From light to paint
Understand what a pigment does, why thick and thin paint differ, and why a match changes under another lamp.
THE LINKS UNDERNEATH MIXORA
One idea should
open another.
Concepts are the reusable connective tissue between tools, lessons and articles. Every entry gives you a plain-language explanation, a concrete example, a common confusion, a question to ask and sources for going deeper.
START WITH A PATH
Learn in a useful order.
You can search all concepts below, or follow one short sequence so each idea prepares the next.
How judgment goes wrong
Follow the path from limited attention through mental shortcuts to better monitoring of your own confidence.
How to ask a deeper question
Move from knowledge and doubt to agency, identity and the main families of ethical evaluation.
Color, perception, psychology, philosophy and logic in one connected library.
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Subtractive color mixing
Mixing colorants that absorb parts of incoming light, usually producing a darker, less reflective mixture.
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Additive color mixing
Combining emitted light so that the light reaching the eye contains more energy or more wavelength regions.
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Pigment
A material that changes reflected or transmitted light through selective absorption and scattering.
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Hue
The attribute by which a color is described as red, yellow, green, blue or an intermediate family.
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Lightness and value
How light or dark a surface color appears relative to white and black under comparable conditions.
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Chroma
The colorfulness of an area judged relative to a similarly illuminated white or gray reference.
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Saturation
Colorfulness judged in proportion to the brightness of the color itself.
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Opacity
How strongly a paint film hides the surface or color beneath it.
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Tint strength
How strongly a color influences a mixture, often judged by how much it changes white or another standard paint.
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Spectral reflectance
The fraction of incoming light a surface returns at each wavelength.
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Metamerism
Different spectral stimuli producing the same or very similar perceived color under a particular viewing condition.
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Color temperature
A description of the chromatic appearance of a light source relative to heated-body radiation, usually expressed in kelvin.
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Color constancy
The tendency to perceive familiar surface colors as relatively stable despite changes in illumination.
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Visual adaptation
A change in visual sensitivity after sustained exposure to particular light levels or colors.
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Simultaneous contrast
A color can appear different when its surrounding colors change, even when the stimulus itself stays the same.
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Complementary colors
Colors positioned as opposites within a specified color system or chosen to produce strong contrast or neutralization.
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Color gamut
The range of colors a device, process or chosen set of colorants can produce.
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Delta E
A numerical estimate of perceived difference between two specified colors in a color space.
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Kubelka–Munk model
A model relating absorption, scattering and reflectance in diffusely scattering layers such as many paints.
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Perception
Processes through which sensory information becomes an experienced and usable representation of the world.
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Attention
Selective prioritization of some information for processing or action.
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Argument
A set of claims in which one or more premises are offered in support of a conclusion.
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Premise
A statement offered as a reason for accepting a conclusion.
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Conclusion
The claim an argument asks you to accept on the basis of its premises.
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Validity
For a deductive argument, the property that true premises could not occur together with a false conclusion.
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Soundness
The combination of a valid deductive structure and true premises.
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Deductive reasoning
Reasoning intended to make the conclusion necessary if the premises are true.
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Inductive reasoning
Reasoning in which evidence supports a conclusion to some degree without guaranteeing it.
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Abductive reasoning
Inferring the explanation that best accounts for the available observations.
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Counterexample
A case that satisfies a claim’s conditions but not its stated conclusion.
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Evidence
Information that raises, lowers or otherwise constrains rational confidence in a claim.
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Uncertainty
A state in which available information does not determine one outcome, explanation or confidence level with certainty.
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Probability
A formal way to represent uncertainty or long-run regularity, depending on the interpretation used.
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Causation
A relationship in which changing one factor makes a difference to another outcome under relevant conditions.
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Correlation
A statistical association in which values or events vary together.
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Confounder
A factor related to both a suspected cause and an outcome that can create or distort their observed association.
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Cognitive bias
A systematic pattern in judgment or memory that departs from a relevant standard or produces predictable error.
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Heuristic
A simplifying strategy or rule of thumb used to make judgments or solve problems efficiently.
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Availability heuristic
Judging frequency or likelihood partly by how easily examples come to mind.
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Anchoring
Insufficient adjustment of a judgment away from an initial value or reference point.
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Confirmation bias
A tendency to seek, interpret or remember information in ways that favor an existing belief or hypothesis.
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Framing effect
A change in judgment caused by how equivalent or closely related information is presented.
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Motivated reasoning
Reasoning shaped by a preferred conclusion, identity, emotion or practical incentive.
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Working memory
A limited system for temporarily holding and manipulating information needed for an ongoing task.
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Cognitive load
The demand a task places on limited mental processing and working-memory resources.
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Thought experiment
A deliberately imagined scenario used to clarify a concept, test a principle or explore consequences.
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Consequentialism
A family of moral theories that evaluates choices centrally by the value of their consequences.
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Deontology
A family of moral theories centered on duties, permissions, prohibitions or rights rather than consequences alone.
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Virtue ethics
An approach to ethics that gives central importance to character, practical wisdom and human flourishing.
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Illuminant
A defined spectral description of the light under which a color is measured or evaluated.
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Color space
A coordinate system and set of rules used to represent colors numerically.
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RGB
A family of color encodings based on amounts of red, green and blue light primaries.
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CMYK
A process-printing model using cyan, magenta, yellow and black colorants.
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White balance
A camera or image adjustment intended to make neutral objects appear neutral under the scene illumination.
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Undertone
The color character a paint reveals when spread thinly, diluted or mixed with a light color.
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Mass tone
The appearance of a paint in a relatively thick, concentrated or opaque application.
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Glazing
Applying a transparent or translucent colored layer so light interacts with both the layer and what lies beneath.
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Optical mixing
A color effect produced when separate marks or layers are combined by viewing rather than physically premixed into one uniform paint.
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Gloss
The degree to which a surface produces directional, mirror-like reflection rather than only diffuse reflection.
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Representativeness heuristic
Judging probability by resemblance to a familiar category or story, sometimes with too little attention to base rates.
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Base-rate neglect
Giving too little weight to how common an outcome is before considering case-specific evidence.
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Loss aversion
A pattern in which losses relative to a reference point can influence choices more strongly than comparable gains.
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Sunk-cost fallacy
Continuing a choice because of resources already spent even when those resources cannot be recovered and no longer improve the future options.
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Hindsight bias
After learning an outcome, seeing it as more predictable or inevitable than it appeared beforehand.
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Halo effect
A general impression of a person or thing influencing judgments about separate qualities.
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Fundamental attribution error
A tendency to explain another person's behavior too much by disposition and too little by situational constraints.
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Cognitive dissonance
An uncomfortable state associated with inconsistency among beliefs, attitudes, self-conceptions or behavior.
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Metacognition
Knowledge, monitoring and regulation of one's own learning and thinking processes.
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Reconstructive memory
Remembering as an active reconstruction influenced by stored information, later cues, expectations and current goals.
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Inattentional blindness
Failing to notice an unexpected visible event while attention is engaged elsewhere.
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Epistemology
The branch of philosophy that studies knowledge, justification, evidence, rational belief and their limits.
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Ontology
The part of metaphysics concerned with what exists and which basic kinds of things there are.
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Philosophical skepticism
A family of positions or arguments that question whether knowledge or justification is possible in some domain.
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Necessary and sufficient conditions
A necessary condition must be present for something to hold; a sufficient condition guarantees that it holds.
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Free will
A debated kind of control over one's actions connected to choice, agency and moral responsibility.
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Determinism
The thesis that the state of the world together with the laws of nature fixes what happens next.
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Compatibilism
The view that free will or moral responsibility can be compatible with determinism.
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Personal identity
The philosophical problem of what makes a person the same person across time and change.
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Consciousness
The presence of subjective experience—there being something it is like to see, feel, think or perceive.
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Utilitarianism
A family of consequentialist theories that evaluates actions or rules by their contribution to overall well-being or utility.
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Moral realism
A family of views on which moral claims can state facts and at least some moral claims are true.
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Moral relativism
A family of views that make the truth or justification of moral judgments relative to a framework, culture or standpoint.
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Burden of proof
The responsibility to provide adequate support for a claim within a discussion or decision context.
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Principle of charity
Interpreting another person's claim in a coherent and plausible form before evaluating it.
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