Conflating Specs & Why Reductionism Is So Seductive

“Display P3 is the color space that Apple computer monitors use. The monitor itself is Display P3, but very often it’s receiving Rec.1886 and just converting it to P3. Rec.2020 is exactly the same as Rec.1886, but with a wider color gamut. sRGB is also exactly the same as Rec.1886, but with a slightly different transfer function.” Steve Yedlin, Debunking “HDR”

In his public discourse, Yedlin reduces every color space to no more than a variant of Rec.1886:

• Display P3? Just Rec.1886 displayed on a P3 monitor.
• Rec.2020? Just Rec.1886 with a wider gamut.
• sRGB? Just Rec.1886 with a slightly different gamma.

In so doing, he surgically removes their transformative context. New color spaces, transfer functions and formats explicitly designed to solve real-world problems—facilitating consistency, increasing visual fidelity and removing creative obstacles for designers, filmmakers and content creators—are reduced to passive containers for the same tired visual language. 

This kind of reductionist, “everything you know is wrong” rhetoric is incredibly powerful. It makes complex, intimidating technology seem simple. It empowers followers with a “secret knowledge” that they’re smarter than the entire industry. The cult isn’t just latching onto his conclusions; they’re latching onto the feeling of intellectual superiority his method provides.

It’s a worldview that defends the status quo by delegitimizing any potential successor. It’s artistic surrender. It protects legacy workflows. It excuses creative stagnation.

This mindset isn’t new. It’s the same reactionary impulse we described elsewhere:

An artist who sees a new tool like HDR as an opportunity might think: “How can I use this expanded range for more powerful storytelling?”

A reactionary thinks: “How do I make this new tool behave exactly like the old one? How do I neutralize its inherent properties to conform to my existing ideology?”

The battle is no longer just over nits or color primaries. It’s over whether we recognize HDR as a bold new language or submit to the reductive consensus that it’s just a new box to put the old one in.