eli5: Why is it impossible to imagine new colors?
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Kind of off topic but three things semi related I want to share:
1. There’s a guy, I can’t recall if he’s a linguist or scientist or some sort, but he basically proposed the idea that it may be possible to describe color to blind people using our current lexicon but maybe we just haven’t found the right combination of words. I always thought that was kind of interesting.
2. There is such a thing as impossible colors. It has to do with, as you’d imagine, colors that just can’t exist to our eyes because of the way our rods and cones work in our eyes and the light frequencies of color. Something like that anyway
3. There’s a thought experiment called the black and white room or something similar that goes like this: a person is born in a room that is completely black and white. They live in that room, are served their meals through a slot by people covered in black and all their food is dyed black. The only stimulation they have is books about color and color theory, obviously also all in black and white. They read these books all day everyday. They eventually become the world’s foremost expert on color theory and how colors work, despite never having seen one. Who knows more about color, this person or someone who knows nothing about color theory and the way colors work but has seen colors? I may have fucked up parts of that but you get the idea.
One more thing kind of relevant: this is from that movie “what the bleep do we know?” And is probably bullshit but the idea is similar. So in the movie, not sure how they’d know this but regardless, a guy tells the story of when the first ships brought people to America or whatever it was at the time. He says that the native Americans could not see the veseles in the distance, although they could see movement in the water, because the idea of a vessel like the ships that were approaching were so foreign to them that they couldn’t even perceive them. But I guess the idea is kind of the same in that your brain can’t conjure up something it has no frame of reference for. There’s a lot of pseudo science stuff in the movie but I found it entertaining. It’s a lot about the multiple worlds theory of quantum physics and things of that nature and how basically you create your own reality and if you truly believed you were capable of certain things you could do them. Anyway sorry for the long post and the nonsense but there you go
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