ok first: this realization fucked me up a year or so ago
everything we are taught about light and color, from art classes and physics classes, computing, whatever, is mostly bullshit. Its all based entirely on how the human eye functions.
primary colors? arbitrary. based entirely on human vision (which is why partially why primary colors differ in paint and RGB) Thats the main thing.
so the divisions of color into wavelength are so uneven (correct me if i’m wrong, but green is disproportionately large) (on that note, humans are better at distinguishing shades of green than of other colors) because its based on how we see things and no real mathematical or physical differences in the light.
other organisms with different eye structures have completely different colors and light. Our eyes have three types of cells to process color (corresponding to Red Green and Blue) butterflies have five types. What the fuck are they seeing? If we could ever know, how could we process that image into something we can sense?
humans made the world to conform to them (RGB screens deliberately use the eyes RGB structure to make a coherent image) and its weird to realize the ways in which we are limited by our senses, especially since sight is probably out main sense.
in that vein, any alien coming to earth would be highly unlikely to be able to use our technology because its surprisingly specific to our eye structure.
they’d have to have fairly good vision to start with, so if they survive mainly on smell or sound on their home planet, earth tech’s not for them (which reveals so flaws in out world in helping disabled people)
their eyes would need to have RGB cells, at least two of those? or something similar enough that its not a big deal. because for some fucking reason our eyes signal red+green as yellow. also, will alien vision even be in out visible range? what if they only see IR or UV light what then
itd be like, “good evening victoria, what is that device in your hand? technology from earth?”
“yeah, i’m just reading something on my phone,” and seeing the screen its a horrible mess of colored dots that burns into your retinas and nothing like human writing on paper.
we’d need to abandon RGB all together and use the lights that genuinely change wavelength.
kaledo-art
izzy806
dailybridgerton
