Trippyness of Life...

[TouchN' Stuff Blvd]

The opening quote in "The Doors of Perception": "If the doors of perception were wiped clean, everything would appear as it is: infinite."
I have experienced this to some degree starring at a still life for hours... there really are infinite ways to view the same simple set up, the colors you see an object are relative to the colors around it, and if you stare at a white or black object long enough you can eventually find all the colors of the rainbow. And, the concept of color trips me out a bit itself: no object really has inherent color, seeing it as a color is completely dependent on light - the color an objet appears is only the type of light which that object tends to reflect. In darkness, all color disappears.

Also, I have heard that scientists once invented a completely new primary color, but it was unstable and only lasted a short time.... so there are a select few people who must have seen a completely new color that cannot be described or pictured to anyone else

 

[Roger&Me]

there isn't infinite space in the universe.

No, but space in the universe is expanding infinitely (that is, in the technical sense-- growing arbitrarily large without bound). Its not expanding at the borders though, the space in between physical bodies is expanding, we've verified this experimentally.

 

[PepperSocks]

the space in between physical bodies is expanding, we've verified this experimentally.

Well Jesus H. :D

So it's not getting larger at the edge of the [i guess it's a sphere?]?

Like planets are drifting away from each other, galaxies are drifting away from each other, etc?

 

[psood0nym]

Also, I have heard that scientists once invented a completely new primary color, but it was unstable and only lasted a short time.... so there are a select few people who must have seen a completely new color that cannot be described or pictured to anyone else

I think you're mixing two or more science stories, most likely from particle physics, into a false memory.

EDIT: Yeah, now I remember. There are subatomic particles that have been created in accelerators that have existed for extremely short periods of time. A property of subatomic particles is 'color,' but it's just a word. Confusingly, their are red, green, and blue color property types, which were probably named so as a nod to the three primary colors because of how fundamental the the properties are thought to be.


Like others have alluded about their childhood thoughts before sleep, I too used to think that I might wake up as someone else, and that the memory of my old life would flit away in the first few blinks of another's new day.

Then it happened on salvia.

 

[RigaCrypto]

I think most non-colorblind neurotypicals probably experience color in roughly the same way. There are strange correlations and consistent perceptual tests that are difficult to reconcile if it's not about the same. For example, if asked to order primary and secondary colors from darkest to brightest, most people pick roughly the same ordering from dark to bright.

The correlation of these subjective associations could be explained by objective experience. Even if the neural pathways for individual colors were random and different for every person, associations could be made with real life experiences, which are the same for most people. For example, fire is usually yellow/red, therefore red is perceived as 'warm', etc. I was thinking that nothing more is required for perception than an (ideally) injective function between input and experience, and further associations could be made independently. Of course, in an evolved cognitive system, many of these associations are inherited. Maybe if humans had used methane stoves since prehistoric times, blue would have been perceived as a warm color too.

However, a really fascinating case is that of synesthetes who report seeing "alien" photisms (color auras that are not of a color they've ever experienced in the environment).

It is suggested that the alien colors exist because the neurological pathway they travel to conscious perception is distinctly different from the one that environmental color perception--and color memory--travels. It's fascinating to think that a dimension of perceptual experience as fundamental as color can be added to without any direct input from the environment. It reminds me of hyperspatial perception during certain drug experiences, where spatial extension is given an extra dimension despite the fact that the tripper never experienced extraspatial dimensions in the 3D physical world.

This seems to me to support the case that the cognitive system is general and flexible rather than specialized. It is also good news in that it would support eye upgrades with wider frequency spectra.

 

[Raw Evil]

I think most non-colorblind neurotypicals probably experience color in roughly the same way. There are strange correlations and consistent perceptual tests that are difficult to reconcile if it's not about the same. For example, if asked to order primary and secondary colors from darkest to brightest, most people pick roughly the same ordering from dark to bright. Brightness and darkness are less subjective than color, as darkness tends to occlude and brightness reveal (which can be tested behaviorally), yet colors are consistently ordered in similar ways along this dimension. Yes, we can contrive all sorts of situations to make exceptions to these rules, but these tendencies will remain. Also, if asked to assign a color a musical tone, the bright colors are usually assigned high frequency tones and the dark, low frequency--again, suggesting a deeper integration of the senses where correlations arise that are difficult to reconcile if our perceptual experiences aren't roughly the same.

I disagree that this necessarily means that we experience colour in the same way, merely that the patterns arise in relation to the quantifiable objective patterns we see. That one colour is seen as dark and is associated with low frequencies, and another seen as bright and associated with high frequencies, does not exclude the possibility that a "dark" colour could still be experienced differently by two subjects. All we can be certain of from such a study is that relative intensity and frequency-relationships are matched between subjects.

 

[psood0nym]

^I wasn't trying to produce an airtight proof that non-colorblind neurotypicals all have the same experience of color, just saying there's a lot of reason to suspect it's roughly the same in most. It would be very strange that all such people have similar genetics, similar retinal biology and rod pigments, and ostensibly similar structural morphology and activity (such as in edge detection) in the areas of their brains associated with color, yet their experiences of color are all different. Our experience of one phenomenon like color does not happen in isolation. It holds relationships with many other experiential phenomena. In order to maintain the appearance of similarity between our experiences in our reports and outward behavior with others, all those relationships must superficially appear to function consistently, too. It's just a hell of a coincidence if true--one so unbelievable that I consider it more "trippyness of logical contrivance" than "trippyness of life."

 

[porkstock]

psood0nym, are you a scientist of some sort?
you should be

 

[TheAppleCore]

Some interesting information in your posts there, psood0nym.

if asked to order primary and secondary colors from darkest to brightest, most people pick roughly the same ordering from dark to bright.

The human eye does perceive color with differing intensity throughout the visual spectrum, naturally. At about, ~530nm, I believe? (which is a yellowish green) our eyes' sensitivity peaks out, and rides down a bell curve in either direction, of course reaching zero in the infrared and ultraviolet frequencies.

Although the average person's association of a color to "bright" or "dark" might not necessarily correlate perfectly with physical sensitivity.

 

[Nibiru]

We are living multiple, cyclical lives all over the universe simultaneously, but are only acutely aware of one of them.

 

[RigaCrypto]

^I wasn't trying to produce an airtight proof that non-colorblind neurotypicals all have the same experience of color, just saying there's a lot of reason to suspect it's roughly the same in most.

My point was that even if one person subjectively experienced green as another experiences blue, it would be inconsequential and unknowable in practice. As long as all associations of the respective color (which depend on external factors) were the same in those people, there would be no way to know.

As an analogy, consider computers that use different numerical values to encode the colors on the screen. Even if they are different, as long as they correspond to the same color and all programs treat them as such, it would be irrelevant.

 

[RhythmSpring]

^ Ya, but WHAT IF??

 

[explorer83]

I've also came up with an idea that corresponds to what is being said here. I think that what each individual experiences as "real life" may not be as concrete as we think it is. That being said, I have came to a couple of conclusions in this line of thinking. Pessimists and Optimists may actually see the world differently colored by their original outlook and worldview. It may be more complex than merely each person just interpreting the same thing differently. I have seen different people have the complete opposite reaction to something just b/c of preconcieved feelings and ideas surrounding the subject.

 

[socalBUD]

there isn't infinite space in the universe.

lol please prove this...

No, wait. Nevermind. Don't even try...The only verifiable fact I have come into contact with in my lifetime is that energy moves. Past that, I don't know why or how, or in what greater capacity, but I simply know that movement is its nature...

I'm just gonna brainstorm some ideas about infinite. This seems to be a concept that we as humans attempt to understand with clarity, but due to the strict limitations of consciousness/language, we only end up failing miserably. This ties in to the concept of "universe", which like "infinite", seems to be understood, but again, has only a very limited amount of concrete understandability. I think this misunderstanding is especially pronounced due to the "uni-" prefix, implying "one". Instead of "universe", I think "everything" would be a more encapsulating and true term. Because, bottom line, we as humans don't know where the universe really ends, or if it ends, and if it did end, what to call that which lies outside the universe. Anyway, the best way I can think to animate/attempt to conceptualize the theory of everything is in this way: Think about everything only having relative size, and wherever you are on the size spectrum it gets both infinitely larger, and infinitesimally smaller. Have you ever noticed when looking at a map of a city from a distance that the map could just as well be an extreme magnification up of a cell? Or possibly that the earth/our galaxy is the size of an atom in comparison to whatever larger body it is a part of? And that larger body is only an atom as well? And so on, and so forth in both directions...Ultimately, this makes size an irrelevant function of our own inevitably skewed ability to perceive "truth" due to the limitations of consciousness. I believe (as I'm sure many of you have experienced) that this is why acid is referred to as mind-expanding. You lose this filter of consciousness, and suddenly you are able to see/feel the truth that was always there...

We are watched over by a council of demi-god extraterrestrials (ie. greys), who calcualte our karma using a giant stellar calculator. Jesus was one of them; and upon realising the karmic-calcualations for sin was too great for humanity, he/it decided to lose his own eternal life to assuage our karmic debt. It didn't work, and so the gods/aliens gave up on us, and put elves in place as temporary guardians until we ourselves evolve into aliens on a council.

Oh yeah, and the aliens are watched over by a council of aliens who are watched over by a council of aliens and so on....

For as long as I can remember I've been from the Terence Mckenna school of thought that says "Not only is the universe stranger than we suppose...It is stranger than we can suppose...(pretty trippy stuff)
Totally plausible...where does it all end?

We are living multiple, cyclical lives all over the universe simultaneously, but are only acutely aware of one of them.

Kind of like my original suggestion that life may be an infinite labyrinth of dreams...Death is only a passage into the next dream...Our current "self" is only perceived to be a separate entity from the actual cloth of which we are all a thread...