Dogs do not see in black and white. This is a false belief. They can see
colors but in a more limited way than we can.
It's easy enough for us to imagine a dog's vision just by using
a filter that removes certain colors, blurs the image a little and voila,
that's what they see.
Butterflies and a lot of other insects can see part of the ultraviolet spectrum,
which we are completely unable to see.
They have one more skill or rather a more widely developed vision that allows them to see
flowers as we can never see them with our own eyes.
There are many companies that claim their products can give you an extra skill...
But we won't go into transhumanism today, we will stop a little ealier.
Let me tell you a little anecdote.
It was a few years ago on December 24th. We had invited friends over
for a Christmas Eve dinner. Among them was Franck... who had gone
to do some shopping just before the stores closed.
Very happy with himself, he took some clementines out of his bag and said:
"Look, I found these great clementines, they were the only ones left. I don't understand
why no one else has taken them." We knew why nobody else had taken them.
Half of the clementines were green, but Franck can't
distinguish green from orange. He is color blind of the protanope type.
That means he sees the world like this:
So half green clementines are impossible to see for him.
And as all color-blind people know, they can't imagine what it means to see
"like everyone else".
But that's what one company promises. They sell glasses to color-blind people and claim
that color-blind people could see an extra color. Franck took their online test and,
according to their estimates, the glasses had a 20% chance of working on Franck.
This depends on the type of color blindness and its "gravity".
Try to picture it, even if you have so-called normal vision.
What would it mean to see one more color...?
For example if you have a red apple and a green apple, a color blind person isn't going
to perceive any color difference.
Everything is like, more vivid...
This gaze is itself the reflection of an illness.
It's not an illness.
I struggle the most with greens.
Let's look at the research conducted as usual tonight by--
Can you tell me which colors you see here?
Yeah.
Orange, pink, yellow, black, blue, pink, green, pink, gray, orange, brown, blue, purple.
Oh my. All the stuff you said was gray, isn't.
These are blue. Different shades of blue.
Ok. Sh*t. It's gray, gray...
I see that one completely gray.
It's not a surprise, Franck having a protanomaly, he has a hard time
discerning blue from green and red from green.
Alright, I want to see, I want to see! I think the microphone will pick up the boom boom
of my heartbeat. You're ready?
OK no it's weird.
While Franck gets used to his glasses, let's take a break. The best explanation
that I've found about what is daltonism is here, in a video
from Scishow which is a gem of clarity. But in short, the most common form of
color blindness is an anomaly at the level of the color receptors in our eyes.
We have three, and each activates for one different color frequency. Color blind people
usually have a photoreceptor that activates at the wrong frequency so
that it overlaps the action of another receptor. This overlap leads to a color mixup.
For example, in Franck's case, a green color that should activate only
the green receptor, actually activates green and red receptors... which means that
he perceives a color that is a mixture of the two.
It is estimated that 5 to 8% of men are color blind while 0.5 to 1% of women are.
So some of you are bound to be color blind.
I don't know if it's like when you put on glasses with a colored filter and that
creates an atmosphere or... OK no it's really colorful.
Oh sh*t your glasses! You hadn't seen them?
It's really so colorful... It works, it works.
It's weird, it's more that the atmosphere is... like intense
Franck is an art lover and he wanted to look at paintings he likes
to know what they look like "in reality". He chose to look at this piece by Rothko.
It's definitely more colorful than usual, it's nice. It's funny because Rothko,
I thought it was beautiful because it's like strong but dull colors
but actually they're pretty intense. I thought it was nice that it was
a little flat but soft.
This new perception of colors changes his perception of art... Maybe that's
why art is so subjective, because our very perceptions are.
But so far, we've assumed that the glasses work. That they corrected
his vision. Let's check by retaking the test from the beginning. But we ran into a problem...
You don't know the names of these colors actually?
There may be nuances that I can see now but that I don't know what
they're called... or I can't associate them rather, because I know the names of colors,
I learned that in school.
What is red? What is blue? How could you define them
or explain them to someone who doesn't know these colors? Or someone to whom
some color perceptions are missing. It's impossible, we don't have
the language to define them. We can only use examples. Blue is the color of the sky.
Red is tomatoes... which means that we don't know if your red
is the same as my red. We all learned that it was red, but it is
possible that we each perceive it completely differently! And we have no way
of checking it.
Your glasses are green? No
They're yellow? Yes they're yellow
Green, white, pink, pink, purple, brown, gray, green, yellow, pink, green, yellow, blue, pink,
pink, blue, black, yellow and pink.
There are no colors I've never seen. Actually the pink is crazy.
You'd never seen it? It's just much brighter.
The tomatoes is crazy too.
They look good these tomatoes. - You mean like the clementines you
brought us for Christmas? That's gotta be the intro!
It is!
With the test, we saw that Franck didn't have a vision identical to those that
aren't color blind. Out of curiosity, he took the company's standardized test again
from the website that sells these glasses to see if he was going to be diagnosed
as having a normal vision while wearing the glasses.
8. 2. 3. 7. I don't know. Could be an 8 but I'm not sure.
You can put "unsure". It's a 9, a very flashy one.
Why can't I see it? No, I don't see a 9.
It's weird, I should see it...
Yes, he should. I mean, if the glasses really did correct his vision
then the diagnosis with the glasses on should be that of a
normal vision. And here is the diagnosis he got:
Inconclusive! Unknown type! So funny... I did it three times before and
I always got 'strong protanope'.
At least I was something before, now I'm just unknown.
So no, these glasses don't work. But do they not work only
for Franck or for anybody? I will let you make your own opinion by
explaining what these glasses really do.
These glasses block frequencies where receptors overlap in order to avoid
the confusion of colors, and they increase the contrast of the other colors in order to help
people better discern them from one other. So it's not a correction but an improvement.
So I let you decide as to whether
it's worth spending so much money for it. Franck has sent back his glasses
and has been refunded.
Well, what do you get out of all this? Franck and I have some slightly more
philosophical reflections than usual to offer you.
Science, as defined by Wikipedia, is "the body of knowledge
and studies of a universal value, characterized by an object and a method based on
verifiable and objective observations and rigorous reasoning". (*French Wikipedia definition)
If science is based on observations, it means that we grasp and understand
the world through our senses. We cannot perceive subtleties
beyond what we are able to feel. The limits of our senses define the limits
of our knowledge.
And then there is technology. It's what allows us to see the ultraviolet light of flowers
and to convert these colors into ones that we can be perceive.
Tech allows us to capture gravitational waves and translate them into a sound track
that we can hear. Technology expands our knowledge potential but also
our potential for empathy.
Simulators can allow us to feel how hard it is to move
for elderly people, and once we understand what they're going through and what
we will also go through someday, it is easier to be understanding and
empathetic. Similarly, filters allow us to see
how color blind people perceive the world, and this understanding leads to questions
in business communication. Knowing what they can or cannot see
is important. Driving simulators allow us
to feel how dangerous it is to drive
after drinking alcohol, and helps us get the need to have
a designated driver... there are many more examples.
In this world where we are constantly reminded of the dangers of technology (phone addiction,
the danger of artificial intelligence, identity theft, pollution, etc)
and they're not to be neglected, that's not what I'm saying.
Remember that technology also allows us to better understand and conceive the world,
our world... and through that, to be more tolerant towards people
who are different from us.
Thank you all for watching this video
with its slightly unusual tone. I hope that you liked it.
Thanks to Franck for agreeing to submit himself to my tests in front of the camera and for all
the discussions we had that led to a more thoughtful video than usual.
If you find that this video has taught you something, I invite you to subscribe
and to help support these productions financially if can afford to.
See you next time, bye.