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My whole world view just shifted. WTF?

Skeptic Bob

Skeptic Bob

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Ok, I have red green color blindness. I have known this for as long as I can remember. I see colors, just not as many shades as people with normal color vision.

What I didn't realize was just how much reinterpretation of the world my brain was doing to help me navigate.

I just found out that the walking man on the crosswalk sign is WHITE. I always thought he was green. I SEE him as green. Red green color blindness in and of itself wouldn't cause me to see white as green. Apparently growing up I was taught red means stop and green means go so I assumed that applied to the crosswalk sign as well. So my brain interpreted the white light of the walking man as green.

The brain is a strange and wonderful thing.
 
Color seems to be tied with language... I've seen a documentary about African tribes not having words for certain primary colors, but have words for shades of brown and red..... and they "see" different colors and have a harder time seeing the difference between colors that are common in our language... while we have a harder time seeing the difference in there's
 
Did you uh, smoke something? :2razz:
 
About 4 years ago, my mother had cataract surgery, which she should have a few years before she did it, but was hesitant about getting any kind of medical procedure.

When she got her first eye done (they do it one at a time), her comment to me was 'You know my bathrobe, it's purple not marroon', and 'the numbers on the microwave are white, not green'.
 
PoS said:
Did you uh, smoke something? :2razz:
Click to expand...

Of course, but not at the time I posted that. :)

I found out by watching an episode of the second season of Detour. In it the family has moved to NYC and the father tells his kids you can't cross the street until the "white man" says it is ok. A black family then comes by and crosses the street while it is still red. The boy yells, "Hey, the white man didn't tell you you could cross. You gotta do what the white man says!"

Funny scene. But it made me ask my wife what color the signs are where we live and she told me it is white in every country we ever lived.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
Ok, I have red green color blindness. I have known this for as long as I can remember. I see colors, just not as many shades as people with normal color vision.

What I didn't realize was just how much reinterpretation of the world my brain was doing to help me navigate.

I just found out that the walking man on the crosswalk sign is WHITE. I always thought he was green. I SEE him as green. Red green color blindness in and of itself wouldn't cause me to see white as green. Apparently growing up I was taught red means stop and green means go so I assumed that applied to the crosswalk sign as well. So my brain interpreted the white light of the walking man as green.

The brain is a strange and wonderful thing.
Click to expand...
IIRC, some lights are red/green and some are white, depends on the locality.

Anyway, the couch in my basement. We have this long-standing (good-natured) dispute in my family. I say it's green. My wife says it's brown. My son says it's gray. :shrug:
 
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