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Is my blue your blue? (2024)

ismy.blue

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Re: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

#282
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many languages considered green and blue so closely related that they grouped them together under a single term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...

grue

"grue" has a specific meaning in philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction

Re: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

#283
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're (accidentally?) hitting on exactly the point there. For some people's language usage, blue and green are adjacent colors, and thus defining a point that divides them is perfectly fine. For other people, these are not adjacent -- for some people, there's a single color (aqua? turquoise?) between them, and green and turquoise are adjacent colors, as are turquoise and blue, and it's reasonable to ask abou…

Are there really people whose language treats “cyan” and “turquoise” as distinct colors which are not in the “blue-green” family?

I don't know if there are people who treat turquoise and aqua as distinct, but I certainly treat them as distinct from blue (azure, cobalt) and green. Several of the colors around the mid range in the linked page are not colors I would use the words "blue" or "green" for. That doesn't mean that I have strict rules here; I don't actually know if I would call what you call "cyan" turquoise or blue; ditto plenty of other words like "seafoam." That's kind of my point -- modulo another poster's comment about this being a test of bad monitor calibration, it's really more about language than about color.

I think there's another set of questions here -- why is "blue-green family" a thing in your mind, rather than "blue-yellow family"? Is there a "red-blue family"? "Orange-blue"?

Re: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

#284
My numbers kept varying wildly from 174 to 189, in the same patterns across multiple devices (initial number different from stable next-five results), so I tried a few things.

First I shifted the app to use P3 `oklch(.7066 .1611 $hue)` with range (150..210) centered on cyan at 180°, same as sRGB. No change, so it's not some sort of artifact of colorspaces. Then I upped it to 16 steps instead of 8. The window narrowed slightly, but the same first-then-the-rest shift kept happening. Finally I raised the random color static mask duration from 200ms to 5000ms. Scored 180 +/- 1. Huh. Makes sense, given the image persistence stuff I deal with.

So, for those seeing that same variability I'd recommend editing that first (local response override index-blah.js, search `, 200` replace `, 5000` by hand, reload page) to get a more stable result.

Re: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

#285
Interesting!

I have UV filters on my glasses and things really changed when I took them on of off. I was much greener with the UV filtering glasses on. I guess my eyes are not picking up on things somehow.

Re: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

#286
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was having a discussion closely related to this recently because of my background in philosophy of language. Languages are functional, but not rigid. The rules and referents of "blue" become kind of pointless around the edges, and narrow words like cyan or turquoise -- even words borrowed from other languages -- are more functional. This is exaggerated further when the functionality becomes very important, which is…

Philosophically speaking, does each of us experience "520 nm green" the same way? Is my "520 nm green" actually your "635 nm red"? And vice versa? Are all of our color embeddings different despite the same g-protein coupled biochemical activation?

My left and right eyes are shifted +cyan and +magenta respectively, so, no, definitely not — but hooray for the resulting semi-tetrachromacy :D

Re: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

#287
It is mentioned on the about page but I still feel like pointing out that your response to this test has as much to do with your perception of colors as how green or blue your screen is and what kind of ambient lighting there is. Especially considering how subtle the differences are in the final rounds of the test.

Still an interesting experiment, but I would be cautious about drawing conclusions about anything from it.

Re: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

#288

As other commenters here have noted, I found this interesting but a little frustrating. The second color it asks about is clearly cyan (or turquoise). For me, this is like showing an orange screen and asking if it is red or yellow. I understand that across cultures "orange" does not exist as a distinctly named color (it only got its name in most European languages around the 1500s), but as someone who was trained sin…

People are freaking out about this test like it’s some judgement of their character or something. I just picked “green” or “blue” without thinking. The biggest problem here is that people have wildly uncalibrated monitors that often have color cast tints. I color calibrate my monitors and even my factory calibrated MacBook has a slight green tint. People should also do hue differentiation tests like this one to see i…

> The biggest problem here is that people have wildly uncalibrated monitors that often have color cast tints. I color calibrate my monitors and even my factory calibrated MacBook has a slight green tint.

Even if anyone actually calibrated their screens, many cheap monitor panels are so shitty the calibration can’t help. I bought two 4K LG monitors at the same time and based on serial numbers, they’re likely from the same batch but LG likes to mix panels on their cheaper products. They have wildly different color spaces to the point where one swallows several points of grayscale*, which means I have to use the right monitor when viewing sites otherwise I lose the subtle gray-on-white that designers love so much.

* black crush I think its called

Re: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

#289
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correctness is not the point. binary choice is the whole point. because my blue may not be your blue...

There's no way for me to answer truthfully whether teal is blue or green. It is neither. Anything I give gives a false answer. The data is invalid.

How would you feel about a test for "teal or blue" or "teal or green?" You still need to make binary choices, just along different boundaries. Would it make any difference?
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