the overwhelming majority doesn’t get the idea that “true color” doesn’t exist.
Count me among them.
I define “true color” as the frequency mix of light together with its brightness. It’s perfectly well measurable—for example, I happen to own a device which will tell me what color it’s looking at. People in photography and design care about “true color” very much—they carefully calibrate their devices (monitors, printers, etc.) to show proper colors.
“In this sense” you defined dress.trueColor as undefined, so I still don’t see what you are talking about.
By the way, normally color is defined at perception point so it already includes both the lighting and the reflective characteristics of the object. It’s common to observe that something is color X under, say, sunlight, and the same thing is color Y under, say, fluorescent lights. Girls understand that well :-)
The crucial point is, I think, the “observer” argument. Even if you compress all the other parameters—lighting, reflective characteristics, etc.--what you’re left with is still a two-place function, such that if you pass in a different observer, a different result is returned. You’re free to define “true color” as whatever you like, but that’s not going to change the fact that some people might look at what you define as “gold” and see black instead—like, for instance, in the optical illusion we’re discussing in this thread—and then they’re going to argue with you. And then you might argue back, saying, “True color is the frequency mix of light together with its brightness!”, and then they’ll say, “Well, that’s not what I’m seeing, so explain that using your ‘true color’,” and so on and so forth, when really the only source of the argument is a failure to recognize that color perception differs depending on the person.
In short, you and adamzerner aren’t actually disagreeing about anything that’s happening here. Rather, you and he are defining the phrase “true color” differently (you as “the frequency mix of light together with its brightness” and adamzerner as “the visual sensation that, when perceived, maps in the brain to a certain word trigger associated with a color concept”). That’s all this whole argument is: an argument about the definition of a word, and those arguments are the most useless of all.
(Hence why Eliezer wrote this post. Seriously, this post is in my opinion one of the most useful posts ever written on LW; I’ve linked people to it more times than I can count. Why are people still making these sorts of elementary errors?)
First, as an aside, my disagreement with adamzerner isn’t about the definition of “true color”, he thinks such a thing just doesn’t exist at all.
Second, color is not a two-argument function, not any more than length or weight or, say, acidity. The output of the two-argument function is called perception of color.
Consider wine. One of it’s characteristics is acidity. Different people may try the same wine and disagree about its tartness—some would say the tannins mask it, some would disagree, some would be abnormally sensitive to acidity, some would have the wine with a meal which would affect the taste, etc. etc. And yet, acidity is not a two-argument function, I can get out the pH meter and measure—objectively—the concentration of hydrogen ions in the liquid.
While consumers might debate the acidity of a particular wine, the professionals—winemakers—do not rely on perception when they quality-control their batches of wine. They use pH meters and ignore the observer variation.
It’s the same thing with color. People can and do argue about perception of color, but if you want to see what the underlying reality is, you pull out your photospectrometer (or a decent proxy like any digital camera) and measure.
Professionals—people in photography, design, fashion—cannot afford to depend on observer perception so they profile and calibrate their entire workflow. Color management is a big and important thing, and it’s a science—it does not depend on people squinting at screens and declaring something to be a particular color.
Think about a photographer shooting a catalog for a fashion brand. In this application color accuracy is critical because if he screws up the color, the return rates for the item will skyrocket with the customers saying “it’s the wrong color, it looks different in real life than in the catalog”. And if that photographer tries to say that true color doesn’t exist and he just sees it that way, well, his professional career is unlikely to be long.
See—this, right here? This is what I mean by “argument about a definition of a word”. I don’t care what you think “color” is; I care if we’re talking about the same thing. If you insist on defining “color” as something else, we are no longer discussing the same topic, and so our disagreement is void. You are talking about one concept (call that concept “roloc”) and adamzerner is talking about another concept (call that concept “pbybe”).
So, does “roloc” exist objectively? Yes, and adamzerner doesn’t disagree with that.
Does “pbybe” exist objectively? No, because it’s a two-place function like I was talking about, and you don’t disagree with that.
So what’s our disagreement here, exactly? Are we arguing about how to define the word color? From your comment, specifically the portion I quoted above, I get the sense that to you, that is what we are arguing about. “Color is not x; it’s y.” Well, I say screw that. I’m not here to argue about definitions of words. You call your thing “color” if you want, and I’ll call mine something different, like “Bob”.
Because your previous comment showed that you were still engaging in an argument about the definition of a word, despite your claims to the contrary, and I was under the impression that you would appreciate it if I pointed that out. Clearly I was mistaken, seeing as your reply contains 100% snark and 0% content. I regret to say that this will be my last reply to you on this thread, seeing as you are clearly not interested in polite or reasoned discussion. Insulting snark does not a good response make.
Count me among them.
I define “true color” as the frequency mix of light together with its brightness. It’s perfectly well measurable—for example, I happen to own a device which will tell me what color it’s looking at. People in photography and design care about “true color” very much—they carefully calibrate their devices (monitors, printers, etc.) to show proper colors.
Go look at e.g. CIE color spaces.
I mean “true color” in this sense:
“In this sense” you defined dress.trueColor as undefined, so I still don’t see what you are talking about.
By the way, normally color is defined at perception point so it already includes both the lighting and the reflective characteristics of the object. It’s common to observe that something is color X under, say, sunlight, and the same thing is color Y under, say, fluorescent lights. Girls understand that well :-)
The crucial point is, I think, the “observer” argument. Even if you compress all the other parameters—lighting, reflective characteristics, etc.--what you’re left with is still a two-place function, such that if you pass in a different observer, a different result is returned. You’re free to define “true color” as whatever you like, but that’s not going to change the fact that some people might look at what you define as “gold” and see black instead—like, for instance, in the optical illusion we’re discussing in this thread—and then they’re going to argue with you. And then you might argue back, saying, “True color is the frequency mix of light together with its brightness!”, and then they’ll say, “Well, that’s not what I’m seeing, so explain that using your ‘true color’,” and so on and so forth, when really the only source of the argument is a failure to recognize that color perception differs depending on the person.
In short, you and adamzerner aren’t actually disagreeing about anything that’s happening here. Rather, you and he are defining the phrase “true color” differently (you as “the frequency mix of light together with its brightness” and adamzerner as “the visual sensation that, when perceived, maps in the brain to a certain word trigger associated with a color concept”). That’s all this whole argument is: an argument about the definition of a word, and those arguments are the most useless of all.
(Hence why Eliezer wrote this post. Seriously, this post is in my opinion one of the most useful posts ever written on LW; I’ve linked people to it more times than I can count. Why are people still making these sorts of elementary errors?)
I think you’re wrong.
First, as an aside, my disagreement with adamzerner isn’t about the definition of “true color”, he thinks such a thing just doesn’t exist at all.
Second, color is not a two-argument function, not any more than length or weight or, say, acidity. The output of the two-argument function is called perception of color.
Consider wine. One of it’s characteristics is acidity. Different people may try the same wine and disagree about its tartness—some would say the tannins mask it, some would disagree, some would be abnormally sensitive to acidity, some would have the wine with a meal which would affect the taste, etc. etc. And yet, acidity is not a two-argument function, I can get out the pH meter and measure—objectively—the concentration of hydrogen ions in the liquid.
While consumers might debate the acidity of a particular wine, the professionals—winemakers—do not rely on perception when they quality-control their batches of wine. They use pH meters and ignore the observer variation.
It’s the same thing with color. People can and do argue about perception of color, but if you want to see what the underlying reality is, you pull out your photospectrometer (or a decent proxy like any digital camera) and measure.
Professionals—people in photography, design, fashion—cannot afford to depend on observer perception so they profile and calibrate their entire workflow. Color management is a big and important thing, and it’s a science—it does not depend on people squinting at screens and declaring something to be a particular color.
Think about a photographer shooting a catalog for a fashion brand. In this application color accuracy is critical because if he screws up the color, the return rates for the item will skyrocket with the customers saying “it’s the wrong color, it looks different in real life than in the catalog”. And if that photographer tries to say that true color doesn’t exist and he just sees it that way, well, his professional career is unlikely to be long.
See—this, right here? This is what I mean by “argument about a definition of a word”. I don’t care what you think “color” is; I care if we’re talking about the same thing. If you insist on defining “color” as something else, we are no longer discussing the same topic, and so our disagreement is void. You are talking about one concept (call that concept “roloc”) and adamzerner is talking about another concept (call that concept “pbybe”).
So, does “roloc” exist objectively? Yes, and adamzerner doesn’t disagree with that.
Does “pbybe” exist objectively? No, because it’s a two-place function like I was talking about, and you don’t disagree with that.
So what’s our disagreement here, exactly? Are we arguing about how to define the word color? From your comment, specifically the portion I quoted above, I get the sense that to you, that is what we are arguing about. “Color is not x; it’s y.” Well, I say screw that. I’m not here to argue about definitions of words. You call your thing “color” if you want, and I’ll call mine something different, like “Bob”.
“Color” exists; “Bob” doesn’t. There, disagreement settled. Okay? Okay.
It’s cool how you talk to yourself, but why is this comment tagged as an answer to me?
Because your previous comment showed that you were still engaging in an argument about the definition of a word, despite your claims to the contrary, and I was under the impression that you would appreciate it if I pointed that out. Clearly I was mistaken, seeing as your reply contains 100% snark and 0% content. I regret to say that this will be my last reply to you on this thread, seeing as you are clearly not interested in polite or reasoned discussion. Insulting snark does not a good response make.
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“Polite or reasoned discussion”, right… X-D