If everyone could agree to not use black-on-white, we could set our monitor brightness to a sane value and have enough contrast to read. In order to read black on white text, I have to turn my backlight down to like 10%, and then turn it up to about 40% to watch a movie.

More contrast isn't always better, or you would read text by printing out foil stencils and aiming them directly at the sun to read.