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SAI_Peregrinusyesterday at 7:44 PM2 repliesview on HN

It also needs a bit of biology. Our eyes don't have a flat response over frequency, they're more sensitive to blue than violet. Violet gets scattered even more than blue, and the violet light does shift our perception of the color. But it does so less than it would if we had photoreceptors more sensitive to violet, so the resulting perceptual color depends not just on the intensity of the light at different frequencies but also on our particular biology. People with tritanopia (blue-yellow color blindness) don't have blue-sensitive cones (S cones) and thus to them there is no perceived blue. Not to mention the linguistic history of the word "blue" and why English uses "blue" instead of "青" or some other word, the questions around qualia & what it means to perceive color, etc.


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__MatrixMan__yesterday at 11:47 PM

There are differences in receptor behavior across species, but they are understandably clustered around the parts of the spectrum in which sol is most luminous. An earth-like planet orbiting a different star would likely have evolved photoreceptor arrangements which match that star instead. So after scratching the biology itch we'll probably need to talk about fusion byproducts in sol-like stars.

reactordevyesterday at 9:10 PM

The real question is, is the sky blue for everyone? Some creatures can see ultraviolet. Some lack color at all…

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