Are Colors Real?

The sky is blue, but according to whom? Could the rules of our language affect the way we perceive color?
Hosted by: Anthony Brown
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[@SeaSpartan118]

I see skies of green, brown roses too. Or see them blue, like me and you. And I think to myself *What a colorful world*

[@Jessafur]

I have a blue house with a blue window Blue is the colour of all that I wear

[@fraserhenderson7839]

As a child,in the early 1960s, I had a large, clear marble (a jumbo crystal, the best of my hundreds of marbles). It was my prized possession. It was a dark shade of indigo, edging into violet and it appeared black in low light. I would stare at it, through it, marveling that this colour could exist. I let the sun shine through it to a sheet of white paper for a gorgeous effect, transmitting shades of colour and also casting a shadow. It made me think of velvet. I lost track of the marble but the colour remains in my minds eye. I don't believe I have ever seen that particular shade again, presented as it was in a transparent, spherical medium and depending on the passage of sunlight to display in all its splendor. I wonder now if other people might not have seen the same thing I did. My family was frustratingly unimpressed with the marble and I couldn't understand why.

[@evilsharkey8954]

Fraser Henderson, there are some people who can perceive more colors than the average person because of another color sensing cone in the eyes. Many who are actually aware of it are artists. Because the condition requires two X chromosomes, it’s extremely rare in men, if it exists at all.

[@AndreyBelenkiy]

What an elegant passage. You must write books.

[@fraserhenderson7839]

@@AndreyBelenkiy Thank you, that's very kind. I am an electrician, specializing in electrical system repair and maintenance of large residential buildings. I enjoy language and words. Writing is a very different media from speech, worthy of effort. I don't usually post such voluminous entries.

[@camerontaylor7471]

Evil Sharkey I’m a self taught artist, idk if I have an extra cone, but I can pick up on undertones and have a Keene eye to detail, shadow, light, perception, etc.. how the eye absorbs light and the brain interpretation of the light into an image, is a whole other universe! But I do know I’m super aware of the impact of color and light and shadows that surround me...

[@AndreyBelenkiy]

@@fraserhenderson7839 Writing is indeed powerful, as is speech. The more exquisite the language, the more powerful its message.

[@eternal8song]

It's all a pigment of your imagination

[@MontgomeryWenis]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@slappy8941]

The police have been notified.

[@OakKnobFarm]

Bravo. I see what you did there :) Pun of the week.

[@ralphhooker6019]

Mine and mine alone.

[@ambergetsbutterflies]

Is this the best KZbin comment of all time?

[@raggedyanarchist]

Interesting. I remember a few years back I went down the Susan "Genie" Wiley rabbit hole... Genie being a 13 year old girl discovered in the late '60s who had spent her childhood in near total isolation and had not acquired a first language. Anyway, the poor kid became a big science project with one of the main focuses being whether or not there was an age by which a first language must be learned or if an older child still had the neurological flexibility to pick one up. In the end, Genie learned many words, but nothing that could really be considered language. Anyway, one of the stories one of her handlers liked to tell was of taking her into a craft store that had many spools of embroidery floss. The child wanted to know the word for absolutely EVERY colour and apparently became frustrated when the handler began resorting to "dark blue" "very dark blue" and "very VERY dark blue". Anyway, I never gave that story much thought until now, but yeah... it almost seems like Genie, a person without language, was not categorizing the colours the same way her handler was. Interesting.

[@tompatterson1548]

Navy, ultramarine, sapphire.

[@evilsharkey8954]

I live in the Midwest. If the sky is grue, there’s probably a tornado coming!

[@AtarahDerek]

Actually, it means the sun is obscured by a very tall, deep cumulonimbus cloud capable of producing large hail, torrential rain and strong winds that can include tornadoes. At any rate, take shelter.

[@slappy8941]

I've seen it turn custard yellow before a storm.

[@evilsharkey8954]

AtarahDerek, specifically, it’s a powerful storm in the late afternoon, when sunlight has a more yellow hue. Such conditions are a high risk for tornadoes and other damaging weather.

[@Kobolds_in_a_trenchcoat]

@@slappy8941 I always heard green myself but everytime any tornadoes or storms happened custard yellow seems way more fitting than green. I don't think I've ever seen a sky I would call green, blue, yellow, pinkish red (at sunset), white, but never green.

[@___LC___]

Green or yellow...camera time.

[@ketsuekikumori9145]

I was ok with having a black and white view on the matter, but now you had to make it all shades of grey.

[@ThrottleKitty]

I started calling "Blue" two colors "azure" and "indigo" for reasons related to art, now I can't hardly look at it as one color. They both have a full range of dark / light colors.

[@ThrottleKitty]

@@MrCurlz Or are blue and green two types of grue? From an artistic perspective, the linguistic distinction is very useful. I can't imagine discussing colors theory using "grue"

[@hochibamabinladenhusainefe8191]

@@ThrottleKitty pinkle is pink and purple mixed that's my opion.

[@Aeririn]

@@hochibamabinladenhusainefe8191 isn't pink nothing more than light red ? So it'd be redurple instead

[@hochibamabinladenhusainefe8191]

@@Aeririn yeah but doesn't flow as well.

[@im_bad_at_names]

@@Aeririn but purple is just a mix of red and blue, so really it'd just be redblue

[@GaryDunion]

Scots Gaelic has three words for green: one of them can also mean grey (glas), one can also mean blue (gorm), and the third means something like 'bright green' (uaine).

[@lampekartoffel]

This reminds me of the many words for "snow" in Finish. They have specific words for all the different types of snow (like newly fallen soft snow, powdery soft snow, sappy soft snow and all that jazz) while in Danish we have a word for the powdery snow that flies everywhere in the wind, the shappy slightly melted snow and then just... Snow for all the rest. It's kinda wild how ones perspective of things are defined by the world we grew up in!

[@bordenfleetwood5773]

Wait. 'Glas' can mean grey? And 'gorm' can mean green? *sigh* I really like the Gaelic tongues, but I'm finding some of the nuances to be nearly impossible to learn without true immersion.

[@tompatterson1548]

is uaine lime?

[@regular-joe]

I love that this host seriously sounds like he's choosing his words carefully, while discussing the importance of choice of words!

[@chalicebailey3287]

Not positive, but I'm pretty sure the host has a speech impediment, most likely a lisp if I had to guess. IF I'm correct, it's impressive that he's so well spoken and can speak so quickly. Hosting a You Tube show is a brave goal for someone who has challenges like that to overcome. If I'm right, I admire him.

[@_ericr]

Please, anyone who is a Patreon, I beg you, ask this question: Some people have an inner monologue and some people don't? How these different types of psych think, interpret thought and elaborate language?

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

(*patron)

[@DabbinLlama]

Does this come from cgp grey?

[@klutterkicker]

That's a myth. It likely traces back to a study that asked a bunch of college kids to go around recording moments of "pristine inner experience" and found that not everyone recorded their inner speech. In that study nearly 80% of all experiences recorded were something like images or feelings, and the people who recorded no speech weren't followed up with, so for all we know they just interpreted the directions differently.

[@anonym3967]

@@klutterkicker Its not a myth, me and my brother differ on it

[@gubjorggisladottir3525]

How can anybody not have an inner monologue? Some use sound, others sight and still others movement. some use all 3 and blend them together.

[@equesdeventusoccasus]

As a young man, I wondered if any two people saw the same hue when they looked at the sky, or anything else. I mean even if the two agree on the name of the color of the sky, would they recognize it if they saw it through the other's eyes.

[@TravisGilbert]

I made a video about that last week!

[@lampekartoffel]

I've often thought about this as well! Like, is the reason people can agree on the colour of one thing but not another because they literally see 2 different things? Or is it because we've been taught different things? Perhaps a mix or something completely different?

[@mastod0n1]

@@lampekartoffel a great example I saw recently was the question "What color is a tennis ball?" My immediate answer was yellow, but I guess a lot of people say green. I think it was an article on Vox or something similar. The author asked a couple experts and, if I remember correctly, there were a couple ideas as to why different people could each be very certain that a tennis ball is yellow or green. I think the color of most tennis balls is an in between hue of yellow-green, and what you learn that color to be as a child will affect your perception of it as you get older. Or if the first tennis ball you see is very clearly yellow then a yellow-green one you see later in life will look more yellow to you. They also mentioned some cultures don't have a word for yellow.

[@Kobolds_in_a_trenchcoat]

@@mastod0n1 I just left a comment on my issues linguistically distinguishing between green and yellow. I'm legally blind and have had color issues due to a nerve defect. I'm pretty sure my color vision is near fully back but whenever my family tries to test it the green-yellow area seems off. I'm pretty sure it's not a perception issue at this point, just a linguistic one but it sounds like I'm making excuses for my vision when I bring it up.

[@rigrentals5297]

this host is "Reading Rainbow" multiplied 1,000. i love it

[@nerysghemor5781]

Lots of nostalgia here, for sure. His delivery SO reminds me of LeVar Burton. First thing that came to mind. :-D

[@beberivera7011]

Yes!!!

[@bordenfleetwood5773]

@@nerysghemor5781 - His pitch, tone and delivery cadence are almost uncannily similar, aren't they?

[@planexshifter]

And I thought I was just being racist because he reminded me of Levar too. So if I am being racist, at least I’m not the only 1. :)

[@nerysghemor5781]

Trevor Goodchild I was listening to audio only and didn’t even know what race the announcer was. Until I started thinking, OMG, is LeVar Burton doing a guest appearance? And looked to find out it was just a guy that sounds a crazy amount like him. If that was my impression literally sight unseen, I don’t think you have to worry about “racism.”

[@Jake12220]

The way colours are defined by language is likely directly related to the importance of being able to identify the difference for survival. If there is a difference in shade between ripe and unripe fruit or quality of materials or different ground types of whatever else, language evolves to meet the needs of the people and when language evolves new words our brains find it easier to categorise and be aware of the distinction.

[@TravisGilbert]

That's crazy! I literally made a video on the same topic last week and thought I was super original lmao great video as always!

[@TheButtDepot]

So, more reasons to have patience when disagreeing with other cultures. sometimes, we literally can't see things the same as them.

[@Kobolds_in_a_trenchcoat]

This issue seemingly exists within a single culture as well, I've had this issue with immediate family.

[@TheButtDepot]

Clockwork King aye, gives perspective on that old white/gold/black/blue dress thing that happened a few years ago

[@AveryMilieu]

I read something on this a few years back. In some places where they have no word for blue, the sky is called "white". That made me think. I was Living in Seattle at the time. Greeks of old had no term for blue, I believe. Homer refers to a "wine dark sea"... Poetry appears when we try to describe what we have no words for.

[@MontgomeryWenis]

This was on an episode of Radiolab!!! I suggested people go check it out in my own comment.

[@hellNo116]

Homer had a word for blue eyes though... I cannot remember how he defences the sky in the original though. However Athena's epithet was basically blue eyes Athena. I hope it wasn't a mistake from our scholars

[@matteopascoli]

john smith : glaukos is light blue, so not good for the sea 😉. In Italian we would say that the sea is “blu” but the eyes “azzurri”.

[@harmonicaveronica]

Yep! That's how we end up with non-basic color terms! Lavender, burgundy, lilac, periwinkle, etc. A lot of them seem to be flowers. My guess is because flowers are pretty and have a fairly consistent color

[@tompatterson1548]

or he had a cool metaphor that he wanted to use. The ancient greeks had κύανος, γλαυκός, γλαύκινος, ᾱ̓ήρ, and οἶνοψ

[@anujarora0]

Roses are red, Vieolets are blue I'm confused and So are you

[@thomasmichaels1671]

The Blue/green distinction isn't that weird when you look at the cyan color spectrum (a mix of green and blue); they merge into a different color that is both blue and green at the same time. Ask your friends if Teal or Light Sea Green is blue or green and you'll get different answers from different people.

[@dutchik5107]

Really depends on what sea green tho. Some brands pick stuff that's obviously more greener. Others name stuff it that's like a darker, more muted, turquoise. that's blue.

[@THETRIVIALTHINGS]

I feel like this might belong on Scishow and the effects of colors on our brains might be more suitable for Scishow psych.

[@bigmike4133]

That's interesting I've never looked up at the sky and saw anything that even remotely resembled green.

[@gubjorggisladottir3525]

just grey/blue i.e grue?

[@aliciabanister8188]

I know it’s not what you mean but sometimes during a particularly bad thunderstorm the clouds will look green. Where I’m from that generally means tornados

[@cdmurray88]

@@aliciabanister8188 yeah, I live in MD were we do occasionally get tornados (like 1 every 5 or more years) But my mom grew up in Indiana and gets freaked out anytime the sky turns that color

[@evilsharkey8954]

Green sky in the afternoon means prepare for really nasty weather!

[@bigmike4133]

@@aliciabanister8188 well I would be curious to see green in the sky under any condition. I'm not saying it can't happen I've just never had the experience.

[@NewMessage]

Somewhere out there, there's a Holovoloo questioning it's existence.

[@greenredblue]

I got that reference.

[@franciscamoena6666]

I wouldnt be so sure. Its superintelligent so it must have all the answers therofore it doesnt question its existence

[@crackedemerald4930]

@@greenredblue what is it from?

[@FlexiiMcLexii]

@Cracked Emerald The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

[@PaleGhost69]

One might say it's s all perspective.

[@camerontaylor7471]

Everything is perspective! That’s why humans can never agree on anything, and are always in conflict with each other, The intellect wants to push its perspective on as many as possible, with no real way of sharing it!

[@mingthan7028]

Unless we create a hive mind ​@@camerontaylor7471

[@Gingehfish]

i love that instead of making up some new word for the green/blue combo scientists just called it "grue." iconic

[@mmmmmmolly]

Very interesting. When I was a kid I thought everyone experienced things the same way, later I found out I have some sort of synesthesia. I've also read that synesthesia itself is debated, but some things feel like colours to me, like a sound sounds purple or feels orange. I can't explain why completely and I also don't just see random colours. But it's weird if I think about it, but I also don't know what it's like not to be this way.

[@YCCCm7]

Lowkey, I found out after years of playing starcraft 1 that their "teal" is really more of a "zomp" in color (look it up, I'm not even joking), IE a spring green. Today I found out Grue is just a canonization of my favorite corner of colors. I endorse Grue purely out of bias as such.

[@raresmircea]

*There is a deeper discussion that needed addressed here:* Things in the world *don’t* have colors. We see a rose petal "red" because the *colorless* material of the petal absorbs some wavelengths of light while reflecting "red" wavelengths. The absorption and reflection happens differently in different materials due to their physical properties. What we see is *not* the rose but the light that reflected off of it. We never see the things themselves. But the light *doesn’t* have color either! Light is an oscillation of the electromagnetic field. Oscillations don’t have colors. Light only presents properties like *frequency, amplitude, polarization, speed through different mediums, spin* , *not* "color". When the light enters the eyes *it stops dead* at the level of the retina, where it gets absorbed and destroyed by having its energy converted into chemical activity at the level of the opsin proteins. Then that triggers a long and complex chain of physical cause-and-effect that eventually perpetuates as *action potential (not light)* through the optic nerve. Somewhere after the signals are interpreted in the occipital visual areas the brain generates the appearance of "color". This quality is a "qualia", a property of consciousness, *not* a property of material things in the world. This is why we can dream a red rose while having our eyes closed, this is why we can lucid dream even more concrete colorful things, and this is why we can hallucinate color more intense than ever while on mind altering substances. Whoever took hallucinogenic drugs knows that the brain can generate a green tree full of red apples protected by a black-yellow snake right in the middle of your living-room. This is possible precisely because *the brain generates colors,* it *doesn’t* "receive" them from the outside environment.

[@arcanewonders9641]

Exactly. I couldn’t describe it better.

[@evanallen7896]

I was kind of angry when this channel said that objectively colors exist. You would expect better from a science channel. So I came to the comments looking for someone else realizing this. This reminds you of the adage "Don't believe everything you hear".

[@threeMetreJim]

I interpret fluorescent yellow hi-vis jackets as fluorescent green. This is due to seeing grass the same colour just after it had rained and the sun came out, and grass is green, yes?

[@tompatterson1548]

not over here in the summer.

[@IANF126]

bro, brooo, are colors, like reeaaal?

[@aleksiajankovic9886]

IS ANYTHING ACTUALLY COLORED OR IT IT JUST LIGHT

[@NavnikBHSilver]

the sky is definitely grue: blue on a good day, gray on a great day... as long as it doesn't rain.

[@evilsharkey8954]

Navnik BHSilver, it can be green, but that’s usually right before a ferocious and possibly tornadic storm!

[@jfimpro]

Being an undergrad, I founded that the most fascinating questions are the ones that never I didn’t know to ask. This one fall so much in this category.

[@SimonClarkstone]

Dark/light, blue/yellow, and red/green are the three axes of variation that TV, digital video, and JPEGs are stored/transmitted in. (but RGB is what they are displayed in, and what camera sensors use, and what BMP and PNG images are stored in).

[@moekitsune]

Me, browsing the internet with no existential crises: SciShow: Is Color Real?

[@dianagibbs3550]

This explains a lot about the tension between art colors (red/blue/yellow), computer colors (green/red/blue), and light colors (cyan/magenta/amber).

[@editorrbr2107]

“Though you and I stand side by side in the same field, my eyes shall never behold what is seen by yours.”

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

Also, females are more sensitive to gradations in hue while males are more sensitive to changes in brightness and contrast (ostensibly, women have more cones and men have more rods). This could have evolved so that men could more easily hunt at night and women could more carefully forage non-poisonous plants. 🤔

[@christelheadington1136]

It's why you guys have those bright colored feathers, to attract us.

[@markredacted8547]

@@christelheadington1136 Feathers, sh***t I been doing my dance and squawk routine on the sidewalk, I guess I'm not mating this human mating season

[@SuviTuuliAllan]

I had only one rod and got it removed. Now I have two cones instead.

[@scinerd11]

I always wonder how much of this has to do with cultural differences between men and women instead of some sort of inherent physiological difference. The evolutionary interpretation seems like it was created more to enforce gender norms than anything else. Like... why on earth would men be hunting at night anyway? And isn't the shape of leaves more important than color since leaf color changes throughout development?

[@dutchik5107]

@@scinerd11 berry colour i assume. Still Doesn't make sense. The hunting at night? Nah. Holding watch? Sure.

[@pvtpain66k]

This makes me think of my favorite line from Malcom in the Middle, "Chad's Sleepover". Dewy's friend, Chad, has severe O.C.D. & he's organizing everything in the house by color & texture. "Red things go with RED THINGS."

[@norma8686]

If I see something that I call red, and another person agrees with me that that thing is red, is the red that I see is the same red that the other person sees?

[@MySerpentine]

There is literally no way to know. Try describing a color without using any color names and you'll see why.

[@daxliniere]

Love your informative videos as always! I did chuckle when babies, stroke patients and Russians, Greeks and Germans were all grouped together. ;) (@7:43)

[@LastUnicorn]

The title "Are Colors Real?" sparks frustration. This sounds less about color and more about semantics. I'm not arguing that we actually see purple because that's complicated and we kind of don't. Despite what we may see, purple still exists. But, if there is no word for green then you can't sort colors into a category of green since green has yet to be defined. Below is original, because maybe something in that mess might be interesting..... Semantics got me all worked up. Now further in, this feels like semantics. If you don't have a word for green, you wouldn't invent a word for green suddenly. You would explain it using the tools that you have. There's a word "litost" which is complicated but amazing and something that English speaking people do even though we don't have a word that sums up that experience. (rough meaning - self sabotague out of spite because you were forced into situation you were rebelling against that you could be awesome at so you're actually kind of sad/miserable because of yourself... like kid forced piano lessons so he fails on purpose who is actually a naturally talented and could be amazing and is drawn to the sound but has ruined it for himself already and realizes it and is sad... that definition could be way off and if so I apologize, I just mean that we can experience that exact thing but we don't have a word for it so we explain it the best we can with the vocabulary that we do have. This isn't really about color, but language. The study might be asking if language can affect perception, but it doesn't seem like the study is set up effectively to test or measure that. The way it is set up sounds like you're asking a participant to look at a plaid, polka dots, and hounds tooth fabric. However, the participant thinks plaid is called flannel, accurately names polka dots, but has never really noticed what hounds tooth pattern print is and never heard the weird name. That doesn't change what they are seeing. A participant's girlfriend gets her hair highlighted and the boyfriend doesn't even notice a difference besides that it looks more sparkly or shiny. That isn't correctly testing the question. There are optical illusion comparisons like two equal parallel lines but with arrows pointing out on one and in on another. To Westerner's that grew up with those lines all over the place like road signs the illusion that the arrows point inward have a shorter line and the arrow point outward has a longer line, when they actually are the same length. Our perception of reality (the size of the lines) is influenced by our cultural experiences (arrows are things and not just lines). Now, maybe the study could do more comparisons like how a person's blue eyes look more green or gray when they are wearing a matching or complimentary color, or something like that? But it should throw the words out of the window and just ask them to group it the way they feel is natural. Our language can change how we organize our thoughts if we don't have the concept of green we wouldn't have that thing to separate because it isn't a factor in the question. You can't categorize blue vs green if there is no category for green because in this scenario there is no word for green. That's like having black and white but you need to fit black and white into categories of blue or green or red or yellow and that's it. You're probably going to group black with blue depending on the brightness of blue, and white with yellow depending on the brightness, because that's what you're asking them to do. Give them lots of color squares and ask them to group them, they will only organize them into categories that they have words for because (unless they are a little extra and don't really follow instructions) they aren't going invent their own game to also make smaller sub groups like blue (dark "grue") vs green (light "grue") unless you make sure they understand that they can make as many groupings that they feel go together as they like. Hopefully I'll see if any of the sources are published free to the public because maybe they did account for everything mentioned already. I should reorder the paragraphs but I've already spent too much time on this and already feel guilty about it.

[@VeronicaGorositoMusic]

This channel shouldn't put its hands on the fields it doesn't belong. Color is a quantum Physics phenomena, not "psychological".

[@laierr]

I love how all those studies overlooking people with different kinds and severity of color blindness, and how those people could be 'primed' to see exactly the same color, which is ambiguous to them, as different colors depending on the context.

[@ufosrus]

This guy has a nice tone and pace of speech. Much more pleasant with which to follow the information.

[@altheaunertl]

I have so many questions about how languages, and especially cultures, that don't distinguish between green and blue understand and discuss things like pigment mixing and color theory-- what does that look like for them in their art...

[@tezzo55]

The most important thing about colour is the u hold no prejudice, and that u love all colours equally.

[@thatperson0013]

New face! Who dis?

[@ottoillian8795]

In photography the primary colors are red, green and blue are used to produce other colors by mixing together. That is if you are viewing an image on a screen, however to make a print the primary colors are yellow, cyan and magenta.

[@ralphhooker6019]

I am colorblind.I am now 65 years old. I have had to "learn" the colors of my world again and again. I decorated my home in "blue" to me.

[@verdatum]

Welcome to SciShow, Anthony!

[@davidsan9654]

3:19 Anybody listen to Tool? From the song Lateralus," Black, then white are all I see, in my infancy, reaching out to me, red and yellow then came to be..." I'm not sure it is, but it almost sounds like a connection to the point in the video about the order which cultures name their colors.

[@DavidAllen_0]

I was asked by a friend (who's Russian) about why we have similar words for blue but not red. For instance: we call 'light blue' and 'dark blue' but then we have 'pink' and 'burgundy'. I didn't know how to answer this back then, thanks to this video, now it makes sense

[@rebekahjohnson1974]

Fauxsyn navy is like the burgundy of the blues.

[@DavidAllen_0]

@@rebekahjohnson1974 right! But we don't refer to 'pink' as 'light red'. Royal, cobalt or even sky blue are lighter blues but (I guess) it confused them by how we don't categorize pink into a type of red.

[@guitargrrl91495]

Just wanted to compliment this episode for not oversimplifying the answer. As a phd student researching the Sapir-whorf hypothesis, I was worried the video might skip past the nuances, but it didn’t! Makes me feel more confident in this channel’s ability to teach me nuanced things about topics I’m less familiar with 😊

[@HECKproductions]

3:20 "black and white are all i see in my infancy red and yellow then came to be reaching out to me lets me see" anyone?

[@RoseWaltz]

you know what would have been hilarious? if his shirt changed colors between segments

[@kelly2fly]

We use the same word for green and blue in my native language as well.

[@noiJadisCailleach]

I'm old. And to this day, i have absolutely no idea what the color "Indigo" is. After green, there's blue, then violet, etc. Whenever it's described to me, i'm just seeing blue. You know what Indigo is? buellshit. P.S. I'm an artist. I deal with colors everyday.

[@olbluelips]

English has a distinction between red and light red (pink). That helps offer some perspective into languages with the blue-light blue distinction.

[@theflyingdutchguy9870]

Its like turquoice ( spelling probably wrong ) some people see it as blue, to me it looks more like green.

[@futurestoryteller]

Pretty sure if you had a color wheel it would be closer to "light" blue.

[@DroolingLizard]

Arrival is a great movie about how an extraterrestrial race's language allows them to perceive the physical world drastically differently from our own views as humans, and even how different countries' language determines how each learns to communicate with the aliens. It's on Netflix and I think it's very entertaining.

[@sethhowell2278]

taking up those vsauce questions

[@BrainsApplied]

But would it be only colors? Who says our brain doesn't interpret lines and dots differently? Our vision might be really different from one another

[@thetommantom]

Middle school art taught me that there are 3 primary colors 3 tertiary colors and even a third group I can't remember with shades and hues by adding black or white to darken or lighten.

[@leeoh4459]

Not that I know anything but the way it’s been layed out here makes it seem to me that language dictates our communication of perception but not necessarily ones experience.

[@Kassidar]

As a 25 year old I can tell you that I remember being a child and thinking how odd it is that the word 'brown' covered such a huge range of shade-hue and how the most red orange and the most yellow orange seems to be so far from eachother that the the word 'orange' is over reaching. I remember thinking how 'gold' and 'silver' are strange for having their own names when ,to my kid brain, they're just metallic yellow and metallic grey. I remember thinking that the blue end of purple and the red end of purple are far to different from eachother to consider them the same name. Might have something to do with being a type 3 bilingual (child who learns 2 languages simultaneously) which delays how soon you can start using language as a crutch for thought.

[@MontgomeryWenis]

There's a wild study on color in the past that was discussed on Radiolab I highly recommend. A man read through Homer's Odyssey and counted the number of times each color was named. His results kinda aligned with the Kay-Berlin theory. You won't regret checking it out.

[@oatkungar]

In Thai language, we call a light blue color "Fah" which mean the sky, and use "Nam-ngern" for a dark blue. So we tend to see those 2 colors as different colors, the same way people see green and red are different colors. However, what interesting is, in older generations like the people before 40s (such as my father) would use a word "Keaw" for both green AND blue (both light and dark) which mean it's basically the same color for them for example, a word for blueprint is "Pim-Keaw" direclty translated as "Prints in green", meanwhile in the present day we use Fah, Nam-ngern and Keaw for light blue, dark blue and green respectively.

[@Simonsays7258]

I see colors slightly warmer with one eye and cooler with the other. Like the difference between a sunny filter and a cloudy filter when correcting color balance in a picture.

[@terriblej6107]

Hey new host, good job

[@Afrikoe]

I once worked in a place where we had to paint the walls either green or orange. We all talked about orange, it was clearly orange to all of us. On the paint cans it said "yellow".

[@markhollas7585]

It might cause a problem when crossing the street in Japan because the indicator has turned blue. Yes, inner city intersections have a vocal announcement when the crosswalk indicators change on order to aid the blind and it uses the color word of 'blue'. The more you know.

[@Sylkis89]

As a non-native speaker I don't get the difference between, Violet, Purple and Magenta in English. It's all Fiolet in Polish... Also, you seem to put the border between some mixes of colours in different places, under which of the base groups it would fall under. And I'm pretty certain that unless colour blindness is at stake it's just a matter of conceptualisation, how you perceive colours on the mental level, not what you physically see, but how you interpret it (and it's trained culturally). I'm also positive that women, despite the tendencies of colour blindness being more common in men and some women having 4 colour cones instead of 3, these things are rare enough that they are not the reason for the stereotype that women are better with colours - it's just cultural that men are taught to treat colours differently, name them differently, more crudely, unless they're artists they just perceive them in lesser detail than women because of how they process them in the abstract layer of their minds - it doesn't mean they don't see the difference, they just.. don't notice, don't regard it significant enough to make a differentiation, or again - will place the borders between 2 categories of colours in a different spot on the spectrum. So my bet would be that only categorising between colours close to what our cones see as the basic colours is innate, the rest how we perceive the mixtures is cultural and more of a result of nurture than nature.

[@Hypernova87]

Speaking of color, I always see the background on SciShowPsych vids as blue, purple and pink at the same time. Now I'm noticing it even more lol

[@AK907guy]

I half expected to hear, "Hey Vsauce, Michael here.." at the beginning of this video with a title like that

[@LauraPalay]

I usually say my favorite colors are "blues, greens, and in-betweens" - so I guess that means that my favorite color is actually grue? I do know that whenever I'm doing online shopping, even if I think of something as more "blue," I have to be sure to search for both green and blue since sometimes the color I want is labeled as one and sometimes it's labeled as the other. It's never consistent.

[@donbrunodelamancha1927]

Master Anthony Brown, you get my vote‼️‼️‼️ You are a natural presenter. You use all your tools to express yourself. Impressive, most impressive. Your ease with the subject projects a confidence and a no nonsense, I know this, I have mastered this, I am a legit authority on this. Bravissimo‼️‼️ I look forward to seeing you on often‼️‼️‼️ Much L♥️VE to You and the Whole of Team SciShow Psych‼️‼️‼️♥️♥️♥️✊🏼✊🏼✊🏼🙆🏻‍♂️🙆🏻‍♂️🙆🏻‍♂️🥩🥩🥩🥓🥓🥓🥃🥃🥃

[@dejayrezme8617]

Honestly I can't fathom a language not having words or concepts for blue and green. They are so fundamental colors for survival and being primary cone colors.

[@UHFStation1]

It would be weird not making a distinction between green and blue since we literally have cone photoreceptors centered around those wavelengths.

[@thesuccessfulone]

I'm deuteranopic and I'm a photographer, so I see fewer colours than normal, but have more categories than others in my peer group - calling "salmon" "pink" is like calling "orange" "sunset red".

[@tompatterson1548]

Colors emerge when a language needs them, english has a lot of nonbasic color words, lime for light green, silver for shiny grey, among others

[@AuntBibby]

*Wharf-Sapir language theory applies very strongly to the definition & interpretation of gender and/or sexuality. From “3rd-gender” on wikipedia:* In different cultures, a third or fourth gender may represent very different things. To Native Hawaiians and Tahitians, Māhū is an intermediate state between man and woman, or a "person of indeterminate gender".[9] Some traditional Diné Native Americans of the Southwestern US acknowledge a spectrum of four genders: feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, and masculine man.[10] The term "third gender" has also been used to describe the hijras of India[11] who have gained legal identity, fa'afafine of Polynesia, and sworn virgins.[12] While found in a number of non-Western cultures, concepts of "third", "fourth", and "some" gender roles are still somewhat new to mainstream western culture and conceptual thought.[13] The concept is most likely to be embraced in the modern LGBT or queer subcultures. While mainstream western scholars-notably anthropologists who have tried to write about the South Asian hijras or the Native American "gender variant" and two-spirit people-have often sought to understand the term "third gender" solely in the language of the modern LGBT community, other scholars-especially Indigenous scholars-stress that mainstream scholars' lack of cultural understanding and context has led to widespread misrepresentation of third gender people, as well as misrepresentations of the cultures in question, including whether or not this concept actually applies to these cultures at all. *Now, for comparison, from “John Money” on wikipedia:* John William Money (8 July 1921 - 7 July 2006) was a New Zealand American psychologist, sexologist and author specializing in research into sexual identity and biology of gender. He was one of the first researchers to publish theories on the influence of societal constructs of "gender" on individual formation of gender identity. Money introduced the terms gender identity, gender role and sexual orientation and popularised the term paraphilia.[1][2] Recent academic studies have criticized Money's work in many respects, particularly in regard to his involvement with the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer,[3] his forcing this child and his brother to simulate sex acts which Money photographed[4] and the adult suicides of both brothers.

[@beetbat5568]

I really appreciate scishow working to undo/call out the biases that have damaged science historically. keep fighting the good fight.

[@orhoushmand85]

And I tried to develop a language in which there are 125 basic color names that represent their RGB value directly, from 0 to 4 for each primary color. My color perception is very systematic, and I find it important to match color names with RGB system.

[@YukihyoShiraki]

I feel like there is an understanding gap between color, pigment, and light. How they intteract and how we perceive that interaction as sight. Terminology and the way words work. I still cant stop thinking about how light waves and radio waves are the same carriers of information, the only difference being how we decode and use that information.

[@VoMFilms]

As a colourist, I've found some people are just not processing all the colours around them. They can see them if they take a closer look, but it's like the brain is deeming most colour info around them as unimportant and just quickly tucking them away into the easiest catagoty.

[@hazell1544]

I’ve always wondered if my blue looks the same as your blue

[@wiseoneedarra593]

I truly think some people can distinguish more shades of colors than others. I don't know if it's language that causes it or if it's innate, but I believe I am one of those people that sees more colors. If you present me with teal or turquoise and tell me to pick green or blue, I physically can't. Teal is its own color, neither blue nor green. I also can't place red-violet as being either red or purple. And shades between tan and off-white are distinctly not brown. It blows my mind when my husband will look at two shades that aren't even in the same category in my mind and call them the same color.

[@Samthe1stbob]

There is a word for the difference in how we perceive colour that can't come to mind now. You may see the strawberry as red and someone else perceives it green but we both call it purple.

[@elanianiyvwia8687]

So that’s why I see magenta as deep pink and not the purple red that it’s described as... I didn’t know the word for it nor how it was “supposed” to be seen as by my peers so I see it more as a deep pink.

[@BlackArrowGaming]

Hey man, don't think I've seen you on SciShow before. If you're new, welcome to the community! :)

[@matthewsander5887]

Wor and nol looks like just separating warm colors and cool colors. You can have warm cool or cool warm (chromatic grays), like a blue tinted with red then neutralized with a touch green and then more blue. It will be a warmer blue. With the secondary colors green is an odd color, but odd for a reason. Yellow is exciting, bright, and intense, but not really warm. Once you skew towards red it becomes warm instead of powerful. So it is an extreme and accounts for highlights. Blue on the other hand is the darkest possible primary color. It accounts for shadowing. Green takes a weird turn because you are mixing a highlight with a shadow,. While the brightness increases, its warmth does not equally increase so spectrum-wise there’s some dissonance. This makes it a very important color because its ambiance is unique in itself despite being made from mixing two primaries. Between the other two primaries the ambiance shifts gradually instead of harshly. So this is some color theory and observation from working with paints. If anyone is interested, Josef Albers wrote a book back in the day on the interactions between colors. Once you get accustomed to seeing colors within other colors and understanding the relations it changes how you see the world

[@salciano]

Some cultures develop words for green way before they develop words for those other color in that theory you mentioned. A highly relevant factor is what colors are available to that culture. So a culture living in the woods can develop many more words for brown and green, while not developing any words at all for colors that they do not have access to. I advise reading Chomsky on this. This is basic linguistics...

[@macsnafu]

Color is a spectrum, the visible area of the electromagnetic spectrum. The cutoffs we use to distinguish one color category from another are clearly arbitrary. So of course the language we use affects those cutoff points.

[@VeronicaGorositoMusic]

Guys at SciShow, don't overcomplicate this topic. Matter, or things, has its own vibration or Frequency in nanometers. What we can't see are still "colors", as infrared, radiowaves, gamma rays, microwaves, etc... We can perceive them with proper gear. A material has it's color due to it's atomic composition, and if photons index ratio are *this or that,* the thing *changes* its color. Not really, because photons interacted with outshell electrons of the material, and we have to take in account the index of refractance and diffusion of light in every case. Colors exist, matter has frequency that could be perceived as another, due to *what frequency* of the photons are affecting it. Illuminate a red ball, with a blue light, and see what I'm saying. You first should have introduced your audience into quantum mechanics, to talk about colors. This is not a "psychologic" phenomenon. This channel shouldn't put its feets on things that aren't their field.

[@charksey]

this isn't "are colors a thing" its more about "how do we put colors into buckets", and it always says "people are better at it when it's in line with their language" ... well, yes, because they've had more practice with those buckets. if you are trying to put colors into different buckets then you are used to, then of course it's going to take longer. that's like "i know you always do wax-on, but this time, do wax-off" and then making conclusions about efficiency ~ here's a better question, can they see the triangles when the shade is different? What about "how long does it a participant to type a number that's rendered on a different color background" Is the question "do words help you organize your thoughts", "do words give you practice interpreting the world", or "do words change the way you see"? Or is there something else I'm missing, because it all seems to be about practice rather than fundamental understanding.

[@raquwanpeoples3186]

Why it take me a whole min to notice a completely new guy. Love this

[@InternetReviewerGuy]

I don't understand how a language could not differentiate between green and blue. Grass and leaves do not look like the sky or water. Even primitive humans must have been able to realize this.

[@zhubajie6940]

I learned about glue when I learned the Mandarin Chinese word 青 qīng. And I learned that in the oldest texts it refers to a black. I later found out Greek had similar evolution especially describing colors of the ocean. Later Mandarin developed 蓝色 lán​sè​ (blue) and 绿色 lǜ​sè​ (green).

[@planexshifter]

Welcome new guy! Anthony Brown eh? Good annunciations.Great voice. Great job Anthony!

[@Grk149]

I always wondered if people actually saw colors completely different. You can’t really explain a color so we may all say “red” but do we all see the same color that we call red?

[@JudiHakim]

What I want to know is why do I see more colors in my dreams? It’s like they have an extra dimension or shimmer that is really difficult to translate to the real world. And no I have never taken drugs.

[@dewip.6305]

Everything I saw in my dreams resembled what I would think of as those breathtaking shots of movie scenes which contain more varied colors

[@TheWyrdSmythe]

Language reflects culture. It’s _culture_ that trains our brain how to perceive color. The different versions likely represent how things were long, long ago. That said, it’s odd a culture wouldn’t distinguish between green plants and blue sky.

[@markhollas7585]

Also Japan had no historic word for orange. The color word for orange is a borrowed word thus most colors in the orange-red and red-orange spectrum are just called red.

[@monstergroupsex6030]

Gotta love Anthony's voice. Its soo soothing