I quite liked your second response, toddos -- you weren't throwing science-shapes as much as you were describing your own experience in accurate language. I do hope people caught that distinction, because it's the difference between prestidigitation and useful subjective data.
About this, though:
Quote:
Originally Posted by toddos
As for transmissive vs. reflective light, I call shenanigans. Look directly at a lightbulb. Now take a mirror and reflect that lightbulb right into your eyes. Both hurt the same, yeah? The light from an LCD backlight is diffused through the LCD panel. When you're looking at a white pixel, that's not the same thing as staring directly at a white LED. People get headaches from flicker, not from a light source.
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It seems to me the problem isn't the source of the light so much as it is the intensity. Reading my AMOLED screen for too long is rather like staring at a light bulb and
does produce the kinds of scotomas that St. Hildegaard mistook for angelic visions. However, reading from an eInk screen, even when lighted, does not. I think this is because (1) one is not staring directly at the light, (2) the light is more muted and (3) visual information is not in glaring color. Scotomas generally appear in the opposite shade of whatever you've been eyeing (by which I don't mean fondling things by rubbing your eyes against them, as pleasant as that might sound).
The visual effect is residual and seems prolonged and heightened by intensities of light, rather like the sonic equivalent: relentless after-tones heard by people with tinnitus.