Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

guzey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 368 posts

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

#281

Post by dionidium »

brewdad wrote: post #268
dionidium wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people here obviously also think this, but I maintain that they're wrong . Consider what the Wired article you linked actually says: > In a 1993 study, he found that hand-eye coordination deteriorated immediately after a player's first drink, but balance and accuracy improved at a BAC of 0.02 (beyond that, performance fell off). A BAC of 0.02 is like, I dunno, less than half a beer? (And even then the article…

.02 BAC is about a 12oz beer for the average male. Given that there is a lag between drinking that first beer and having the alcohol absorbed into the bloodstream, I find it entirely plausible that 1.5 pints in could correspond with a pool player's peak performance. They've already consumed enough alcohol to move past the sweet spot but it isn't yet affecting their performance.

Good point about the lag.

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

#282

Post by d2v »

elliekelly wrote: post #100
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…

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've been doing something similar with my sleep paralysis demons. Once I realized that they are a figment of my imagination, I trained myself to conjure a demon who has the knowledge of my physics professor. Instead of clawing at my feet while muffled screams fail to escape my paralyzed larynx, he holds an informal office hours where we can work through this week's problem set.

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

#284

Post by warranty »

WildGreenLeave wrote: post #99
tasty_freeze wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 15 years ago I tried polyphasic sleeping for about two months. I was on a horrific work crunch and I threw myself into it. I believe my schedule was a 20 minute nap every 3 or 4 hours (I forget now), with one nap being two hours instead of 20 minutes, a total of about 4 hours a day. The first week was horrible, but then I got in the groove and I actually functioned and got work done. I'd often wake up a minute…

I don't want to sound racist, but your last sentence is something that struck me as something oddly european/american. At least in Asia it is just normal to take a nap somewhere for 30 minutes or so. Just imagine what you could've achieved if napping wasn't a problem :-) I'm european but I really like the asian culture where napping is in general socially acceptable.

“Asia” isn’t one place. Only Japan has napping culture.

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

#285

Post by warranty »

cercatrova wrote: post #92

Incidentally, I've been sleeping polyphasically for some time now. Of course, there have been no real studies done on polyphasic sleep and it must be taken on anecdotal evidence alone. However, I don't feel any ill effects after a year. My schedule is tamer than others, however; the Everyman 2 consists of a 4.5 hour core sleep and two 20 minute naps [0]. Schedules like Uberman (six 20 minute naps equidistant in time,…

Is Uberman an app or are you referring yourself as ubermensch?

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

#286

Post by rkagerer »

guzey wrote: post #225
rkagerer wrote: post #33

Was his assessment basically just playing video games? I've noticed that's an activity I can do proficiently for an extended duration on very little sleep (along with things like "bulk" coding) but there are others I'm awful at unless I'm well rested (eg. complex planning, creative efforts like songwriting) and I've found my communication skills start to become impaired when I'm really sleep deprived. I'd be curious…

This gotta be my favorite comment in the entire thread. I take three tests: PVT, a video game, SAT -- and I get accused of "just playing video games" and told to perform a broader spectrum of assessments.

Fair point!

I'm not familiar with PVT, and from the description I thought it seemed itself like a simple (if boring) videogame - or at least measured a subset of similar skills, like reaction time and attention lapse.

Didn't mean to come across as dismissive; I really am interested in broader metrics on this stuff. But don't deprive yourself again just for our sake. Thanks for your work, for reiterating the SAT piece, and for stimulating some great HN discussion.

(ps. You attributed some of the minor, sleep-deprived PVT and SAT deterioration to "getting lost in thought". Do you think you'd encounter the same degree of boredom or drifting focus if you did them again post-experiment, in a well-rested state?)

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

#287

Post by guzey »

rkagerer wrote: post #286
guzey wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gotta be my favorite comment in the entire thread. I take three tests: PVT, a video game, SAT -- and I get accused of "just playing video games" and told to perform a broader spectrum of assessments.

Fair point! I'm not familiar with PVT, and from the description I thought it seemed itself like a simple (if boring) videogame - or at least measured a subset of similar skills, like reaction time and attention lapse. Didn't mean to come across as dismissive; I really am interested in broader metrics on this stuff. But don't deprive yourself again just for our sake. Thanks for your work, for reiterating the SAT piece…

PVT is a standard in psychology task used to assess sleepiness - no relation to video games

Note that the "getting lost in thought" happened when I slept 8 hours not 4. I think it just came to me taking hours upon hours of very similar tasks.

>I was extremely bored in the last 2 days of taking control measurements and sometimes got distracted and lost in thought, which resulted in me getting 3 and 4 lapses per session (as can be seen on Figure 1). I do not believe that these lapses represent my lack of alertness. ...

>The last low control score on the verbal section is a result of me becoming very bored with taking the SAT 5 days in a row, getting lost in thought for 10 minutes, and having to rush.

I will continue to experiment with sleep, mostly for myself :) and I'm planning to test memory and skill acquisition next time -- these are the two things people say are affected the most, so I'll try to figure out if that is true for me.

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

#288

Post by elbear »

fiblye wrote: post #239
hombre_fatal wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few beers makes you better at anything hindered by anxiety. For many people, that's playing pool at the bar in front of others. Or speaking a foreign language. Or holding conversation.

I think a beer can help with anxiety. A few beers just results in overconfidence. I will admit it helps with conversation if you don’t normally talk and you’re around equally drunk people, but a few beers plus a crowd of sober people doesn’t work as well as most people think it does.

I would say it depends on your alcohol tolerance. I get tipsy if I have a beer. Other friends don't show any signs at 3 beers.

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

#289

Post by elbear »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #264
jkhdigital wrote: post #128

> It seems that there’s very high variation in how people respond to sleep deprivation. There you go. It's the tyranny of averages: when variation between humans is greater than the effect of the intervention. This reminds me of reading The How of Happiness and learning that happiness is basically 50% genetics, 10% circumstances and 40% behavior. The author frames that 40% as a really big number, but I thought about…

I ain't no fancy pants happiness author but I'd posit that happiness is 70% stupidity and 30% circumstance. You can be poor and happy or rich and happy, but the smarter you are the less likely either of those are true. Though being rich certainly helps.

Why would it be less likely to be rich and happy the smarter you are?

If you're smarter, it means you can learn more efficiently. If you learn more efficiently, you get a deeper understanding of the world.

If you understand how something works, you stop having the wrong expectations, so you're less likely to be unhappy.

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

#290

Post by superpermutat0r »

spacephysics wrote: post #160
kthxbye123 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> or carnivore with a focus on ketosis Following a "carnivore" diet is a really terrible idea. Unless you're an Inuit living in the frozen north, you should eat some greens.

Going on 3 years now, with comprehensive blood tests taken every 3-4 months for 2 years. Never had better markers for inflammation (below error threshold), cardiac health, liver health, etc. Tried keto (proper), vegan, vegetarian, low-FODMAP, paleo, all without success. Found a forum of other IBS people, and decided to risk going against mainstream 'authority' such as the American Heart Association. So far, feel bett…

Inuits did not adapt to their diet. Maasai adapted well but still not enough to avoid severe atherosclerotic build up, there's Maasai people ~20 years old dying from atherosclerosis.

It's not just AHA recommendations based on epidemiological studies, it's also the vast amount of data showing that unfortunately, cultural diets high in animal fat and protein eventually get the best of you.

Scientifically watching these kinds of interventions and showing they have positive outcomes still does not mean that practicing the intervention long-term is fine.

Post reply on HN