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[–] 33 points 1 year ago (20 children)

Pick any two adjacent known colors. Find the wavelength midpoint between these colors. Determine if this is a known color. Repeat until you've found an unclassified color.

This isn't an imagination problem, its a math problem.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    They are not talking about the mathematical definition of color, but how the color is represented in the mental image you have in your head. Think about how a blue wavelength becomes a blue "pixel" in your head. It is possible to imagine other colors? If we could see ultraviolet, what color would it be? Is my blue the same as your blue or what my brain interprets as blue is different from what your brain does?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    how the color is represented in the mental image you have in your head.

    That's not a color, its an abstraction of a memory

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It depends on the definition of "color". For us humans, in our everyday life, the abstraction we have in our mind is more meaningful than the wavelength, which is what formally defines a color, but not how we cognitively perceive it

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yeah, pretty much all arguments about colour can be solved if you realise each side is using a different definition of the word "colour" out of the four or five common ones. It's frustrating.

    Same with holes - people always bring out topology as if it wasn't a super specialised piece of abstract math with barely any relation to anything physical.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    This doesn't really work because colors are a spectrum. You can split and merge existing colors like using a single word for blue and green (like Japanese) or distinguish between light and dark blue (like Italian) but "light blue" isn't a new color. It's part of the blue spectrum

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    but "light blue" isn't a new color. It's part of the blue spectrum

    A spectrum isn't a color, its a range of wavelengths. "Light Blue" is a narrower range of wavelengths with higher brightness value than the "Dark Blue" end.

    We define a unique "color" as a specific combination of hue, saturation, and brightness value. "Inventing" a new color is just a question of finding a combination of attributes that hasn't been produced before. Thanks to the midpoint theorum, you can do this right up to the point of Plank's constant.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    I meant spectrum as in it's not a fixed value but, fine, I can call it range instead. Doesn't change my argument.

    What do you mean "hasn't been produced before"? That comes with a huge burden of proof. People produce color gradients all the time. Pretty many colors in them.

    And if you produce a shade of blue that by happenstance is either more or less saturated than anything else, what have you found there? It isn't a new color by any meaningful definition. It won't blow anyone's mind, it's just a shade of blue similar but not identical to other blue shades. It falls into the blue range. The observable light is devided into colors, each inhabiting a range. The exact way is different depending on language and other contexts but by no meaningful definition is a color just a single value.

    Before you double down on your definition: the implication is that your definition doesn't make much sense and to demonstrate it from a different angle: how precise are you going to measure these? Let's say a common blue has the saturation of 63%, would 64% quality as a new color? What about 63.2%? Where do you draw the line? And if you have to draw lines anyway, why not choose a meaningful way as in defining "blue" as one color?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    What do you mean “hasn’t been produced before”? That comes with a huge burden of proof.

    Sure. But, again, that's not a question of creativity, just an exhaustive exercise of proving uniqueness.

    It isn’t a new color by any meaningful definition.

    Because color isn't an invented concept, it is a perceived wavelength value/range. Asking for a "new color" is like asking for a "new number".

    Under your broader definition of color, we've already found the three or seven or I guess nine if you want to count black/white, existing colors. The only way to "invent" new colors is to expand the spectrum by which humans perceive light.

    Understanding how light works and how one might accomplish this takes creativity. But if we're excluding ultraviolet or infrared because they're outside the natural visual spectrum, all we can creatively accomplish is proving we've exhausted the range of available colors.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Under your broader definition of color, we've already found the three or seven or I guess nine if you want to count black/white, existing colors

    Which is the point of the meme and I agree with it

    all we can creatively accomplish is proving we've exhausted the range of available colors.

    There is a lot we can do creatively besides creating new colors from stretch. The meme is about how the human mind is creative but this one thing it can't do.

    Besides, how is your method creative? You said yourself it's pure mathematics.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Which is the point of the meme

    The point is based on a faulty understanding of creativity. It's not a counting problem.

    Besides, how is your method creative?

    It's not. The problem isn't a problem of creativity. That's the underlying flaw in the comic's conceit. "Give me a color that's not a composite of primary colors" is an impossible task because of how we define the concept of colors, not because an individual is incapable of coming up with a color permutation that has never been seen before.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I think you're conflating creativity and imagination. The task isn't about physically creating a color but about imaging it. About a mental image of a color you never saw before. Not about actualizing that color.

    It's not a counting problem.

    You made it into a counting problem so I really don't see your point here

    "Give me a color that's not a composite of primary colors" is an impossible task

    Exactly. It's even impossible to imagine. We can imagine shapes and form and stuff we never saw and will never see but for colors, this isn't true. That's the whole point.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    The task isn’t about physically creating a color but about imaging it.

    How on earth do you tell someone they haven't imagined a new color? That's quite literally impossible to assert or deny.

    You made it into a counting problem

    It is inherently a counting problem because of how sight and color recognition functions.

    It’s even impossible to imagine.

    It is impossible to for a second party tell a first party that they have been unsuccessful in imagining something.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    It is impossible to for a second party tell a first party that they have been unsuccessful in imagining something.

    Looking at the last panel, I can say with certainty, that dude failed at the task.

    It is inherently a counting problem because of how sight and color recognition functions.

    It's, again, no question of sight and color recognition but about imagination.

    You're still looking that the comic from a very wrong angle and say "it makes no sense". Well, from my angle, it does.

    It's a thought experiment, reminds me of zen Buddhist koans. "What is the sound of one clapping hand?" or "What did your face look like before your parents were born?" don't have an answer. You can tell me you know the answer and I can't proof you wrong but that's not the point. It's about making people think. "Imagine a color you never saw" is the same. You can tell me you made it and maybe that would mean enlightenment for you but it's beside the point. It's a thought experiment obviously meant to have no answer (again, look at the last panel). The more you tell me that makes no sense and there is no answer, you're proofing my point. The comic makes it explicit that there is no answer. You impose a very different meaning onto it that doesn't lead to anything and say "the comic doesn't lead to anything".

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Looking at the last panel

    The last panel is a fantasy by the artist.

    It’s a thought experiment, reminds me of zen Buddhist koans. “What is the sound of one clapping hand?” or “What did your face look like before your parents were born?” don’t have an answer.

    You can answer these questions. People just get anger when you do, because they want the question to be mystical rather than nonsensical. When they get silly-but-correct answers, it denudes the questions of their woo-woo faux-wisdom.

    So you have to fall back on even vaguer and more imprecise language, to try and obscure the original badly worded riddle.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The last panel is a fantasy by the artist.

    This might come as a surprise, but the whole comic is. If you read the first 3 panels as being historically accurate, I see where your confusion comes from.

    Anyway, you have a very unimaginative and literal approach to all this and that's just not the layer the comic communicates on. Maybe at least acknowledge that.

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  • Anyway, you have a very unimaginative and literal approach to all this

    The one thing I really dislike about lemmy in general is that there are sooo many people like this here.

    No fun. No whimsy. All philosophical challenges are puzzles meant to be conquered by misinterpreting the point and then writing a 4-line python script. It's linux people, man, I swear.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    If you read the first 3 panels as being historically accurate

    The first panel is a challenge by the author, which is real at least in so far as it's a sentiment the author actually has.

    The next two are filler.

    The fourth is an invented response.

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