why is red red?

[scruffy]

I've been checking into this in great detail. There are all kinds of conditions where people can't see colors. Color blindness is "achromatopsia", and it could come from anything from missing cones in the retina, to missing wiring in the brain.

But there is no congenital condition in which colors are actually reversed, where red becomes green or blue becomes yellow.

This is entirely fascinating because it doesn't make any sense! From an evolutionary standpoint, seeing "some" color is better than seeing none.

If I'm mistaken and you know of such a condition, please let me know, I want to know about it!

AI says there's no such thing, and AI knows everything, so... Why is red "red", and not green or some other color?

If I stimulate the right parts of the visual cortex, I get "phosphenes", which are little spots of light, and they may or may not be colored. (Mostly they're perceived as white). There are places I can stimulate to get color, but I can't change the color. A "green" cell is a green cell forever, I can't turn it into a red cell. Not with chemicals, not with electricity.... hm...

 

[Muhammed]

 

[White 6]

I've been checking into this in great detail. There are all kinds of conditions where people can't see colors. Color blindness is "achromatopsia", and it could come from anything from missing cones in the retina, to missing wiring in the brain.

But there is no congenital condition in which colors are actually reversed, where red becomes green or blue becomes yellow.

This is entirely fascinating because it doesn't make any sense! From an evolutionary standpoint, seeing "some" color is better than seeing none.

If I'm mistaken and you know of such a condition, please let me know, I want to know about it!

AI says there's no such thing, and AI knows everything, so... Why is red "red", and not green or some other color?

If I stimulate the right parts of the visual cortex, I get "phosphenes", which are little spots of light, and they may or may not be colored. (Mostly they're perceived as white). There are places I can stimulate to get color, but I can't change the color. A "green" cell is a green cell forever, I can't turn it into a red cell. Not with chemicals, not with electricity.... hm...

The condition where reds are perceived as greens is known as deuteranopia, a type of red-green color blindness. It occurs due to a deficiency in the green cone cells in the retina, making it difficult to distinguish between red and green hues. Wikipedia National Institutes of Health

I had a Kayak/Canoe buddy with this condition, before crackhead put a hunting knife in his chest, threw him in the bathtub and burned his house down around him.
I found out he had the condition, on a canoe spring canoe trip, when I pointed out some cool, vibrant red wild flowers on a sandbar we were passing, and all he saw was green bushes. He had us paddle back up, get out so he could touch them, and said to him they were just a darker green. I asked about stop signs. He said green. I asked about stop lights, he said it was the one at the top. It keeps you out of flight school and even out of tanks, in the military.

 

[scruffy]

The condition where reds are perceived as greens is known as deuteranopia, a type of red-green color blindness. It occurs due to a deficiency in the green cone cells in the retina, making it difficult to distinguish between red and green hues. Wikipedia National Institutes of Health

I had a Kayak/Canoe buddy with this condition, before crackhead put a hunting knife in his chest, threw him in the bathtub and burned his house down around him.
I found out he had the condition, on a canoe spring canoe trip, when I pointed out some cool, vibrant red wild flowers on a sandbar we were passing, and all he saw was green bushes. He had us paddle back up, get out so he could touch them, and said to him they were just a darker green. I asked about stop signs. He said green. I asked about stop lights, he said it was the one at the top. It keeps you out of flight school and even out of tanks, in the military.

Yes that's close, thank you. It's not exactly what I'm looking for though. I'm looking for a reversal, not just red also becoming green, but green becoming red too.

Yes, this is one way you could get it, by switching the wires in the retina. But apparently that doesn't happen. (Like, "ever"). So my next thought was switching some wires in the brain, which happens a lot more frequently. But no luck with that either - there is a condition called "cerebral achromatopsia" but the result is black and white (no color at all).

I'm looking for something like a soft form of synesthesia, where colors become other colors. Apparently no such case has ever been recorded. (Other than acid trips and such).

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

The condition where reds are perceived as greens is known as deuteranopia, a type of red-green color blindness. It occurs due to a deficiency in the green cone cells in the retina, making it difficult to distinguish between red and green hues. Wikipedia National Institutes of Health

I had a Kayak/Canoe buddy with this condition, before crackhead put a hunting knife in his chest, threw him in the bathtub and burned his house down around him.
I found out he had the condition, on a canoe spring canoe trip, when I pointed out some cool, vibrant red wild flowers on a sandbar we were passing, and all he saw was green bushes. He had us paddle back up, get out so he could touch them, and said to him they were just a darker green. I asked about stop signs. He said green. I asked about stop lights, he said it was the one at the top. It keeps you out of flight school and even out of tanks, in the military.

Can't be an electrician either!

 

[White 6]

Can't be an electrician either!

That is not surprising. Pisses me off wiring in dim light, as getting harder for me also, and I don't realize, until I have to stop and go get flashlight. Harder on car, as more colors involved.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

That is not surprising. Pisses me off wiring in dim light, as getting harder for me also, and I don't realize, until I have to stop and go get flashlight. Harder on car, as more colors involved.

When I was released from active duty to go to college, they sent me to recruiting duty t wait for school to start, so I recruited a kid from my high school. he came back from MEPS saying he didn't get the electrical job he wanted because he found out he was colorblind.

Years later, when I applied to work for TSA, you can't be colorblind either! The test was very difficult, but I passed. I had already started another job when they called me to go to work, but my daughter had applied and she went a few weeks after me and worked for them for three years.

 

[scruffy]

Reading the resistor color code could be a bit of a challenge.

 

[ReinyDays]

My first answer was 'because Sir Issac Newton said it was Red, aka "#FF0000;"' ... that's always been good enough for me ...

 

[Mushroom]

It keeps you out of flight school and even out of tanks, in the military.

I had a buddy like that in high school.. I never knew until we had electronics class together, and he would have me identify resisters for him as he could not always read the color codes.

After school he joined the Army, but was frustrated he could not get into any electronics fields and ended up working as an admin clerk.

 

[scruffy]

My first answer was 'because Sir Issac Newton said it was Red, aka "#FF0000;"' ... that's always been good enough for me ...

Apparently, the perception created by brain stimulation depends on the individual neuron. You've heard of the "grandmother cell", it's like that. When you stimulate the grandma cell you get grandma.

In area V4 of the visual cortex, neurons are color sensitive. They're all intermingled though, there's no "red area", the red cells are in with the green cells and blue cells. So if you want to elicit "red", you have to find a red cell.

The assignment of perceptions to neurons is vexing. There are red-responsive cells all over the brain, but to elicit the perception you have to find "the" red cell in the right area. So the question of "which brain areas can you stimulate to get synesthesia" becomes pretty important.

The other thing is I'm trying to figure out how to determine which points along the timeline are in a chaotic state. I found this video that works with Lyapunov exponents which requires perturbations to test, but I'm looking for something more along the lines of the 0-1 test for chaos, where you can just stick an electrode in there and watch for a while.

The video is about 5 min long