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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Jun 14, 2018 - 06:27pm PT
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There is nothing inherent in either light waves or our brain that "causes" a specific outcome in a determined way, meaning that ~670–610 THz can only be blue and nothing else.
Brains evolved to "see" colors to help interpret what those colors mean. Blood is red, if you see blood things are going down! Alert! That's why stop signs are red.
Orange can be healthy food. Yellow (sun) helps with alertness and energy. Green is freshness. Blue is water and sky, clean air and water.
What I wonder is the blue I see the same as the blue someone else sees? I would guess so.
I've read this and it seems like it could be true: women see colors better than men. Possibly because woman would pick out the food in hunter/gatherer societies, they needed to be able to see subtle difference to determine freshness/poison. Men have a better sense of direction. They needed to go far afield on hunts and find their way back to the woman and children.
It's not hard to see that human brains evolved from lower animals. All the great apes have self awareness and Koko the sign talking Ape is pretty amazing how smart she is. Is that "mind" based on a more universal consciousness? Maybe, but to me evidence points to evolution leading us to where we are.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Jun 14, 2018 - 07:08pm PT
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[Click to View YouTube Video]
Mind Games
John Lennon
We're playing those mind games together
Pushing the barriers planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla
Chanting the Mantra peace on earth
We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil
Doing the mind guerrilla
Some call it magic the search for the grail
Love is the answer and you know that for sure
Love is a flower
You got to let it, you gotta let it grow
So keep on playing those mind games together
Faith in the future out of the now
You just can't beat on those mind guerrillas
Absolute elsewhere in the stones of your mind
Yeah we're playing those mind games forever
Projecting our images in space and in time
Yes is the answer and you know that for sure
Yes is surrender
You got to let it, you gotta let it go
So keep on playing those mind games together
Doing the ritual dance in the sun
Millions of mind guerrillas
Putting their soul power to the karmic wheel
Keep on playing those mind games forever
Raising the spirit of peace and love
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 14, 2018 - 07:19pm PT
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Ah The Matrix. Now we are getting somewhere. Like how the squiddies have more personality than the humans.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 14, 2018 - 08:05pm PT
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Proves they are clueless when they start posting st00pid YouTube videos ...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 14, 2018 - 10:07pm PT
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DMT: Things, of which reality is made.
There’s where you left the tracks. Only in a conventional sense. It’s what you believe.
If you could get beyond seeing things as “things,” then you can see the conventionality of it.
After that, you’re on your own.
And that’s a good thing.
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Jim Clipper
climber
from: forests to tree farms
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Jun 14, 2018 - 11:37pm PT
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Malleable, within limits.
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Jun 15, 2018 - 04:21am PT
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What I wonder is the blue I see the same as the blue someone else sees? I would guess so.
Consider that “seeing blue” is a learned skill taught by society to you. If so, then it is the same.
There are societies that actually have different color palettes. The split the continuum differently, and so have more words (not just different ones) for the colors.
And until you came name it, it doesn’t exist (for us).
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 15, 2018 - 06:47am PT
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Consider that “seeing blue” is a learned skill taught by society to you. If so, then it is the same.
I still haven't learned, if the climbing gym is any indication.
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Jun 15, 2018 - 07:18am PT
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We already live in The Matrix
Roberson and her colleagues first wanted to test two opposed hypotheses of color categorization--universalist (the idea that we categorize and remember colors the same way around the world, in keeping with the structure of our visual system) versus relativist (the idea that color perception depends upon culture and language)...
Not only has no evidence emerged to link the 11 basic English colors to the visual system, but the English-Himba data support the theory that color terms are learned relative to language and culture.
First, for children who didn't know color terms at the start of the study, the pattern of memory errors in both languages was very similar. Crucially, their mistakes were based on perceptual distances between colors rather than a given set of predetermined categories, arguing against an innate origin for the 11 basic color terms of English.
Second, the children in both cultures didn't acquire color terms in any particular, predictable order--such as the universalist idea that the primary colors of red, blue, green and yellow are learned first.
Third, the authors say that as both Himba and English children started learning their cultures' color terms, the link between color memory and color language increased. Their rapid perceptual divergence once they acquired color terms strongly suggests that cognitive color categories are learned rather than innate, according to the authors.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 15, 2018 - 08:44am PT
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color terms are learned relative to language and culture.
How else would you learn words?
cognitive color categories are learned rather than innate
English words and those of other languages are learned rather than innate.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 15, 2018 - 09:01am PT
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Dingus, there's no philosophical hand-wringing going on from this end. Just a simple question, so simple that it is hard for many to understand it. The misunderstanding concerns first assumptions about our understanding of reality, of what is happening.
You said: the word 'blue' is nomenclature. I could also label light waves of a certain frequency, funneled to my brain by a highly tuned optical nerve system, 'bhlarz.' It's just a symbol to represent the image we see in our minds.
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Is the image you see in your mind "nomenclature," or is the word "blue" just a symbol for the image you see in your mind? The image you see in your mind is that which we assign the word "blue." That hardly seems debatable.
Now back to the simple question: what is the difference between the blue you see in the sky, for example, as a quality "out there," and the blue "image we see in our minds?"
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 15, 2018 - 09:25am PT
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there is a whole industry devoted to various aspects of the rather broad term "associative memory"
in computers I've built in the past we used an implementation of the idea to great effect
however, if you insist on a linear concept of memory, then perhaps the mystery and wonder of what we dredge up when someone asks "what is blue?" might be astonishing and indicative of some deeper meaning.
but then again, maybe it's just good ol' associative memory
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 15, 2018 - 11:44am PT
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The palette or subtractive theory of color is based on the non mixable primaries red, yellow and blue and their secondary, opposite complements green, violet and orange. If you stare at an orange blot on a white surface and look away to a plain white paper you will see an after image of a blue blot. Since the structure of the human eye and human brain do not vary from culture to culture it seems hard to imagine that the perception of color and how it acts would change as well.
That there is no blue except as a wavelength and that our experience of the color blue is a construct of the forms of sensibility is a given. It's much like the notion of sound as simply a manifestation/measurement of vibrations in a medium.
But it seems unlikely that the evolutionary process would result in the success of inaccuracies that might jeopardize our own success as a species. Sensory perception is really a measuring device(s) for our environment and that environment is dangerous and so those measurements must have some degree of accuracy.
And those measurements are experienced by something and that something is a real curiosity especially when you realize that that something understands the secondary nature of its own sensory experience. We must be something special.
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Jun 15, 2018 - 12:29pm PT
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Since the structure of the human eye and human brain do not vary from culture to culture it seems hard to imagine that the perception of color and how it acts would change as well. The flow of vision info between in the brain is nowhere close to one way. There's a feedback loop from the higher brain downward to the lower vision region that is every bit as busy as the flow upward, or more so when you are doing certain things (like reading). This kind of blew my mind when I first learned of it.
So (JMO YMMV) the brain is running the simulation of the universe, and it predicts what is coming next based on the sim, and it sends those predictions down to where the senses first hit the noggin. It is looking for specific things, and those specific things can be driven by cultural stuff.
The eyeball might respond to a wavelength of light, but what is "seen" by our mind is very much a function of what the brain expects too.
Sensory perception is really a measuring device(s) for our environment and that environment is dangerous and so those measurements must have some degree of accuracy. The measurements need utility more than accuracy. If the difference between blue and almost-blue doesn't matter (and that could be a highly cultural thing), why would the brain bother to waste energy on discriminating?
Sensory perception could be considered to be the link between the simulation (key part of our mind) and the environment, and if the simulation doesn't care, the measurement isn't made. We don't "see" it.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 15, 2018 - 12:59pm PT
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The "blue" experiment, if understood, uproots our general, pre-verbal concepts of what we consider to be real, and washes out our "explanations" once we get hold of what is actually going on.
I'm not sure what angle Ed is working, but I was not asking for whatever associations we might attach to "blue." But back to Dingus:
I said: what is the difference between the blue you see in the sky, for example, as a quality "out there," and the blue "image we see in our minds?"
Dingus replied: "Short answer: I don't know. :)"
But they are linked by finely tuned organic machinery that is able to distinguish subtle differences in specific frequencies of a slice of the electromagnetic spectrum."
First, I don't look at this as something to grind on, rather something to have fun with. An adventure. So I investigate with that in mind or it's hardly worth the while. But what this leads to is mind boggling once you realize it's not an argument, and what is involved.
Per Dingus' assertion that he doesn't know the difference between the "Blue" on a Honda Civic, say, and the image of blue in his mind (to use his own words). Lets look at that.
If we were to do a purely objective breakdown of the "blue" on the Honda, would there be any inherent property therein that would suggest or in any way point toward our phenomenal experience of the color blue?
Is there anything in the paint on the Honda that causely determines that a conscious person will experience the 606–668 THz light waves coming off the Honda as "blue" and only blue?
Is there anything in the "finely tuned organic machinery" of our brains that causally determines that said organic machinery will translate light at 606–668 THz into the phenomenal experience of blue and only blue, as opposed to green or pink or orange?
Note this is not an epistemic question about "knowing," and the relationship perception has to labeling and recall of match fits between other blues and our use of the word to label same. Labels DO effect our perceptions, even greatly influence them to some extent, but that's not the issue here.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 15, 2018 - 01:19pm PT
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The measurements need utility more than accuracy. If the difference between blue and almost-blue doesn't matter (and that could be a highly cultural thing), why would the brain bother to waste energy on discriminating?
Utility depends on accuracy. The complementary nature of color is a reality in any culture and the uniform nature of colors use culturally is evidence for a continuity of perception. In the visual arts all cultures engage contrasts of saturation, contrasts of hue and complementary contrasts as devices for the creation of aesthetic interest. Doesn't matter where on earth you might be or even what time period you might observe.
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