h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a colour blind person I would be interested to know what "advantages" there are to being colour blind?

Supposedly (vide supra) you can see better in the dark. Maybe this also is neutralised by Guinness consumption?

..that's more of a side-effect. The cause of colour blindness being related to having fewer "cones" in your eye which allows more space for "rods" I suppose.
(Cones being the colour-receptor nerves, rods the light intensity ones).

..as for Guiness affecting vision - I find its more of a 100% bonus in vision .

In the dark ages it was useful for some people to be able to see well in the dark. 24 hour light means this is less useful nowadays. I'm trying to get in a reference to the" dark stuff" here, but can't manage it.

..can't be done, as the dark stuff doesn't travel too well.

This is a bit off-message, but I read somewhere that an Australian scientist has come up with a theory as to why the bubbles in Guinness initially go downwards...but he's completely wrong and I wish to have an argument with him. .

Quote from my bedtime reading "Our eyes have rods for night vision and cones for day vision" Move back to somewhere like darkest Africa and you will again have an advantage Stay in a big city with bright lights and it's a disadvantage until you're rich enough to afford a personal colour consultant for your clothes.

I too am colour blind. Me and my brother both have Protanopia. I would be interested to find out what advantages there are to this but I would also like to know if this condition prevents us from getting any particular jobs. I had heard in the past that being an electrician was prohibited 'cos we might present a danger to both ourselves and to others whoose plugs we might be wiring and also the Police and the Armed Forces are reluctant to hire us because of problems that might arise if our colour blindness was to affect our jugement. ( The guide entry which I found this thread on mentioned briefly that the hong kong police were FORCED to take on colour blind constables because of the high insidence of the conditon. ) If such a list exists or if it is in fact a complete falacy I would like to know either way.

I was prevented from being a pilot in the RAF - but think this is not as bad a thing as it sounded at the time.
The electrician thing is probably a myth - the colours of wires are carefully chosen to be "impossible" to confuse.
Other than that, I don't know of any job you'd be actively prevented from doing - but it would be a disadvantage in, say, a paintshop quality control job (unless you worked for Rover )

I am actually quite happy to be colour blind. When I was small I used to enjoy doing the Ishara tests and knowing that I could see things that the other people in the room with me couldn't. Still, all that time I was not sure if it was a bar to jobs, so thank you for clearing that up for me .

What're "Ishara tests"?

You've probably seen them when you had your eyes first tested at school or the opticians and if nothing much was wrong with them probably not much since.

The test is a series of discs made up of coloured dots. The dots are specially coloured in the areas of colour-vision that may be deficiant. ( There are many forms of colour-blindness blue-green deficiancy, red-green deficiancy- that's my one, it's medical term is "Protanopia" - some people have no colour vision at all and only see in black, white and grey, though this is fortunately rare)

Some of the dots are special because they are designed to be seen one way by someone who isn't colourblind and a different way by someone who is. So, for instance, on a mainly green background the pattern might be orange. Someone with normal vision would spot this straight away, someone who confused orange and geen would not.

So sometimes I might claim that there is not a number there when you may clearly see that there is. You could even try tracing your're finger over it, it wouldn't matter all I would see would be a formless colection of dots.

The trick is that an alternative pattern which is obvious to colourblind people but invisible to others is often included as well.
So sometimes On the green background with an orange 3 on it, the loops may be filled in with, say red, which according to the colour-deficiancy in my vision meens that I would see the number 8, the red and the orange becomeing confused.

In fact, I often think as Colour-blindess as a bit of a missnoma, it is not that I cannot see colours (as if i could not see at all) but that the receptors in my eyes do not distinguish between various shades because a particluar colour element is missing. Look closely at a colour print in magazine, you will see it too is just made up of coloured dots overlayed on one and other is specific qualities to create the different shades of different colours. Imagine if there were no green dots say in that mixture, how the picture would change. That would be colour blindeness.

The tests highlight this problem. Speaking from my own experience there are only a few instances were I notice it at all (from my perspective the colours of the world all look fine.)I often confuse blue and purple, it is as if the red element that make blue purple is not there and so they look the same, which is of cours, exactly the case. The only thing that is obviously different is the green light on traffic signals. It appears to me to be white as if the colour wasn't there at all! This a true absence of colour for me and yet, contrary to what you might expect from that, the grass is most definately green (not white!)and the sky is not purple(it doesn't work in reverse).

Are you colourblind? So far I've only encountered to Duncun Jones (Spearcarrier) and that's because he beat me to writing a guide entry about it. As I said in the above forum, I quite enjoy the special privilege of being colourblind (as you might also gather from the length of this reply, it's something I am quite interested in)

Its a co fort to think that I have my own private view of the world, that belongs only to me. (so has everyone,in a sense, but I KNOW mines unique.)

I mean, how many others can say that they have white traffic lights?

Clive

Correction it was not Duncun who wrote the entry. It was the somewhat anonymous Researhcer: 51997.

Clive

i can actually see i colour, but i have no idea what colour it is. Of those little dot tests, i think i once took a session of 30 of the things and got 2 right... anyway, in what ways am i colourblind....
Well, my worst is Blue-purple. I only see one colour, to me the colour purple does not exist because i prefer to call it blue. However, i am also:
Red-green
Red-brown
Brown-orange
green-orange
Green-yellow
blue-pink
Pink-purple
Any dark colour-black
lightblue-white (especially on computers)
green-blue
red-purple (I refuse to believe that purple exists!)

I cannot tell the difference between any coloured fluids that still allow light through and pastel shades are all a kind of orange or blue.

Now, as far as the colours in a plug being made to be "impossible" to confuse, just hope i never have to wire up your house...

Thats pretty severe colour vision deficiency.

I have problems with red-green if their the same temperature, and dark blue / purple acoss a large temperature variance....or so I'm told, as its one of those things one rarely notices for oneself.

I believe that my brother has colour deficiency, though not as severe as my own, and have heard that up to 1 in 4 males has some level of colour deficiency.

Yes he does. He could't be a RAF pilot either, but it seems he could be a civilian pilot if he wanted to. Daltonism? is inherited from your grandfather through your mother seemingly.
Sideswipe - do you have wordblindness as well? There,they're,their.

I'm actually suffering from a very rapid drop in mental acuity altogether. I'm either tired/coming down with something or well advanced into senility...tests are ongoing
*I'm still quite worried that I nearly put my trousers on back to front this morning..something is definitely amiss*

I know exactly what you mean about the Light Blue -White (especially on computers) confusion. The number of times I've sworn blind there was nothing on screen only to be corrected by several people who can. Actually the wonderful h2g2 is complicite in this. Have you ever tried printing of a page from a forum? My printer at least spits out all the names of contributing researchers in exactly that shade of blue as to melt into the paper.

The RAF pilot thing again, can we fly or can we not? (I personally would not want to if I could, these feet are staying planted on Terra Firma regardless) I wonder why they refused both Duncun Jones and Wandrin'star?

nope, not in the RAF, not in the Fleet Air Arm, not in the marines, not in the Army, not even comericaly (well, exept australia), but you can get a private lisence. and there are some advantages to colour blindness. 1. camoflage, it is less likly to confuse a colour deficient person, so hunting is easyer, 2. night vision is offen better than people with normal vision, believe me, on a sunny day i have to squint and look at the ground. 3. it is a bloody good excuse for screwing up titrations, false colour maps, picking up the wrong object, etc. 4.if you want sympathy (and thats a very big IF) you can get it, but as the symptoms are very hardto spot if you just wnat to get on wiht life you can. 5. if you significant other can't ask, "do you like the colour of these curtains/ coushions/ wallpaper/ plant/ my new dress/ and the list goes on.

I'm red-green color blind. I usually have confuse colors of thin lines in excel plots. Actually, if light intensity goes down I have a harder time differentiating colors.

ooh long dead thread resurrection!



I have more difficulty distinguishing between colours in poor light as well.