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thenewnewguy | 9 days ago

I'm not an MD or expert in this field enough to know if OP is right or wrong, but I think it's fairly reasonable to be irritated people are claiming software has a health benefit based on vibes/feels.

I thought we as a society had moved on from superstition to evidence-based medicine, but in this very post there are plenty of replies countering OP's scientific analysis and data with anecdotes (which is disappointing regardless of if TFA is correct or incorrect).

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jack_pp|9 days ago

Is it superstition to deduce that I get gassy after eating beans? I need a scientific study to tell me this? Same for if a screen hurts my eyes (not long term, like truly my eyes hurt) when using bright white colors at night.

thenewnewguy|9 days ago

Yes, actually, if someone has direct scientific evidence contrary to the claim (I doubt such evidence exists for your first example as to the best of my knowledge the relationship between beans and gastrointestinal changes is well understood).

Your eyes could hurt for a variety of reasons - brightness, too long screen time, being dry for external reasons, etc. Most humans are poor at identifying the cause of one-off events: you may think it's because you turned on a blue-light filter, but it actually could be because you used your phone for an hour less.

That's why we have science to actually isolate variables and prove (or at least gather strong evidence for) things about the world, and why doctors don't (or at least shouldn't) make health-related recommendations based on vibes.

geoduck14|9 days ago

>I think it's fairly reasonable to be irritated people are pushing software based on vibes/feels.

You are going to HATE to find out about night-mode in the browser

thenewnewguy|9 days ago

To be fair, I should have said something like "claiming software has a health benefit based on vibes/feels". I personally prefer the look of night/dark mode (or whatever you call it) in apps and the browser, but I'm not going to claim it makes me healthier or improves my sleep or whatever.

If you just like how something looks, that's fine, but there's a difference between "I like how X looks" (subjective opinion) than "X helps me sleep better" (difficult to prove but objectively true or false).

Edit: Changed this in my original message as it seems multiple people got confused by my prior poor wording.

taco_emoji|9 days ago

> I thought we as a society had moved on from superstition to evidence-based medicine

Surely you didn't actually believe that unless you JUST landed here from space after being away for 60 years.