I’m colorblind. I have color cones in my eyes, but the red ones are mutated towards higher wavelengths (i.e. green). This makes red-green-brown, blue-purple and grey-pink hard to distinguish.
As a result, I pay quite a lot of attention to colors and shades in everyday life. I don’t trust my eyes and often test my perceptions against other people’s (“Hey, is that shirt green or yellow?”). To the point that I actually discern more shades than most people. I’m sometimes wrong about their names, but I see shades other people don’t notice, e.g.
me: “This grey has more red than green in it.”
someone else: “What are you talking about, it’s just grey.”
On these occasions, the only one who agrees with me on subtle hue differences is actually my sister, who is not colorblind, but has been painting as a hobby for 20-ish years, and is also accustomed to pay attention to hues.
Also the injunction not to trust your senses / brain has always seemed obvious to me. So was the idea of testing your beliefs against the real world / other people’s belief.
Bottom line, you can apparently train your perception by not trusting them. And color blindness taught me distrust in my wetware.
P.S. : I’ve started playing an instrument when I was 7 and was also very surprised to learn several years later that people can’t pick apart instruments when listening to a piece of music.
I’m colorblind. I have color cones in my eyes, but the red ones are mutated towards higher wavelengths (i.e. green). This makes red-green-brown, blue-purple and grey-pink hard to distinguish.
As a result, I pay quite a lot of attention to colors and shades in everyday life. I don’t trust my eyes and often test my perceptions against other people’s (“Hey, is that shirt green or yellow?”). To the point that I actually discern more shades than most people. I’m sometimes wrong about their names, but I see shades other people don’t notice, e.g. me: “This grey has more red than green in it.” someone else: “What are you talking about, it’s just grey.”
On these occasions, the only one who agrees with me on subtle hue differences is actually my sister, who is not colorblind, but has been painting as a hobby for 20-ish years, and is also accustomed to pay attention to hues.
Also the injunction not to trust your senses / brain has always seemed obvious to me. So was the idea of testing your beliefs against the real world / other people’s belief.
Bottom line, you can apparently train your perception by not trusting them. And color blindness taught me distrust in my wetware.
P.S. : I’ve started playing an instrument when I was 7 and was also very surprised to learn several years later that people can’t pick apart instruments when listening to a piece of music.