I think you have not actually understood what I wrote, because of this part:

>> My point is, nothing in this article does establish that it is "actually bullshit".

> Why not?

I've already said it multiple times. Allow me to repeat myself:

> make the elemental mistake that showing one biological mechanism doesn't have an effect, means no other mechanisms can either.

You've written a lot, but you haven't understood that this is the core mistake of the article, and the core mistake of what you're trying to argue.

You reply with a reference to Russell's teapot, and that would be fine if you were merely trying to make the point that the effect of amber light on sleep has not been sufficiently proven. But you're the one literally calling it "bullshit", i.e. disproven. That's wrong. There's no high-quality study conclusively demonstrating it doesn't have an effect.

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AshamedCaptain 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Certainly you can claim that because not all mechanisms have been disproven yet, then there could still be an effect. That is why I quote Russell's teapot. Your claims are technically not disproven, and may not even be possible to disprove, but that doesn't mean that the existence of the teapot is (most definitely) bullshit. This is what the example of Russell's teapot is trying to show.

I also keep continuously putting the example of homeopathy because it is exactly the same. Homeopathy has plenty of (weak) evidence, but no known mechanism of action. All the proposed religious, memory of water, etc. have been disproved. Certainly you can argue that homeopathy could still be a thing because there could be some physical/biological mechanism that has not yet been disproved! But this is just nitpicking: homeopathy is still bullshit. In the same way that a teapot in space is bullshit.

Anything else is a (useless) nitpick.

In any case, even from day #1 it's been known that blue light could possibly have a mechanism, but there's always been a big stretch from there to claiming that blue light filters/night shift have an effect, and the evidence for the latter is substantially lacking. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/blue-light/

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crazygringo an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm sorry, but using the idea of Russell's teapot to claim anything without rock-solid proof is "bullshit" is a deep misunderstanding of the idea. It's wrong, it's offensive, and it's not helpful to genuine understanding.

Amber light is not Russell's teapot. There's widespread anecdotal reporting that it helps with sleep. It's not something nonsensical like a teapot between Earth and Mars. And for you to suggest that they're the equivalent is, frankly, arguing in bad faith.

The world of knowledge is not divided, black-and-white, between things that are scientifically proven and "bullshit". Probably the vast majority of practical facts we rely on daily are not "proven" with empirical studies. That doesn't make them "bullshit". I hope you can understand that.

	▲	AshamedCaptain an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No, I do not understand why I cannot call homeopathy bullshit. There's plenty of widespread positive anecdote for it, too! Why would you think calling one bullshit is "offensive" and not the other? You realize that this "gray" scale that you claim is as unscientific as it gets, right? After all, it worked for me! And I hear that it works for my friends! How can homeopathy/blue light filters/whatever-ritual-you-like-today not work? How can there not be a teapot on the sky? If the problem is with the word "bullshit", call it pseudo-scientific, but it is almost the same thing. Tomorrow there could be some evidence of an effect shown in the opposite direction (e.g. blue light filters _harming_ sleep quality, or performance the day after, or whatever) and you would be as skeptical as with claims of no effect, if not more. See the recent article of white noise in HN and how it was met in the comments. Because of people (or worse, software) turning their screens' brightness up to compensate, which I already read an article about long time ago...