Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

how does u play games on it

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

At least two parts of the Standard Explanation - that red cars are easier to see and appear to be moving faster due to an optical illusion - seem factually questionable to me.

The photoreceptive pigment in motion-specialized rod cells (rhodopsin) is most sensitive to the wavelengths of visible light that that the sun emits with greatest intensity. Wouldn't that make yellow cars even worse than red ones?

Putting on my PoMo-MoFo hat, the story I find myself concocting is that redness (at least to caucasians) signifies health, virility, and strength, whereas yellow carries connotations of jaundice and sickness. So the urban legend about red cars (they signify Mojo to the PoPo) persists because it's really a story about the necessity of sublimating baser urges to integrate onself into society.

Expand full comment
11 more comments...

No posts