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Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

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Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#431

Post by marcus_holmes »

mellosouls wrote: post #319
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…

Whatever works for you, that's great. But your anecdotal preferences are hardly worth using as an argument against scientific research in general. If we all dismissed science to serve our preferences and prejudices, we'd still be in the dark ages. No pun intended.

sorry if I mislead. I'm criticising Academia, and how science is actually done by humans trying to get tenure. Not Science.

And my point was that my anecdotal preferences are massively more important for me than any scientific study, no matter how rigorous.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#432

Post by unnouinceput »

I'm a light mode user. I don't like dark mode for my work. But I also don't imposed on anyone. Everybody's free to use what they consider best for their eyes/work. It's the same as what shortcuts/icons to keep at hand on desktop/quickLaunch, it's a personal preference.

So when I hear some fanboy about dark mode this and dark mode that I roll my eyes and try to ignore it until shoves it in my eyes with his "I know better" attitude. At which point I kindly remind him that I don't go in his house and rearrange furniture to my liking and better change the subject

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#433

Post by aisamu »

cnity wrote: post #214
aasasd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emitted light isn't a problem per se, because reflected photons aren't somehow radically different from emitted ones. Color and brightness profile is the problem. On a display, you have to have high contrast and brightness for images (that have lots of darker areas), so the system interface is in turn tuned for this high brightness—and then you have to deal with bright white under text. Note how text on e-ink is exce…

These are good points but miss an essential part of the story: reflected light almost by definition matches the brightness of the surrounding environment, meaning that the periphery is roughly the same brightness and white balance as the reading medium. If I look at my laptop on full brightness in a nearly pitch black room, it is far less comfortable to read than if I turned on a lamp. So there are two solutions to t…

A simple method that I use to demonstrate that: point a phone's camera at the screen+surroundings.

Then it's easy to adjust the screen's brightness/turn on lights until the screen is not overexposed/the environment is not underexposed.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#434

Post by andreilys »

derefr wrote: post #428
marcus_holmes wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah yes because these scientific studies using light vs dark mode were able to precisely capture “productivity” output which totally translates to the work that SWE do.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#435

Post by stefantalpalaru »

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…

"Reading and Myopia: Contrast Polarity Matters" - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x :

"reading white text from a black screen or tablet may be a way to inhibit myopia, while conventional black text on white background may stimulate myopia"

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#436

Post by derefr »

andreilys wrote: post #434
derefr wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah yes because these scientific studies using light vs dark mode were able to precisely capture “productivity” output which totally translates to the work that SWE do.

Who said anything about the scientific studies proving anything? My point was that feelings prove just as little. If you're not going to trust other people, then especially don't trust yourself. The output of your feelings is even less evidence-based than the worst possible scientific study.

If you want to truly understand how you specifically react to something, then do science yourself. You don't need to be very rigorous with this, as the goal isn't to prove some huge effect size. The goal is to just get an objective answer to the question of whether you are more productive, rather than a subjective (and therefore very likely wrong) one. Find an objective measure of your own personal performance (anything you care about, doesn't have to be something a boss would care about); maybe find a way to blind yourself to which days you're using the treatment vs. a placebo; write down numbers; and then stick 'em in Excel and see what you get.

I would point at Gwern as a good example of someone who runs self-experiments to determine the objective n=1 effects of different "life hacks" on things they care about. (For Gwern, this is usually brain performance—measured by, among other things, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back task, data for which can be collected in the form of "playing" a quick round of a computer game.) For example, here's their look into magnesium supplementation: https://www.gwern.net/nootropics/Magnesium

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#437

Post by derefr »

One thing I know is pretty well-researched about light, is that our brains produce dopamine in response to optic-nerve signals hitting our https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus. This response is what causes circadian entrainment, but it also just has the same effect as any other dopaminergic agonism in the brain: increasing motivational arousal. This is why light-therapy lamps warn you not to use them for more than 30 minutes at a time: the excess dopamine produced by your SCN will put you into a state of mania.

Up to a point, people work better with more dopamine in their brains. (Many people have subclinical/undiagnosed ADHD, and work especially better with more dopamine in their brains.) One way to make people's brains produce more dopamine is to make them stare directly into bright light sources. Therefore, light-mode is very likely to be observed as "more productive" for anyone who's not already saturating their dopamine receptors by other means (drugs et al.)

-----

Fun tangent that I like to bring up, because few people seem to have heard of it:

This dopamine agonism in the SCN also increases muscle tone in muscles with nerve connections afferent to the SCN, e.g. the orbital muscles of the eye (chemical "feedback" through the optic nerve, essentially.)

The current hypothesis for the development of myopia (nearsightedness) is that the eye's orbital muscles must receive a certain amount of dopamine during the development/growth of the skull to keep the eye pressed into the right shape relative to the ocular orbit. In people who don't get enough bright-light exposure to consistently trigger dopamine release from the SCN, their orbital muscles remain slack, allowing their eye to "relax" wider into the orbit, leading to the retina growing into position further away from the cornea, and thus leading to myopia.

This means that children don't get nearsighted from doing "close work" all day; but they do become nearsighted from staying inside all day, where they aren't getting enough SCN stimulation from the lower indoor light levels. The likely "fix" for the epidemic of nearsightedness is to get kids to do even sedentary activities outside. (And for people who live in places where it's cloudy/raining most of the year, to get indoor lighting equivalent in light output to a light-therapy lamp.)

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#438

Post by username90 »

robotmay wrote: post #197

Dark modes are a choice. Light modes are a choice. Everyone is free to choose what they like, so trying to influence people one way or another, or criticising their choice, is unproductive. I live in Wales, a country where our default weather is "meh". I live on the dark side of a mountain. I work in a room with no external windows. Yes I use dark modes, and if you used light mode in my office I'd think you were a fu…

> I live on the dark side of a mountain. I work in a room with no external windows.

You don't have lamps? I think most people prefer to have properly lit rooms, and then you also want a light theme on the computer. If you like sitting in the darkness this might not apply to you.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#439

Post by pier25 »

I used dark mode for about 8 years and I've gone back to light mode recently. It looks less cool, but my eye strain is gone and I've been able to go back to my older glasses.

I'm now almost certain 8-10 daily hours of reading code in dark mode contributed negatively to my vision.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#440

Post by dekhn »

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…

I think you have multiple misunderstandings about how science provides valuable results. The first thing I want to say is that I don't devalue your personal experience.

I am unaware of any fighter jet seat problem. If you use the average, you're actually pretty likely (depending on the shape of the distribution, which in the case of phenotypes like body size, are normally distributed when broken down by gender) to find the size that accomodates the most people (you could also consider using the median, or the most populated class, or add a few adjustable parts).

Science hasn't reached the point where it can create truly personalized models that account for your genetics, personal feelings, and other details about your setup. It would be nice if we had that kind of ability, but the data isn't there (either the quality or quantity of the data). however, it's generally understood that these sorts of studies provide useful evidence for people who are making policy for large numbers of people.

Also, what you did at home wasn't an experiment (did you use positive and negative controls and blinding), it was just a measurement of your personal preferences. Again, not trying to deny your personal experience, but a good scientific study does trump your actual experience, when applied to the population at large.

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