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The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

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

#171

Post by nitrogen »

emodendroket wrote: post #170
timeinput wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a time system based around sunrise. I mean with most clocks also being internet connected computers it wouldnt be too hard to make a system where you measure time in hours after average sunrise in a tike zone. That is where I live right now it's sunrise +3. I'll reschedule the daily 'standup' to SR+3.5, the banks open at SR+3 and close at SR+11. One major consequence I can see is that now we have north s…

That's what time zones are. You're just proposing more granular time zones. And none of them can fix the problem that in a lot of places the days are just short in the winter.

Timezones don't account for seasonal changes in sunrise times, and DST is a poor hack that tries and fails. Using local solar time would be an improvement in that regard. On short days you just do less.

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

#172

Post by shlep21 »

currymj wrote: post #151
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 provok…

Surely you concede that, even if 5-6 hours is not enough for you, it might still be enough for them.

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

#173

Post by emodendroket »

nitrogen wrote: post #171
emodendroket wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what time zones are. You're just proposing more granular time zones. And none of them can fix the problem that in a lot of places the days are just short in the winter.

Timezones don't account for seasonal changes in sunrise times, and DST is a poor hack that tries and fails. Using local solar time would be an improvement in that regard. On short days you just do less.

Timezones are a reasonable compromise between the desire for people to be up during the day, on one hand, and the need for a modern economy to be able to coordinate people over long distances, on the other. Turning up the dial all the way to the left here is going to cause a lot of problems.

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

#174

Post by shlep21 »

Pyramus wrote: post #114
Tenoke wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long before that specific book came out. If you look at how they arrived at the recommendation here, a lot of it was based on discussions and voting by 15 experts chosen by the US Department of Health. Actual studies are much less conclusive (see the one we are commenting on for example) and the evidence for 8 hours of sleep is shaky and the difference from 6 to 8 is rarely especially big even when it is supported wi…

This is one of my favourite topics that seems straightforward (What's the optimal sleep length?) but is a lot more tricky. > If you go through actual studies and systematic reviews it is really hard to make much of a case that 6 hours is much worse (if at all) than 8, yet alone anything more than that. The absence of evidence that 6 is much worse than 8 hours is not evidence that 6 is not much worse than 8 hours. It…

The absence of evidence that 6 is much worse than 8 hours is not evidence that 6 is not much worse than 8 hours.

If sleep studies show that 6-hour sleepers do better than 8-hour sleepers on a variety of metrics... that definitely counts as evidence.

It doesn't matter that much in this case because we already agree that it's worse

The parent comment literally cites a study that suggests 8 is worse than 6.

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

#175

Post by AndrewKemendo »

schappim wrote: post #3

Those in the study were low-income adults in Chennai, India who sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. The key takeaway was: > increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being, and led to small decreases in labor supply. I find the result surprising. When I get under 6 hours I see a clear drop off in performance.

That wasn't the entire result. What I took away was this:

>In contrast, short afternoon naps at the workplace improved an overall index of outcomes by 0.12 standard deviations, with significant increases in productivity, psychological well-being, and cognition, but a decrease in work time.

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

#176

Post by polalavik »

hedora wrote: post #154

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.

the standards for noise proofing apply to all construction (condos, townhomes, apartments) https://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/STP/PAGES/STP35976S.htm

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

#177

Post by einpoklum »

peepholeperson wrote: post #146
einpoklum wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people do acceptably with coffee. Do they, though?

Technically, yes. They do well enough that we can and do accept it.

> Technically, yes. They do well enough that we can and do accept it.

You shouldn't, and a great many in the US don't.

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

#178

Post by artem247 »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #10
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief. It almost makes me question what information is missing from the abstract since I don't know how one can consistently run on fumes without it affecting cognition, productivity or decision making.

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…

I had a similar experience from severe burnout - I was overly ambitios and worked for 12 hours + poor sleep. Its like you feel dumb and that you will never regain the clarity of mind. It took me a couple of years to get back to normal (around four I think). That included a year of therapy and a half of year of just doing the stuff that I like with no job commitment. Some downtime is needed.

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

#179

Post by Pyramus »

Tenoke wrote: post #136
Pyramus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. The study you cited, a meta-analysis, reviews the adverse effects of short and long sleep on * Mortality * Incident cardiovascular disease * Incident type 2 diabetes * Mental health (incident depression) * Brain health (incident cognitive disorders) * Cognitive function * Falls * Accidents and injuries and six other outcomes. The authors conclude: > Conclusion > A comprehensive body of evidence su…

I specifically cited the actual results from the meta-analysis. In the conclusion and abstract they seem to mostly talk about 7-8 vs really short or longer sleep but when you look at the analysis there's barely any adverse effects at 6 (and indeed 6 is better than 8 and only a tiny bit worse than 7 on the most important thing from most studies - all-cause mortality). Yes, of course sleeping, say, 2 hours a night is t…

It seems to me you are picking one outcome, all-cause mortality (link to the study in question with nice dose-response curves [1]) but ignoring cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, brain health, cognitive function, falls, accidents and injuries, and obesity?

> My claims and quotations were about 6 hours, which is roughly what the people in OP slept, too.

It's not clear how comparable the numbers are. The study from OP [2] reports sleep as measured by actigraphy (5.5h), time in bed (8h) and self-reported sleep (7.2h). What the meta-analyses most likely have studied (I haven't checked) is self-reported sleep.

[1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/JAHA.117.005947

[2] https://economics.mit.edu/files/16994

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

#180

Post by currymj »

Tenoke wrote: post #167
currymj wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 provok…

>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. Perhaps you feel like it is much worse for the side you perceive yourself to be on. I, and plenty of other people have had very negative experiences and sleep-related anxiety because of all the people insisting that getting less than 8 hours of sleep is bad for you on flimsy evidenc…

I agree with your analysis above -- a lot of the causal claims trying to connect However I really do maintain that the anti-sleep attitude is much more common. There is always huge pressure in schools, the workplace, social life to cut into sleep.

I think the reason "Why We Sleep" became so popular without facing much scrutiny is because many people were facing these pressures and desperate for some countervailing authority to point to.

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