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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

#81

Post by Roritharr »

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…

Your last point really resonated with me. I've seen a very good friend crash his entire life by a string of bad decisions that led to him being constantly under pressure and burned out.

Ironically the use of some strong nootropics helped him cut the corner and work himself in a saner situation from which he could use to start coming back on his feet.

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

#82

Post by Roritharr »

oh-4-fucks-sake wrote: post #65
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 think that's what other recent psychological/neurological research has found too (citation needed--but do remember reading about it recently from multiple sources). It figures that everyone each has their individual baseline "propensity to stay focused"--and sleep deprivation degrades someone's focus below that. You take a normal person and sleep deprive them, and their "propensity to stay focused" is lowered, but…

Oh god, this explains so many things. My wife is suffering ten times worse from the maternity related sleep deprivation than what other moms report. I'll talk to her about more active sleep management.

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

#83

Post by jjdredd »

pstuart wrote: post #3
rckoepke wrote: post #2

I'm amazed by how thoroughly he wrote up the experiment.

yeah, with a sample size of 1 and the subject at a prime point in maturation. What's the lesson learned from this? Disclaimer: this experiment would destroy me (but I'm old enough to be the author's father).

Even 1-2 days of bad sleep (< 6 hrs) would destroy me either now or back when I was 20.

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

#84

Post by jotm »

I definitely couldn't do it. After about a week, my body would just crash/go to sleep by itself, world be damned.

Same, or rather, worse, when working 12 hours a day for more than ~2 weeks. I just start thinking "what the fuck am I doing? Why is this worth it?", and if it's not worth it it would just drive me into a serious depressive mood.

Maybe because I know I could do better than this, that there are other options. Maybe it's because I made peace with death already. But I think it's just that I'm physically not made for this kind of overload.

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

#85

Post by abtom »

> I slept 4 hours a night for 14 days and didn’t find any effects on cognition (assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter scenario, and SAT).

Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

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

#86

Post by jotm »

koheripbal wrote: post #75

This reminds me of Steve Pavlina who successfully slept 2-3 hrs per day for 5.5 months and reported no ill effects. source: https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ We definitely need more people to try variations on this. If you're in confinement, this is actually a great time to try.

I used to really like that guy... But I got a suspicion that sleep experiment may have been fabricated. There is zero proof beyond the blog posts :/

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

#87

Post by hawkice »

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.

This is by far the most important thing for HN to learn about this. The default level of self deception on this front is enormous.

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

#88

Post by deegles »

gonehome wrote: post #57
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.

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?

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

#89

Post by saadalem »

Tesla sleep by taking 20 mins naps (they said that he sleep just 2/3 hours per day by taking naps) a la polyphasic way. He is compared to Da Vinci which also did the same thing, Edison who sleep 4/5 hours ..

Does someone relate to polyphasic sleep ?

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

#90

Post by conistonwater »

hawkice wrote: post #87
hashmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is by far the most important thing for HN to learn about this. The default level of self deception on this front is enormous.

I don't think it's quite the same as self-deception. The way I understood it is that it's more like alcohol: the first thing to go is your ability to judge for yourself whether your judgment is impaired.
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