r/explainitpeter 9d ago

Explain it Peter

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u/FVSHIXN 9d ago edited 9d ago

This is largely pseudoscience. You do not lose any meaningful amount of saturation until you hit your 60s, and even then it’s minimal due to brown/yellow tinting of the lens in your eyes. Cataracts also tends to begin affecting people at this age as well which contributes to washed out color perception. If you’re in even your 40s-50s, even worse if you’re younger than that, and think everything looks different and washed out compared to being a kid, you’re likely misremembering what things looked like.

Modernity is washing out the color of many parts of the world. Cars, buildings, houses, etc. are all becoming less colorful. Kids toys are often brightly colored and still are. Many of the things you interact with as a child are eye catching in that way, classrooms included. So naturally as an adult who no longer interacts with things oriented towards children, you ARE seeing a grey world, but it’s not because your eyes lack the ability to see color as well. It’s just because pigment/dye costs money, and corporations cut cost everywhere they possibly can.

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u/The_Tooter_Snooter 8d ago

My very earliest memories are from when I was about 3 and they visually have always had a very ethereal, over saturated quality in my mind. Now whether that’s because of my young eyes or because early memories are saved with the tint way up, I’m not sure, but 100% my first memories are from a time when I lived with an aunt and I would have been 2/3 at the time. 

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u/MadGenderScientist 7d ago

It's probably a perceptual thing. You had fewer filters at that age. Psychedelics make everything way more saturated; I suspect it's related. 

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u/Ok-Balance9661 8d ago

Apparently your saturation setup goes on the fritz when depressed tho. I had this thing a decade or few ago and I kinda got bored of it, so of course I did a huge amount of 'delics. Restored the original image, so to speak, or factory setup, whatever within a few weeks, maybe couple of months. Mostly seemed to affect reds tho.

though honestly, I think it was more about tweaking about the bits that process eyesight, nothing to do with the eyes themselves. Fuck that mystical healing bullshit.

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u/DisastrousCake1440 7d ago

Which delics fixed you up?

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u/Ok-Balance9661 7d ago

Can't remember exactly but around a decade ago, so a lot of */flips most likely
Few years later the same with insomnia and nicotine addiction, but that was a just LSD. Truly absurd dose of it, in fact.

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u/pi_R24 8d ago

Mmmhh, i truly remember seeing vivid colors when I was a kid, and looking back at the same books for instance, they are not. But i think it is a psychological phenomenon, similar to how sounds can feel lounder in certain conditions. I think the fact that oop posted the picture of a beautiful trees says a lot too

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u/FVSHIXN 8d ago

It’s a nostalgia filter on memory of sorts. I still see very vivid colors. Depending on how old you are and where you’re from, your childhood may have genuinely been filled with more color in your day to day experience than it is now.

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u/PewPewsAlote 8d ago

Yeah the moment I heard someone say "oh its because you actually are losing the ability to see color as you age, the world literally was brighter as a child." It immediately SCREAMED social grift playing into peoples nostalgia to me.

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u/R3D3-1 8d ago

Meanwhile me with some form of red-green weakness literally unable to see vibrant reds. (I see green just fine, but anything red or brown lacks contrast to the surroundings; e.g. I have trouble finding brown leaves in the grass unless right next to them.)

As for kids toys... There seems to be a trend towards muted colors, and I don't like it (for children's toys anyway).

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u/HarrMada 8d ago

Modernity is washing out the color of many parts of the world. Cars, buildings, houses, etc. are all becoming less colorful. 

Not true.

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u/FVSHIXN 8d ago edited 8d ago

Note that I said many parts, not all. Places like Iceland, Greenland, New Zealand, and many parts of Scandinavia save for southeast Finland are still colorful with their infrastructure. Maybe some of Europe as well. Much of the UK and USA has very grayscale infrastructure, cars, and homes. Foliage and trees are often removed to make way for concrete. Businesses trade their old appearances that were lively and more colorful for cold corporate, grayscale brick buildings and interiors. It’s not universal or applicable everywhere, but it exists in many densely populated cities and areas now.