When channeled through the external sensory receptors (your eyes), you can't see red. That's what I'd guess was going on.

[Zydrunas]

Check this out if you haven't yet https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5001

Maybe it will help you see 'more colors' ?

[Jonathan Mead]

Wow, firefox truly is the most advanced browser on the web. =)