let me decide it for you man, not trying to be a smart ass about it either...
look out your window at night. is it pitch black? no.
lets pretend you can blame the fact its not pitch black on artificial light pollution (streetlamps, etc etc)
so lets head out into the wilderness... far far into the wilderness. is it pitch black at night? no.
lets head south to some of the tropical latitudes... you'll find that the closer you get to the equator, the brighter the night sky gets. this is really noticeable at sea. not like you'd be growing on a ship, but just for examples sake. you will find that in most of cannabis' natural habitat, the starlight combined with the moonlight is bright enough to read by.
hmmmmmm..... makes you wonder why you don't have hermies in nature occurring on a more regular basis, doesn't it....
hermies caused by light leaks is kind of a myth. but it does happen.
let me explain a little further... bear with me on my layman's terms as well, its just easier for me to explain things in laymans terms to avoid confusion or misinterpretation.
if your growing indoors, its not natural. the normal limiting factors that are present in nature are simply not there in your indoor op. weaker plants that would normally die off in the wild thrive, because you do your best to provide the perfect environment. more often than not, the 'perfect environment' is too much for the plants, its not natural. there's no times of drought or shitty light or extreme temp swings to harden them up. you could compare it to raising a retarded pig and a normal pig, side by side in a closet. both will thrive, because you provide everything for them. however in the wild, its obvious the retarded pig wouldn't make it very far at all... for various reasons.
what this means, is that your prize plant that looks so nice and smells so nice might have the weakest genetics in your entire crop... but you would never know, until something affects your 'perfect environment'... like a light leak... then, and only then, do the weaker genetics become apparent.
its not rocket science folks... its jr high level botany.
