Pick any two adjacent known colors. Find the wavelength midpoint between these colors. Determine if this is a known color. Repeat until you've found an unclassified color.
This isn't an imagination problem, its a math problem.
This doesn't really work because colors are a spectrum. You can split and merge existing colors like using a single word for blue and green (like Japanese) or distinguish between light and dark blue (like Italian) but "light blue" isn't a new color. It's part of the blue spectrum
but "light blue" isn't a new color. It's part of the blue spectrum
A spectrum isn't a color, its a range of wavelengths. "Light Blue" is a narrower range of wavelengths with higher brightness value than the "Dark Blue" end.
We define a unique "color" as a specific combination of hue, saturation, and brightness value. "Inventing" a new color is just a question of finding a combination of attributes that hasn't been produced before. Thanks to the midpoint theorum, you can do this right up to the point of Plank's constant.
They are not talking about the mathematical definition of color, but how the color is represented in the mental image you have in your head. Think about how a blue wavelength becomes a blue "pixel" in your head. It is possible to imagine other colors? If we could see ultraviolet, what color would it be? Is my blue the same as your blue or what my brain interprets as blue is different from what your brain does?
The set of natural numbers is infinite, yet it contains no negative numbers.
The set of whole numbers is infinite, yet it contains no fractional numbers, except arbitrary fractions like four halves.
The set of fractional numbers is infinite, yet it does not contain most real numbers...
I know I heard about a group in Africa (IIRC) where they have a lot more words for greens, but they don't have a word for blue, or something like that. When given a test to identify the odd color out, when it's a very slight tint change of green they identify it quickly, but most westerners take a lot longer. When all of them are green, but then there's a blue one, they take a long time, but westerners see it instantly.
It's why IQ tests are fundamentally flawed. Just our launguage can shape our recognition of the world. Imagine how much the rest of our culture, education, and surroundings influence us. None of these make us better or smarter than anyone else, yet they'll all make us better or worse at different things. They're all valuable, and it's part of why diversity, equity, and inclusion are so important. These different points of view can bring so much value to us
Since you have failed to correctly define the words “highfalutin”, “dogsbody”, “apiary”, “valise”, “collet”, “haruspex”, “threnody”, or even “copse”, we regret to inform you that you are functionally illiterate and likely mentally disabled.
Brown and orange are different brightness levels of the same colour. Brown is dark orange and orange is light brown. Yet people experience brown and orange as separate colours, because we have separate words for it, while we experience light blue and dark blue as different brightness levels of the same colour, because both are called "blue".
This one’s for me! I saw a new color the second time I broke through on DMT! I can still see it in my imagination. I’ve broken through since and haven’t seen it again.
Trying to imagine objects in higher than 3 spatial dimensions.
Imagining 2 or more temporal dimensions.
Designing a system of governance that is fair to all constituents, physically realizable, and marketable enough to convince future constituents to follow it.
This one's actually kind of easy. The plot of Back to the Future (and every other time travel story where changing the past is possible) doesn't work unless there's more than one timelike dimension.
Ehh 4 dimensions can be bootstrapped off of 3 dimensions. 2 or more temporal dimensions is even easier. Cant really say anything to the third one lol. I think if youre dumb its probably easy to convince yourself that you did just invent such a system tho.
There's actually impossible colors that can be seen by playing with the visual spectrum of the color sensitive molecules. You can also play with visual processing to further see impossible colors
I'm not saying there's infinite combinations, but there's ones you've never seen and no one has a word for
Brown is on the colour spectrum, it does have a wavelength. Specifically, it has the same wavelength as orange. Because brown is dark orange and orange is light brown.
What's not on the colour spectrum are multi-wavelength mixed colours like e.g. red and blue light combining to something that looks like spectral violet. And while these multi-wavelength colours are physically different than a pure spectral colour, the sensation to a human is identical, because both trigger the cone cells in the eyes in an identical way. Which is why we can have screens that only emit three colours and still trigger the same sensations as millions of different spectral colours.