301–310 of 368 posts
I am fascinated by this, when I was younger I was obsessed with cutting out sleep, experimenting with polyphasic sleep, energy drinks etc. I'll add one other anecdote that I don't know what it means, but I had a project I was working on that was tight deadline, as a result I was only able to get two hours a sleep a night for about a week. For some reason once I got past the third day my tiredness and desire to sleep…
I spent one of the hottest summers on record couchsurfing around Europe. The heat and the casual accommodations both truncated my sleep significantly. I thought I'd cool off by going mountain biking in the Alps. I didn't realize how tired I was until I got to the top of the lift. It was fucking terrifying! Doing regular vacation stuff like eating and talking to people was totally fine - I hadn't even noticed I'd accu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are lots of big problems in the world, too big to be fixed by a single person. Dwelling on these can be depressing, they don't say that ignorance is bliss without a reason.
You are 22 year old. Your body is at peak condition, built to go out and hunt for days on little food and little sleep. Of course it will work more or less fine for a few weeks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is often a problem. Some say ignorance is bliss, and I am not sure they are wrong.
> If you understand how something works, you stop having the wrong expectations, so you're less likely to be unhappy.
While one may not have the wrong expectations, it can be painful sometimes to see how deep the rot goes and how that rot impacts people’s lives deeply (often negatively).
Additionally, changing the rot may be outside of your sphere of influence, so feelings of helplessness are possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This seems like a big leap in logic.
I used to use memrise [flash card style memorisation] to learn new words/concepts for years [25minutes, the first thing after waking up, every single day] and I know from experience how sleep, food, hangover, etc. impact my performance.
Sleep has a gigantic impact on my memory, focus and creativity — I believe it is responsible for really high variation in IQ points [10 - 20, but that's my rough guesstimate]. This is a more qualitative assessment but whey I sleep 4 hours it resembles a high level of depression — I lose motivation and all of my natural curiosity is gone [eg. usually, reading/learning brings me happiness, but it's all gone when I'm sleep deprived].
That's why I haven't used an alarm clock for years now.
I would suggest this book to anyone interested in the topic: Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams – Matthew Walker The author was on Joe Rogan at some point too but I haven't listened to it.
This is one of those posts I wish I could downvote 1000 times. It's the brogrammer equivalent of fake news: 22-yo kid "makes science" with a sample of 1, some videogames, and a few charts. You are 22 year old. Your body is at peak condition, built to go out and hunt for days on little food and little sleep. Of course it will work more or less fine for a few weeks.
> I believe that this experiment provides strong evidence that I experienced no major cognitive impairment
(emphasis mine)
> I’m wary of generalizing my results to other people and welcome independent replications of this experiment.
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> 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.
When sober, when things don't go well, the stress leads me to trying to take stupid shortcuts (like braking later and later before the corners) that don't work. With a bit of alcohol, it seems there's a bit less stress and I'm better at doing things the right way.
With more alcohol, the negative effects start to dominate. Slower reflexes, too aggressive driving.
With sufficient effort I can focus on driving the right way while sober, which works even better of course.
To be clear: the only racing in real life I do is the occasional karting session, which I do only when sober!