The Atari ST's late 80s monochrome CRT looked a bit like an eink display, with no discernible flicker even at 72 Hz. It certainly looked very different from a 72 Hz colour CRT displaying a monochrome image. I think it used a different type of phosphor.
You’d need much lower than 72 hz for you to notice flicker. Regular VGA was 60 hz. Amiga interlace had noticeable flicker with an effective rate of 25 to 30 hz.
This is biology-dependent. With CRTs, I could detect flicker all the way up to 85Hz* (where it vanished for me). Made it a real pain to find a good monitor.
* Hitachi 21" CRT which seemed enormous at the time
You are right. Perhaps I should've phrased it as "most people need..."
The Amiga interlace flicker was bothersome to me. When I got an Amiga 3000 with the built in deinterlacer / flicker fixer, it was like night and day...
