Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

neuroai.science

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 257 posts

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#181

Post by Marsymars »

reenorap wrote: post #125

The entire blue light madness is based on a poor study where N was around 8. And the difference in sleep was something like 15 mins. The entire study was based on crap but somehow the entire world has run rampant on the idea that blue light has this profound effect. It just goes to show that bad science is easily propagated, even when there's even more sources of information.

I don't know enough to defend the study, but I don't think 15 minutes of sleep is insignificant. If I'm consistently woken up 15 minutes before my normal wake time it's going to have a negative effect on me.

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#183

Post by thrawa8387336 »

stuckonempty wrote: post #165
pclowes wrote: post #32

You can just do things. Not everything needs a study, you don’t have to justify yourself to anyone! Try things, if you like them, do them! Try not living a neurotic “study” based life, I am trying it and its pretty great!

You can and should! Just don’t go justifying that your choices are rooted in science when they aren’t.

What, you think Newton relied on a study to believe his own conclusions?

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#184

Post by avadodin »

zargon wrote: post #176
zdc1 wrote: post #174

I recall studies showing that reading in poor lighting conditions is a cause of myopia in children. So I'm questioning whether we want to be reducing luminance on our devices at all. I like my (warm-coloured) lights and screens set to max brightness. I find it's easier to read and lets me work with more distance from the screen. But what about easier sleep? Could we exercise more? Leave screens out of the bedroom? I…

Significant outdoor exposure is essentially the only relevant factor for preventing myopia. I would be interested in seeing any studies that showed any meaningful relevance of low light reading, while controlling for time spent outdoors.

Main factor is genetics.

I was gaming on a blurry CRT and reading on a dim light while hardly ever going outside during my teens and I only have light myopia on one eye.

I don't know if it has ever been studied, but I suspect eye socket morphology from my own family anecdata.

large eyes + small socket = squashed eyes.

It could be different genetic factors for different populations too.

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#185

Post by energy123 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #141

I found the basic premise of this blog post to be incredibly flawed. The author seems very sure of himself that blue light filters don't work, but making arguments related to cell types and emissions spectra and circadian rhythms is not the way to make a conclusive argument in a topic like this. Science is littered with recommendations about things that "plausibly" made sense, but that turned out to be flawed or just…

Blue light blockers are a scam that was created when some circadian rhythm research went viral (in a highly misrepresented way) online a few years ago. It's a stunt to make some quick cash from unwitting buyers.

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#186

Post by Griffinsauce »

stuckonempty wrote: post #162
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #141

I found the basic premise of this blog post to be incredibly flawed. The author seems very sure of himself that blue light filters don't work, but making arguments related to cell types and emissions spectra and circadian rhythms is not the way to make a conclusive argument in a topic like this. Science is littered with recommendations about things that "plausibly" made sense, but that turned out to be flawed or just…

Did you read the article? He points out “It’s possible that Night Shift does something, but the biggest study I could find of Night Shift mode (still a pretty small study) found little effect on sleep, so if there’s an effect, it must be tiny.” He links the exact type of observational study you asked for Regardless the maximum possible effect will be constrained by the biology of the cells responsible for responding…

That sentence does not give me a lot of confidence. The conclusion does not follow the initial statement at all.

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#187

Post by storus »

energy123 wrote: post #185
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #141

I found the basic premise of this blog post to be incredibly flawed. The author seems very sure of himself that blue light filters don't work, but making arguments related to cell types and emissions spectra and circadian rhythms is not the way to make a conclusive argument in a topic like this. Science is littered with recommendations about things that "plausibly" made sense, but that turned out to be flawed or just…

Blue light blockers are a scam that was created when some circadian rhythm research went viral (in a highly misrepresented way) online a few years ago. It's a stunt to make some quick cash from unwitting buyers.

My Gunnars give me immediate eye relief after a day of work looking at a display. Are you sure it's a scam?

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#188

Post by simoncion »

aethrum wrote: post #9

They absolutely help my eyes not be so strained. If its placebo, its a working placebo. >Are people actually using Night Shift? >Aggravatingly, yes. What is the authors problem lol? It feels a lot better on eyeballs to use warm light things. Why does he care?

> What is the authors problem lol?

I'm not the author, but every time I've seen Night Shift (and things like it) being used, they've done a grand job of royally fucking up the colors of whatever's on screen.

> It feels a lot better on eyeballs to use warm light things.

That's, like, your opinion, man. The lights in my house are all 5000K lights, and I love it.

I expect you'd get way more out of reducing the brightness of your screen [0] than fucking with its colors. So many people seem to love having searingly-bright screens shining into their faces... I don't get the fascination.

[0] If you've got the monitor's brightness at minimum and it's still too bright, then there are software controls to further reduce it.

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#189

Post by lloeki »

> Is half a lot?

> No. Human light perception works on a log scale, allowing us to maintain useful vision over 6 orders of magnitude of luminance, from the sun at noon to moonless nights, whereas halving is .3 orders of magnitude. In relative terms, halving light is a tiny blip of the dynamic range of vision.

Kind of missing the point that:

a) a display emits spectacularly less light than the sun, even on very overcast days

b) said "blue light" reduction is presumably intended to happen at night where 1) any comparison with the ability to maintain unsaturated vision in plain sun on a clear day is largely irrelevant and 2) backlight itself is typically lower than in daylight (not for OLED which does PWM)

So given that the amount of artificial light to not screw up with sleep is about equal to "none at all" I'll take a cut in half of what essentially constitutes a flashlight aimed straight at my retinas any day.

> Here are four things that can help. [...] Use dark mode [...] found reductions in luminance ranging from 92% to 98%! That’s huge.

From my anecdotal experience dark mode and other low contrast themes are mostly used by people who set their brightness too high, and conversely people switching to dark mode immediately crank brightness up.

Countless discussions I had:

"my battery holds poorly"

"using dark mode?"

"yes"

"try light mode"

"but my eyes!"

"turn brightness down"

"done. wow I just reclaimed 1-2h of battery"

Re: Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet

#190

Post by disillusioned »

storus wrote: post #187
energy123 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue light blockers are a scam that was created when some circadian rhythm research went viral (in a highly misrepresented way) online a few years ago. It's a stunt to make some quick cash from unwitting buyers.

My Gunnars give me immediate eye relief after a day of work looking at a display. Are you sure it's a scam?

To the extent that there's some sort of clinical statistically significant lift over, say, however you might control for a placebo here, who knows? To the extent that it's working for you in a meaningful way, placebo or not... does it even matter? If they're working for you, they're tautologically not a scam, except insofar as you find yourself missing out on benefits promised that aren't being realized, or you feel that the price you've paid is disproportionate to the benefit because some much cheaper option exists in some sense.

Put another way, placebo or not, if there's an effect, and it's a positive one for you, it really doesn't matter. It's working.

Post reply on HN