Color Perception

So a picture of a dress freaked out the nettubes Thursday.  My favorite response:

Anyone who disagrees, I'm at 37th and Madison, come fight me. #TheDress pic.twitter.com/8dwglnP672
— Krister Johnson (@KristerJohnson) February 27, 2015

That anyone saw white and gold is very strange to me and somewhat disturbing, though polls indicate at least 2/3rds of people see white and old instead of reality.  Even when other pictures of the dress were posted, including from the manufacturer, some have refused to concede, claiming conspiracy.  (Meanwhile, one blue-black camp member replied to the proof of blue-black with "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!", much to my nerdy pleasure.)

Of course we have probably all seen assorted optical illusions, some of which deal with color perception like the orange/brown shadowed object on a chessboard that is actually the same color (courtesy of Wikipedia):

And I presume you're all aware of the blind spot a few degrees outboard of your center of vision that is normally not perceived.

The brain engages in many such 'post-production' camera-correction efforts.  What makes this one strange is that it is such a stark contrast with no obvious solution like the orange/brown thing, and has to do with perception in such a basic way.

See, I have long used color as an example when discussing perception and objective reality.  Despite eye contruction variations and visual cortex differences, generally we can all expect that we can all agree that light of such and such nanometer wavelength is red.  That is to say, even if the output of your eye and brain, piped into mine, looked green or yellow or ultraviolet, we both know that everyone knows it as red and all agree on that.

It is distressing to learn that this example is not necessarily correct at such a scale.  It disturbs people because it is a basic issue of perception.  It's one thing to show the same facts to a commie bastard and a Constitutionalist American and have them disagree on the correct conclusion, but we would commonly expect them to at least concur on the basic color of an item.  I know sane and truthful people who inexplicably (to me) saw it as white and gold.

Of course, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to have been firmly in the blue-black camp since the first moment.  Apparently, this suggests I have superior color discernment, in addition to my being able to pick up on spatial orientation cues that others miss.

I am led to wonder if perhaps there haven't been a few Vs. Debate events where folks are similarly color-blind, or at least color-illusory.  I thought of the last objection on this page, the old "band of brightness" debate, and some others where folks seemed to me to be actively refusing to see the obvious.  Perhaps they were, or perhaps they really are blind, by comparison.

Either way, I don't feel bad about responding to their flames with equal fire.  If you're blind or daft, don't flame ... in the debate of the blind, the one-eyed nerd is king.