What would it mean to see a new color?

fortran77 30 points 9 comments July 30, 2026
www.newyorker.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (7 comments)

josefritzishere

I dislike the color hexadecimal code #00FFCC very much and it's not even the real Olo color.

mitchbob

https://archive.ph/fi8Hy

redbell

A question I, sometimes, ask my friends and relatives when discussing the human brain and its limitations is: Imagine a color that you've never seen?

xnx

Related: Stare at the dot here for ~1 minute: https://dynomight.net/img/colors/eclipse-(255,0,0)-(0,170,85... From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44594808

AIorNot

Neat, basically a real life version of Mary's Room https://youtu.be/mGYmiQkah4o?si=L8JKYQP5JqRjyFEt

fortran77

I have a taste of this when I got IOLs last month (cataract surgery). I now see colors I haven't seen in years. And I suspect that the IOL passes more blue light than my natural lens ever did, even when I was young.

JohnBooty

I can see an extra shade of purple. I had essentially the same lens removal cataract surgery as Monet did. Like Monet, I can see slightly into the ultraviolet range, because the retina can react to some UV frequencies that the lens normally blocks! Unlike Monet, I'm not much of a painter. It really does defy words, for obvious reasons. The short answer is that it's "like purple... but even more purple" The slightly longer version is: imagine moving a color slider from red to purple and then keep going a little more.

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