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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   5681 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, it needs to know almost exactly when the sun rose. That doesn't work with variable weather. If your brain is basing it on brightness, it's going to take a lot longer to reach a given brightness on an overcast day than on a clear day.

You also need to be outside where you can see that change in brightness. Following the common advice of getting some light exposure within the first few hours of waking is not going to be able to fine tune a circadian rhythm that is off by half an hour.

It's entirely plausible that your brain kinda groks light angle. And it's entirely possible that your brain kinda groks the overall change in brightness in a day, so if it gets bright suddenly, it thinks "ah, this is the real brightness, the previous one was overcast or whatever".

Also, again, remember that the change is slow. Even if it gets only one good anchor every week or so, maybe that's enough to keep it aligned with the sunrise, everything else just keeps it vaguely on-track.

The human brain is complicated enough that I'm willing to give it a lot of slack in terms of what it may be capable of.

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