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

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

#141

Post by 0xddd »

Barrin92 wrote: post #101
deegles wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What agenda could be served by convincing people to get enough sleep?

I don't know if you can call it an agenda but I think there's something like a 'wellness' or moderation bias in these fields. The idea that you need to balance out hard work, slow down, and so on. For example, as it turns out there is little evidence that stretching actually does anything, yet a lot of experts used to recommend it for decades. Same with nutrition, 'balanced diets', workouts at low heart rates and so…

What do you mean that stretching doesn't do anything? Any links to such evidence? It's a pretty simple experiment to stretch every day for a month and measure your flexibility gains, so that's quite a bold claim. Do you mean it has no direct impact on your health?

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

#142

Post by tetha »

shaftway wrote: post #118

I read about the Uberman sleep schedule stuff myself when I was younger and trying to recover time I "wasted" sleeping. I ended up trying Uberman myself (15 minute naps, 6x per day). I did a decent amount of prep work. I talked to my doctor (who basically said as long as I'm not falling asleep while driving, go for it). I set up ways to track my cognitive abilities around work (remote software engineer at the time).…

> Would I suggest it to others? No. There were other issues I had with the plan, more societal. And it was frustrating to not be able to focus on something for more than 3.5 hours at a time. But it certainly was an interesting time.

This mirrors what I found in airforce studies about the uberman schedule. The overall gist was: The uberman schedule, if executed well, gives a person more time in a day awake without severe drawbacks. Whatever "severe" means.

However, they also found that dudes following the uber schedule suffered more from interrupts in sleep schedules. On a singular 6-8 hour sleep situation, you can go 13-16 hours with little pause or sleep without much trouble. More with some trouble. Candidates on the uberman schedule crashed a lot harder on sleep deprivation.

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

#143

Post by 0xddd »

deegles wrote: post #88
gonehome wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What agenda could be served by convincing people to get enough sleep?

Walker has clearly made a huge name for himself and sold a significant number of books by skewing the evidence to make his thesis sound more substantial than it is

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

#144

Post by dionidium »

hashmal wrote: post #66
snowwrestler wrote: post #31

When I go many days in a row without enough sleep, I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline--as judged by things I build and people I interact with. But, my endurance of focus (the amount of time for which I can perform at a high level) does suffer. The weird thing is that it doesn't feel like I can't keep going... it's just that I sort of somehow don…

> I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

See also: "I'm better at pool after 3 beers."

Yeah, no you're not.

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

#145

Post by scollet »

akersten wrote: post #6

I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time. Sadly, I've never found any positive research that there's any way to do it safely. When I was younger I found schedules like the Uberman[0] and was amazed by the claim: only 2 hours of sleep a day required, as long as you stuck to a pretty rigid schedule a…

That has never been wasted time for me so I disagree on your sentiment. Sleeping is a very fulfilling and engaging activity. I would rather not have the pace set by an expectation of increased "productivity".

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

#146

Post by elliekelly »

benibela wrote: post #116
elliekelly wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried lucid dreaming? I’ve been a lucid dreamer since I was a kid but I didn’t know what it was called and I thought that’s how everyone’s dreams work. Somewhere along the way in law school I started using my dreams to study. I’d slow-walk through hypothetical fact patterns or anticipate getting cold-called to recite a case we’d read. It’s been incredibly helpful and once I realized my classmates had no idea…

I have, but I wake up after every lucid dream, so I need to spend more time in bed to get a full length sleep. And it only last a few minutes, so there is not enough time to study. Even if there was, I am always more interesting in flying around. And most of the time I only reach a half-lucid state. Like tonight I got stuck in a time loop in a train station. Like I could not leave, because I did not have the right ti…

I actually think the infinite loop, while frustrating, is a good sign! As a kid I had a recurring dream just about every night (I’m talking years) about infinite escalators. I’d ride an escalator up and get off only to find several more to choose from to continue riding up. No matter what escalators I chose there were always more. No end. No way out. It was pretty stressful for my elementary school self.

I had a psychologist relative who tried to help me with my “nightmares” by telling me to just accept the escalator dream instead of being frustrated by it. Somehow it worked, instead of getting frustrated by the endless escalators I eventually figured out how to just dutifully ride in peace until I woke up.

Of course that was super boring, but once I stopped frantically searching for the “right way” to do the escalators I started to figure out all the cool things I could do to entertain myself on the infinite escalator rides. I still use an escalator to “start” my lucid dreams if that makes sense. Maybe you’ll similarly take the train to lucid dreams?

All that is to say that I think the loops are actually the perfect way to practice if you can manage to abandon the problem-solving urge. Easier said than done, I know. Best of luck!

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

#147

Post by hirsin »

dionidium wrote: post #144
hashmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

See also: "I'm better at pool after 3 beers." Yeah, no you're not.

I dunno. I realize Balmer peak is a semi-joke, but I really enjoy bowling and used to go once a week or so with friends. Some days we'd get a pitcher of beer, some times we wouldn't. My third game is reliably better if we bought a pitcher. So who knows! Lots of confounding questions there. (three beers, though, my bowling probably gets much worse reliably)

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

#148

Post by e40 »

dionidium wrote: post #144
hashmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

See also: "I'm better at pool after 3 beers." Yeah, no you're not.

Actually, I accidentally found I am better at pool with like 3/4 of a beer. Something about being in that relaxed but pre-inebriated state.

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

#149

Post by spacephysics »

DominikPeters wrote: post #63
spacephysics wrote: post #56

Since a few years ago (when I read Why We Sleep [0]) I’ve made it my priority above all else to allow myself 8 hours of sleep, even if I don’t ‘use’ all of it. With more sleep, an innumerable amount of things are better (as read in the book), but subjectively I noticed the following after about a month straight of good sleep: * Pain was far more manageable (IBS, MMA injuries) * Sleep was more restorative when I woke…

The author of the OP is not a fan of Why We Sleep, having found many errors and misrepresentations [1]. [1] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

I did not know that, thanks. Time to read the article and threads dang posted.

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

#150

Post by wizzzzzy »

dionidium wrote: post #144
hashmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

See also: "I'm better at pool after 3 beers." Yeah, no you're not.

I'm actually inclined to disagree here -- I think after a couple of beers it's reasonable to assume someone might be better at pool. Firstly you're both physically and mentally more relaxed and often more confident too so I think it's completely plauisble theres a couple of beers sweet spot for playing pool.
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