“hey, I’m colour blind!”
they ask: “what colour’s this?”
“blue”
“what colour’s that?”
“black”
“and this?”
“yellow”
“what about and that?”
“pink”
“you’re not colour blind!”

Ha! Well, we were seven years old. What do you expect?

In any case, here’s my ‘lil invention, that I sadly haven’t implemented for myself: carry around a red and green filter. Or even a blue one as well, if you need it.

Colour Perception

Allow me to sketch an over-simplified way of how we see colour…

Our eyes are sensitive to “three colours”. But that isn’t actually true. They are sensitive to three ranges of colour. Suppose you see some yellow light, with wavelength 580 nanometer (abbreviated nm, that’s a millionth of a millimetre). This lies between the wavelength for red light and green light (620–750 nm and 495–570 nm respectively). Your eye does not get stimulated for “yellow”, it gets stimulated for red to the one side, and green to the other, which we then interpret as “yellow”. For this reason, and this reason alone, we can simulate yellow light with a computer or TV screen by combining red and green light. (Yes, red and green light together looks like yellow.)

The image above (source: Wikipedia) shows the wavelength sensitivities of our eye, notice the heavy overlap between red and green. Along the horizontal axis is the colour (according to the wavelength of the light), and the vertical is how each is perceived by the eye. It suggests that light that is right in the middle of our green-sensitivity still looks more than 80% red to our “red receptors”. Our brains or neural networks interpret something that stimulates “100% green” and “80% red” as green.

The Idea

Now to colour-blind people, it is often this distinction between red and green that they find hard to make. My idea is to externalise the filtering between red and green. A red filter (a piece of plastic that lets through red light, aka red plastic) will let through red light unhindered, while suppressing “not red” wavelengths, while a green piece of plastic lets through green light unhindered, suppressing the rest.

Again these filters will overlap, but the better you can get them to differentiate, the sharper you can make their graphs as mentioned above, the bigger their effect will be on the red and green light they let through. Under the pair of filters, red light should look dimmer on the green side, and green light should look dimmer on the red side.

Resistors, Rubik’s

Maybe something like this would help us poor colour-deficient people from telling apart different resistor values — in electronics the amount of resistance on a resistor is encoded by a couple of coloured lines. Maybe if I had these filters, I would have opted for hardware instead of software!

Naah, kidding, I got by. My deficiency isn’t too bad. It presents itself in a couple of interesting places, such as sometimes having to look twice to distinguish orange and yellow on a Rubik’s cube… while it sounds like most people find the orange to be closer to the red than to the yellow (?!) — what do you think?

Canon PowerShot woes!

The biggest evil though, the biggest handicap this is for me right now, is Canon. Yes, Canon. Canon is being evil towards us poor colour deficient people. I can not for the life of me determine whether my Canon PowerShot camera’s batteries have finished charging or not… the battery charge indicator is a mix between red/green or (or yellow/green for all I know?) representing charging/charged, and even after plugging out the battery and plugging it back in, to get the light to switch from charged back to charging, to have something to compare to, doesn’t help me! Sometimes, yes, I can determine the answer with suitable certainty, but these days I simply plug in the batteries for “long enough”. Which means it is impossible for me to charge three batteries in “as short a time as possible”.

Ugh!

I see a vague 21, or some other shapes if I search for them, but I can’t even point out where the 74 is suppose to be.

Further Reading (Wikipedia): Visible Spectrum, Colour Vision, Colour blindness

Images:

• Simplified human cone response curves, based on Dicklyon’s PNG version, itself based on data from Stockman, MacLeod & Johnson (1993) Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 10, 2491-2521d (log E human cone response, via http://www.cvrl.org/database/text/cones/smj2.htm)
• Ishihara Plate 9 – public domain – You MUST NOT use this image in diagnostics.

On 18 December a Tinus de Bruyn left a lengthy comment on my about page. (That’s the page titled You New?) It ended up in the moderation queue due to it containing more than one link. It isn’t the kind of material that seems on-topic on the about page anyway. I thought I’d respond to the first third of the comment today. The rest of the comment criticised George Claassen, I may tackle that later.

Cynics, skeptics and meme-tics

Why is it that cynics always think themselves to be more enlightened? In reality, it is quite the opposite: Cynicism is nothing but a cover-up for naivety. Cynics live by the dictum that “I don’t believe it so I don’t have to know it.” What is so informed about that?

Skepticism is in itself a good thing, but when invaded by cynicism, it becomes warped and discriminative, losing its scientific value. Without the capacity to question, the sciences would not be possible, but mingled with cynicism it is reduced to mud-slinging. Cynicism is all too often confused with skepticism, robbing the “skeptic” of the chance to learn.

In this context, cynic: “A person whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative.” It appears Tinus considers me a cynic.

For instance, take a look at the website thinktoomuch.net, which opens with the slogan: “An emerging memetic engineer…” The web host wants us to respect his intellect, but right upfront, he associates himself with Blackwell and Dawkins’ fantastical meme theory. It does not seem to bother him that meme theory exists only on paper; as a crack-filler for the already-precarious house of evolution. Theory built on theory is hardly the basis for establishing truth, but this website host goes one step further – he claims to be a meme engineer; engineering that which probably doesn’t even exist. That’s pushing it a bit, don’t you think?

Huh? OK, Tinus, please suggest to me another word instead of “meme”. I’m looking for a word to refer to the aspects of culture that evolve. Consider for example the evolution of music, or art, or cooking methods, or language… or the evolution of bird songs for example. The usefulness of the word is completely unrelated to who came up with it. (It was Richard Dawkins, in “The Selfish Gene”.) I’m associating my blog with the idea of memes, not with specific people. If you, in your mind, want to associate the idea of memes with a particular pair of people, that’s your prerogative. I still suggest you re-evaluate your approach though.

Yes, taglines generally suck, being an attempt to communicate as much information about a blog’s stance in just a couple of words. If you have any better suggestions than “An Emerging Memetic Engineer”, I’d love to hear it. However, those words were chosen with a particular audience and effect in mind. (It used to be “An Apprentice”, but “An Emerging” communicates another aspect of my identity quite well, to those that I’m trying to communicate it to.)

With respect to intellect, I’d like you to respect my potential intellect just as much as I respect your potential intellect. If you see a flaw in some of my statements, let’s discuss it. Please refrain from hit-and-run mud-slinging.

At best, meme theory is a clever “scientific fairy tale.” Read Blackwell and see for yourself what a crafty author she proves to be, ascribing intelligent characteristics to her memes (after she told us not to see them as such). “Memes” (the name designed to rhyme with genes – so that it would sound more scientific) become the “fairies (of evolution) that fixes the “shoes” (theoretical shortcomings) in the “night” (netherworld between the mind and the DNA).

Tinus, please tell me you understand figurative language? It is very sad that so many people in the world seem unable to recognise hyperbole, metaphor, personification and other figures of speech. (What is more lacking, our science education, or our language education?) The tradition of personifying things seems rather ingrained in the human psyche, and is a useful way of relating to otherwise abstract ideas. I’m sure Susan Blackmore also took some inspiration from Dawkins’ personification of genes.

Perhaps thinktoomuch should spend less time thinking (as he suggests himself) and more reading, verifying and learning. A teachable spirit opens the doors to learning.

On what do you base your suggestion that I read too little? On what front do you reckon my knowledge/education is particularly lacking? What books do you recommend I read? Possibly some Dawkins and Blackmore? Blackmore’s book is actually waiting on my shelf… I have indeed done less reading than I would have liked to do. Until recently, my reason was the need to get my thesis finished. Hopefully I will be doing significantly more reading from now on. I will also make some posts about the books on my bookshelf, in case anyone is looking for some book recommendations.

And then you seem to imply I’m not teachable. I resent that. Based on what do you make that claim?

So, dear readers, does anyone agree with Tinus that I’m relatively cynical, or do you think Tinus is misguided in his appraisal of my blog and merely busy with some mud-slinging himself? (Oh, and please do let me know when I come across as cynical. I consider myself to be quite teachable.)

I wonder how many Fight Clubs there are, and how many Fight Club members. Many more than you think, far fewer than you know. So hard to tell, with the first rule being what it is. And woe to those that try to break the first rule. It just doesn’t work. Like a curse one is unable to talk about, like the secret hidden in plain sight with everyone turning a blind eye, like the Matrix, all encompassing to all your senses, like a rootkit implemented using a virtual machine hypervisor…

We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

The first encounter with such adventures, was an adventure of twisty little passages, all alike. An adventure with a clock tick-tocking at around 2400 times per “human” second, in what seemed to be particularly meaningful patterns. Tick-tick-tock-tick-tock-tock, or something like it, around 400 times per “second”. That was all that the innocent mind needed, to see into a whole ‘nother universe. The “solo” game, where only one-dimension was important: collecting gold. Simple. Enough. It was the first time we came face-to-face with magic spells, and the uber-spell xyzzy. Safe. xyzzy. What harm can be done by something that simple? What are the differences between that, and abracadabra, or even Havada Cadavra? To the innocent mind, the difference was the whole world. The difference is the whole world. But innocence continued exploring its boundaries. The next excursion was into the lands of British Legends.

Apparently these adventures of a British kind, was one of the very first multi-user dungeons. A dungeon, with a whole bunch of lost souls, interacting. Innocence became frightened, and ignored the bigger picture. It was just a brief excursion into a more mature world. And sometimes innocence witnessed a pair of more mature characters requesting something from the naive, who obeyed orders in return for some mystery gift. And the naive liked the gifts. That was what life was supposedly about. But it was too mysterious. Innocence lost interest, and dabbled some more in simple one-dimensional entertainment. Beauty is found in simplicity.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Another visit to the more mature world, somewhat less brief, took place in the fields of Elanthia. The Fields of Elanthia rode on the back of some incarnation of the GemStone. This was our first encounter with the choosing of professions. What profession shall we choose? The Empath? The Empath proposed. And the call of the Empath was hard to resist. It lured innocence in, ready to chew it up and spit out the shell. And we thought the contract sounded good. Some entertainment, some cheap thrills, again at some mystery cost. The mystery was still beyond comprehension, and would remain so for more than a decade. Was the choice of Empath random, or was there some grander scheme at work, pulling its own strings?

So here then the Empath’s task: absorb the world’s ills, by taking the ills upon itself, and then healing. Itself. Healing yourself. Only yourself can you heal. Except, healing takes time. Becoming a skilled Empath takes time. Clearly more than a decade. Why? Because healing yourself is a hard skill to learn. The inexperienced Empath is worthless, the only function he could have, would be suicide. And the patience was not yet there, the patience needed to understand the all-seeing eye, observing the triangle of trade. Oh my, the all seeing eye. Innocence ran away again. A decade. More. But is or was a decade enough?

Tick tock, tick tock.

The time has come. Or at least, innocence thought it was ready to be lost. Ready to be birthed into the next plane of existence. Ready to play in a three dimensional world. Oh my. The fear, the loathing, the exhilaration. The death, the suffering, the chaos. All to be channelled through one frail virtual body. One mind. The hive mind. And innocence took one big bite. Boom, head explodes.

So this is then the virtual world? Suddenly we believe. We see how “healing” works. How shifting the blame works. The all seeing eye, balancing the transactions, hiding the truth. Oh, the truth, why do we seek it so, when it burns? It burns… The touch… The touch of Truth.

So where do we go from here? The world of Red and Black is no longer so simple. Now we are supposedly capable of healing ourselves, for suitable definitions of healing. And we are capable of channelling the world’s ills… somewhere… dumping grounds in some other dimension… But what is the cost? What was the cost? Oh, what cost! The importance of grounding, of anchoring, of maintaining one foot firmly planted in reality… Is transcendence worth this pain? Or will the healing process stabilise, and provide infinite wells of living water, relatively speaking? To sleep, to dream… to work, to eat… to play, to communicate… The three. Third heaven. Third haven.

Three dimensions just juggle that much harder. Step back down to two, or find some way to balance three? Maintain the juggling of three, by using a helping hand every now and then? A helping hand, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, and disappearing just as quickly? Or a figment eventually finding form. A body, in the mirror. The mirror. We fear the mirror. The fourth dimension. The sixth, the seventh? Does the answer lie in the seventh?

Oh, hell, if the third dimension is this scary, how long will it take to get used to it? Find the path back to lost innocence, or start building new alliances in this new realm, to keep away the scary forces?

Ponder…

Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?

Let’s try sleep.

This is from The Bad Astronomer’s Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2007.

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