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Comment by saghm | Hacker News Reader

At best, what you're describing seems like a skill issue with the people describing it. Using multiple different metaphors that imply the thing you're saying is unrelated (mind'seye, visualization, image, etc) is just bad communication.

I'm not making any argument for or against your hypothesis that everyone can actually do it but might just struggle. I just find it pretty confusing to even understand what anyone is talking about with this sort of thing to the point where I genuinely have no clue of I can do it or not. It seems like there are so many descriptions that to me seem conflicting that I don't know if I'm doing the same thing or if I'm just doing some crude approximation because that's all I'm capable of.

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At the end of the day, it's the "Is your green my green?" question and is unknowable.

You cannot describe something that someone lacks or has a substantially different subjective experience with, truly.

The best we can do is show that the effects of your seeing green are the same as mine (biologically, behaviorally, etc).

If you're curious about the broader subject, would highly recommend reading An Anthropologist on Mars.

Color is perhaps the worst thing to try to make this argument with. We can measure it with tools and there's entire industries that would fall apart if human color perception wasn't a knowable thing.

Like, the whole Apple iMessage thing with the green and blue bubbles wouldn't, couldn't have even been a thing if human color perception weren't widely shared.

We, like all mammals, have very similar neural architecture that evolved to keep us safe from predators. It's pretty reliable.

It's not the question of if objective physical green pigment is objective physical green pigment, but rather if what I see when I look at it is what you see (and not in the color blind sense, assuming neither of us are).

Except there are no people like the parent commenter insisting that everyone is capable of seeing their green if they tried hard enough or whatever

> At the end of the day, it's the "Is your green my green?" question and is unknowable.

It sounds like you're equating the comment I responded to with a question about colorblindness is a skill issue. I'm guessing that's not what you're actually arguing, but it's not clear to me what the actually analogy you're trying to make is.

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