How a train crash changed vision

[@teamcoltra]

These two trains driving towards each other changed our understanding of vision as well as every math text book since.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i would have done better on those story problems if they ended in deadly collisions

[@Roddy556]

​@@PhilEdwardsIncit would have made the questions more interesting and help to show the real world applications.

[@Bacopa68]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Yeah, "Where will passengers die?" would have been more motivating.

[@ChemEDan]

@@PhilEdwardsInc You'd love chemical engineering then 😳

[@stephensheppard]

This was very interesting! A few years ago I visited Linkoping for a conference and I wish I had known this story then! Folks there stressed that the name of the city was pronounced "Lin - shurping" (the ur should be soft to get the umlaut o) rather than "Lin-Ko-ping". The last part of the name is a cognate of the english word "shopping" and it refers to a market town. There is a string of cities in that area, all ending in "koping". They are all market towns and it is a beautiful region of the country to visit.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

haha yes i have deleted my mispronunciation and it should process on youtube shortly. seems like a nice place!

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@PhilEdwardsIncWikipedia has the pronunciation, maybe a tip for the future. Also, "Linköping - where ideas come to life".

[@AdventureOtaku]

Yeah, as someone who is pretty severely color blind this hit home. I too wanted to be a pilot and couldn’t. I also generally tell people it is the only disability that people make you prove. “Really?? What does this look like?”

[@littlesnowflakepunk855]

Nah, people make you prove other disabilities. People don't believe me when I tell them I'm autistic.

[@Frommerman]

Asking people to prove disability is distressingly common, particularly for people whose issues aren't immediately visible or are intermittent.

[@ApolloVIIIYouAreGoForTLI]

Ok that intro was cool...

[@RyansColoradoRailProductions]

Two more train crashes here in America, the Secaucus train collision of 1996 and the Goodwell train collision in 2012, were both directly caused by the engineer/conductor having red/green color blindness.

[@MrJuliansnow]

The conversation with the person who is color blind, reminds me of learning about aphantasia. I always thought people "counting sheep" or "picture the people in the room naked" was just figures of speech. I had no idea people could literally see that in their imagination at will.

[@Frommerman]

I had experiences like this except with my lifelong chronic anxiety. Apparently most children don't become convinced that every creak of a 90 year old house is a murderer come for your whole family, leap out of bed, and arm themselves with the nearest heavy object at least once a month. I was shocked to learn this isn't normal.

[@ajourneytogrowth]

This video should be required reading for courses teaching about technological determinism and social determinism of technology, loved it!

[@Search-Party]

love what you did with the office

[@meikahidenori]

I'd love a vision video to touch on how you can tell when and artist had a eye injury or myopia, cataracts and depth perception issues and how you can see these in their artworks. Artists like Monet are a great example of a creator whose eyesight was failing by the end of his career. As an artist myself with issues with depth perception it's really interesting to me as it affects how you create a HUGE deal.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

oh that's interesting. i will add this to my list.

[@olavsantiago]

Orienteering as a sport has a control flag, 30cm x 30cm, with blue diagonal stripe. Added colour helps colour blind individuals find the flag more easily. The sport was also invented in Sweden in 18XX. So you can consider this as an activity that has adapted to include other users.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

never knew! thanks.

[@korakys]

Looks like the missing date here is 1886.

[@olavsantiago]

@@korakys thanks

[@Altoclarinets]

Between the amount of objects in nature which signal they are poisonous by being the red thing standing out among a sea of green, and the amount of fruits and vegetables which signal they are ripe by changing from green to some shade of orange, red, or purple, I have a really hard time believing colorblindness has only presented a problem post-industrialization. Also, the direction I was expecting this to go was that the discovery of the role of colorblindness made the job more accessible because they introduced some feature like two red lamps and one green or different flashing patterns to make them easy to distinguish. But nope guess we'd rather just disqualify a huge chunk of people from having the job than make any small accommodations for accessibility. Never mind that the human eye being more attuned to luminance than chrominance means these changes would have made the signals clearer for everyone and thus easier to make out at a distance or in foul weather

[@NYKevin100]

It's cheaper to disqualify people. Capitalism's a hell of a drug, ain't it?

[@screetchycello]

Nah, I buy it. You tell ripeness from scent, taste and touch which are honestly more indicative. And you'd learn what was poisonous from your tribe or group, not from first principles.

[@screetchycello]

Also, we don't do a good job of accommodating differences *now*, let alone in an era where labor was cheap and fungible.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

the swedish rail was state run fwiw

[@conorcrowley6256]

A train crash which had a potentially even greater impact on Railways worldwide was the Armagh Rail Disaster in 1889. The crash killed 80 people, many of whom were children and created much of the modern rail safety systems still used today.

[@SamAronow]

Man, this is exactly what I needed right now.

[@jaymacpherson8167]

Your mention of VR vs motion sickness brings up another topic: medical testing for vertigo… The current tests for someone with vertigo are to induce vertigo and monitor the patient’s response. I liken this to someone with a possible broken bone, where the physician probes the break area with their fingers. If the patient doesn’t scream in agony, then no break. If they do, broken. I make this analogy because I have seen 4 ENTs over the years who all ran the same basic tests, along with a few extras at the more sophisticated facilities. As someone with chronic vertigo, these tests are literal torture. Efforts to correlate brain signals to those with chronic vertigo have been inconclusive. Given that the experience clearly is signal processing malfunction, it seems therein lies the way to diagnose the illness without subjecting the patient to torture.

[@mercster]

"It's green, for the record." That's, like, your opinion, man. Thanks Phil!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

thanks dude

[@PLuMUK54]

I am colour blind, but most people do not realise because, apparently, I'm very good at choosing colours, even though I usually have no idea what colour it is. According to tests that I have taken, my colour blindness is unusual. I see colours that others do not. Many might know the test where you trace a pathway of colour from "x" to "x". Well, I see pathways that no one else does. When I was being tested, eventually the tester gave me plastic sheets and a marker pen. When they checked the paths that I followed, they were all the same. Sometimes, it gets annoying when people find out I'm colour blind, and keep asking, "What colour is this?", "What colour is that?" I feel like screaming, "I don't know, I'm #!@^☆¥¿ colour blind", but I don't.

[@jamesphillips2285]

Sounds like you would be a tetrachromat if not deficient in one of the more common colours.

[@skylark.kraken]

1:53 fun fact the red and green also shows priority. 2 boats or 2 aircraft that are heading towards each other perpendicularly can use the lights as effectively traffic lights. A boat passing from the left will show green which means you have priority, they see red on your boat. You can continue. If a boat is passing from the right you see red and you need to make corrections whether it be slow down or fly in a circle.

[@Anubis256]

Great, video Phil. I've been thoroughly enjoying your style of story-telling mixed with the inner-child my 40 year-old self still clings to. I bet you've just been waiting for a topic to come along so you could break out the Brio!

[@AJBlue98]

Love your videos, Phil ! I do have a minor erratum for you, though ... I found out from watching @TokyoExplorer that in Swedish, "k" is pronounced like English "sh" before certain letters including "ö". So it really should be "LIN-shö-ping" rather than "LINK-oh-ping".

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

noted!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i have cut out the pronunciation, it populate in a couple hours...

[@ryanortega1511]

Will you restore it with this change?

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@ryanortega1511 nah it won't let me but the perfectionist is willing to just let it be text on screen and not be said aloud.

[@ryanortega1511]

Makes sense. I hear only corporations and big KZbin accounts can do that.

[@Keith.Zielinski]

I enjoy your playful perspective!

[@the4tierbridge]

Loved the video! Thought it was very informative. Gonna do more research on the train crash mentioned later.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

In the description, but here's the paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22301271/ (it's a bit of a tricky read, but it's the most exhaustive chronicle of the specific events)

[@the4tierbridge]

@@PhilEdwardsIncthanks

[@GaryBaddorf]

I love the green color on your walls. Or grey depending on your perspective.

[@bradonsmith9729]

Recently passed the farnham lanternn test. Had to take it twice but its a very cool and rare unit. Also outdated by 75 or so years.

[@ilRosewood]

I just figured those were IKEA trains considering all of the other IKEA stuff behind you in the shot (seriously it is straight out of a catalog).

[@ilRosewood]

(My office is the exact same. I'm not throwing any FÖNSTERBLAD here.)

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i had such grand dreams of diversifying in the beginning...

[@Xanderall]

Sometimes I wish the LIKE button could be pressed many, many times instead of just one. That opening scene body slide was worth a million likes alone.

[@freddysandoval4252]

In high school AP Anatomy class we were tasked with conducting a case study of someone with an illness which required us to interview the subject and write a paper on our findings. We had an entire semester to complete the project. The teacher would ask us every few weeks how our progress was going, and each time I told her that I hadn't even started. She was growing increasingly concerned as the deadline got closer, but I was completely unconcerned. When it came time to turn in our work on the case study I turned mine in and told her I conducted the entire project and wrote the paper the night before. She looked at me skeptically. Two days later she returned our work to us, and she pulled me aside to congratulate me. I conducted the case study on myself and my color blindness. I got the highest grade out of all the classes.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

dang ace in the hole there

[@pwolfamv]

5:42 "This one says '42'" No, it's just a bunch of... oh...

[@FlashMeterRed]

Imagine if so long ago whoever made lights that would indicate go/good/yes and stop/bad/no had just by chance picked cyan and red instead.

[@jaimel88]

Smooth dodge of having to pronounce Linköping lol I was waiting for you to say "Link-oh-ping" as soon as the name popped onscreen (I've gone that road before, myself lol)

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

haha it wasn't a dodge - i said it wrong, some kind people told me, and i deleted it. but now i know for that next big linking story...

[@jaimel88]

@@PhilEdwardsInc oh wow 😁 but at least now that you know, Jonköping should be a piece of cake, as well! 🇸🇪

[@corgi_dad]

That Brio setup seems rather small, hope your kids have a lot more! My son was a train addict when little. We have a huge number of Brio and Thomas products. We even took a vacation to a train museum to see a full sized Thomas the Tank Engine, and stayed in a train car hotel room at the Chattanooga Choo Choo.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

haha we have some more!

[@FosukeLordOfError]

No clue where this would go but rc car history would be cool

[@RPSchonherr]

You can be a pilot with colorblindness. As long as you can tell the difference in the runway lights

[@Pastadudde]

... is that toy train set from IKEA?

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

you know it! well, a combo - some ikea, some brio, some who knows...

[@csrmndz]

I'd love to see your take on the convoluted history of Alexander Graham Bell and the Deaf community.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

oh interesting. if anybody's curious: www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/unsound-the-legacy-of-alexander-graham-bell-1.6020596/alexander-graham-bell-s-oralist-mission-still-harms-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-people-say-critics-1.6025659#:~:text=Bell%20developed%20a%20method%20of,akin%20to%20a%20speech%20therapist.

[@littlekirby6]

btw Linköping is pronounced like Linshoping

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

apologies!

[@littlekirby6]

@@PhilEdwardsInc no worries! The combination of some Swedish letters is different than what you expect in English, so I always just try to inform people. Great video as always, I learned something relatively unknown!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i have cut out the pronunciation, it populate in a couple hours...will google better next time!

[@amydavidoff4900]

My father fought in WWII but didn't learn he was colorblind until he kept failing flame tests in chemistry while in college on the GI Bill.

[@Komadaki]

It seems crazy to me that the solution was to test RR workers for colorblindness, and exclude them from employment opportunities, instead of adopting more accessible signaling technology.

[@johnrigler8858]

Thet were like 2 trains that crash in the night!

[@--julian_]

in soanish we say daltonismo. i had no idea this was the story behind the name

[@TheNightshadePrince]

Very disappointed you didn’t mention future safety measures that were brought on after this.

[@qwertyTRiG]

Guy Deutscher's book _Through the Language Glass_ is extraordinary, fascinating, engaging, and easy to read. It's mostly about linguistics, but also about the mind, and about the history of ideas.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

oh that's cool- i was actually surprised to find the homer color blue theory in one of the books i read/skimmed for this video- from the 1800s!

[@inwalters]

His daughter is also extraordinary and fascinating. But for different reasons.

[@qwertyTRiG]

​@PhilEdwardsInc Gladstone, yes that Gladstone, was the first person to notice Homer's strange colour vocabulary. Since you were talking to someone I Japan, but thought you might mention Japanese green.

[@nerkyder]

Ok how many takes was it to get that slide in on par in thee beginning? Cool video.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

haha the outtakes shall never see the light of day

[@Fottrel]

they're taking me away to the hospital i said "this sounds like foucalt" too many times so theyre testing me for carbon monoxide poisoning

[@shiccup]

Did you colorblind the video?

[@jamesweldon8118]

I thought there was going to be a big punchline about how the whole room is red and green

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

lol did i even realize until this comment...no comment

[@JoseOnTour]

Loving the AI thumbnail. Looking like Commissioner Jim Gordon from Batman

[@arcoma11]

in portuguese we call "colorblindness" "daltonismo"

[@videoclips3143]

Commenting for the algorithm

[@Agnes.Nutter]

1:01 Why does John Dalton have individual pockets for four of the fingers on his right hand

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

Do you think it's just that his vest is mega-tight? Who knew Dalton wanted to show his body shape so much...

[@Agnes.Nutter]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Even if it is, that wouldn’t explain it going _back_ in _between_ his fingers! (Realistically, I suppose the painter made that part up and didn’t consider how it would work in reality, but who can say for sure)

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@Agnes.Nutterit looks almost like an ai art screw up! but it's old, very odd

[@quantisedspace7047]

Are we saying that the concept of colour blindness was unknown until the 19thC ? Surely someone would have said (of R and G) 'but they look the same colour to me' before that time !

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

maybe not unknown but perhaps unmedicalized/less a part of scientific inquiry

[@yellowflowerorangeflower5706]

Cool

[@StinkyPeteThePirate]

The scene in "Little Miss Sunshine" where Dwayne discovers he is color blind and won't be able to fly jets in the Air Force. kzbin.info/www/bejne/mqWXnYCLjpybeMk

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i forgot about that!

[@TheNefari]

If you want to use toys Rubiks Cube Gyroscope Plastic shovels on the beach - sandcastles

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

ooh these are all tempting

[@robertmunciework]

I’m keeping an eye on your videos because I love the content and how you leverage AI, especially in this thumbnail.

[@johncheek07]

You kept saying it changed trains, but never said what they do differently now. 😢

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

they started testing everybody for colorblindness!

[@Shinzon23]

....shouldn't the people with colorblindness have clued into that they had colorblindness pretty quickly and upon mentioning that to their bosses, not be on the night shift? It's not like you don't notice that you have color blindness

[@allanjmcpherson]

It seems strange to me that they decided colour blindness was a problem and that this meant they had to start testing for it instead of just changing one of the colours.

[@sophiejones3554]

The problem with "just change one of the colors" is that red and green lights are really the only ones that can be discerned at a sufficient distance, and through any kind of weather conditions. This is why traffic signals are still red and green, despite so many people being unable to distinguish those colors. However, they could have solved the problem in much the same way we do now with traffic signals: by building in some redundancy. For example: have one red light stand for "stop", and two green lights stand for "go". Then a colorblind conductor could still read the signal.

[@AppleGameification]

As someone who has mild red-green colourblindness, thanks for actually labelling the colours when they come up

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i tried my best - realized how bad i've been about this on previous videos!

[@hprotz6600]

When I was a teen, I took an EMT class. You could be red/green colorblind, but NOT blue/yellow. Why was one okay and not the other? If you can't see blue or yellow, you can't see if someone is cyanotic (not enough oxygen) or in certain stages of hypothermia. You also couldn't see if they were jaundiced, indicating liver problems.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

oh wow that's crazy.

[@carnanya]

I've heard cases of people missing when someone is pale (and what that could be a sign of) due to being colorblind, and that causing issues - or something along those lines, anyway. I myself am colorblind and have trouble noticing when an area of the body is redder than usual, due to inflammation or what have you; on multiple occasions I've been asked by people if this or that part of their body is red or otherwise off looking and I'm unable to pick up on anything off, only for someone else to notice something indeed being off color.

[@jenniferbates2811]

No way? I've never even thought about that.

[@hprotz6600]

@@carnanya Interesting! I never got an answer to why red/green wasn't a problem in my program, but I did wonder about people being pale/flushed. I figured there was a work around or something...

[@hprotz6600]

@@jenniferbates2811 I hadn’t either. But it made sense after ot was explained.

[@FredHsu]

So refreshing to hear you explain how the technological advances makes previous non-issues an issue. The example with VR is spot on. Great work.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

thanks! was worried i was too pretentious, appreciate it

[@DarkSyster]

@PhilEdwards It's been found that women are more likely to have problems with VR than men. I'm a woman. I have problems with VR. But the same thing happens with those 3D movies where you wear the polarizing glasses. 100% live action, no problem. 100% CGI, no problem. Mix the 2, vertigo. And the same with VR. Look straight ahead, no problem. Look right or left, vertigo. What gives? Using only myself as the test subject, I think it's perception discontinuity. The best example I have is from the movie Avatar. There's a scene where they're entering a control room leading up to the discussion on unobtanium. In the background, there is someone in a circular work station with a CGI holographic cylinder projected above it, slightly to the right and what would be about 8 inches towards the viewer of where it should be. In other words, the CGI and the live action do not match. But it's in the background! Most people probably don't notice it but for some reason, even though it's not the focus of the scene, some of us find it highly problematic. The world is fracturing, breaking apart. And that's when the vertigo sets in. With VR, when you move your head, no matter how good the sensors are, there's always a tiny bit of lag. And if you move your head back, sometimes the image doesn't end up back where it should because the sensors are only so good. Sometimes it takes a tiny moment for it to correct and sometimes it doesn't correct. I end up feeling like I'm in a chair that's slowly jiggling in 3D. So there are problems with the technology and we do know about them. But like color blindness, they affect only a small number of people. And from what I understand, no one is really studying the issue because it affects so few people. But as one of the affected, I'll continue to live in a 2D world.

[@FredHsu]

@@DarkSyster - the perception discontinuity you mentioned affects some people more than others. You mentioned 3D movies. But the same is the of plain motion sickness. The amount of discontinuity in physical space is the same for everyone in the same situation, but this affects some people more than others. In many ways you can say that modern experience of driving (I suppose it started with horse riding) favors people with less sensitive and sophisticated perceptions. Before the advent of horse riding and cars, having more sophisticated perception would have been better when our common ancestors were still swing on treetops. But today the playing field has been tilted the other way.

[@WalterBurton]

@@FredHsu : Horses? Dude. Sea sickness.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@DarkSysterI’m also prone to motion sickness, headaches, and other visual disturbances from 3D content. Turned it off right away on the 3DS. Haven’t tried VR yet though I am curious how I deal with two separate screens for the eyes - it might just be an astigmatism convergence issue in the other cases for me. But I’m also very prone to motion sickness while reading in a car, which is one reason I prefer trains - the smooth motion over the rails doesn’t have the vehicle bobbing up and down like a rubber tyred car does.

[@Texelism]

As somebody who is stereoblind, ironically your comment about VR headsets is already pretty real for me. I've been working in the mobile development field for fifteen years and as technology becomes more and more focused on wearables, I've literally been unable to work on a lot of our VR projects. It's been surreal as the condition doesn't really ever effect my day to day life, but as you put it, the new technology created the impact of my condition. Excellent video as always, keep up the good work~

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

wow, i didn't know this was a condition. thanks for sharing.

[@jamesphillips2285]

@@PhilEdwardsInc For my last glasses prescription my optometrist changed the focus of my new glasses after I said I essentially used my "reading" glasses as stereoscopic glasses for driving.[1] Can't read up close with the new ones without seeing double; but the 3D adaptation time is greatly reduced (no headache from the transition anymore!). Essentially I have one "good" eye and one "bad" eye with a strong prescription. This seems like something VR headsets can be designed to accommodate. I have an old pair of binoculars that let you fine-adjust one eye to accommodate for such conditions. 1. It is possible to drive without stereo vision: but you essentially need to move your head and do some calculus to determine position (1 head movement), speed (2 head movements), acceleration (3 head movements). This means that things like taking left turns takes longer than it would with somebody with stereo vision. I started trying to always wear my glasses while driving after more than one incident where I suspect a person crossing the road wanted to go behind me (and thinking back a cat in one case); but I stopped in front of them instead. In mono vision all I see in the moment is something approaching my intended path.

[@lithiumsulfate7361]

​@@PhilEdwardsIncI was born with a lazy eye, and, while I've had corrective surgery to prevent total loss of vision in my left eye, years of my eyes not being totally aligned has lead to stereo vision to be "turned off" by my brain. My vision basically just looks like I only have my right eye open, except for the purposes of peripheral movement. (I also can't read with my left eye, which is apparently related)

[@Faultlinevideos]

Thanks for having me Phil✌️ I was also a huge BRIO fan as a kid, and wanted to also drive trains so this video was a lot of nostalgia. Would love to also see a video on how BRIO won 🚂

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

oh i went down a brio rabbit hole for sure (and they remain a successful mystery to me)

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

there are tons of brio fansites though- pretty amazing obsessives out there

[@LinusBoman]

​@@PhilEdwardsIncgoing to jump in here and recommend searching Brio to Duplo adaptor. It's been a game changer for our brio track laying game.

[@FosukeLordOfError]

I prescribe my current enjoyment of programming to my childhood love if BRIO. Writing code feels just like making those tracks to me.

[@corgi_dad]

@faultlinevideos I did not have Brio trains as a kid, but I remember playing with them at friends houses. My kids had a large number of Brio and Thomas trains. They are all in a large bin in our basement, since the kids are grown.

[@tzor]

One interesting thing to consider is the evolution of stoplights. In the United States, there wasn't a standard for the positions of the colors, but one was adopted because of red/green color blindness. In Japan, the "green" light basically evolved into a "blue" light. Even in the United States, the "green" light isn't pure green, it has some blue in it, "hex code is #008450 and RGB (0, 132, 80)."

[@corgi_dad]

I remember hearing about someone color blind who lived in a two traffic light town where the red and green were on opposite ends at the two locations.

[@five-toedslothbear4051]

In Japanese, the word _midori_ existed for "green" for since some time in the Heian era (794-1185 CE), but wasn't commonly used until after World War II. The word _ao_ is used for both blue and green, and a green traffic signal was called _ao shingou_ by newspapers when they were introduced, and _ao_ appears in the government regulations. Traffic lights in Japan are a very blue shade of green; I've seen articles call it "bleen". Edit: KZbin let me type italic letters, but removed them when I saved, so now there are underscores.

[@ErickC]

Well, there *would* be a standard if Wisconsin and Utah were kicked out of the union.

[@_Zaid]

@@ErickC I'm a colorblind Utahn and I don't know what you're referencing, our traffic lights are the same as everywhere else?

[@ErickC]

@@_Zaid: when I lived there they were turned sideways like they are in Wisconsin. Has this changed since then, maybe?

[@lydia1634]

Color blindness accessibility is a big topic of conversation in game development, especially for how red is used to indicate so many things. My husband and a colleague were discussing the game Control, a game which is largely greyscale with moments of red indicating importance. His colleague is color blind and found the experience infuriating. It's really important to not forget for the rest of us. It's also why Ticket to Ride has unique symbols with every colored card, so you can track symbols if you can't see colors.

[@johnkeefer8760]

Interesting note: there are people who are properly color blind (missing one of the three cones), but there are also many more who have “color deficiency” who have all three cones but one of the cones is sensitive to the incorrect wave lengths of light. Ie the green cone may be shifted too close to the red wavelengths etc. This causes people to also have difficulty distinguishing some shades but not to the same extent as people lacking a cone entirely. I have all three cones so can distinguish green from red but fail some of the color blindness tests that trigger for those with a cone that has the wrong sensitivity

[@FosukeLordOfError]

That matches my description of color blindness

[@Calv_]

Love the video! Colourblindness is always kinda shown with a lack of colour, and I don't know if it's because I have mild red/green colourblindness (still too much that I can't become a pilot which was a dream of mine - even as a private pilot for myself), but my experience hasn't been an absence of colour, it's moreso a point where the shades are indistinguishable from another. Red and green shades just merge earlier than I assume they do for others. Just a small thing I thought I'd mention to anyone who's curious or doesn't even realise they have it, as I only found out when I casually mentioned to an optician and she gave me an ishihara test which I failed 😂

[@wobblysauce]

Bingo, it isn't black and white but the shade blending

[@Zeyev]

My vision isn't perfect but I am not colorblind. A few years ago, my Federal agency used color coding to describe which corridor one was heading towards at certain points in a refurbished building. Yes, in one case the squares were red and green. I tried telling folks that was perhaps the stupidest thing I had ever seen but I was ignored. The main issue is that my agency was considered the leader in designing Federal buildings and making them fully accessible. Grrr.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

it is widespread!

[@PhilVanVeldhuizen]

Any excuse to play with your kids' toys makes sense to me.

[@callmeperch]

Color blindness is still pretty under-diagnosed, especially in women (who it is rarer for) but hopefully drawing attention to this condition and how our world is STILL designed for color-sighted people will help spread useful information!

[@KristopherBel]

I was talking to an eye doctor and they were saying that parents will teach their kids what they are supposed to say to pass the colorblind test like answer for them or tell them what to answer! It's insane I can't understand how anyone could do that to their children.

[@bufordhighwater9872]

I'm not quite sure how color-blindness can be under-diagnosed. Ishihara tests are nearly a standard part of any basic eye exam. Even outside of going to an optometrist, they're performed during elementary through high schools. They're often done at Departments of Motor Vehicles to get a driver's license; in fact, licensing to operate almost any moving vehicle requires an eye exam and testing for color blindness.

[@KristopherBel]

@bufordhighwater9872 so I lso wonder about the school physical except I had this experience where the school nurse was administrating the eye exam and when I failed the astigmatism test (I had to answer weather a red dot was on the picnic table or not) I said the question is confusing because they are just two separate images one red dot and one picnic table, so no? Unless you want me to make my eyes work together? And they just told me I was wrong and asked me to answer again. So I said yeah (if I make my eyes work together) it's on the picnic table. I think an eye doctor would have seen I have astigmatism but the school nurse doing hundreds? Of these exams gave me a clean bill of health. We also took the test in groups so that you could copy someone else's answers.

[@pastasauce]

I'm a train conductor in the US and color blindness is taken very seriously still. We have to take a physical upon hiring and every three years after which has a color blindness test. A coworker was found to have his sight be red deficient. The railroad set up a test signal where an employee can change the aspects (colors) with a switch and used this to test to see if he can tell red, yellow and green apart (solid and flashing, different combinations of two) from certain distances. He failed the test at the furthest distance (quarter mile) required. Him being a railroad nerd pointed out that the signals used for the test were only rated for 1000 feet, so they sent him to test at another location. He failed again but the test used the exact same model of signal. He tried to fight it but unfortunately his union didn't want to back him up and he was medically disqualified from the job. What's wild is there's no standardization on railroad signals in the US. A green aspect over a yellow can have completely different meanings between two adjacent railroads. Employees are required to memorize signal names (proceed, stop, approach, etc.) and associated rules with each verbatim for each host railroad they operate on. As you can imagine, this can and has lead to errors caused by the human factor. More relevant to your video, the Pennsylvania Railroad devised a radical new signal design in 1915. All the signals were a yellow color designed to cut through fog and be very visible from long distances. The design mimicked semaphores. A straight up and down was equivalent to green, diagonal to yellow, and horizontal to red. These position signals were probably the first color blind friendly signaling system. The signals used today on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and many parts of the eastern US (NORAC signals) are derived from the Pennsylvania Railroad signals, but with added color.

[@Ashley-xu1lk]

The bit near the end about motion sickness, that's very important to me. I can't play first person games because I almost immediately feel nauseous so I cannot imagine how I would feel using a VR headset.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i'm sorta nervous about this for myself(haven't gotten to try any of them yet)

[@cyrilio]

As a designer of safety charts I’m super aware of color blindness and how it impacts peoples perception of information shared. Thanks for pointing out how we build upon the shoulders of giants.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i appreciate that work - this is the first video i've tried to make somewhat color sensitive and it was a challenge!

[@dougsundseth6904]

During WWII, allied air forces used people with color deficiency as photo interpreters for reconnaissance photos. They could easily see through certain types of camouflage that were very effective against people with more typical color vision.

[@xiggywiggs]

Another strong contender for conditions that only "exist" because of societal technological choices is handedness! I'm a left-handed software dev & designer and it ends up adding avoidable complexity in so many domains purely because right-handed people make things and never consider what a left-handed person's experience might be. product design is the obvious and inevitable place handedness bias crops up, but it also comes up rather a lot in UX / UI design in software and even games. I use MS Surface devices for my portable computing and for work, so I end up using surface pens and touch screen interfaces rather a lot, and it quickly becomes obvious that UX designers and UI devs rarely consider where a lefty's palm will end up on a screen, because they're constantly adding 'swipe in' menus to the left edge of the screen (lookin at you windows widget menu) or putting all the tool / UI selection on the left edge - which is obscured by your hand if you're left handed. it also comes up in games more than you'd think, especially in VR apps, where it's very often arbitrarily presumed that your left hand will be your off-hand. which is an especially egregious over-sight in that context because VR systems start off handedness agnostic, since the controls are symmetrical. so any bias toward being right-handed in a VR app is a bias brought in by the developer, consciously or unconsciously.

[@fabrisseterbrugghe8567]

I'm ambidextrous and, after developing carpal tunnel in my right arm, changed to a left handed mouse. I have had tech people come by to update my work computer swear at me for being left handed. They get especially peeved because I switch my mouse to "left-handed" rather than just put it on the left. But that's an artifact of being ambidextrous. Telling right from left is difficult for me. I know whether I use my index or middle finger, so switching which side the mouse is on means I have to switch the buttons, too.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

wow i would have thought this kinda left handed penalty stopped decades ago. interesting.

[@fabrisseterbrugghe8567]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Would that it were.

[@bradarmstrong3952]

Super interesting perspective on history. Felt like a part of the "Connections" TV series.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

the highest possible compliment!

[@Mar_Ten]

Whooh another video, and the first minute is already gooood

[@Ice_Karma]

I'm not colour-blind myself, but something I've never really understood is _why_ ships, trains, and later aircraft insisted on red and green, even knowing that some proportion of the population wouldn't be able to distinguish them, when if they'd used blue instead of green, there wouldn't have been a problem. It's not like ships and aircraft are even using the colours for their iconic "stop" and "go" meanings -- they just needed two different colours.

[@korakys]

That is a good question and I suspect the answer has something to do with a higher cost for blue dyes or tints.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i ran into some studies that said red and green could be seen farther away (but i lack the ability to judge the quality of those statements)

[@Ice_Karma]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Actually, no, that makes perfect sense. D'oh! I've actually known the answer the whole time, but I never connected the dots before! A bunch of pieces just clicked into place in my head! Of the three primary colours, the human eye is least sensitive to blue. The numbers vary according to exactly which colour space you use, among other things, but when you convert RGB to grayscale, the green channel contributes 60-70% of the result, the red channel 20-30%, and the blue channel just 5-10%. And if you've ever been in a space floodlit in blue, you've probably noticed that it just feels dim, even when it's really bright. So if you need two colours of light for use at night, it just makes sense to use red and green, even in spite of disqualifying roughly 1 in 10 men and a small number of women, because we just perceive them better.

[@shub]

Love those nail biting real world sound effects juxtaposed to the train play set.

[@alexlik4197]

Here's an idea: What's the history of e=mc^2? We all know Einstein discovered it, but it seems to be the of intelligence now-a-days. Any cartoon that has a 'smart kid' will show it scribbled on a black-board or paper that they have; any time a character is thinking really hard, a bunch of equations will float by, including this one. Why has equation become the symbol of smarts, and not another one? What made this one special?

[@FosukeLordOfError]

6:45 oh man watching out of the side of my eye and it looked just grey. Rewinding and double checking I see some green but not enough to make a number out. I know I’m red green colorblind. It’s somewhat mild as I’ve been able to tell red from green on most of the stuff in this video but there are definitely some shades of red and green that look brown to me.

[@AJ-kv1po]

Was on a sailboat for several weeks not long ago, mildly red green colour blind. The navigation lights at night are infuriating, also if it's a gtey day then forgetaboutit.

[@TheCho5enJuan]

🚂

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

🚂

[@PSingletary]

🚂

[@ianmark5094]

My Dad was rejected as a pilot in the airforce due to his color blindness, he stayed as a meteorologist for another 25 years and was always a touch bitter about it all. When I was hired as a railroad conductor and eventual engineer I was definitely worried I'd be in the same genetic boat. Thankfully I didn't inherit that myself, given that all I ever wanted to do was run freight trains. Signaling systems on railroads are far more complex than most people would probably assume, and color combinations definitely require a thorough understanding or else carnage inevitably ensues. Even where I work in western Canada there's literally hundreds of different combinations and sequences we have to memorize over hundreds of miles of collective territory ranging from blind curves through mountains in near blinding wintery conditions and everything else in between. I'm sure it's even more intense in passenger service on 100+ mph track the world over. Great videos, glad I came across this channel. Cheers.

[@The_Sofa_King]

This is a story I didn’t know I wanted to, but I was glad I watched. Thanks Phil!

[@BOABModels]

I love Brio - despite not being colour blind, I have crashed Brio trains hundreds of times.

[@PSingletary]

Great slide in intro Trains are always a great hook Thanks for another great video

[@MillBrookRailroad]

Great video! Interestingly enough, the Pennsylvania Railroad solved the problem with position light signals. It was basically a semaphore in lights. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad did something similar with their color position signals. Railroad signaling developed independently, country by country, and sometimes railroad by railroad.

[@TimeLapseSweden]

Yeah something about Sweden.

[@sparky_murph]

Another great video and topic. Throughly enjoy all of your video’s. Keep it up. Make more.

[@rafaelribas1027]

In Spanish we still refer to colour-blindness and colour-blind people as "daltonismo" and "daltónico". I had never clicked that it is the same Dalton of early atomic theory - and I teach middle school science!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

had no idea! interesting!

[@gibsondean100]

As a SCADA architect colour blindness is something you have to factor into the solution. I like using a shape to back up a colour.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

you taught me a new acronym

[@digzgwentplayer4159]

Another hypothetical, let's say VR headsets still become a huge thing, but then people suddenly remembered the movie "Scanners" 🎉 hahaha

[@TheJollyGotthardt]

I think an underappreciated aspect of colour-blindness is how a large part of it is a linguistic phenomenon. As it's not just a matter of confusing red and green, but rather having a different neurological sensation of them. While two things which are generally seen as red and green respectively are perceived as the same colour for a colour-blind person, the opposite is true as well; two shades of green will by a colour-blind person be seen as red and green. Thus, the confusion about what lingustically is red and green becomes muddied as the use of the two words don't match up with the experience visual perception of colour. One theory of why colour-blindness is as relatively widespread as it is, is that the ability to perceive slight nuances in e.g. green can be helpfull when foraging for fruit (think green grapes or gooseberries).

[@DannerBanks]

I still don't understand why signal lights for all moving vehicles aren't blue and orange.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i ran into some theories that red green was more visible from farther away (but have no idea if it's true or not)

[@TonyPedretti]

Thank you, Phil. Not only for the intriguing content, but the bigger picture and lesson you conclude with.

[@dylangehring]

Phil! Great work and the animation is some of your best yet!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

thanks for noticing!

[@HLR4th]

Thanks for this. The train wreck may have gotten color blindness (some prefer color deficiency) attention, but society has a long way still to go. Red Green Navigational Lights are still a thing- we have other colors to pick from! Video game designers (I’m looking at you Lucas Arts) always use Red for foe and Green for friend- so much for playing X Wing Squadron! Traffic lights - yes they have positions that can be used but in the dark, a blinking colored light could be Red (full stop) or yellow (caution). Old Halogen street lights used to match the yellow of the yellow light- put them on a curve and that yellow light is nicely hidden. I was not diagnosed until 8th grade (60 now), when we were shown the Navy color blindness test, and me and another kid couldn’t see the numbers. When I was young, I was told I “didn’t know my colors". I learned to depend on other cues- that mysterious crayon box with so many duplicates was was at least labeled. 10% of the population has a color vision issue. Being careful when selecting colors in graphics, signage, is a type of inclusivity people should remember.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

this vid definitely made me realize how easy it is to design adaptively (and tragically that i have t done it before!)

[@HLR4th]

@@PhilEdwardsInc that’s why your videos are so great. They are thoughtful and inspire deeper thinking.

[@Jesiahjesiah]

The modern version of this is how car headlights are shifting into the blue spectrum with the use of LEDs. *stay with me* This allows them to illuminate more of the road in a way that we perceive as brighter, while still only emitting the regulated amount of lumens. For most people this is a minor annoyance. But for *checks note* THIRTY PERCENT of the population (!!!) that has an astigmatism these headlights flare in their field of vision to a degree that can overpower anything else they may be trying to see (like the road or obstacles). There are other issues with vision contrast that make it more dangerous for everyone as well, but that's less to the point of the original video. Would love to see you cover this topic! Great video here

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

interesting!

[@Jesiahjesiah]

​@@PhilEdwardsInc @TechnologyConnections and others do decent videos on various aspects contributing to the growing problem of "headlights being too bright", but I've yet to see anyone put all the pieces together (technological changes of lights, cars getting bigger/taller, car bling / ego, lack of enforcement/regulation, how human awareness of what we can see overshadows what we cannot see ie lighting contrast, plus the aforementioned astigmatism for many) . Anyway, thanks for reading, hope to see more!

[@huyxiun2085]

Thanks for the video. As a slightly "colorblind" (god the English word for it is dumb) person, AND a scientist working in a field which relies HEAVILY on colors, I know a lot about the scientific aspects of it. But I didn't know the historical aspect of Daltonism. That was extremely interesting. That was also very clever NOT TO try to explain it. It's not that it's hard to do. But it's easy to do it poorly, thus you need to take your time. You have to start by being able to explain colors. Explaining intuitive things is difficult, you need to be able to deconstruct whichever ideas the audience have about it. On a video, that means you have to account for EVERY misperception there is. That's a long work. It's not helping that although science CAN explains a lot, we still aren't 100% sure how color works. Don't get me wrong, we know a LOT about how it works. But at some point... We have excellent hypothesis, things any scientist on the field would agree makes sense and is MOST CERTAINLY right... but they are very hard to prove. At least without sacrificing a fair number of humans. Although it's perfectly reasonable, we only need to take off their vision and a small part of their brain. They'll still be able to speak! Humans sucks as guinea pigs because they tend to talk too much, in general... Doing all these hypothesis about the study or suddenly shouting "I'm blind, I'm blind, boohoo", ruining the double-blind protocol (No Greg, you were not supposed to TELL). But anyway... In some fields, it's good to have the pig talking. For instance, it can describe the colors it sees. For some reason, I NEVER manage to get the grant on that part of the project... I shall consider moving to North Korea. The things you have to do for SCIENCE.

[@whophd]

NGL, I clicked on this video wondering how the mayor of Gotham City was involved in a train thing