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Comment by kall | Hacker News Reader

I have had my lens removed and I do experience this. To me its more annoying than exciting though. Those black light lamps used in things like club lighting are somewhat blinding to me. My glasses do filter it though.

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I as well see it, like a faint hazy halo around the black light, and it really messes with my vision. I cannot go into a club anymore, nor go to haunted houses, as the black lights are really disorienting.

I have had both my lenses removed and have implants now. Since I was young when they were removed, I thought everyone saw this until a couple years ago.

This brings me to a question I've always had: What if the colors we see are specific to us? I.e., what if what I perceive as blue and you perceive as blue don't look the same to us, but because we've always been taught that that color we see is blue, our differing perceptions lead us to that conclusion?

I know I'm not explaining this correctly, I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while.

Perhaps you're referring to "qualia"? Supposedly, it's an open question in philosophy. I'm no expert myself, but I figured I'd mention it in case you found the subject worth pursuing.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Obligatory xkcd:

http://xkcd.com/32/

That's not an uncommon question at all. This is a single instance of a set of philosophical questions related to qualia[1], i.e., the question of subjectivity and conscious experience. Richard Dawkins stretches the question a little more by taking into consideration the experiences of other species, such as bats [2] —spatial sense through audition—, and it's not hard to find more[3][4][5]

Fun questions to ask (and hard to put into words indeed, I had my share of trouble trying this exact same thing), but I don't think we're anywhere close to answer them. At least not until we really understand what consciousness is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia

[2] http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/479563-sky-blue-pink-...

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-changizi-phd/perceiving-c...

[4] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051026082313.ht...

[5] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2166917/We-DONT-colo...

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