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I upvoted you for the link to the old thread, but why is it self-evidently crazy? Just because most humans do something by default doesn't mean it's an optimal

by garply 16y ago

I upvoted you for the link to the old thread, but why is it self-evidently crazy? Just because most humans do something by default doesn't mean it's an optimal solution. Many things that people do by default are a result of environmental training but are not necessarily optimal behavior (here in China people juggle walnuts between their fingers in an effort to ward of arthritis, but as far as I can tell that behavior is just as likely to encourage arthritis as protect against it). I also attended Dr. Dement's Sleep and Dreams class while I was at Stanford. His class was basically a propaganda program for students to get more sleep: He even gave us extra credit for sleeping during class. The man is a true believer in getting tons of sleep and that does indeed say a lot towards discrediting people who vouch for polyphasic sleep schedules. I tend to trust what he says, even if he was rather old and eccentric. On the other hand, what's going on with all of these people who write such glowing reviews of the process? Are they just delusional?

mechanical_fish 16y ago
Yes, Dement is hilarious in his single-mindedness. And I didn't even have to take the class to figure it out: I just listened to one recorded lecture by the guy. His idee fixe is understandable. It's a story as old as the Greeks, who wrote the myth of Cassandra for a reason: You set out to discover something important, and you do, and the answer is seemingly obvious, especially to a highly rational person... and yet society just can't seem to act on that obvious answer, and people's lives just continue being screwed up. It works on your nerves, over the years. (I used to work in cancer research, and I get a small pang of this feeling every time I see a lit cigarette. So far I have been able to control my impulse to whip out the scale model of the diseased human lung and confront people with it, like that guy in the movie Clerks. But if I spent another twenty years in the field I'm not sure I'd be so restrained. Similarly, I met a cardiologist and the guy was pretty animated when selling me on the advantages of exercise. There's something about watching people die on a daily basis that makes you a very forceful salesman.) what's going on with all of these people who write such glowing reviews of the process? I also think it's partly the Efficacy Fallacy: When you make a decision to do something, you have a powerful internal motivation to defend the efficacy of that action. After all, nobody likes to think of themselves as stupid, and it actually is a bad idea to second-guess yourself every ten seconds. So your decisions have a psychological momentum that takes time to wear off. That would explain why people embark on these life-changing crazy ideas, then enthuse loudly about them for a certain number of months, and then quietly give them up. I've been there. It's also worth remembering that, like drunkenness and drug addiction, chronic sleepiness has a "death spiral" pattern: It impedes your judgement, which causes you to do stupid things, which may impede your judgement further... It is also likely that this weird sleep cycle does "work" for some people. A few people may have really odd biological clocks. Others may find that the ill effects of messed-up circadian rhythms are canceled out by some good effect, in their particular circumstance, or for their particular psychology. If you desperately need to escape a miserable home life, becoming a marine and being shipped off to war might be a net win, and if you desperately want to hack on the lab full of million-dollar equipment -- or you desperately need to get out of sync with the time-wasting meetings that dominate your daytime office life -- having a crazy sleep schedule might be a net win. Or at least feel like one.

by garply 16y ago

mechanical_fish 16y ago

Yes, Dement is hilarious in his single-mindedness. And I didn't even have to take the class to figure it out: I just listened to one recorded lecture by the guy. His idee fixe is understandable. It's a story as old as the Greeks, who wrote the myth of Cassandra for a reason: You set out to discover something important, and you do, and the answer is seemingly obvious, especially to a highly rational person... and yet society just can't seem to act on that obvious answer, and people's lives just continue being screwed up. It works on your nerves, over the years. (I used to work in cancer research, and I get a small pang of this feeling every time I see a lit cigarette. So far I have been able to control my impulse to whip out the scale model of the diseased human lung and confront people with it, like that guy in the movie Clerks. But if I spent another twenty years in the field I'm not sure I'd be so restrained. Similarly, I met a cardiologist and the guy was pretty animated when selling me on the advantages of exercise. There's something about watching people die on a daily basis that makes you a very forceful salesman.) what's going on with all of these people who write such glowing reviews of the process? I also think it's partly the Efficacy Fallacy: When you make a decision to do something, you have a powerful internal motivation to defend the efficacy of that action. After all, nobody likes to think of themselves as stupid, and it actually is a bad idea to second-guess yourself every ten seconds. So your decisions have a psychological momentum that takes time to wear off. That would explain why people embark on these life-changing crazy ideas, then enthuse loudly about them for a certain number of months, and then quietly give them up. I've been there. It's also worth remembering that, like drunkenness and drug addiction, chronic sleepiness has a "death spiral" pattern: It impedes your judgement, which causes you to do stupid things, which may impede your judgement further... It is also likely that this weird sleep cycle does "work" for some people. A few people may have really odd biological clocks. Others may find that the ill effects of messed-up circadian rhythms are canceled out by some good effect, in their particular circumstance, or for their particular psychology. If you desperately need to escape a miserable home life, becoming a marine and being shipped off to war might be a net win, and if you desperately want to hack on the lab full of million-dollar equipment -- or you desperately need to get out of sync with the time-wasting meetings that dominate your daytime office life -- having a crazy sleep schedule might be a net win. Or at least feel like one.