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.

Easier to read for whom?

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.

So when you first said "this is really good", was it?

Or did you just let your wife bully you into not liking something that you, personally, actually liked?

That's a little harsh. Entertaining new information is not really 'bullying', not when I recognized the truth in what she said.

Sure I was enjoying myself. This is kind of the point of this thread. Your enjoyment is not a real measure of what's good or bad.

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?

I changed because I attended to what I was eating, and it wasn't very good.

Or you changed because you were attending to what your wife was saying.

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.

> 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?

It's possible one can enjoy heroin, while it's simultaneously not beneficial for them to do so.

Just because something is subjectively positive, doesn't mean it's objectively positive.

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.