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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

#181
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.

The better takeaway is that napping is awesome! Moving work time into nap time resulted in a net productivity increase! That's amazing.

If you consider taking 30 minutes of a 6 hour shift to nap, that means they have to be 10% more productive for the 5.5 hours after the nap. I'd suspect hawthorne here, even though it didn't show up in the night treatment group, but it would be interesting to see if this productivity increase is sustained in the long run.

>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.

Time spent napping >> time in bed. They're sufficiently exhausted by mid-day to get higher quality rest than they would by spending the same time in bed.

If you're tired, you're better off getting up at your normal wake time, then taking a nap later.

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

#182
post #48

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.

I totally agree.

My sleep was somewhat destroyed from having kids. Not that I was extremely underslept, but my brain somehow stopped sleeping deeply it felt like. I awoke from every minute sound the kids made.

Today theyr'e 7 and 9 and I still wake from silly sounds.. Some sounds the kids make is like driving a knife through my ears. It is getting better but still...

The upside from this is now I don't need anywhwre near 8 hours of sleep anymore! 7 hours is almost too much, 6 works perfectly most of the time. 5 hours though is when I get into zombie-mode during daytime.

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

#183
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*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.

Which averages out to 7.5. So the average should have been in that range with outliners at 6 and 9

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

#184
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but you could say “ADHD medication”, much of which is very similar

Please stop repeating this anti-psychiatric talking point. 1. They are different chemicals. 2. They are administered by different means (inhalation is vastly more impactful than swallowing a tablet). 3. The doses for pharmaceuticals are much lower. By repeating this argument you create prejudice against those of us who live with ADHD and rely on medication to function normally.

Yet methamphetamine is prescribed for narcolepsy and ADHD. The trade name is Desoxyn.

Note that you are also creating prejudice against an already marginalized group of people, a subset of whom may have undiagnosed ADHD.

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

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same can be said for other drugs that raise monoamine neurotransmitter levels, such as amphetamines.

Stimulant overdosage can cause permanent brain damage.

That brain damage is not caused by the stimulants per se, but the rise in body temperature caused by stimulants. Don’t do meth on a hot day.

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

#186

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.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science

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

#187
post #107
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sort of inflammatory mind set is not helpful Although not completely relevant to the topic, it's not outside the realm of possibility for what was stated to become a reality. And it's very much an important idea to explore, because to not do so would help those willing to exploit such "zombie workers" actually go through with it.

It has been the reality for some sets of society during particularly terrible periods within humanities history. Gulags, concentration camps, work gangs and any other element of human exploitation. For these to work most often one needs to denigrate the peoples concern to the point where they are no longer even perceived as the same level of human. Sure all of that is possible but we wont have useful conversations or…

That's why the idea presented - the idea that we can keep people awake 24/7 without negative consequences (or at least not enough of them to warrant alarm) - is so insidious.

It doesn't require anyone to subjugate or enslave anyone else.

Nor think of them as "sub-human" or try to convince a larger population that their exploitation is warranted. All it takes is for the substance or technology that allows for this 24/7 waking state to become legal and you're done.

The moment it's legal, warehouses, factories, the service industry, will start looking for people who can pull 10 hour shifts. If you can't do that then you can't have a job (or you lose an existing one.)

Then it goes from 10 to 15 hours. If you can't keep up, perhaps be cause you refuse to "augment" yourself, then you're unable to find work or loose your existing one.

This really isn't that far stretched.

Do you really think Bezos and his lot wouldn't be willing to invest in technologies that allowed an already underpaid workforce to go from 8 hour shifts to 15, 18 or 24 hours?

Of course they would.

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

#188
post #165
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staying up late is much easier then getting up early. Anyone who gets up early and then has to be anywhere can speak to the general paralysis that involves, since the entire activity has to be planned around a very sharp time-based shutdown. Stealing hours later is a lot easier, because any amount of sleep will still break up the day compared to none. The other reason of course is that the real trick is just staying…

No major disagreement, but I will add this... Eating too much, borrowing more money than you should, eating junk food, staying up too late, being addicted to your phone, texting whilst driving, perhaps these are all the same problem? And like any animal, we need to be trained to control ourselves, when young, for our own good?

[deleted]

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given the attendance rate at private schools (low) and their divergence from the normal public school schedule (low) this doesn’t seem accurate. People may complain but they don’t do anything.

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

#190
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not remotely unique to capitalism in the slightest. Those wonderful socialist "democracies" were just as exploitative, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, the lot of them exploited groups for the good of the state.
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