Comment on Blurble
lugal@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks agoI meant spectrum as in it’s not a fixed value but, fine, I can call it range instead. Doesn’t change my argument.
What do you mean “hasn’t been produced before”? That comes with a huge burden of proof. People produce color gradients all the time. Pretty many colors in them.
And if you produce a shade of blue that by happenstance is either more or less saturated than anything else, what have you found there? It isn’t a new color by any meaningful definition. It won’t blow anyone’s mind, it’s just a shade of blue similar but not identical to other blue shades. It falls into the blue range. The observable light is devided into colors, each inhabiting a range. The exact way is different depending on language and other contexts but by no meaningful definition is a color just a single value.
Before you double down on your definition: the implication is that your definition doesn’t make much sense and to demonstrate it from a different angle: how precise are you going to measure these? Let’s say a common blue has the saturation of 63%, would 64% quality as a new color? What about 63.2%? Where do you draw the line? And if you have to draw lines anyway, why not choose a meaningful way as in defining “blue” as one color?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sure. But, again, that’s not a question of creativity, just an exhaustive exercise of proving uniqueness.
Because color isn’t an invented concept, it is a perceived wavelength value/range. Asking for a “new color” is like asking for a “new number”.
Under your broader definition of color, we’ve already found the three or seven or I guess nine if you want to count black/white, existing colors. The only way to “invent” new colors is to expand the spectrum by which humans perceive light.
Understanding how light works and how one might accomplish this takes creativity. But if we’re excluding ultraviolet or infrared because they’re outside the natural visual spectrum, all we can creatively accomplish is proving we’ve exhausted the range of available colors.
lugal@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Which is the point of the meme and I agree with it
There is a lot we can do creatively besides creating new colors from stretch. The meme is about how the human mind is creative but this one thing it can’t do.
Besides, how is your method creative? You said yourself it’s pure mathematics.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The point is based on a faulty understanding of creativity. It’s not a counting problem.
It’s not. The problem isn’t a problem of creativity. That’s the underlying flaw in the comic’s conceit. “Give me a color that’s not a composite of primary colors” is an impossible task because of how we define the concept of colors, not because an individual is incapable of coming up with a color permutation that has never been seen before.
lugal@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I think you’re conflating creativity and imagination. The task isn’t about physically creating a color but about imaging it. About a mental image of a color you never saw before. Not about actualizing that color.
You made it into a counting problem so I really don’t see your point here
Exactly. It’s even impossible to imagine. We can imagine shapes and form and stuff we never saw and will never see but for colors, this isn’t true. That’s the whole point.