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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I never understood "forced classification" games like this (as an aside, it's also why I always hated Myers Briggs). Maybe it's because I'm somewhere on the spectrum, but it always seems like a dumb, false choice to me.

For example, when I saw the second color, "aqua" immediately popped into my mind. Aqua is literally defined as #00FFFF in RGB color space - no red, equal (max) parts blue and green. So it just felt like flipping a coin to me as it felt neither more blue nor more green.

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But what about the definition of aqua outside of any digital color space?

I feel like using only RGB values to define 'aqua' is a bit reductive as it is merely a specification in a specific environment trying to render a type of color but with inherent limitations such as not being able to reproduce the whole spectrum, color accuracy on the display, etc. etc. there's a lot of other parameters along with your own individual color perception that goes beyond "it's equal values blue and green within the RGB color-space"

But then as I list all these things I think I arrive at the same conclusion as you, it feels like a dumb false choice haha

I feel like you're missing the forest for the trees. Outside of any digital color space, aqua is still defined as "blue green" in plain English - I just used the CSS RGB definition as an example where it's literally defined as just equal parts blue and green.

Yeah but so is cyan, which is arguably more accurate of a name for the 100% blue/green combo that you're talking about. What I'm saying is why are you using an arbitrary specification to make decisions based on individual perception?

I could say 0,255,255 is aqua but that doesn't really mean anything beyond digital color space, so why even use that as a metric for how green or blue something is beyond a perfectly color-accurate digital display using RGB as a colorspace? "Blue green" in plain English is not solely the 0,255,255 "blue green" that is in RGB space, it's like you narrowed it down to just that and ignored everything else

This test finds the midpoints of people's spectrum. They're not asking is "is this completely blue or completely green" but rather "is this more blue or green"

This is the wrong way to do it, psychometrically, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47929056. You need to provide people gradations, or you get junk responses / abandonment, and your instrument doesn't measure what you think.

I hereby propose the Turquoise Trolley Problem (TTP):

If you say the trolley is blue, it goes straight, where there's a baby in the tracks. If the trolley is green, two grandmas die.

If you say it's neither, the trolley derails ;)

It's a fun toy website.

It's ok that there are things you don't understand in the world. It's just as valid for them to exist, as it is you are upset about it.

Even if aqua is neither more green or more blue, wouldn't it be interesting if when given the choice, the outcome leans toward green or blue to a statistically significant degree? or perhaps that there are differences in how it's perceived based on measurable factors like geography, wealth, height, weight, etc?

Collecting data is how we learn, and discover new things. Even if it seems dumb to you.

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