Infinite Reality: The Hidden Blueprint of Our Virtual Lives

by Jim Blascovich

Consider red-green color-blindness, the inability to differentiate those two colors. Statistically, 8 percent of men and less than 1 percent of women are afflicted. However, everyone experiences a form of color-blindness every day. Look at the corner of a room in which the intersecting walls were painted the same color. In answer to the question What color are the two walls? most people would name a single color, such as “sandalwood” or “buckskin” or whatever color the walls were painted. The assumption that the walls are painted the same hue drives people’s mental perception, hence the answer. However, light in the room very likely reflects off the walls differently on the way back to one’s retina. Consequently, the wavelength of the light—which defines the color—coming from each wall is different. Yet, most people fail to perceive the color difference and are temporarily color-blind. The perceptual system makes the walls seem the same color, simplifying the world for the viewer, even though viewers can override this perceptual process when they consciously try to notice the different colors on each wall. Perceptionists label this phenomenon “color constancy.”

That's not an example of the walls BEING different colors, that's an example of the walls APPEARING different colors. If the difference is slight - only a shade or two, say - the difference may not be vast enough for the perception machine that is the brain to bring it to someone's attention (similar to inattentional blindness). And, even when noticed, people are intelligent enough to know the difference between a shadow making the wall darker and having actually used a darker shade while painting. This is not "colorblindness" in the way red/green colorblindness is, and this example is both incorrect and misleading.