131–140 of 146 posts
Sounds very cool. Though the only problem is that if I were to rely on it, I will most likely be late everyday to drop my kid to school :D. On a different note, if this is bluetooth, whats preventing it from working with a computer etc. Why only phone??
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The science has been done. I'm afraid I don't see any citations in that article for studies done specifically on polyphasic sleep. I see citations for the natural length of the human day (24.2 hours), sleep deprivation effects, maximum waking time for humans, etc. But nothing but unbacked, though strongly held, assertions about polyphasic sleep. I may have missed it, but every time the article goes into discussion of…
Claudio Stampi tested all the various forms of reducing sleep and found polyphasic - the uberman style - to be the best out of them all. At the same time, he found that polyphasic sleep results in poorer performance compared to normal sleepers. And this was considered non-noteworthy, since obviously 2 hours of sleep is worse than 8. You can find his articles on Google Scholar. Steve Pavlina is the only person I know…
You're right, however, that there is a cult-like feeling around polyphasic sleep discussion, and I view that sort of thing with extreme skepticism...but I'm surprised to find it happening on both sides. The "debunkers" are just as guilty of making unbacked claims, and poorly citing their opinions.
Every time I've seen a straight up assertion about how long one should sleep, whether napping can reduce the total number of hours needed, etc. I'm unable to find a study that directly backs the assertion. I guess such studies must exist, but no one is linking to them. Even Wikipedia is surprisingly lacking in citations of directly relevant scientific research on the matter.
I really like the idea, but putting "(works on all phones)" on your front page is kind of shady if the actual requirements are bluetooth and internet access and third-party app support. No phone I've ever owned has all those features.
Those features have been practically ubiquitous on GSM phones for about five years (except for the cheapest 3rd world models). That's as close to "all phones" as you can get.
That $5 pre-order is far too easy to do. I bought one without stopping to research other products like the http://www.fitbit.com/ . Brilliantly designed pricing. It's a lot like Glastonbury ticketing. Deposits in autumn, full payment in January. This is extra profitable because in January many people are short on cash post-christmas and either can not or choose not to pay the full amount. You get to keep the non-refu…
We're definitely open to the idea of letting people play with communicating to our device.
ive always had trouble with sleep, and especially functioning in the mornings
I'm particularly interested in using this to help trigger lucid dreams. For the past few years, I've had a song on my playlist that I've trained myself to always ask if I'm dreaming when I hear it. The idea being that this song would play at the right time during my sleep cycle to get me to realize that I'm dreaming. However, so far I've had trouble triggering the song at the right time. Perhaps this app will be conf…
Where did you get the idea to trigger lucid dreaming with a song? I am both very musically oriented and a frequent lucid dreamer, and I rarely ever have any music in my dreams, let alone any sort of recognizable tune. I'm talking months between each such event. Unless you frequently dream about music already (as we are all different), I would suggest sticking to the more conventional triggers. One of these events too…
Using a song as a trigger for lucid dreaming seems like a reasonable enough way to send myself a signal, though I honestly don't have much to back it up.
Often the time you have to wake up is dictacted by factors out of your control (get to work/lecture/event at a certain time)
I'm particularly interested in using this to help trigger lucid dreams. For the past few years, I've had a song on my playlist that I've trained myself to always ask if I'm dreaming when I hear it. The idea being that this song would play at the right time during my sleep cycle to get me to realize that I'm dreaming. However, so far I've had trouble triggering the song at the right time. Perhaps this app will be conf…
... so you can listen to REM while in REM?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claudio Stampi tested all the various forms of reducing sleep and found polyphasic - the uberman style - to be the best out of them all. At the same time, he found that polyphasic sleep results in poorer performance compared to normal sleepers. And this was considered non-noteworthy, since obviously 2 hours of sleep is worse than 8. You can find his articles on Google Scholar. Steve Pavlina is the only person I know…
So, talking about this and reading what links I could find from your originally linked article, as well as reading up on Claudio Stampi leaves me no more illuminated. Stampi's book Why We Nap is out of print, my library does not have a copy, and I can't find any other references to actual studies that prove the arguments against polyphasic sleep, though the opinion of most folks does seem to be that it's not a replac…
References I found enlightening about the actual practice of it (in favor of it) are the book Ubersleep:
http://www.lulu.com/content/2649551
and Hacker News threads like this one:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=673726
I've read enough anecdotal evidence to be convinced that when it polyphasic sleep works, it works -- that after a potentially rough (and potentially impossible, depending on the person) period of adaptation, the practitioner is not significantly impaired in day-to-day functioning. Skeptics' arguments usually boil down to "it's unnatural", "you can't get something for nothing", or "it didn't work for me".
In terms of needing to set an alarm, I don't know if the body can learn a polyphasic schedule or not; even if it can, the reasons busy monophasic people use alarms to regulate their sleep would apply all the more so to polyphasic sleepers, and I get the sense polyphasic sleep is a sort of "unstable equilibrium"; and if the body can't learn it, that still doesn't mean it's unnatural.
Science could come along and discover a long-term deleterious effect of getting so little sleep, in which case I'd be all ears, but it seems doubtful. I hope the science catches up, though, and we figure out what the deal is with sleep, so we don't have to argue quite so irrationally. There's a lot of interesting recent work on whether being unconscious for eight hours is mostly a behavioral adaptation rather than a biological necessity.
My general philosophy is "if it works, do it", and it definitely works in some instances. Reducing total time spent sleeping per day isn't like smoking cigarettes, it isn't going to slowly poison you. Lots of people get very poor sleep and are definitely impaired during the day, more so than a skilled polyphasic sleeper would report, and they aren't doing long-term damage.