Claimed evidence for the ability to see colors not in the color space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color

by xhrpost • 4 years ago

5 2 4 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

No physical object can have an imaginary color.

It's weird that this extremely logical conclusion is built up by borrowing two very crucial cultural words, fictitious and imaginary, as labels for a definition. I wish they would pick other labels than those.

Why? Because if someone who doesn't know the difference says "are there imaginary colors?" You end up having to answer "yes" and be wrong, or "no" and be wrong.

Yes: There are imaginary colors, and there's an example of how that can be framed, at the bottom of the wikipedia article. But actually that's wrong, because we borrowed the word "imaginary" as a label for a particular string of subjective (self-contained) logic.

No: There are no imaginary colors, because what _imaginary color_ is taken to mean by important people is X, and so no there are none of those things, by that definition. But actually that's wrong, because you can also use imaginary in the general sense all you want, and stake huge claims around it, and you'd be right to do so because maybe you haven't read this wikipedia article, or you have and don't care because you're building on centuries of culture and you're being creative.

And it can easy extend to essentially playing with "developmental fire", i.e. the pressure to decide between logic, definition, and science on the one hand, or fiction, creativity, and imagining new concepts on the other. If one of those sides "wins", we all lose. It's a false dichotomy.

If there's any pressure to swing to either side of that dichotomy _as if_ the other side must be discarded, then either science and logic lose, or creativity and imagination lose.

So this cognitive downside risk due to the need to frame things as if this solves some actual debate affecting the imagination or fictional things (maybe to make a splash, try to tear a hole in reality, or start some new debate out of boredom) is silly and unnecessary, and I'm here to demand that new words be used. :-)

(Also I enjoyed staring at the chart and doing the imaginary color exercise but why are the edges of the newly-perceived colors fuzzy when the shapes are otherwise sharp?)

yababa_y• 4 years ago

(Also I enjoyed staring at the chart and doing the imaginary color exercise but why are the edges of the newly-perceived colors fuzzy when the shapes are otherwise sharp?)

I'm going to blame the effect of saccades and other motions. If you fixed your head in a rig and used one of those eye tracking apparatus they discuss in the article, presumably the features would be much sharper.

Claimed evidence for the ability to see colors not in the color space

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