How many colours does a rainbow have?

You probably answered 7.

If you Google it, you will get 7 as the answer. It will even return results for educational websites showing the answer as 7.

If you ask ChatGPT, it will also answer 7:

But it’s simply not true.

Just look at a rainbow. You don’t actually see 7 distinct bands of colour the way a child would draw a rainbow 🤷🏽‍♂️.

But isn’t education marvellous? We were taught (at home, in school, in books, and on TV) that a rainbow has 7 colours — we probably used a mnemonic to help remember them (either Roy G Biv as shown in ChatGPT or perhaps “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain”). And we are able to look at a rainbow, ignore the evidence of our eyes, and believe we see exactly 7 colours.

What’s even more amazing is that we not only ignore the in-between shades (that we could call, for example, reddish orange, orangish yellow and greenish blue even if we didn’t know the names vermillion, amber and cyan) but we also identify indigo between blue and violet, even when most of us can’t actually recognize indigo 🤦🏽.

What other lies have we been “educated” to believe in?

By the way, if you want to know how the ChatGPT conversation continued when I called it out, see here