Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, but the contents of your linked PDF, which is just plaintext, no images, is different from the Archive copy of the article shared up-thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31712453 Did the Economist show you a different article with the same title due to your location?
Sorry about that! I used the website of my academic library which collects articles from a variety of newspapers, but it seems they got the wrong one.
Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
181–190 of 424 posts
Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
#182Pet peeve about language use: I thought it was obvious that short-sightedness (Exclusively Short term thinking) is an epidemic, nobody on Wall Street can see past the next Quarter's numbers. I don't need the economist to point that out. Nearsightedness is what this article is about... a completely different thing. I've dealt with that my entire life... and just went through the knock-on effect of retina detachment, a…
Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
#183I usually don't agree with The Economist but I agree with them on this one, people spend too much time indoor and that's why there is an epidemic of shortsightedness. I would actually call it pandemic because it is affecting all developed countries because majority of their workforce works indoor and then goes home or to the gym....again indoor environment.
I heard it said that it's lack of UV that does the damage, glass filters out UV. Sounds like it might be a resolvable problem without having kids take class outdoor.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8179197/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5233810/
Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
#184Almost all children are born hypermetropic (far-sighted). The growth of the eyeball is calibrated by the amount of defocus (blur) experienced. More defocus, more growth, which reduces hypermetropia. My hypothesis is that less sunlight means wider pupils and more defocus (contrast to a pinhole camera), so more eye growth. Even with perfect eyesight, there's a 2-diopter difference between focussing blue light and red l…
Mine is genetic. I have very similiar values than my mother. So i'mnot sure if / how your theory is correct or not. Also there are a lot of normal people in the world who live outside and also don't have perfect eye sight at all. This goes back a long time. Can you also elaborate on your 2 diopter difference between red and blue light? For one i find that number very very big but i'm very good in seeing full color wi…
Re: the chromatic aberration spread, see e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3716229/
They measured 1.82 diopters between 420nm and 660nm. Visible light is a bit wider, 380nm to 720nm, so 2 diopters is about right.
You easily can see this in a dark data centre. If your vision is perfectly corrected (which normally means perfect for red-green light) you won't be able to focus on a blue LED unless you are about 50cm away.
Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
#185Quoted post unavailable.
You have no idea how language works and provided a weak example that didn't make any sense.
Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
#186But too much sunlight will cause retinal damage. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the dictionary this is a valid use of the word 'epidemic'. It's also probably the best word to convey what is happening to a general audience.
> According to the dictionary this is a valid use of the word 'epidemic'. That's circular logic because dictionaries keep changing their definition to match what ignorant people use.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/epidemic -- "epi-dēmos", "among the people".
If you hold close what the term says, and regard the use as a derivation, you develop an aware, rooted terminology.
But then, you'd lose the grounds to embrace a conventional derivation as what the term means - which is what you just condemned.
Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
You and I and a few others around the web all have had this idea of making screens look farther away, by changing focus with positive lenses and and binocular convergence using prisms. I actually wrote this comment with the math for determining the required prescription (since you can simply order them online) just a month ago.[1] I then found that the concept isn't uncommon when I discovered an older comment with th…
You might enjoy checking out https://endmyopia.org/ There's calculators on his site also for astigmatism. I think also a list of optometrists who will understand if you want weaker lenses.
I also found an older myopia submission where a comment links several related sites.[1] frauenfeldclinic.com now redirects to endmyopia.org; archive.org confirms that the old domain was the same site, but oddly the new domain has an exclusion applied. As one reply noted, myopia.org really is an excellent display of the Time Cube design language.[2]
Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic
#189Pet peeve about language use: I thought it was obvious that short-sightedness (Exclusively Short term thinking) is an epidemic, nobody on Wall Street can see past the next Quarter's numbers. I don't need the economist to point that out. Nearsightedness is what this article is about... a completely different thing. I've dealt with that my entire life... and just went through the knock-on effect of retina detachment, a…