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In Magenta Ain’t a Colour by Liz Elliot, Elliot explains why magenta isn’t an actual color. The colors of the light spectrum all have wavelengths. Red being the longest and violet being the shortest. But magenta doesn’t have a wavelength! It’s actually just your brain inventing a new color when you see both the red and violet light waves at the same time. Pretty interesting stuff.
It’s part of a phenomenon known as Qualia. Qualia is basically the interface between how our brain processes information and how our mind interprets it.
A simple analogy is a computer. The picture that you see on a computer monitor is made up by the computer to represent the states inside it. Just like the brain, inside the computer, everything is coded in electrical spikes. Yet you see pictures and text on the computer's monitor. This is to help you interface with the computer, just as Qualia helps you to interface with your brain which is connected by your senses to your world.
This is pretty crazy. All those years that went by thinking that magenta was a color. Our brains are lying to us!
Oh, the mysteries of the universe.
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Back in 6th grade, we were making badass tesselations and we were supposed to color 'em. My partner pulls out a pink crayon and starts coloring away. I got mad and yelled at him, "WHY ARE YOU COLORING IT PINK?" He simply said "It's not pink, it's MAGNETA."
Yeah, he pronounced it MAG-NEE-TA. Still though, i've hated that color since.
and magenta is my favorite color too :[
and mine too
the prefered color for me to see on my girlfrend
magenta is a real color. it's on the CMYK color spectrum.
I don't think Chris was denying magneta's street cred, I think he was just informing us that magneta doesn't have its own unique wavelength.
No, it's not crazy. It's just plain stupid! To say that the brain creates the color says nothing. What is being done here is narrowing the definition of color. I would be curious to interview the person that sees color in the absence of a brain. Hmm!
Well, it's not that it's narrowing the definition of color. It's just stating that in relation to the visible light spectrum, magenta shouldn't exist.
"Ain't is a WORD" just as much as Magenta is a color!!! LOL It doesn't have it's own wavelength, just like ain't doesn't have true cred as a word, but it's still used as a word and IS a word technically, just a magenta is technically a color.
The subtlties of the analogy really went over most of your heads.
sighs. just shows you how ignorant we humans are. dogs only see the blue and yellow parts of the spectrum. Magenta isn't a color. It isnt a wavelength on the color (visible light) spectrum. Humans see magenta. that doesnt mean anything else does, like Bees probably see magenta flowers as black or something of the sort. we're the "special case that was dropped on our heads and got our retinas all screwed up.