What is "color"?
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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Baby don't hurt me,
No more.
It's what happens when you spell "bolor" with a K.
karl's koloring korner... actually it seems best to knever spell anything at all beginning with a "k", ya'now?
krusty's klown kolonics?
Even in jest I dare not put those in Capitalized Case!!
i haven't watched new episodes in years (and considering how much of a simpsons fan i used to be and still am, that's a real shame. i should start watching again) and look how much expression is in his face. how much love the animators put into this cel. because, like. yeah.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryOmqxJcK5w)
for those of you who aren't as deep simpsons fans as us, i really truly hope this cel or one with krusty getting beaned is framed and signed at the apollo because watch the clip.
Fun fact! Since we (primates) have three cone cell types, we only really see three colours (red, green, blue). The rest are illusions. Some animals, like some fish and birds, have four or five cone cell types.
This means that for animals that have a cone cell type for yellow, a sunflower displayed on an LCD screen will not have the same color as a real sunflower. The screen will show a mixture of red and green (which we perceive as yellow) but it won't actually be yellow.
Mantis shrimps seem to be the champions of this. They have between 12 and 16 different types of cones, spanning into the ultraviolet. They have a very different visual processing system to most animals though, so despite all the cones, they don't seem to synthesise shades between them, so they probably don't have a very vivid image.
They basically have most of visual processing offloaded to cones because of how simplistic their nervous system has to be.
You can actually distinguish colors better than a mantis shrimp.
Turns out a lot of the processing that allows us to distinguish between colors happens in our huge brains. Take that, stupid shrimp!
What they are the champions of, however, is seeing polarized light. Some researchers have modeled cameras off of their eyes to help detent cancer.
It's more complicated than that. Colours are not some discrete things, it's a spectra. Even one colour is a bunch of wavelengths.
So in truth each eye cone of ours perceives a spectrum.
But real sunflowers are (and correct me if I'm wrong) yellow colored, so why LCD screens don't do tue same thing? Is it because they are based upon RGB? If so, that kinda feels like an issue with screens and not with our lack of cones
Yes! We developed screens to suit our eyes. Pixels look like this: https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/subpixels-monitor-types.jpg
It's not an issue, it's just that they're built to be viewed by three-cone creatures.
Obligatory "there is a Radiolab episode about this": https://www.radiolab.org/podcast/rippin-the-rainbow-an-even-newer-one
And here is a great video by Steve Mould about cameras and true color: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-DyrBDsKA5s
okay, but why are they Wanda and Cosmo colored?
Good question! Some people will probably cite the electromagnetic spectrum, but in this case the scientific principle is much simpler. It's called "because I felt like it"
funderstandable, have a nice day
If I had a nickel for every time somebody asked that...
I'd only have one nickel.
... but it's a girl nickel!
I remember when I learned about the possible existence of a girl nickel. It was right before creating this reply to it.
Its such an absurd joke, its my favorite stupid joke in the entire show.
Its uh... 'pizza the hutt died of eating himself to death' levels of just ridiculous.
Brain working as expected. Thank you for the confirmation. I did have some doubts before.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Colour is just an illusion caused by objects absorbing some frequencies of light and reflecting others into the photo receptors of your “eye”.
From the thumbnail I just see polar bears with tiddies.
Oh my god this is so stupid but I love it!
Got an actual belly laugh out of me, oh god, I'm crying... thank you OP.
No, this must be an illusion. All ice bears are white, even albinos
Gummy Bears' new shape is pretty detailed
Stupid brain.
And magenta is a lie Dx
What do colorblind people see? Any color blind people out there?
Polar bears
I’m no polar bear but I don’t think the seeing happens in the brain.
But it is. Eyes just receive light.