That whole article is flawed in defining 'color' as 'color perception of average human'. I don't think one gets anywhere unless one strictly separates the physical properties (of a light source) from the perception (of a (human or otherwise) sensor).

Color is subjective. The physical properties contribute, of course, but color happens in the brain.

Image search "color illusion": https://duckduckgo.com/?q=optical+color+illusion&t=ffab&atb=...

Or see (literally) "Benham's top" where a black-and-white pattern on a spinning disk induces the perception of color. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benham%27s_top

I see slightly different colors out of each eye, with no way of knowing which eye is correct.

Neither eye is correct: color is subjective.

"Who is the master who makes the grass green?"

It's a deep question.

I'm somewhat red/green colorblind.

With psychedelics, I saw colors that I'd never seen in reality. But that's just color illusion on steroids.

What interesting, though, is that I saw patterns in objects that normally seemed ~uniform in color. So maybe "software tweaks" can mitigate hardware limitations.

Somewhat? I wonder how you would measure that. Many long years ago a co-worker was explaining a control panel to me. It had red and green LED indicators. He had them backward as he pointed them out. I asked him if he was color-blind. His reply was "Yes, a little bit."

It seems to me that when everything looks the same from birth on (excepting perhaps focus. ;) ) then it is difficult to compare what one sees with what others see.

I also wonder if some colored LEDs tend to be "worst case" as they may be monochromatic and if the eye is not sensitive to that particular wavelength, it will not be visible as color.

Actually... I also wonder about how a wide gamut of colors can be represented by relative intensity of three primary colors: red, green and blue. I would expect the emitters in, for example, an LCD screen to emit light at specific frequencies. How can any combination of three frequencies represent what must be a broad rage of frequencies that form any given color in the world around us.

They use tests like https://www.eyeque.com/color-blind-test/

How colorblind you are -- or maybe in what way -- determines which color combinations you can distinguish characters for. That's horrible, I know, but I'm tired.

I suppose it depends on what mutation(s) you carry. And probably other factors that affect penetrance.

I think the tests provide an objective measure of color blindness (or maybe better described as color acuity.) I was more interested in the subjective experience. How can someone know what they're missing if they have never experienced it.

Fair enough.

So "somewhat" was the diagnosis, not my experience.

But I have known other red/green colorblind people. And I can distinguish reddish vs greenish colors better than some. But worse than others.

Interesting. I didn't know that red/green color blindness could be partial. In the case I cited, the person was completely unable to distinguish red/green LEDs so I assumed his condition was complete, but perhaps it was just the specific wavelengths involved that were troublesome for him.

Definitions vary, but the first for "color" is "A property depending on the relations of light to the eye".

http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=col...

Freedict gives:

That aspect of things that is caused by differing qualities of the light reflected or emitted by them, definable in terms of the observer or of the light

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/color

That is, colour is a perception, dependent on the observer. Agreed-on colours being those on which typical observers share common experience, is correct.

Wavelengths, pigmentation, and diffraction effects (which give rise to colour in observers) are phenomena.

The terms quale and qualia suggested by @codebolt are indeed quite useful.

(Language itself is shared agreement among symbolic references, given context.)

The term quale/qualia is useful in this discussion. It seems his wife is experiencing color-qualia in her dream that doesn't correspond to any qualia that is produced in response to light hitting her eyes, whatever the wavelength. To me it only highlights our gaping lack of scientific understanding as to what qualia is and how it is produced.