How Vision Differs Across People

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]How do we know if your red is the same as my red? Take a look at this image.

[00:00:05]These strawberries appear to be red, but there's really no red in this image at all. And this is important because it tells us that out here in the real world, there's no real thing as red light. There's only light waves and the different shapes and patterns they come in. What we call red is really just an interpretation your brain invents when you perceive a certain pattern of light.

[00:00:26]And science has no way of knowing what your unique interpretation actually looks like. I mean, you could be seeing a completely different color to me that we've both just called red our entire lives. And this is our problem. Our brains could be like the computers running the code and our minds like the monitors, the part we actually experience. These computers will agree that this color is exactly the same despite the fact their monitors are set to completely different color spaces.

[00:00:53]Just because they agree doesn't mean they're really seeing the same thing.

[00:00:57]So, how do we know our minds aren't any different?