Colors and Liars, but not Colored Liars.
The human eye is a vastly complex thing, and while those proponents of Intelligent Design will tell you there is no use for half an eye, the human brain shows otherwise. Apparently, when your eye first started developing the only light waves that were provided were the blues. As a result blue makes up the smallest portion of what your brain determines the luminance of an object to be. Later on your brain developed red and finally green to give you what you see today. As a result of this order, luminance can be broken down into ratios as follows: Y' = 0.299 R' + 0.587 G' + 0.114 B'(the modern HDTVs use a slightly different algorithm). Given that green makes up the largest portion it should come as no surprise that traditional fighter jets used Red for the HUD display and Green for targets. Less than a decade ago the air force did a study to find out what the best combination is and to their surprise just the opposite has a better reaction time (Green for HUD and Red for targets). Perplexing at best.
When we are young we believe everything we hear, but somewhere in our early childhood we learn to lie, or at least that people do lie. At some point, most of us try to lie ourselves, and if we're smart get away with it. The standard for lying appears to go like so: I did/know/am x, but I don't want so-and-so to know that so I will pretend y. At first this is sufficient, but eventually people ask questions about y (whether they accept it or not), so y becomes Universe y (denoted as Y and Universe x denoted as X). If we are clever we choose a Y such that so-and-so does not have the means at their disposal to disprove Y (things like saying Y is an opinion, or based on opinions, or make Y a very small devation from X). Without the means to disprove Y any attempt to call Y a lie is unsubstantiatible. However, time and again people who have no means to disprove Y end up disbelieving Y. We assume this is foolish and become very adamant about Y being true, because for all they know it is true, and fail to relies why they disbelieve Y.
So now you must be asking yourself "what do these two things, colors for a HUD display on a fighter jet and algebraically analyzing lies, have to do with one another?" And the truth probably is nothing, but I found the answer to one in the other. Why do people respond more quickly to red than the brighter green? It wasn't until I was outside crossing a street that I figured it out. Social conditioning. Red means stop, Green means go. If you mistake Green for Red you've made a type I statistical error (false negative) and the worse that happens is you get honked at, but god forbid you make the opposite error. In fact, the presence of red in streetlights and other stop signs combined with our desire to avoid these type II statistical errors (false positive) as caused a social norm to be attacked to the color red. We are conditioned by interaction with it to see it as a warning sign and thus it finds our attention quicker than any other color, and in fact we'll find the same can be said about liars. Liars, while clever enough to create universes we cannot disprove, are after all human, and thus have tell tail signs. Some stutter, some take too long thinking, others elaborate too much. All of these signs, while having little to do with the lies themselves, are picked up by the so-and-so characters over time, as the lies they have told are revealed to them. These "tricks" allow us to pick out liars based solely on social conditioning.
So, next time someone doubts your lie, remember, it may not have anything to do with the lie itself.
taken from: And then there was Society by Jim Tzenes
The human eye is a vastly complex thing, and while those proponents of Intelligent Design will tell you there is no use for half an eye, the human brain shows otherwise. Apparently, when your eye first started developing the only light waves that were provided were the blues. As a result blue makes up the smallest portion of what your brain determines the luminance of an object to be. Later on your brain developed red and finally green to give you what you see today. As a result of this order, luminance can be broken down into ratios as follows: Y' = 0.299 R' + 0.587 G' + 0.114 B'(the modern HDTVs use a slightly different algorithm). Given that green makes up the largest portion it should come as no surprise that traditional fighter jets used Red for the HUD display and Green for targets. Less than a decade ago the air force did a study to find out what the best combination is and to their surprise just the opposite has a better reaction time (Green for HUD and Red for targets). Perplexing at best.
When we are young we believe everything we hear, but somewhere in our early childhood we learn to lie, or at least that people do lie. At some point, most of us try to lie ourselves, and if we're smart get away with it. The standard for lying appears to go like so: I did/know/am x, but I don't want so-and-so to know that so I will pretend y. At first this is sufficient, but eventually people ask questions about y (whether they accept it or not), so y becomes Universe y (denoted as Y and Universe x denoted as X). If we are clever we choose a Y such that so-and-so does not have the means at their disposal to disprove Y (things like saying Y is an opinion, or based on opinions, or make Y a very small devation from X). Without the means to disprove Y any attempt to call Y a lie is unsubstantiatible. However, time and again people who have no means to disprove Y end up disbelieving Y. We assume this is foolish and become very adamant about Y being true, because for all they know it is true, and fail to relies why they disbelieve Y.
So now you must be asking yourself "what do these two things, colors for a HUD display on a fighter jet and algebraically analyzing lies, have to do with one another?" And the truth probably is nothing, but I found the answer to one in the other. Why do people respond more quickly to red than the brighter green? It wasn't until I was outside crossing a street that I figured it out. Social conditioning. Red means stop, Green means go. If you mistake Green for Red you've made a type I statistical error (false negative) and the worse that happens is you get honked at, but god forbid you make the opposite error. In fact, the presence of red in streetlights and other stop signs combined with our desire to avoid these type II statistical errors (false positive) as caused a social norm to be attacked to the color red. We are conditioned by interaction with it to see it as a warning sign and thus it finds our attention quicker than any other color, and in fact we'll find the same can be said about liars. Liars, while clever enough to create universes we cannot disprove, are after all human, and thus have tell tail signs. Some stutter, some take too long thinking, others elaborate too much. All of these signs, while having little to do with the lies themselves, are picked up by the so-and-so characters over time, as the lies they have told are revealed to them. These "tricks" allow us to pick out liars based solely on social conditioning.
So, next time someone doubts your lie, remember, it may not have anything to do with the lie itself.
taken from: And then there was Society by Jim Tzenes
posted by jim at 8/22/2005 01:35:00 PM
4 Comments:
That is an interesting theory, but I wouldn't discount some instinctual reasoning behind ignoring green, but noticing red.
Toads in the Amazon rainforest and for that matter poisonous creatures around the world color themselves brightly as a warning system. This is exactly the opposite of the way that most non-poisonous species tend to camoflauge themselves. Red is one color that such species use to distinguish themselves. It doesn't make sense that they distinguish themselves with the color green. This is because most of the vegitation on the world is green (because of chlorophyll), and so we learn that the color green is the color of that which is harmless (vegitation) while red and other bright colors are that which is harmful (poison).
Also, berries and many fruits are red, so it is reasonable to surmise that we look for the color red when searching for food as well. Such fruits seem to often be colored red specifically for attracting animals to eat it and spead its seeds in their feces, so this is more like a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" situation, but it is something to think about.
In autumn the leaves turn red, and in winter they are gone. As if that was not enough alone, the dirt on the ground can range from brown to red to yellow. Its a funny thing about poisonous frogs, but if I remember correctly, all but a few have at least some green in their color. If red was such an important color from a survival of the fittest stand point, why does it get shafted when we talk about luminance? If its presence was of the utmost importance to survival, don't you think it would factor in more than 30% to greens 60? Instead its presence correlates to its chronological importance rather than survival. But then again, I'm always saying how correlations are almost meaningless.
I wasn't disagreeing with the idea that which one is the most luminous to us is so because of the order in which we developed our ability to sense color, but I was offering an instinctual reason that we may have since given certain colors priority in how we notice them.
Perhaps, we should get some baby fighter pilots to help us determine if we notice red more from mental conditioning or from instincts.
I would surmise that it is likely the latter. We didn't make stop signs red and yellow for no reason. We made them these bright colors because we have known all along that they are the ones that psychologically stand out the most to us.
Also, I'd like to suggest that when we do see red and yellow, it is often much more bright, so luminance is not as much a factor. This could be an alternate explanation of how we have come to treat green with such luministic (neologism, I'm sure.) priority.
Anyway, this is a great subject. It makes you think.
One of the best ways to know if someone is lying is to just know them really well. If you know someone well enough, you not only know what is "in their character", you know what makes them act "out of character", and can start to recognize patterns in behavior.
This seems to support your idea on the colors; we recognize the pattern that "red" is dangerous and act accordingly.
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