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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

That's because we like the color of fire and always have. The lux from the sun is so high that the color temperature doesn't matter except in photos.

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Always have... since the invention of controllable fire by nearly anatomically modern humans? I'm skeptical.

For the entire history of human evolution since the formation of the Earth, that color of light has meant it's almost, or just was, night, and was strictly transient. Just 400,000 years ago it also started meaning that it is night. And just in the last couple of hundred years, with industrialization, it's become the color that most of us see most of the time.

Now, I'm not saying that's necessarily bad— but you gotta wonder why.

My understanding was controllable fire predated anatomically modern humans. I remember one theory that basically said using fire allowed modern humans to evolve with a larger brain because fire aided digestion.

PS: Seems to be up in the air: Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 0.2 to 1.7 million years ago (Mya).[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans Note: Homo erectus is fiarly diffrent from Homo sapiens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus

I heard this theory as well, in a history of science class. The professor claimed that you can extract something like 60% more food energy from an egg by cooking it.

Seems to me that humans who liked the color of fire, and by extension liked fire (or vis versa) did better than those humans who did not like fire (or its color).

I like the color of fire, and I seem to be doing pretty well, if I do say so myself. :)

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