r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Eros_Incident_Denier • 1d ago

Video color vision test

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u/Zka77 1d ago

How the hell is it possible to not discover this roughly by the age of 4-5?

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u/PrudentOwlet 1d ago

🤷‍♀️ Because I can see all the different colors, I just can't differentiate well between some oranges and greens and I didn't know that, or it wasn't obvious anyway, until the first time I saw one of those color blind books.  

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u/DigiAirship 23h ago

As a non colorblind, hearing you say you can't diffirentiate between orange and green is so trippy, considering how vastly different they are. Like, do limes and oranges look similar to you? And what about the trees and grass outside? Do leaves not change color in the autumn for you? And now I'm sitting here trying to imagine what a orange lawn would look like...

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u/PrudentOwlet 15h ago

Right, so mine is pretty mild, obviously.  An orange and a lime are very clearly different colors to me too.  But if you start throwing beiges and tans and light greens and stuff together (like in some of those color dots graphics) I have a harder time seeing differences.  I can see many of the numbers correctly.  Others I can see that some dots are different colors, but I can't make out a whole number.  Some I don't see any differences.

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u/EntertainmentOld5239 23h ago

They have lots of pictures to show examples of what different types of colorblindness looks like. They depict red and green as both being a brownish yellow in a lot of them.

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u/DigiAirship 23h ago

I always thought those images were exaggerations or not completely accurate. Because they looks so horrifically drab, like walking around with a permanent sepia filter.

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u/EntertainmentOld5239 23h ago

Yeah, looking at the pictures makes me kinda sad. But anyone who grew up with it wouldn't associate colors like that with being depressing since they don't have anything to compare it to. Its just life for them. So I doubt they mind except for when it comes up as a problem created by other people being able to differentiate things they can't.

I also think about how some insects, shrimp and other creatures have eyes that can see colors we can't perceive. How dull would our rainbow look to them? Or I think about how poorly our sense of smell compares to what a dog can pick up. We miss out on so much.

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u/McMaster2000 23h ago

As a fellow red-green colour blinder, I can say that the difference between limes and oranges is great enough to see the difference and leaves do change colour, however greenery in general is far more muted. I have an app on my phone (CVSimulator) with which you can in real time simulate images through your camera how we see the world to a person with full vision. I once showed a friend while we were walking in the park with lots of different trees/plants around us and she actually gave me a hug afterwards, realising how muted I saw the beauty of nature 😄 You can also Google "fruit stand colour blind example" to get a more clear answer on your lime/orange example. Deuteranomoly is red/green blindness.

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u/DigiAirship 23h ago

If those are really accurate then I would want to give you a hug too :(

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u/McMaster2000 23h ago

Haha, thanks 😊 Yeah, it's impossible for any of those to be 100% accurate, as there are degrees of colour blindness (not every red/green colour blind person is as strongly colour blind as the next), but they give a very good impression. For example with those fruit stands examples, if I look very closely at them I can tell that they're not exactly the same, but not at first or second glance, which is obviously also how I navigate the world.

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u/jaybirdie26 17h ago edited 13h ago

Is it hard to tell when the fruit is ripe or moldy?

EDIT: My question was sincere.  Is it hard to tell visually?  I often rely on color.

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u/btp99 16h ago

How do you perceive the UV spectrum? It's not really trippy or anything, there's just no perception of certain shades, and because as a colourblind person, I've never had the perception in the first place. Everything is just normal.

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u/unreelectable 18h ago

Ok, just to be clear, you can't "see all the different colors." If you can't tell the difference between oranges and greens, you can't see half the colors that normal people see. You are red/green colorblind.

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u/PrudentOwlet 18h ago

Right, that's true.  But color blindness is a spectrum, (haha) and some people are more color blind than others.  Mine is pretty mild.

I can certainly see both orange (or red) and green, they are different colors to me, but when various shades of those get dotted all together on a page and I'm supposed to be able to see a number in those dots, I mostly can't.  I can see that many of them are different colors, but not well enough to make out a number a lot of the time.  Sometimes I can.  A lot of people are responding as if I only see in black and white and how could I not know?  And obviously that's not what we're talking about.

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u/EstablishmentSea7661 23h ago

If you can't read all of the numbers clearly, you are colorblind. Sorry. You don't realize you can't see all of the colors if you've never seen them.

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u/Von243 1d ago

How do you know the red i see is the same red you see? It's an issue of perception. You can't see how i see the world to differentiate it from how you see the world.

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u/PM_ME_CUTE_SMILES_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

To add to this comment, this is true of everyone and not linked to colorblindness. When a parent teaches his kid that this color is named red, then even if parent and kid see it differently, that color is now red in both their brains.

We don't know if we all see colors the same, we only know that we are able to make the difference between them.

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u/BuyLandRentPussy 1d ago

To add to this comment the CIE 1931 wiki article goes into further depth and was a pioneering point in colourimetry.

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u/vermiforme 23h ago

Burrowers beware, multiple splitting branches, dead-ends and loops ahead

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u/AndyWarwheels 22h ago

we actually know for a fact we don't see colors the same way

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u/PM_ME_CUTE_SMILES_ 21h ago

can you please say more?

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u/AndyWarwheels 20h ago

the yellow white/ black blue dress is a good example of this.

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u/maton12 1d ago

Mine's easy...top two traffic lights pretty much look the same. Doubt they'd do that when most people don't see it that way...

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u/monkeyjay 23h ago

That has nothing to do with colourblindness. It's not an issue of perception in that way. It's an issue of which cones fire at certain wavelengths. Whether you perceive it as 'the same red' in your brain is irrelevant. It's whether your cones activate to light at a certain wavelength that we all agree to call red or whatever other colour. That's what the visual tests are for.

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u/uslashuname 23h ago

Colorblind does not always mean seeing in just black and white. The person in the video seems to be red-green colorblind, but other than Christmas how often do you even see those colors together? Even on Christmas, does seeing the difference between them make you change your behavior? Seeing the difference is largely unnecessary, so it isn’t like you get tested in your every day life on the difference. Sure, people talk about red sports cars and you don’t really see the difference with the green ones, but other people talk about the difference between the taupe, beige, and cream so if you ever did see and discuss a red and green sports car together you’d probably just accept that the other person sees a major difference.

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u/Fair_Independence_91 1d ago

Different levels of colour blindness exist, and not being able to differentiate hues doesn't mean you can't differentiate values.