If you reversed absorption and reflection, things would generally look like their colors in a
photographic negative.
(A whole scene wouldn't look like that, though, because changing the surface properties of everything wouldn't result in different shadow patterns, but negatives have bright shadows and dark light sources.)
It's also complicated by the fact that photographic negatives look the way they do because photographic technology is designed with human color vision in mind. Two things that look the same color in real life should also have the same color in a photograph and in the negative of that photograph. But the actual reflection and absorption spectra of the two things might be quite different, and they only coincidentally look identical to human trichromatic eyes. Inverting those spectra might bring out some of the differences we couldn't have noticed before.
(This is related to the fact that reflections of RGB monitor or TV or fluorescent light don't look naturally colored, even if the monitor itself looks identical to a full-spectrum light.)
Unless stated otherwise, I
do not care whether a statement, by itself, constitutes a persuasive political argument. I care whether it's true.
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