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 homeopathy, where science, logic and data is completely rejected and replaced with pure faith. Real studies can be criticized without relying on that trap.
No. They were pointing out it's possible that you prefer dark mode, even though it may not have the benefits you believe it does. Your preference may be more about aesthetic taste than a physiological response - and that's okay.
I'm gonna lean in to your side. I've noticed ever since switching to a dark theme in my code editor that at the end of the day my eyes feel less tired. BUT (and big one) on the glossy screen of my phone, dark mode feels more straining to the eyes... How can this be so?
My notebook has a matte screen and barely reflects ambient light(s) back at me. I say barely to avoid saying "none" because surely someone will nitpick that it is reflecting a small amount of light etc.
The phone has a glossy screen, and it reflects every single thing it can back my eyes. Dark mode makes it even more "mirror like". And while I prefer the colours (specially if you're using the phone at night, with no ambient lights to bother), I acknowledge that it is more straining during most of the day. Even at night when it autoswitches to dark mode, I'll have some ambient illumination unless I'm at the cinema (not for a couple of months since lockdown) or basically trying to sleep (and I know I shouldn't be checking the phone if I'm trying to sleep).
Another data point: reading PDFs of books and conference papers on my computer (black on white) is tiresome, whereas reading the same on a kindle feels amazing. But then again, the kindles have won this battle a long time ago and nobody should be trying to read books or other media made for plant-based-paper on a screen anyway (and here I give e-ink a bit of leeway and consider it more plant-paper-like than a screen).
I use the pc mostly for music making and video/ photo edit, when i do so i like to work in an almost completely dark rook just some indirect lights, all the software i use has dark grey backgrounds by default, if i need to check something quickly on the internet the browser opens with a blank page (then it switches to dark or theme), that feels in my eyes like being in the nuclear test field.
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.
> 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.
The hidden assumption in that framing is that there's an objective measure of "what is best for them" which somehow isn't based on what people subjectively prefer.
Is it? I mean, serious question - aren't they they same thing? What IS our subjective experience if not our conscious estimation of how we experienced the thing? Is it possible to think you're enjoying something when really you're not, and if so then what the heck does that even mean?
You can enjoy what you want. The article we are discussing has measurable claims:
1. Easier to read
2. Eye Strain
3. Battery savings
Your subjective "studies" about that are irrelevant if you put them in contrast to proper scientific studies for those things - if you don't measure them properly. And that's not how you feel about it. That's what I was saying.
And it does not matter for that whether you like dark or bright mode, whether you follow the article or speak against it :) That might be part of the confusion.
I have pretty bad eye floaters, and they're more visible in bright light. Having crud bouncing around my entire field of vision does not make for an easy or strain-free reading experience, so I enable dark mode whenever it's an option. I found checking Zulip at work pretty unpleasant until I realized I could enable dark mode.
If you're running a scientific study and basing your conclusions on the average of all participants, you might not pick up on things like that. And if you're running a scientific study on people with normal vision, a sufficiently strict definition of "normal vision" guarantees that you won't pick up on that, although the studies in question probably didn't use so strict a definition.
Even if dark mode is "scientifically worse" for most people, whatever that means, it's a useful accommodation. In fact, the Nielsen Norman Group article that this post links to argue against dark mode recommends dark mode as an accommodation for people with vision impairments.
Yes, I'm aware. A school friend of mine was almost blind and he enabled the Windows white on black accessibility setting to make using the PC easier. I'm not arguing against that.
Although we're far from figuring out the mind in general, much less specifically to certain individuals, there's growing evidence that minds are a collective of sub-units which vie for conscious attention but are nonetheless active in subconscious even if "you" don't know it.
As an example, one part of your mind could be extremely conditioned to want to please and be with someone who is (objectively) abusing you and so you think you're having a good time when they do show you attention, while another part of your mind hates them for hurting you. There are countless examples of how different parts of a single mind can be at odds with each other, and depending on when you think deeply about an experience, can both have enjoyed and not enjoyed an experience.
It's not unreasonable to think that similar mechanics are at play with more subtle, less social-based mechanics. Food (and drugs) have a lot of this going on too.
Well, eating at a restaurant with my wife, I said "This is really good!"
She looked askance, said "Well, its a little salty".
"Yeah, I guess it is."
"And not really very hot"
"Oh, yeah. Hm."
"And there no spice in it. Kinda plain."
"Dang, you're right"
So was I enjoying it? Or the experience of being out with the wife and not having to cook? Or just hungry and anything would do? And I'd mis-attributed what I was enjoying. Clearly my 'subjective experience' was not very, well, objective.
Not saying you didn't change your assessment after new sensory input (which is fine), but did you truly, honestly, change how much you were enjoying the /exact same physical sensations/ based on how much your partner thought you should be enjoying them?
Were you actually happier after you changed your mind that the food wasn't as good? I'm struggling to see this as evidence that your experience improved based on that conversation.
To me that sounds like an orthogonal statement from the article. The article is talking about objective performance and efficiency of the two and you're talking about how they make you feel.
Feeling efficient and being efficient are both valid bases for choosing, but the point of the article is that they don't have high correlation.
You can be wrong about your perceptions, if you’ve read your Descartes.
Dark mode could be more aesthetically pleasing, and yet could also be less legible. I have personally experienced this. Dark mode is hard to read and find my place in compared to light mode. The white space helps me absorb the information and use it effectively. I say this while I still think dark mode looks better for many apps. I just choose light mode because of utility and usability.
I've never had issues with legibility in dark mode but then I apparently have very large pupils (to the point where when I got contact lenses the optician warned me about lens flares / halos) so maybe I don't get some of the benefits of day mode.
What IS our subjective experience if not our conscious estimation of how we experienced the thing?
regardless of the sample population, the difference is asking about perception vs. designing an experiment that provides consistent measures and accounts for bias. That's the definition of science. What you're arguing is "I know what I know", i.e. faith.
This whole "those studies are studies of how other people experienced X" is a typical argumentation scheme of esoteric fields like homeopathy, where science, logic and data is completely rejected and replaced with pure faith. Real studies can be criticized without relying on that trap.