system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why do mirrors and other highly reflective materials look grey?

Mirrors and polished metals seem to have a grey-ish (I guess many people would say silver) colour to them. But it seems somewhat counterintuitive that something which is supposed to reflect the light from its surroundings would itself be perceived to have a colour. Why is it that these materials seem to have a distinct colour themselves? I guess a related, and possibly better, question is: what is this 'silver' colour that we perceive reflective things to have? And why are we able to see that something is a reflected image rather than "reality"?
gpt
A perfect mirror is not grey.  A mirror with a non-smooth surface scatters some of the light, this results in blur.  Typically blur appears to be grey because grey is average value of most scenes.  almost all mirrors have 95% or better reflection, you can't really notice this absorption if it isn't wavelength dependent.  the grey you notice on chromed surfaces is due to the scattering, not the absorption.

Silver is not a color, silver is how we describe specular (non-diffuse reflections).  We notice this affect more with non-flat surfaces (such as a car bumper) because we can't make sense of the reflected image due to high amounts of distortion.

and for your last question:  im not sure what you mean, but with high quality mirrors it is very hard to differentiate between a real image and a reflected image.  This is how kaleidoscopes work.