LED lighting (350-650nm) undermines human visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra (400-1500nm+) like daylight | Scientific Reports

I have heard people suggest that LED lighting isn't as good for people. I've not dug deep but this research is interesting.

Life evolved under broad spectrum sunlight, from ultraviolet to infrared (300–2500 nm). This spectrally balanced light sculpted life’s physiology and metabolism. But modern lighting has recently become dominated by restricted spectrum light emitting diodes (350–650 nm LEDs). Absence of longer wavelengths in LEDs and their short wavelength dominance impacts physiology, undermining normal mitochondrial respiration that regulates metabolism, disease and ageing.

Reading this comes back to two fundamental things I think about a good amount: the fundamental difference of analog and digital, and our habit of reducing things to what we can measure.

I was watching a movie recently with scenes in the 70's of cars that were purely mechanical cars. They sounded different. It made me think how they were, in a way, living. They consumed fuel and spit out exhaust. The act of consuming on thing to create another and notably to exhaust something feels organic in a way. Us, people, we eat, we get energy, and we "exhaust" that food. This feels very different to the digital world with an electrical "air" and information being moved without specific calories or exhaust. Perhaps there are good reasons we can relate to mechanical things in ways that their digital equivalents feel foreign.

On reductionism my thinking starts with food. I logged my food for a very long time recording macronutrients and even micros. But fundamentally what I was eating wasn't captured by this crude instrument. A banana is not just a collection of macros and micros. It is an actual banana. It has so many layers that we cannot see. But I think our bodies do. This is why we cannot just eat a paste of macros. In addition to it being gross.

Is LED lighting another case of reductionism? Look, I can see the light. But what can I not see? And is it fundamentally digital, a place that "we" are foreigners in. Maybe?