Comment by PeterisP
9 years ago
If you have a bin of different Lego pieces of the same color, you have to carefully look for the piece you want.
If you have a bin of the same pieces in various color, you just pick the color you want.
9 years ago
If you have a bin of different Lego pieces of the same color, you have to carefully look for the piece you want.
If you have a bin of the same pieces in various color, you just pick the color you want.
I suspect this is our evolutionary trained neural net looking for fruits in vegetation that helps us here.
It makes me wonder if there are species (that have full color vision) that are better at the opposite. Is shape discrimination simply harder than color discrimination, or is it related to our evolutionary history as you posit?
I would say color discrimination is easier because it's basically 1-dimensional. In the best case you could do it with a resolution of a single photoreceptor. If you account for ambient lighting, shadows, etc you still just have a 2-dimensional task.
Shape discrimination is a 3-dimensional task. In the worst case you need to change your point-of-view or the orientation of the object.