Is color blind right?

Question

Okay this is my friends theory, and if you really think about it, it could be true.

He says that color blinded people could actually be seeing right and that people who think they see right may be wrong.

He is colored blind to a point of he mixes up colors like pastel pinks and blues. Reds and purples and so on. The other day he said "look at that pink car" well it was actually blue and I replied "It's blue" Then he stated, how do you know? Maybe I see right and you see wrong. It got me thinking, Maybe that is true but since so many people aren't colored blind we think we see right and they see wrong. But what if God only made a few people who could see right, AKA people who are colored blind?

What do you think?

To henry d they do allow color blinded people to drive. My friend does and so does my husband. Where do you live? I am in NC and color blinded people drive all the time.

Answer 1

If I see one more answer that says there is no such thing as right and wrong I'm going to scream "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh".

If I say there is a right answer, by your thinking I must be correct. If there is no right answer you can't even say that, because you would just be giving a "right" answer. It is like saying there is no such thing as truth. If you burn the truth bridge then you don't get to cross it either and that statement cannot itself be true. Gad, let's at least adopt a point of view that allows intelligent contact. I can't believe the number of people who are willing to whisper "you can't believe anything anyone is saying, they are all lying", or what amounts to the same thing "believe everyone equally, they are all telling the truth." Sorry but this is getting frustrating and I don't know what to do.

Answer 2

Many people think anyone labeled as "colorblind" only sees black and white - like watching a black and white movie or television. This is a big misconception and not true. It is extremely rare to be totally color blind (monochromasy - complete absence of any color sensation). There are many different types and degrees of colorblindness - more correctly called color deficiencies.

It should be obvious there are several different kinds and degrees of color vision deficiencies. Protanomalous or deuteranomalous individuals can usually pass as a normal observer in everyday activities. They may make occasional errors in color names, or may encounter difficulties in discriminating small differences in colors, but usually they do not perform very differently from the normal except on color vision tests.
The protanope and deuteranope, on the other hand, can be severely color deficient. The real problem, as a protanope or deuteranope may see it, is there are far too many hue names (color names) used by most people without any obvious basis for using one instead of another. Why call something "orange" when it doesn't look different in any way from something else called green, tan, beige, or any of several other color names?

Answer 3

There is no right and wrong in seeing. It just happens to be that the majority of people see pink as pink. Maybe they are the future, these color-blind people. But what about true color blindness, when a person sees only black, white, and gray?

For the convenience fo the majority, traffic lights are red, green, and amber. But why don't they let color blind people drive? Surely they know that when the top signal is one, it means stop, and so on. I think traffic lights are international in their set-up. Signs are recognized by shapes, not color, so that's no problem.
It would be interesting to see paintings by color-blind people.

Answer 4

Well - my grandfather was color blind and he said that what he saw for certain colors was grey. So he would look at a stoplight and when a particular place went grey he know it was on. If they had ever changed the positions he would have been in trouble.
I don't think the concept that only color blind people are seeing it right can be possibly correct. I understand what you are saying but it doesn't ring true to me at all.

Answer 5

You could extend this argument in any number of directions if you wanted to. What if blind people are 'right' and everyone else is just hallucinating? What if solipsists are right and there ARE no other people?

Ultimately, the best disproof of this is correlation. We can measure wavelengths of light with instruments. People who see colours can reliably predict what your instrument is going to say. People who are colourblind cannot. This suggests that colourblind people really do lack a capability that others really do have. Likewise, all people who see colours tend to see the same colour... they agree with each other (more or less). That is further evidence that this is not a hallucination, but a common, accurate perception.

You can see the same thing with people who can detect magnetic north with their nose. This sounds odd, but some people can actually DO this. And you can tell by comparing it to a compass. On the other hand, there is no instrument that can detect what a person on LSD is seeing... they really ARE hallucinating!

Answer 6

There is no such thing as right and wrong :-)~

No seriously people are color blind because multiple frequencies of light appear as the same color to a color impaired individual (they take offense to being called color blind). Its not as if a color blind person sees blue and thinks its chartruse, rather they see red and think its grey. The reason everyone always says canines are color blind is becuase the have only a quarter amount of cones in their eyes as homo sapiens.

Answer 7

The answer is this: the car is neither blue nor pink, but painted metal. Light bounces off the paint, and a portion of the light is absorbed. The remaining light hits your eye, and carries a particular wavelength. Your brain assigns the sensation "blue" to that wavelength. THE ONLY PLACE THE BLUE EXISTS IS IN YOUR MIND, NOT IN THE CAR.

If you truly understand this, it can blow your mind.

The other thing that is true is that your friend cannot distinguish the wavelengths of light as well as you can. He has the same sensation for several different wavelengths, while you have multiple different sensations. There's no "right" or "wrong" about it. But, your vision is better at discerning variations among wavelengths of visible light.

Answer 8

What is thought of as reality is just agreement. If the majority of people think that this is the way it is, then it is that way (and everybody who disagrees is crazy and locked up and drugged out of their minds).

Even science is dependent upon this agreement. If you do an experiment and find that apples fall from trees, you still depend upon other people to agree with you.

There is an agreement about what reality is. Most people pretty much agree with it. Thats fine. That is what reality is for them. Other people may see things differently. Well fair enough, maybe your view is correct for you, and their view is correct for them.

It only ever becomes a problem when you try to communicate with someone who has a different view of reality. In that case you both need to remember that the other person has a right to their own view and you shouldn't try to force your view down their throat. That way you will get along just fine.

Answer 9

Your friend is wrong. To understand why he is color blind and we are not you have to understand why we see color.
Colors are grouped into a visible spectrum.
Red is the first color in the visible spectrum and violet is the last. When we see color what we are actually seeing is frequencies in light waves.
The frequency of visible light is referred to as color, and ranges from 430 trillion Hz, seen as red, to 750 trillion Hz, seen as violet. Again, the full range of frequencies extends beyond the visible spectrum, from less than one billion Hz, as in radio waves, to greater than 3 billion billion Hz, as in gamma rays.
Conclusion. Your friends eye is not properly reading the frequencies in light Waves which is why he is color blind. Take man made colors for example.
i.e. A blue t shirt. The t shirt itself is not actually blue. Whats happening is the t shirt is dyed and the dye absorbs a certain amount of light waves. The reflecting remainder of the light waves is the color. Hence, your friends eye does not properly read the frequencies in light waves.

Answer 10

You can tell him your eyesight is better, (even though I know you don't want to hurt his feelings), because you can simply see more colors in the rainbow than he can. There is also a color blind test where, if a person's eyesight is good, they will see numbers in a diagram whereas the color deficient person can't. The fact that you see pink and blue, whereas he can't, is proof that you see better.