I can stare at my CCFL ThinkPad all day, but if I stare away from it at around 75-80° (basically not quite 90°, so say around 2PM on a clock) I can see it flickering away. But if I stare straight-on it's fine; it feels completely steady, and certainly more rock-solid than any CRT.

My light emits a (very) tiny amount of light when it's initially turned off. If I stare straight at it I can't see this tiny bit of light at all; I can only see it in my periphery. I suspect my inability to see flickering works by the same mechanism - and I'm very glad for that!

Incidentally, when I was using CRTs I had to have them at 85Hz to hide the flickering as much as possible. 60Hz would drive me nuts - but then again, I used 60Hz for several years while using MS-DOS, so I think 85Hz was just a strong preference.

This may be interesting to some: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15004608#15005811 (the whole thread, along with the highlighted comment)

Most people can see these effects if they know how to look for them. Most "sensitives" are folks who accidentally figured out how to see them.

It's really not at all clear that they possess some kind of higher clock rate for sampling optical images.

I've noticed this with some LED light fixtures in people's houses before and deliberately don't mention it because once you see it you can't unsee it. Particularly evident on things like running water in a bathroom.

I can deal for a few minutes, they have to live there!

Personally, I think this is like when kids start sticking their tongue through the slit of a Halloween mask until they cut it. It's just something you can choose to stop doing but people can't help themselves.

I agree (I replied to the other comment in this subthread).