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Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

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Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#421

Post by philipov »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #414
shawnz wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if dark mode "feels" better that still doesn't imply it actually causes less eye strain. Without data it's possible OP's choice could be driven just by aesthetic preferences and they don't realize it.

I don't see in the study linked in the article where it attributes light mode to more eye strain. I found where blue light causes eye strain, and it most certainly does, I immediately notice the difference when using a blue light filter on my monitor, but you can have both dark mode and a blue light filter enabled. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6020759/ Anecdotally, dark mode causes my eyes and my part…

What's a post limit? I've never encountered such a thing.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#422

Post by jonathanstrange »

taneq wrote: post #322
onli wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to be wrong even about your own perception. You might think you like the dark mode because it strains your eyes less, but in reality you just like how it looks and you strain your eyes more, being more fatigued at the end of the day without even noticing. Or the other direction. This whole "those studies are studies of how other people experienced X" is a typical argumentation scheme of esoteric fields like…

So you're telling me I'm wrong and I actually like bright mode more than dark mode? We are literally discussing my subjective experiences here . And you're telling me I'm wrong. About my subjective experiences. Ohhh-kay.

The hidden assumption you make is discussed as the Preference Satisfaction Thesis in the philosophy of welfare economics, it's the idea that people (subjectively) prefer what is best for them. Almost everybody agrees that the thesis is generally speaking false, although some people would argue that you should accept the preference satisfaction thesis as a rule of thumb if you are an ethical anti-paternalists.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, you could be like the smoker who prefers to have another cigarette even though it's bad for him. Not only that, it's even possible to find examples of people being wrong about their own subjective experiences. For example, people sometimes have cyclic personal preferences and one of the arguments against them is that their subjective feelings are wrong.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#423

Post by Aardwolf »

Why is dark mode treated as something new since around a year or so?

Look at 70's terminals and 80's DOS computers. Notice how they are green on black, light gray on black or amber on black: dark mode.

Look at code editors from the 90s or early 2000s. They allowed choosing color schemes, many of which were light text on dark background.

Look at websites from the 90s and mid 2000s: there was still some diversity in design back then, some allowed switching CSS color schemes by the user.

Look at Windows 3.11, Windows 98, XP, etc...: allowed changing all the colors of everything (no clue how the situation in Windows 10 is).

Android also has been having white text on black in various iterations of early to recent versions, especially for OLED screens.

Etc...

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#424

Post by marcus_holmes »

shawnz wrote: post #393
marcus_holmes wrote: post #241

Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment? No. No it doesn't. 1. I don't have that much faith in scientists. Someone trying to p-hack their way to a publishable result that's sensational enough to advance their career is not going to produce good advice for me. 2. Even if they were perfect scientists, they're not using my eyebal…

> Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment? Of course. All you are measuring is how comfortable you feel , which is irrelevant. What they are measuring is how well people actually perform on tasks while using dark mode. Just because dark mode feels better to you doesn't imply anything about the latter question.

I feel more productive when using dark mode.

Better?

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#425

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #419
guykdm wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this commentator invested far less effort than the scientists in reaching his result about dark mode, he also has no benefits from you choosing to believe him or not. You are in fact choosing to see the brand "science" as something transcendental that doesn't concern any incentive structures, which if false and opens you to lots of manipulation.

I am just wondering does the author alao distrust science when it comes to medical treatments and the law of gravity, or does is his distrust highly selective.

Medical treatments can be really faulty too.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#426

Post by waffletower »

This article is the epitome of faulty generalization. Visual astigmatism is one of the most common eye conditions. Reducing the quantity of light on the screen greatly reduces glare and light scatter for those effected. And this is only one eye condition where illuminated black on white printing is far less than ideal.

Some readers, particularly those who are older, have a large number of "eye floaters", fibers that float in the vitreous of the eye. Illuminated black on white printing exposes these far more readily to the reader, making reading more challenging and chaotic.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#427

Post by marcus_holmes »

cooper12 wrote: post #356
marcus_holmes wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not conduct your own experiment, using Science? 1. Start with a hypothesis, that "dark mode is less comfortable for me than light mode". 2. Design an experiment: find the sites that you use most. Use them for 10 minutes each in light mode and dark mode. Write down your impressions. 3. Build a conclusion: was your hypothesis correct? Was it partially correct for some sites? Then you can adapt your behaviour accord…

Unfortunately your proposed study design does not control for biases. For example, say I'm an audiophile comparing two audio formats, x and y, and I hear y is remarkably better. If I compare them side by side, my own brain might fool me that y is better. The way to control that is to do a blind test, where I won't know which one is x or y. Also, asking people their impressions can be helpful in the human aspect of th…

But that's the point. I don't care about anyone else's preferences. I'm not trying to find the best option out of the two for anyone else but me. My biases are the thing I'm trying to measure here :)

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#428

Post by derefr »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #424
shawnz wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment? Of course. All you are measuring is how comfortable you feel , which is irrelevant. What they are measuring is how well people actually perform on tasks while using dark mode. Just because dark mode feels better to you doesn't imply anything about the latter question.

I feel more productive when using dark mode. Better?

The parent's point being that feeling productive has roughly no correlation with being productive. You can feel very productive with that https://pippinbarr.github.io/itisasifyouweredoingwork/ game that was recently linked here; but that doesn't mean that you are more productive, and in fact you will be much less-so, because the "work" in the game is meaningless.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#429

Post by marcus_holmes »

sgift wrote: post #332
etage3 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is faith based for the non-scientific. As you put it yourself, it is about trusting studies and the institutions that produced it (including whatever in them creates the incentives for p-hacking).

No scientist expects anyone to trust studies or the institutions producing them. So, that's wrong from the beginning. The expectation of refuting something is just a bit higher than "I don't believe it!", e.g. read the study and show flaws in it - or make a counter study which shows different results. Maybe combine both. Comparing this to faith where from the start you cannot check anything doesn't make any sense (if…

and yet if you dare to disagree with a scientist (as we see in the comments here) you can expect to be shouted down because SCIENCE!

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#430

Post by atombender »

One annoying thing I've noticed is that a low brightness setting on the iPhone screen makes a big difference with light vs. dark mode.

For example, at night, sitting in a low-lit living room, I can set the brightness to 20% and comfortably read articles where the text is black on a white background. But if I then switch to a "dark mode" app that has white text on a black/gray background, I need to bump the brightness up to 30-40% for it to be comfortable.

I'm not sure what the solution is, or even what the "scientific" explanation is. Isn't the contrast exactly the same?

Surely this is not an uncommon problem?

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