[zamadatix]

There is no "person A's sky only receives light from lamp A and person B's sky only receives light from lamp B" repeated 500,000 times. Both will make their own "simply existing in a city should not..." and "they can take that upon themselves" arguments about it and the problem that it's about what should be done with public space rather than the inside of their homes will still remain.

The article would be a lot shorter if it were as easy as individuals taking on their own citywide lighting choice and perspective. Signed as someone who now lives in a much, much smaller "city" than before :).

[estearum]

Your argument is that someone stating "night time should be night time" has the same standing as someone stating "night time should be day time," just because neither person owns night time?

No, they don't actually.

[zamadatix]

People feel their perspective about outdoor light is the obviously principled one which is uncontestably based on obvious realities everyone should agree of until they start talking at the bar about which hour offset the local clock should be in winter.

The posted page goes through great effort to frame the problem from every perspective it possibly can precisely because it has spent enough time on the topic to understand how people won't agree it does/doesn't make obvious sense for a city to be dark because the sun went down. It's not because the author forgot to think of using a 3 line comment declaring it obvious instead, they know many people have many different angles they consider the important reasons it should be light/dark.

[estearum]

No, not really. There is a null state of the world on this dimension and many others.

Next up in Zamadatix's Magic Mirror Funhouse: "It's purely a matter of opinion whether or not you want your city:...

1. Constantly blaring a siren (for no reason at all other than my opinion) at 100 dB

2. A thin layer of battery acid covering the ground in all public places

3. Live shooting ranges operating on every avenue

4. A perpetual smog that smells of rotten eggs

Many people have many different angles they consider important reasons for the sirens/battery acid/live shooting ranges/smog."

Again: You can go sniff your rotten egg smog on your own time, outside of the commons we all share. Whether its my obligation to find my preferred egg-free air or your obligation to find your preferred rotten-egg air (privately) is not really just a matter of opinion, even though we may both have opinions on it.

[zamadatix]

I'm not really going to engage on the "$person's magic mirror funhouse" type conversation as it doesn't go anywhere.

My opinion is it'd be nice to have dark skies. I'm talking about how we can properly dismiss the alternative views, not why I think x is what you as an individual should want to prefer or not.

If the majority of people want something of the commons other than what I want then I'm going to assume my preference is the one that seems like rotten eggs for some reason to a lot of people, figure out why it is, and debate it. I'm not going to assume they just need me to state I find the opposite a problem so it's on them to of figure out - I'll just be left with what I see as a rotting eggs smell and nobody who cares because it doesn't seem that way to them.

[estearum]

But we're not having a conversation about the full scope of reasons a person could want A or B. I'm saying the null hypothesis is Dark Nighttime. You are insisting it's not. GP above said one argument against Dark Nighttime is that it puts them to sleep. That is not a good reason, as Nighttime for humans is meant to be sleep time, and for animals where nighttime is meant to be wake time, the dark is what keeps them awake.

If GP wanted to raise issues like safety, then we could have a conversation about that topic, where there are legitimate positions to hold. But they didn't, and neither did you!

They said dark lights make them sleepy and you argued there's no "default state" of darkness at night, it's purely opinion. Both of these specific arguments are very bad.

[zamadatix]

Now we have a discussion :D!

You'll be hard pressed to convince everyone the null hypothesis should be either A or B, which is the biggest reason it doesn't get anywhere to argue from that stance alone. For more than the lifetime of anyone living in a city, the baseline expectation of a city has been "light pollutingly bright". Similarly, making light is something a city has to do so one may argue the baseline is "a city is dark unless we do something". But is it still a city if you do that for all things about the city? There are dozens of arguments why the null should be A or why the null should be B. Thankfully, it doesn't really matter unless all you want to comment is "the null agrees with me so it's your problem" so we don't actually need to halt until everyone to agrees what the null is to debate what we should do.

So instead of commenting to ahmedehab_01 it's a feature & not a bug, their problem to deal with (for which they'll think & say the exact same in reverse - which as just as valid unless you can first get everyone to agree what the null should be) we can just skip to talking to the merits of their point, as you already did here.

I.e. yeah, white does keep people up more. Amber's impact was low enough it's not an impact to safety though & the inverse (not being kept up as you walk around a city) . There's no option which has every benefit so we need to weigh all of the impacts as a whole, which means it may have a few downsides like making you sleepier walking around at night. That speaks directly to why we should turn down the light pollution regardless of the null, and is exactly how the article went about it (which could be referenced again for the safety portions or the like). It's not even 100% clear ahmedehab_01 was saying "because of this, we shouldn't have dark lights". They may have just been casually lamenting one particular downside. The chain kind of forced it to be taken as a debate opener, and then forced a choice of which null should be assumed, and then went a long way of debating that, and then finally talked about what was really said only at the end.