Forbidden Colours

[Jack_Ian]

Inspired by an article in Scientific American on Opponent process.

[Zag]

Hmmm. I kind of saw it. Definitely I had brief flashes of a color my brain was quite unhappy with naming.

I have a personal anecdote about a similar sort of "unhooking" of a semi-hardwired thing in the brain. If you ever have ever tried to scream or shout at full volume, acting as if you are truly terrified by something, you'll know that it is hard to do if you don't know how. The problem is that we are pre-programmed with a certain self-consciousness or something, that causes us to do the fake shout, which is significantly less loud than a real one, and is easily identified by any listener as fake. I learned this many years ago in an acting class. The trick is just to recognize that this happens, and "unhook" the regulator in your brain that saves such volume for real emergencies. It takes only a little practice once you know to do it.

Anyway, about a year ago I was asleep in bed, with my wife sleeping not 3 feet away. I was dreaming that I had been captured by spies and brought to their safe house. I managed to free myself from my bonds, but I wanted to create chaos in the house in which I might escape. I decided to shout "Fire!" hoping some of the enemy would be confused. Of course, I (in my dream) knew about the fake shout vs. real shout issue, so I mentally unhooked the internal regulator and shouted with full panic sound to my voice.

Guess what my wife woke up to.

[Lepton*]

I just get flickering.

Regarding Zag's yelling addition, I've also learned how to do that. In fact, yesterday I had to do so in order to get two boys to stop fighting. In cases like that, it's pretty clearly advantageous to have the ability to yell both louder and more coarsely than normal. Puts the fear in 'em.

[wordcross]

I managed to settle on a red-green equilibrium, but the blue-yellow just melted back and forth.
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Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[Nsof]

[Jack_Ian]

I had a lot of trouble with the Blue/Yellow one too, but the following helped me see the effect.

The problem is that your brain can only merge the colours together when the appear to you to have the same luminescence. Of course people's perception of this attribute varies and that coupled with the fact that we each are using different hardware for displaying it, makes it difficult to present an image that will work for everybody.

What you need to do is observe the colours switching rapidly and then adjust your monitor to minimise the flickering effect. Once you observe minimal flicker (basically when it's easiest on the eyes), you should have a better chance of seeing the forbidden colours.

With that in mind I have created two animated GIFs that should help you adjust your monitor and provide the optimum environment. They are a little hard on the eyes, so I will only provide them as links rather than submit you to the constant flashing.

YellowBlueFlicker
RedGreenFlicker

HTH

[DF*]

I tried and got a sort of yellowish beige for the red/green and a faintly creamy grey from the blue/yellow.
I tried again with an idea I had about making a chequerboard pattern from 1 pixel each of the alternate colours side by side and looking at the pattern from a distance far enough to blur the distinction. In both cases I got a similar result to the migraine inducing version.
I get the feeling I'm just seeing a sort of "colour blindness" effect rather than a "new" colour that I can't name.

[mv*]

I get wonderful sense of colors I can't explain and amazing patterns when I close my eyes and gently press and massage the eyes. There is absolutely no effect if I keep one eye open.

Another funny feeling was writing a paper on a faulty computer screen. The screen had a severe blue tint and I so I was staring at a "white" page for a long time. When I looked away, everything had a very noticeable red tint. The blue tinted computer screen looked as it completely normal.

[wordcross]

mv, that's something that all of our senses do. Whenever we're presented with continuous stimuli whatever sense is in use starts to phase out specific awareness. That's why, when you put on a shirt, you feel the fabric for a bit but then for the rest of the day you hardly notice it. But then when you take off the shirt you notice the difference.

A fun experiment is to find super-saturated colored glasses. (The lenses are usually given gem names such as ruby or sapphire or emerald etc.) Wear them until everything looks normal again. Take them off and everything looks like the opposite color. (i.e. wear Ruby glasses and everything looks greenish afterwards.)
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Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[Samadhi]

That reminds me of an experiment where the subject wore glasses that flipped the image (upside down). Eventually the subject adapted and saw things normally. When the glasses were taken off, everything was upside down.
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And he lived happily ever after. Except for the dieing at the end and the heartbreak in between.

[groza528]

Word; I experienced that the first time I went skiing. I was wearing orange-tinted goggles. When I took them off the snow looked blue.