VSauce

[Fusty]

Okay. Very offtopic but still geeky (what Sporclers like). I have discovered this video from my favourite youtuber vsauce and it changed the way I think. He made the point that each colour could be different for each person. My cones could see an entirely different colour to what your cones could see, but we'd agree that the colour is red or blue. Watch it.

 

Also, post good videos by great youtubers that make amazing points

[Daniel Hodgson]

Yeah I've seen some deep thinking stuff before, for example, (on the topic of colors) Can you describe what, a certain color looks like? Or what water tastes like? These are fun.

On Sep 9, 2013 5:43 PM, "Fusty" <john_s...@aol.com> wrote:

Okay. Very offtopic but still geeky (what Sporclers like). I have discovered this video from my favourite youtuber vsauce and it changed the way I think. He made the point that each colour could be different for each person. My cones could see an entirely different colour to what your cones could see, but we'd agree that the colour is red or blue. Watch it.

 

Also, post good videos by great youtubers that make amazing points

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sporcle University" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sporcle-univers...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sporcle-u...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sporcle-university/a50381f7-a24c-4aee-acef-7b2c0ccd7847%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Fusty]

Water tastes refreshing. Or like fish if you want tap water in the North of England. 

[SproutCM]

As a person who has written a book on chemistry and art with an entire chapter on how color works and is perceived, this is just kind of wrong.  If i shine red light on your eye, the same molecules in the same sensors receive the same signal of what wavelengths of light you're being exposed to, and that same signal gets sent to the brain in everyone, unless you have color blindness, which means at least one of the types of sensors in your eye are genetically broken.

[Fusty]

Oh. You have to agree vsauce is a great youtuber though?

[Bazmerelda]

Water tastes refreshing. Or like fish if you want tap water in the North of England. 

That might be to do with the fact that Northern England gets fresh water from Kielder Reservoir, whereas most Southern water is recycled waste water. :p

As far as perceiving colours differently goes, I think that thought crosses everyone's mind at some stage when they are growing up. My niece asked me something similar not too long ago. Ultimately, we have all evolved in such a way that the systems and structures of our bodies are almost identical. The genetic differences between each human are minuscule and our brains process thoughts and sensory information in the same ways.

[razorz]

I have no idea how I remember this thread, and I feel a little like the board police for doing this, but nevertheless someone posted about this already:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/sporcle-university/vsauce/sporcle-university/uXU8rQkb_Bo/EwaPuKHckNAJ

[Amazingjosh Sporcle]

That's so funny! I read BZ's post from last year earlier this morning.

But you're right. Vsauce does bring up some interesting (but maybe wrong) points.

[Funnyfavorer101]

Sprout: I'm not saying you're wrong, but I disagree that this kind of theory is necessarily false. Science discovers new things all the time, some things that are completely new, and others just more pieces in the puzzle of an old topic.

Consider this: what if each of us does see different colors differently, but the evidence of this just can't be detected by modern technology? I mean, we know that everyone's brain is a little different. We all think differently, so why isn't it possible that we all see differently, as well, but without actually getting into another's thoughts, how could we know that we all see the same? (I'd really like to know if anyone has a good answer.)

[Fusty]

On Monday, 9 September 2013 23:08:26 UTC+1, SproutCM wrote:

As a person who has written a book on chemistry and art with an entire chapter on how color works and is perceived, this is just kind of wrong.  If i shine red light on your eye, the same molecules in the same sensors receive the same signal of what wavelengths of light you're being exposed to, and that same signal gets sent to the brain in everyone, unless you have color blindness, which means at least one of the types of sensors in your eye are genetically broken.

 

Sorry if this is the same as what funnyfavorer wrote, physics will never be my strong point. What if we all perceive wavelengths of light in different ways, for example, while scientists think they shine the light onto your eye they see to be red, the other person sees this as their type of red. There is no way of definitively knowing what a person sees without being that person. I would love to see what other people see, what colours they see differently to us and the same with tastes and smells, maybe even what something feels like.

[Fusty]

READ : http://www.plantandfood.co.nz/page/news/media-release/story/genetics-of-smell/.  It is about smell but I think the things can be transferred to sight too and definitely taste (since the two are similar). It mentions ' This might mean that when people sit down to eat a meal, they each experience it in their own personalised way '.

 

[iglew]

I am less interested in the theoretical idea that different individuals might PERceive colors differently (where I'm inclined to agree with Sprout that we really don't), and more interested in the real phenomenon that different cultures CONceive colors differently.

Even if we perceive each specific hue exactly the same, our brain must decide how to group the hues into conceptual color categories and where to draw the line between them. If you have little experience with foreign cultures you might think color groupings are universal, but they really aren't; they are culture-specific, and especially tied to language. For example, navy and turquoise are no less distinct than yellow and orange, but we think of yellow and orange as two separate colors while navy and turquoise are two shades of a single color called "blue".  Why?  If we think of light blue as a lighter shade of blue, why don't we think of pink as "light red"?

Other languages divide up colors differently. Romance languages have a much broader sense of "red", so that many hues we would think of as orange, gold, or brown to their speakers are variants of "red".  English likes to divide colors by hue while grouping them by saturation or brightness; Slavic languages are more inclined to separate by brightness. Chinese sees most of our blues and greens as a single color group. Japanese has separate groups for "green" and "blue", but a lot of hues we perceive as in the green category they put in the blue category.

Color words in ancient Greek are bafflingly foreign to the modern reader.  In Homer, the sky is the color of bronze and the sea is the color of wine. And it's not just Homer; other classical Greek authors use similarly strange color descriptions. 18th century scholars who puzzled over the apparent color-blindness of the ancient Greeks put forth several theories, one of which was that they really did perceive color differently in those days. That speculation is what gave rise to this idea which vsauce is discussing now.

[Daniel Hodgson]

To add on to what iglew said a little bit, the show Brain Games on Nat. Geo. did a little study that females can see different shades of colors better than males. What a male might say is red, a female might classify as rose.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sporcle University" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sporcle-univers...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sporcle-u...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sporcle-university/a27c91ca-dcc6-44c3-8402-284958355e68%40googlegroups.com.

[Funnyfavorer101]

Fusty, I have read a lot about different tastes, and the general consensus (there were a few sources who said different) would seem to be that yes, it is almost certain that different people taste different things. It is known for a fact that different people have different amounts of taste buds, and they are generally a little different on everyone. Therefore, it isn't hard to imagine that this could have a major effect on peoples' favorite/least favorite foods.

[Samantha Wiegand]

I know, I read it. I'm just saying that there are many other articles backed up by various other studies, and they would seem to agree.

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Fusty <john_s...@aol.com> wrote:

READ : http://www.plantandfood.co.nz/page/news/media-release/story/genetics-of-smell/.  It is about smell but I think the things can be transferred to sight too and definitely taste (since the two are similar). It mentions ' This might mean that when people sit down to eat a meal, they each experience it in their own personalised way '.

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Sporcle University" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/sporcle-university/qmF6BuErvis/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to sporcle-univers...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to sporcle-u...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sporcle-university/1f23d151-1a9d-45df-a0be-dbefcd140100%40googlegroups.com.

[goseaward]

As far as the different colors go, xkcd did a survey on this a while ago.  Short version: women are slightly more likely to use modifiers like "light" or "neon", but otherwise, on average, men and women named the colors pretty much the same.

[Daniel Hodgson]

Just saw this link: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

Just a summary, rather than the three color receptive cones that humans have (Red, green, and blue), they have SIXTEEN.  In other words, they can see a lot more colors than we can.

On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 12:26 AM, goseaward <gose...@gmail.com> wrote:

As far as the different colors go, xkcd did a survey on this a while ago.  Short version: women are slightly more likely to use modifiers like "light" or "neon", but otherwise, on average, men and women named the colors pretty much the same.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sporcle University" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sporcle-univers...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sporcle-u...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sporcle-university/5598216c-b106-4e73-94b1-a1f9bc917fb6%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

--

teddy109768

[Samantha Wiegand]

I suppose this is a bit off-topic, but is it just me, or is The Oatmeal suddenly really popular? I found it maybe a month ago on Stumbleupon, I had never heard of it before, and now it seems to be mentioned at least a couple of times a week. Was I missing something before?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Sporcle University" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/sporcle-university/qmF6BuErvis/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to sporcle-univers...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to sporcle-u...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sporcle-university/CAK%2BKXHgrtJ0BcwYW%2B3tnevT6bMDzjK3EXMtDKCnim9U3RHK06w%40mail.gmail.com.

[iglew]

I've known about Oatmeal for years.  My girlfriend is a regular reader.

I don't think it has suddenly blossomed. Probably just a coincidence that you happened to notice it now.

[vikZ]

Yeah I've known about the Oatmeal for years too. It's always been quite popular. Two books Matthew Inman (the man behind the Oatmeal) authored are New York Times Best Sellers.

He was in the news a lot over the whole fiasco about him vs FunnyJunk which turned into him vs FunnyJunk's lawyer and the lawyer just kept making it worse. On top he saved Nikola Tesla's former laboratory. But most importantly, one of his comics was the idea/inspiration for this quiz.