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m_d_hIt is always disorienting for the lights to switch on after spending a long time in the dark, especially if it's been so dark that your eyes have completely adapted to it. It can even feel painful, "blink, blink," so you instinctively close or cover your eyes while they adjust to the light.
But turning on an infrared vision that I didn't know I had ... or didn't remember I had ... turning on my eyes ... is different from turning on the lights. The infrared light was already there. Now I'm seeing it!
Infrared is not one color. It's not even a small band of color. People use the word "infrared" as though it is the single invisible color on the other side of red. Or would be, if they could see it. It's got "red" in the word, so people think infrared is sort of MORE red, or DARKER red, or BLURRY red, or GLOWING red. Or the color that would logically be next to red on the spectrum if the color spectrum were a color wheel instead -- Red Violet.
What about the night-vision goggles that people are familiar with from TV or movies? Those portray infrared as monochromatic shades of green, although night-vision goggles pick up all shades of light, not just infrared, and magnify them ... monochromatically.
(How do I know all this stuff about colors?)
As my infrared vision flicked on, I could see myself and my surroundings in as many infrared colors as the rest of you see all the time in your "visual" range. But these were all different colors! Completely different colors, colors I've never seen before, or don't remember seeing before ... which feels like the same thing right now (I'll stop saying this). None of these colors will ever be found in your Crayola Box of 64. They are real colors, but human eyes never evolved to see them, because seeing them provided no survival advantage over people who couldn't see them.
No. Seeing infrared colors must have been a survival disadvantage, or we would've evolved to see them. Infrared colors require more amplification than visible colors, require bigger lenses, more internal energy to resolve them ...
These cannot be human eyes. But the rest of me looks human to me, except for the strange colors. I cannot see my eyes, there are no mirrors in the room.
-----
A long-winded explanation for my "Wow" upon turning on my infrared vision. Why had it been turned off? Why did I wake in a dark room with only my "visible spectrum" vision turned on?
I don't know! But now the room is perfectly visible to me, because there's an infrared-spectrum light bulb in the ceiling I cannot reach, and it is on.
And printed on the door -- now clearly a door -- a door with no handles or keyholes or hinges on my side of the door -- printed on the door it says, "Why aren't you afraid?"
-----
There's no other printing of any kind in the room.
"Why aren't you afraid?"
I am getting hungry, but, yeah, I'm not afraid. Why does the door know this?
But turning on an infrared vision that I didn't know I had ... or didn't remember I had ... turning on my eyes ... is different from turning on the lights. The infrared light was already there. Now I'm seeing it!
Infrared is not one color. It's not even a small band of color. People use the word "infrared" as though it is the single invisible color on the other side of red. Or would be, if they could see it. It's got "red" in the word, so people think infrared is sort of MORE red, or DARKER red, or BLURRY red, or GLOWING red. Or the color that would logically be next to red on the spectrum if the color spectrum were a color wheel instead -- Red Violet.
What about the night-vision goggles that people are familiar with from TV or movies? Those portray infrared as monochromatic shades of green, although night-vision goggles pick up all shades of light, not just infrared, and magnify them ... monochromatically.
(How do I know all this stuff about colors?)
As my infrared vision flicked on, I could see myself and my surroundings in as many infrared colors as the rest of you see all the time in your "visual" range. But these were all different colors! Completely different colors, colors I've never seen before, or don't remember seeing before ... which feels like the same thing right now (I'll stop saying this). None of these colors will ever be found in your Crayola Box of 64. They are real colors, but human eyes never evolved to see them, because seeing them provided no survival advantage over people who couldn't see them.
No. Seeing infrared colors must have been a survival disadvantage, or we would've evolved to see them. Infrared colors require more amplification than visible colors, require bigger lenses, more internal energy to resolve them ...
These cannot be human eyes. But the rest of me looks human to me, except for the strange colors. I cannot see my eyes, there are no mirrors in the room.
-----
A long-winded explanation for my "Wow" upon turning on my infrared vision. Why had it been turned off? Why did I wake in a dark room with only my "visible spectrum" vision turned on?
I don't know! But now the room is perfectly visible to me, because there's an infrared-spectrum light bulb in the ceiling I cannot reach, and it is on.
And printed on the door -- now clearly a door -- a door with no handles or keyholes or hinges on my side of the door -- printed on the door it says, "Why aren't you afraid?"
-----
There's no other printing of any kind in the room.
"Why aren't you afraid?"
I am getting hungry, but, yeah, I'm not afraid. Why does the door know this?