2 pointsby thunderbong5 hours ago1 comment
  • _wire_4 hours ago
    If you've studied color perception even at the most superficial, the idea of a count of seeable colors is ludicrous. Colors aren't countable in any detailed sense. A common misunderstanding by those who are aware that colors aren't countable is that reproduction systems inappropriately claim resolution of more "colors" than can be seen, but this is another form of the fallacy: color difference artifacts are a common hazard in reproduction systems that can express large numbers of discrete stimuli, so there's something like a quantitative notion of different colors, but proven reproduction techniques, such as dither, can transcend such limits.

    A saner way to consider exceptional color sensitivity is via a N-primary visual response, where N=3 in the CIE's titular tri-stimulus model, which guides all modern reproduction systems, but where N can be regarded as 4 in certain humans, and increases incrementally for "vision" of other species.

    The key to understanding color sensitivity is that it's a qualia of an organism, not a direct physical trait of the world, just as the sense of hearing or touch is not a direct physical trait of the world.