[WesleyJohnson]

I'm sure this isn't an original thought, but I wonder how others see colors. Irrespective of color blindness, is what I know as red appear as blue to someone else? How would you even know or describe it? "Red, like a strawberry, tomato, or apple." And they say, "Yes, exactly." But what they're truly seeing is what YOU know as blue. They see something different than you do, but to them that color has always been called red - even though, if you were to see it as them, it's blue.

[michaelmior]

The scenario you're describing seems like more of a language thing than a perception thing. We generally learn names of colors by references to common objects. I would argue that if people agree something is "Red, like a strawberry, tomato, or apple" then it doesn't really matter what you're seeing, that color is red.

[strogonoff]

Our experience doesn’t become unimportant just because it’s lost in translation. It’s a paradox that we can’t know what X feels like to another person because communication is very lossy, but that does not warrant dismissal. We are not p-zombies, we do feel things.

In fact, the argument that “what we experience doesn’t matter” looks incongruous insofar as it is made by an entity experiencing something and in fact because said entity is experiencing something—the entity has no access to anything but experience.

[michaelmior]

I'm not saying our experience is unimportant. I'm talking about how we communicate what colors are. I'm not an expert by any means, but it seems like the way we communicate a shared understanding of what colors are is based on observing things that are the same color. I just don't think we have a way of communicating our subjective view of what a color looks like without reference to some other color.

[mikestorrent]

The term you're looking for is "qualia" - one's own experience of sensory inputs, which cannot be compared with others' except through allegory.

[Nition]

I vividly remember my friend and I first thinking of this question during a sleepover at around 13 years old, as we stayed awake late talking about what seemed at the time like the deep philosophies of life. This isn't to say that it's a bad question, but more that it's funny how everyone seems to come up with this question independently at some point. I've read many others with the same question since.

[WesleyJohnson]

You certainly stumbled onto it much sooner in life than I did. It wasn't until I had children in my late 30s that this dawned on me - and has perplexed me ever since. Funny indeed.

[dc96]

Yup, always wondered this as well! The word for each internal subjective experience is called qualia.

Pretty much impossible to prove the original question until we're able to see through someone else's eyes and brain (if we ever get there, that's probably the least of our philosophical worries :D)

[cbarrick]

Have I got a Wikipedia article for you!

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

[WesleyJohnson]

Amazing. I'm so glad to have a name for this.

[namanyayg]

We know for a fact that bees or dogs perceive color very differently. But in between humans, the perception of physical sensations can still be resolved when we consider near-identical genetics.

But it's way more fun when you apply it to abstract concepts like love, happiness, or fear!

"Wittgenstein's beetle" is the mind-blowing concept for today if you want to dive deeper into this rabbit hole :)

[srathi]

If you want to explore it further, look up the philosophical aspects of the hard problem of consciousness. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

[humanfromearth9]

It would be interesting to see if llms all share the same internal representation of red. It might hint towards how it works for humans.

Note: I'm not sure this is formulated well, or even if I am able to articulate this correctly.

[14]

I have thought about this many times. The same could be asked about other senses as well like taste, do we both interpret the taste of a banana the same?

At the end of the day what exactly are our senses? Are they simply our brains interpretation of the energies that surround us?

Apparently about 4.4% of the population experiences chromesthesia in which they have a blending of their senses and will see colors or shapes when hearing music.

My opinion is that it is impossible to know and if I had to bet I would bet that we all experience things slightly different. That is only based on the thought that from an evolutionary standpoint we already have many diverse traits from one another. It's another one of those philosophical thoughts we most likely could never answer.

[WesleyJohnson]

Oh wow, I hadn't thought of taste, but you're exactly right. Fascinating subject.

[humanfromearth9]

Chemistry is the same for each of us, as is physics, so I'd be inclined to think that red is the same red for everyone.

[stevenhuang]

You'd be inclined to, but no, of the little we do understand about human perception, we do understand enough by now to say that different people can genuinely experience and perceive the world differently, sometimes wildly so.

Look into aphantasia (lack of mental imagery), anendophasia (lack of inner voice).