this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 65 points 1 week ago (9 children)

I think this speaks to a significant misunderstanding that most people hold of the way vision actually works.

Most people imagine that vision is a relatively simple process by which our eyes detect and transmit to us the nature of the world. Not so.

Eyes are complex and interesting organs in their own right but fundamentally what they do is relatively simple. They are able to detect and report to the brain certain qualities of the light that hits them. Primarily these are: intensity, direction, and proximity to three points on the frequency spectrum (what we perceive as red, green, and blue). But this data alone is not vision. Vision is a conscious experience our brains create by interpreting and processing this data into the visual field before us—basically, a full scale 3D model of the world in front of us, including the blended information on reflection and emission that color entails.

Quite amazing! Most of this takes place in the human brain, and not the eyes. From this perspective, it is not terribly surprising that an organism with more complex eyes but a much simpler brain might have worse vision than we do.

[–] GreenCavalier@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Ha! I read the following Science new article just today about how Purple Only Exists In Our Brains. It's written for a younger audience (I think), but it lays out how our sight works, and how our brains trick us into seeing purple (a red-blue colour, as opposed to violet).

Poor shrimpos, no purple for them, I bet.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 51 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Reminds me a little of CD digital audio. The original Red Book audio standard hasn't really been improved upon because it's uncompressed audio which covers basically all of the range of human hearing within the capabilities of any speaker we could build. It's uncompressed because in the early 80's when the tech hit the market, it was completely unfeasible to include the CPU and RAM needed to decompress audio in real time.

Shrimp has more color receptors because he doesn't have enough neurons to run trichromacy, so he sees in EGA.

[–] gabereal@sopuli.xyz 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Shrimp has more color receptors because he doesn’t have enough neurons to run trichromacy, so he sees in EGA.

love this. nice job :)

VGA vs EGA, from the game 'Police Quest 3'

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I remember experiencing the EGA to VGA graphics evolution when I was growing up. I remember thinking the VGA almost seemed too real.

In my mind, this was a game that felt like it was pretend:

But this felt entirely too real:

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[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Oh man.

12 year old me waiting for hours to rip mp3s from cds always wondered about this.

Like why isn't it already compressed?

The answer is that storage was available but processing wasn't. Amaze.

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[–] electricyarn@lemmy.world 46 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] te_abstract_art@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Ruined my day tbh

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 43 points 1 week ago (3 children)

How did they test if they could see color? Did they make little shrimp dioramas or something?

[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 47 points 1 week ago

They asked them politely

[–] GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The easiest way is to use the principles of conditioning. Pair a stimulus with a certain color light, then start flashing up different colored lights. If the organism is cued to the stimulus by multiple colors of lights, it means that they can't really distinguish between them.

That's how we tested when kids lose the ability to distinguish certain phonemes.

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[–] Wilco@lemm.ee 15 points 1 week ago

They give them a miniature color blind print that has those numbers in them that are hidden if you are color blind.

[–] Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The shrimp are holier than we are because they cannot see the devil's color (it's pink 🩷)

[–] pzzzt@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] Panamalt@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That is clearly embarrassed white

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[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I need to use wherewithal more in my daily life

[–] ignotum@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Every lunar month, when there is a full moon, i try quitting caffeine

werewithdrawal

(I initially misread you comment)

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago

I wish I had the wherewithal to use it more often.

[–] Geodad@lemm.ee 23 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Technically, all the colors are fake. They're just the halucinations of a brain trying to understand the input from sensory organs.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

That doesn't make them fake, in the same way that x can mean 2. You are merely representing a given value (in this case light within a certain electromagnetic spectrum) in a useful way.

[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But is my red the same as your red? Hmmm?

[–] Guns0rWeD13@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (6 children)

if two people can both point to red and agree that it's red, that's close enough. anything beyond that is just pointless esoteric debate.

[–] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago (9 children)

I disagree that it's pointless. I think it may be beneficial to humanity (eventually) to establish whether or not there is an objective reality which we all experience.

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[–] Philharmonic3@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago

My whole world is crumbling

[–] TTH4P@lemm.ee 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is really cool, but it's also over a decade old info. I remember growing up in awe of Mantis shrimp and then, as with all wonder, this was removed from my life in adulthood. :)

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks I was gonna check

Still one of today’s lucky 10K!

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[–] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Isn't it amazing how birds reverse engineered airplanes?

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[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Really wish talking about what shrimp see didn't remind me that in farming them females have one eye removed to promote breeding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyestalk_ablation

[–] Sedathems@mander.xyz 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I am eternally gratefull the practice is forbidden in Europe in organic cultivation. It's one of the small wins that fly under the radar. It's still a long way to people choosing for organic, awareness is the start of every change.

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[–] Wizzard@lemm.ee 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

But compared with human eyesight, they could still see more 'colors' - As we see (almost) the same white in incandescent bulbs as LEDs and fluorescents, they might actually see the component colors and their intensities.

Not unlike how we may hear a combination tone when multiple other tones are played, and hear the difference (or sum) of them.

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[–] hikuro93@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I... must... be... strong... must... not... do... it... must... resist... the urge...

🎵 But I'm only human 🎶

escondidoWe got shrimp drama before GTA VI

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 12 points 1 week ago

Yeah, but, imagine the possibilities in humans

[–] wander1236@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago
[–] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Imagine how OP their colour perception would be if they did have that mental processing power

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Shrimp photoreceptor situation is crazy

[–] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Disappointed. But didn't the have receptors for differently polarized light? What about that?

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Color me appointed, at least we're not missing out on fresh new colors!

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[–] Guns0rWeD13@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I hate that it invalidates this episode of radiolab, which is, without a doubt, a masterpiece of podcasting:

https://youtu.be/jibvu9BHV_k?t=795

i saved the video at the 13 minute mark where they do the audio representation of the vivid colors. still worth a watch/listen

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[–] mmddmm@lemm.ee 6 points 1 week ago

Some hugely detailed and really certain knowledge from neurology...

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