Color Podcast

Color is such an interesting and fascinating concept. Thinking about colors for too long is enough to make your head hurt. When I was younger, I learned that butterflies can see more colors than humans. As a young child, this thought frustrated me to no end. I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that colors that I couldn't see existed. It is impossible to imagine colors you have never seen. The color podcast brought back these thoughts that haunted me as a child. It's kind of like asking the question: "how can you explain or describe color to someone who is blind?" It is nearly impossible.

It is easy to imagine a dog's world which is either in blue/yellow tones or is black and white. It is simple to eliminate color from our palette but incredibly difficult to add color. While humans normally have 3 color receptors, creatures like butterflies have 5 or 6, and even more unbelievable, mantis shrimp have 16 color receptors. A creature so small and insignificant lives in a more vibrant world than humans. But apparently, there are some women who have 4 color receptors. The podcast discussed how hard it is to determine the accuracy of this fact.

We don't think about how much color affects our every day life. Color determines what clothes we wear and what foods we eat. This podcast reminded me of an experiment I once saw. People ate skittles blindfolded and were unable to differentiate between flavors even though each skittle has a different flavor. Humans associate colors with mood. People associate with different colors and tend to gravitate towards different colors. I started to think, "what if I am seeing green but another sees 'red'?" How do we know that we are all seeing the same colors with the same names?

There has been a trend on the internet for a while now where people post an image and then debate the colors of the object. This was first seen with "the dress" where some people saw black and blue and others saw white and gold. "The dress" sparked arguments all over. How could someone be seeing something so opposite of me? Last week an image of a shoe went around the internet. Some said it was white and pink, and others said mint and grey. People were again divided. How do you determine who is correct when so many people are convinced on what colors they are seeing?