Hacker News Reader

Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

I got the confetti at the end, what did I find out?

There were 2 I had to just start hitting squares until I got it right, and one of those I did notice the different one once I started tapping, I probably could have spotted it if I was more intentional. This seemed significantly easier than the standard Ishihara tests for me, which makes me question how well it works to judge color vision. I’m red/green color blind and the Ishihara test usually have me skipping a significant number, because I don’t see anything… to the point doctors bring out a basic red, yellow, green cards to make sure I can see traffic lights.

View on HN

I breezed through this test, with the exception of maybe one or two squares.

I’m red/green colorblind but constantly doubt if I am. Every few years I ask an eye doctor if I’m colorblind. The last time I did this they only went through a few pages of the Ishihara test before closing it and saying, “Yep, you’re colorblind.” I’m also able to read reverse Ishihara tests which my non-colorblind friends can’t.

I don’t think I’ve ever called something red when it was green or vise versa when someone’s asked me to identify its color. Red and green look quite different to me! However, I cannot for the life of me spot my dog’s red frisbee in green grass, or pick out a red character among a bunch of green ones without looking at each character. These are both things people in my family with perfect color vision do just fine and without difficulty.

> Red and green look quite different to me! However, I cannot for the life of me spot my dog’s red frisbee in green grass, or pick out a red character among a bunch of green ones without looking at each character.

This is basically a textbook description of standard red green colorblindness. Whenever you find yourself doubting whether you actually are red/green colorblind, just go strawberry picking with friends.

Yep. Whenever I say I am colourblind, people show me a tree and ask "what color is it?". And I have to explain that I know what red/green is.

An example I give is red flowers in green grass: I may not see the flowers at all unless I go very close.

Another one is while climbing indoors: say there is a purple route next to a blue one. Some handles I will clearly classify as blue, some clearly as purple, and some in the middle I won't be able to classify. But non-colourblind people will clearly be able to classify them all.

> Whenever you find yourself doubting whether you actually are red/green colorblind, just go strawberry picking with friends.

I'm extremely bad at picking fruit in our garden. I'll go to pick the raspberries, strawberries, or peppers and only find a few. Then my wife will go out and find several times my haul from the same plants.

It does seem like they use darker/lighter shades instead of redder/greener/bluer at the same intensity but I don't have the means to check if that's true

Reply on news.ycombinator.com