You're probably right that hypothesis better fits my intention than theory. And they're not my hypotheses, they're common hypotheses on human perception from psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process (also references trichromatic theory). Also, I'm well aware of the decreasing function of cones with decreasing light - that's why it's easier to distinguish shapes in the dark if you don't look directly at them: your retina is covered with cones at the center and rods around the edges (rods process vision without color).
I was under the impression that there were two leading models of human color vision: opponent-process and trichromatic. Trichromatic stipulates that the there are three types of cones that register light at three different wavelengths corresponding to red, green, and blue. This theory is pretty well-supported in general. However, this theory does nothing to predict or explain afterimages (i.e. seeing a blob of purple in the shape of a bright [yellow] light after looking away from it, or seeing blue when looking away from a yellow image after staring at it for a long period of time). That's where opponent-process theory comes in. It claims that there are three types of cones specialized to receive "channels": Black/White, Red/Green, and Blue/Yellow. I don't really have anything to add as far as which color scheme minimizes eye strain, but thought I'd chip in on color vision in general.
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You're probably right that hypothesis better fits my intention than theory. And they're not my hypotheses, they're common hypotheses on human perception from psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process (also references trichromatic theory). Also, I'm well aware of the decreasing function of cones with decreasing light - that's why it's easier to distinguish shapes in the dark if you don't look directly at them: your retina is covered with cones at the center and rods around the edges (rods process vision without color).
I was under the impression that there were two leading models of human color vision: opponent-process and trichromatic. Trichromatic stipulates that the there are three types of cones that register light at three different wavelengths corresponding to red, green, and blue. This theory is pretty well-supported in general. However, this theory does nothing to predict or explain afterimages (i.e. seeing a blob of purple in the shape of a bright [yellow] light after looking away from it, or seeing blue when looking away from a yellow image after staring at it for a long period of time). That's where opponent-process theory comes in. It claims that there are three types of cones specialized to receive "channels": Black/White, Red/Green, and Blue/Yellow. I don't really have anything to add as far as which color scheme minimizes eye strain, but thought I'd chip in on color vision in general.