[ExI] Red

[Brent Allsop]

Yes, Yes!
Except I'd call it Steven Lehar's theory, as he pretty much taught me all I
know and he's the top peer-ranked expert on Canonizer
<https://canonizer.com/topic/81-Mind-Experts/4-Steven-Lehar?>.

https://www.amazon.com/World-Your-Head-Mechanism-Experience/dp/0415652790/ref=sr_1_1

https://qri.org/blog/steven-lehar-lineage#:~:text=Steven%20Lehar%20is%20many%20things,rational%20psychonauts%20of%20all%20times
.

And color is just the simplest and most straightforward set of qualities.
Once we figure that out, the rest will fall into place using the same
general principles.






On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 3:49 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 06/07/2026 20:21, Brent wrote (with my additions in square brackets, to
> try to clarify the language):
> >
> > To me this question reveals why you are so confused.  The only thing
> that matters is the [quality of the knowledge = 'the experience'], which is
> black.  Everything else is unrelated, or at best causally upstream from the
> [quality of this black knowledge = experience of black] rendered by our
> perception system.
> > You always focus on everything but what matters.
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 6:27 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >     On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 6:37 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> >         A question for Brent:
> >
> >         These 'fundamental physical qualities' that you believe in, how
> do they relate to what I said about 'red' being a category of colours
> rather than an actual colour?
> >
> >         Do you think there's a different 'quality' for each of the
> thousands of different reds that we can see, or just one kind of 'essence
> of red' quality that applies to them all?
> >
> >
> >     If something with the "red quality" is illuminated with blue light
> it will subjectively look black, does it still have the red quality or does
> it now have the black quality?
> >
> > There are a relatively few "primary colors" which can be subjectively
> bound in infinitely many different ways.
>
>
> So the answer to John's question is "Black". Which tells us that it's the
> light entering our eyes that's the significant thing, not the physical
> properties of the strawberry or whatever object we're looking at.
>
> And the answer to my question is "Just one" (just one Red quality, etc.).
>
> Fine, so there's one Black quality that leads to the perception of
> Blackness, one White quality, one Red quality, one Blue quality, one Yellow
> quality, all of these are 'Primary Qualities', and colours like green,
> brown, grey, maroon, and even magenta can be explained by mixing together
> (which is what I presume 'subjectively bind' means) these different
> qualities in different combinations to produce the relevant experiences of
> different colours.
>
> Which means that there is no Green quality. All the green experiences we
> have are formed by combining a variety of the Blue and Yellow qualities,
> plus others as required. Similarly for purples, oranges, etc.
>
> And the Dark Red colour that I used previously must be a combination of
> the primary Red quality and the primary Black quality.
>
> I'm guessing that colour saturation (intensity) fits into this by varying
> the amount of White, and lightness by varying the amount of Black.
>
> So basically, our brains have a colour palette consisting of 'Spectrum' or
> 'Primary' colour qualities: Black, White, Red, Yellow, and Blue. This can
> produce all the millions of colours we can experience. Excellent.
>
> And this also means that each of these 'qualities' must have some
> mechanism to control the amounts of each that are mixed together to produce
> any specific colour experience. Each Quality must also have a Quantity.
>
> Good, that simplifies things considerably, and we only need five
> mysterious substances that embody these five Qualities, plus a way to
> control the 'dosage' of each, and some kind of recipe that controls which
> qualities are used in what amounts for each different colour experience we
> are having. And some way to create these recipes for each specific spot in
> our visual field and transmit them to the relevant areas in our brains at
> sufficient speed for it all to work seamlessly and in real-time.
>
> Exactly how these five substances do their thing (and what that thing
> actually is) is presumably still a mystery, but at least we have some
> clarification of what Brent is talking about.
>
> So now that we've tidied up Brent's theory of colour vision (or at least
> expressed it in comprehensible terms, and laid out some necessary
> conditions for it to work), what about the varied and many other kinds of
> subjective experiences we can have?
>
> If Brent's theory is to have any legs at all, it must be extendable to all
> our experiences. I'm not sure how to do that, but it can wait for another
> thread, I think.
>
> --
> Ben
>
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