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

The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

academic.oup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 207 posts

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#151

Post by currymj »

Tenoke wrote: post #91

The majority of comments seem to have the belief that the need for 8 hours of sleep is truth, and seem to mostly be making up various excuses why the increase in sleep here doesn't show results. As far as I can tell, the 8 hours figure is on pretty shaky grounds and most believe it due to pop-science books like 'Why we sleep' and it could easily be the case that this is just another study showing how exaggerated that…

I need probably 7.5-8 hours of sleep. I'm very confident about this. If I get only 5-6 hours sleep for a couple nights, I become quite cognitively impaired; if it goes on long enough there are serious emotional effects too.

There are people who insist that actually, 5-6 hours is fine, and that I must be lying, lazy, or deluding myself. These people are trying to make me stupid and miserable.

It's an issue that provokes a lot of strong emotions, especially on the side of people who feel pressured to sleep less than they need.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#152

Post by aiisjustanif »

djbebs wrote: post #99
astrange wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably wouldn't be a good idea because demand would collapse, and there's no work without customers. This is actually why economics is called the "dismal science", it's not because everyone hates economists, a slave-owner gave it that name because he was mad economists didn't like slavery.

Given the low income/wealth of the people doing the work, that's not a convincing argument. There's a reason why overall income didn't really go down in 2020 (and even increased in some places), and thats because poor people don't actually make that much money, nor do they provide any significant value.

> because poor people don't actually make that much money, nor do they provide any significant value.

I’d love to see this reasoning or study behind this, and the context of “poor people”.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#153

Post by data_acquired »

Roritharr wrote: post #131
XorNot wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm...extremely skeptical a generic "data entry job" is "high cognitive demand". I can write new applications (atrociously) on basically no sleep, so I'm pretty skeptical "sit at this desk and enter these things" swings one way or the other (or even has much of an ability to quality check - at least the compiler will yell at me when I'm egregiously wrong). I'd be far more interested if these people could be trusted t…

I just got a good laugh out of the image of a study putting sleep deprived people in charge of heavy machinery for science.

They're called grad students :)

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#154

Post by hedora »

In California, rental apartments are built to a lower standard than condos. In particular, they don’t require noise proofing between units.

Noise proofing interior walls costs almost nothing (something like 1% the price of construction), but has a huge impact on quality of life.

I’m continually shocked at the systematic discrimination built into California housing.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#155

Post by fingerlocks »

astrange wrote: post #27
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain’s Factory Laws were created to prevent 8 year olds from working 16 hours per day with only a single break, but weren’t really enforced until automation made child labour obsolete. If we had the technology to force people to work 24/7 but proved to it was detrimental to people’s health, somehow I know deep down that society would just bite the bullet and people would burn the midnight oil for a few more dollar…

It probably wouldn't be a good idea because demand would collapse, and there's no work without customers. This is actually why economics is called the "dismal science", it's not because everyone hates economists, a slave-owner gave it that name because he was mad economists didn't like slavery.

I’m sorry, but is this a joke? It’s well known the “dismal science” came from Malthus’s incorrect prediction of society’s collapse.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#156

Post by intrepidhero »

Iv wrote: post #48
throwawaysleep wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway as I don't want to admit that I feel permanently cognitively impaired. Anecdotal, but I spent years not sleeping through university and sleeping in airports or on the train. Studied engineering and did a lot of hackathons and events and stuff. I figured out then that I didn't need full cognition or excellent decision making. I needed more hours cranking out work. I spent years sleeping just a few hours and…

Since I had a child, I started questioning whether cognitive decay in aging people was really caused by aging or a change in sleep patterns. Now my kid makes his nights mostly without problems, but the ~2 years of insufficient sleep feels like it had a toll.

Same. I mean there are probably multiple factors in play but I can't imagine the interrupted sleep, plus the baseload stress and anxiety, are good for long term mental health. Hopefully counteracted by long term benefits of rewarding family relationships.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#157

Post by minikites »

Guthur wrote: post #28
llamataboot wrote: post #2

Just imagine what we'll do to the labor supply if we can figure out a way to keep the poors working 24/7 and have them not suffer any ill effects from it!

This sort of inflammatory mind set is not helpful, and in this case the abstract describes they are actually getting adequate time in bed, just having interrupted sleep. The causes of the interruptions could be manifold but i would hazard a guess that the primary cause would be interruption from young children in small domiciles and lack of could social responsibility within the neighbourhood. I've experienced both h…

>This sort of inflammatory mind set is not helpful

It's not inflammatory because it's an accurate description of the capitalist mindset. You wouldn't get a CEO to admit it out loud, but they all believe that in their heart, otherwise they would be replaced by someone who does.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#158

Post by andi999 »

jonplackett wrote: post #112
andi999 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the abstract like the managed through information to reduce the non sleeping time in bed. They shd have used a fitness tracker to confirm, relying on the answers of people who might think their income depends on giving the 'right' answers is dangerous.

> increased sleep duration by 27 minutes per night by inducing more time in bed

From the article or abstract?

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#159

Post by eMSF »

peepholeperson wrote: post #144
signal11 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chennai's extremely hot. Having been there, intuitively I'd suspect a Spain-like siesta would work very well there and boost productivity. The nights there are extremely warm too. I wonder if that's a factor in ensuring that 5.5 hours of sleep is no worse than 8?

*5.5 vs about 6. The study increased their sleep by 27 minutes, they were still under-slept by 2 hours.

AFAIK not anything below 8 hours qualifies as “under-sleeping”; instead, the need of sleep typically varies between 6 to 9 hours for healthy adults.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#160

Post by buu700 »

XorNot wrote: post #126
DecayingOrganic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They employed 452 adults for a one-month data-entry job, which the authors say it's "a relatively cognitively-demanding task intended to be sensitive to sleep deprivation." As a side note, the study also says that short afternoon naps increased productivity.

I'm...extremely skeptical a generic "data entry job" is "high cognitive demand". I can write new applications (atrociously) on basically no sleep, so I'm pretty skeptical "sit at this desk and enter these things" swings one way or the other (or even has much of an ability to quality check - at least the compiler will yell at me when I'm egregiously wrong). I'd be far more interested if these people could be trusted t…

I'm...extremely skeptical a generic "data entry job" is "high cognitive demand".

Same here. While writing the GP comment, I considered using that exact example as something that I wouldn't expect to be heavily impacted by moderate sleep deprivation.

Post reply on HN