The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

I came here to say this. I can still get stuff done and answer questions, but I have the attention span of a goldfish.

>I get a pretty strong pseudoscience vibe from it.

I don't quite know how to categorize complaining about pseudoscience based on a "vibe".

It's not quite irony... maybe it's just humorous. As a member of the post Alanis Morissette generation I guess I can no longer recognize irony.

> The Effects on Cognition of Sleeping 4 Hours per Night

I lived like this for nearly 5 years. I knew I was taking my health to an extreme so I did intermittent fasting (but ate one large meal with 7:5:1 fat-plant/carb-protein ratio and it was all organic) and worked out on a regular basis before I slept 3-5 times a week. I also had physical labour jobs with some driving involved on top of typical tech based startup stuff at night while trying to maintain relationships. It was taxing to say the least.

What I did noticed when I stopped living that way was that it felt like a fog was lifted and I stopped hearing what had become an omnipresent high pitch sound like the kind you get when you get hit hard in the head, also before I could only work optimally for maybe 7 hours max a day so I had to prioritize/schedule my day accordingly as the rest was a sluggish grind by comparison. I took cheater naps where I could, but simply put: those were brutal times.

Also my raw strength got way better, likely because of re-introducing a recovery period, and my PB and max lifts went up 35% in almost all of my lifts and exercises. I think I'm at higher than my peak years in early university at this point on single max lifts.

Personally, I realized my most optimized sleep-work schedule follows a 6-3-6-3-6 routine (6 hours of work, with 3 hours pause to eat/sleep in between). I've cranked a ton of things that way, its not ideal as it doesn't allow for much leisure but if I need to get things done and I can afford to have that schedule I'll do it and get amazing results I can't emulate any other way.

By 'vibe' I mean a ton of statements that sound likely to be false or at least would surprise me if they were true that aren't backed up when you look closer. The fact that the information is surprising isn't bad itself, but it spikes curiosity - then when I look deeper there isn't much actually there to support the surprising claims and what is there has a ton of issues.

There's a lot of 'wow, isn't that interesting' talk and deference to authority on an 'important' issue, but little talk of the actual mechanisms of how things work, little consideration of obvious counter examples that could be an explanation (like the one in my comment).

The sense is that the argument is driven by motivated reasoning instead of trying to understand what's true. Basically starting with a position and forcing the data to fit your pre-existing position.

It feels like I'm being conned by someone making up bullshit for status or some other agenda (maybe just sunk costs into an existing theory). Often bullshit and complex interesting topics can sound similar at first and it's helpful to have some sense for telling the difference. Otherwise you wander around impressed by 'energy crystals' and worried about 5g.

For me it depends on the video game. I've noticed that I'm much more resilient to cognitive disruptors in counterstrike than I am in Starcraft.

Starcraft 2 seems to be very sensitive to my cognitive state. When I've been looked back at my starcraft 2 score, I see it jump right before and during a really productive week.

I also see it drop or stall from a lack of sleep before I notice it in my day to day life or work.