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A comment on What If Evolution Bred Reality Out of Us?. Parent comment

Re:What If Evolution Bred Reality Out of Us? by orangecat on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @10:53PM (#12440717)
What if the energy emitted/reflected by the universe was totally in the non visible light spectrum. No one would see anything.

We would have evolved to see those wavelengths, if it was useful to do so. Like how bees can see ultraviolet markings on flowers.

And yet we perceive solid things, as if they were solid. But again they are not. We just feel electro-magnetic force.

That's what "solid" actually means if you reduce it far enough.

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Re:What If Evolution Bred Reality Out of Us? by mbfg on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @11:00PM (#12440742)
Sure i get all that.

You still have to wonder why the brain created color to differentiate wavelengths. If we could not see and were speculating on how you could discern wavelengths, maybe you would guess that there would be some sort of frequency pattern that differentiated. But no... color? What is color, really? I'm not sure i even know the answer to that.

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Re:What If Evolution Bred Reality Out of Us? by orangecat on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @11:11PM (#12440768)
What is color, really? I'm not sure i even know the answer to that.

Color is the classic quale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia), so if you did have a convincing answer to that you could be famous :)

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