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

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

#101

Post by Barrin92 »

deegles wrote: post #88
gonehome wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 'vibe' I mean a ton of statements that sound likely to be false or at least would surprise me if they were true that aren't backed up when you look closer. The fact that the information is surprising isn't bad itself, but it spikes curiosity - then when I look deeper there isn't much actually there to support the surprising claims and what is there has a ton of issues. There's a lot of 'wow, isn't that interesting…

What agenda could be served by convincing people to get enough sleep?

I don't know if you can call it an agenda but I think there's something like a 'wellness' or moderation bias in these fields. The idea that you need to balance out hard work, slow down, and so on.

For example, as it turns out there is little evidence that stretching actually does anything, yet a lot of experts used to recommend it for decades. Same with nutrition, 'balanced diets', workouts at low heart rates and so on.

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

#102

Post by rxhernandez »

hashmal wrote: post #66
snowwrestler wrote: post #31

When I go many days in a row without enough sleep, I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline--as judged by things I build and people I interact with. But, my endurance of focus (the amount of time for which I can perform at a high level) does suffer. The weird thing is that it doesn't feel like I can't keep going... it's just that I sort of somehow don…

> 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.

I wonder if recognizing your cognitive decline is a cultural issue or something else; it couldn't be more clear that I am unable traverse many layers of abstraction when I havent slept enough; it was also apparent to everyone in my physics undergrad that they couldn't handle statistical mechanics with sleep deprivation.

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

#103

Post by deegles »

wccrawford wrote: post #50
gonehome wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this book is mostly bullshit - the same author that wrote the linked HN post dug into that book and there was a ton of manipulative data and just straight up false claims. [0] I get a pretty strong pseudoscience vibe from it. From a previous post: I got a strong motivated reasoning/bullshit vibe from Walker in this interview: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-war... Particularly this se…

I find this argument odd for a couple reasons. First, if you "can't get back lost sleep", wouldn't that mean that you were tired forever? I'm definitely more tired after 24 hours awake than 18. But I can sleep and get back to normal. Second, I once stayed up for almost 3 days straight. At the end of that, I slept for 24 hours straight. I woke up the next evening as if it were a normal morning, fully refreshed. (I wen…

Sleep is essential for memory and skill consolidation. What they mean by not being able to recover sleep is that if you (for example) try to learn something while sleep deprived, more of those memories will be lost the next day. Sleeping extra on the weekend will not make those memories come back. The benefits of sleep are "lost" forever.

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

#104

Post by renewiltord »

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…

Honestly, at least sleep makes me feel good. Distractions (like HN) make me feel worse at the end.

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

#105

Post by dang »

DominikPeters wrote: post #63
spacephysics wrote: post #56

Since a few years ago (when I read Why We Sleep [0]) I’ve made it my priority above all else to allow myself 8 hours of sleep, even if I don’t ‘use’ all of it. With more sleep, an innumerable amount of things are better (as read in the book), but subjectively I noticed the following after about a month straight of good sleep: * Pain was far more manageable (IBS, MMA injuries) * Sleep was more restorative when I woke…

The author of the OP is not a fan of Why We Sleep, having found many errors and misrepresentations [1]. [1] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

A couple threads on that if anyone's curious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22419958

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

#106

Post by gonehome »

deegles wrote: post #103
wccrawford wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this argument odd for a couple reasons. First, if you "can't get back lost sleep", wouldn't that mean that you were tired forever? I'm definitely more tired after 24 hours awake than 18. But I can sleep and get back to normal. Second, I once stayed up for almost 3 days straight. At the end of that, I slept for 24 hours straight. I woke up the next evening as if it were a normal morning, fully refreshed. (I wen…

Sleep is essential for memory and skill consolidation. What they mean by not being able to recover sleep is that if you (for example) try to learn something while sleep deprived, more of those memories will be lost the next day. Sleeping extra on the weekend will not make those memories come back. The benefits of sleep are "lost" forever.

If that's what they meant then isn't that what they should have said?

What you're saying makes sense, but it's very different from what was said in that interview.

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

#107

Post by outworlder »

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…

> 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.

Given the option, would you want to be slower and less energetic if you could stay up 24/7? We seem to make a trade-off. We sleep for 8 hours so that we can be at optimal performance the rest of the time.

> Uberman

I have never seen anyone that could sustain this. This is probably by design, the body has several mechanisms to make you go to bed. If not doing so was actually beneficial, it is likely that adaptations to this end would be more common.

> I truly wish one day we can isolate and synthesize whatever magical thing happens during sleep and recover some useful time.

Even our real world machines require maintenance stops. Don't hold your breath. Maybe we could make this more efficient in the future and speed up the processes.

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

#108

Post by tomjakubowski »

gonehome wrote: post #106
deegles wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep is essential for memory and skill consolidation. What they mean by not being able to recover sleep is that if you (for example) try to learn something while sleep deprived, more of those memories will be lost the next day. Sleeping extra on the weekend will not make those memories come back. The benefits of sleep are "lost" forever.

If that's what they meant then isn't that what they should have said? What you're saying makes sense, but it's very different from what was said in that interview.

Grandparent's description is exactly how I read the interview too.

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

#109

Post by gonehome »

ambicapter wrote: post #95
slm_HN wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I get a pretty strong pseudoscience vibe from it. I don't quite know how to categorize complaining about pseudoscience based on a "vibe". It's not quite irony... maybe it's just humorous. As a member of the post Alanis Morissette generation I guess I can no longer recognize irony.

Pseudoscience isn't about "vibes" though, its about mis-using scientific concepts in disingenuous ways.

I get the “vibe” because of the misuse. I regret using the colloquialism since people seem to have such a strong reaction to it. I just meant my skepticism went up from what I was hearing.

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

#110

Post by vikiomega9 »

hashmal wrote: post #66
snowwrestler wrote: post #31

When I go many days in a row without enough sleep, I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline--as judged by things I build and people I interact with. But, my endurance of focus (the amount of time for which I can perform at a high level) does suffer. The weird thing is that it doesn't feel like I can't keep going... it's just that I sort of somehow don…

> 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.

Could you point me to some of these studies, ie. one that's a good starting reference.
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