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We have had industrial shift hours for nearly two centuries, and before that in the Army and Navy. Yet large organizations are still implementing new shift/watc

We have had industrial shift hours for nearly two centuries, and before that in the Army and Navy. Yet large organizations are still implementing new shift/watch schedules to (or sometimes purportedly to) improve health and alertness based on scientific results. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2016/10/28/this-life-changing-shift-has-made-submariners-much-happier/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2016/10/28/this-lif... What is the problem with science here? Without being an expert it seems like there are three possibilities: 1) Sleep studies are too difficult to discern results and control. 2) We have culturally been focused on the wrong results, organizational efficiencies rather than individual health. 3) Humans actually adapt to new conditions faster than expected. Everyone is at least mildly interested in this topic and mildly an expert. Its easier to see problems than remedies and there are conspiracy theories too: http://rotateshift.blogspot.com/ http://rotateshift.blogspot.com/

barry-cotter 8y ago
4) No one gives a shit about the long term health effects. There are lots of pieces of knowledge that have obvious practical implications that aren’t acted upon because it’s inconvenient and the function of a system is different from what people say it’s for. School is more childcare than education and using the same buses for elementary and high school is cheaper so all high school students are sleep deprived and learn less than they would if they could get up at a natural hour. Psychological research on learning like the forgetting curve that works is ignored while crap like learning styles comes and goes in fads. Direct instruction works wonderfully but is boring to teach so it isn’t adopted anywhere. School isn’t about learning. Politics isn’t about policy. Healthcare isn’t about health. The purpose of a thing is what it does, not what someone says it’s for.
- benlorenzetti 8y ago
  Just because organizations have...organization and heirarchy doesn't mean they don't have a goal, or government and politics dont have policies. I agree though about school being at least half to keep the kids locked up and out of the way for most of the day. People care about long term health impacts.
- darkerside 8y ago
  Can you explain more about forgetting curve and direct instruction?
  - kilotaras 8y ago
    Forgetting curve means it's better to learn about independent topics (in lets say philosophy) A B C in the order ABCABCABC, but almost in every school it would be AAABBBCCC.
    - joveian 8y ago
      In a bit more detail, the basic idea is that forgetting is a regular, valuable occurance to have better access to the useful information and the way that useful information is determined is use over time. If you use particular information intensely over a short period of time then stop using it at all, that is a signal that you are done with that information and it will be forgotten fairly quickly. But if you use it again after a while then that is a signal that it might be useful even further into the future. Spaced repetition is another application of this idea. I've always liked B.F. Skinner's ideas about learning, where the forgetting curve is paired with the idea that making mistakes is quite harmful since then we also have the memory of the incorrect answer (that will decay more slowly than random information due to being close to the thing we want to actually use). So it is better to refer to the correct answer until you can recall it correctly, which happens automatically as a standard brain optimization when we do something repeatedly. I don't really know anything about direct instruction, but it sounds like a core idea is heavily scripted teacher student interaction, which sounds even more dystopian to me than the current system (like being raised by an automated call center in human form). But IMO a bit further in that direction would be great. Remove teachers from the normal learning loop and provide a variety of learning materals (books, video, audio). Teachers can then assist students individually and spend more time being social workers or whatever else is needed so that kids are in a place to be able to learn. Currently the whole school experience tends towards performance art by teachers where the presence or absence of students is a secondary concern. If learning was the important part then the experience would be centered around learning with the presence or absence of teachers a secondary concern.

barry-cotter 8y ago

4) No one gives a shit about the long term health effects. There are lots of pieces of knowledge that have obvious practical implications that aren’t acted upon because it’s inconvenient and the function of a system is different from what people say it’s for. School is more childcare than education and using the same buses for elementary and high school is cheaper so all high school students are sleep deprived and learn less than they would if they could get up at a natural hour. Psychological research on learning like the forgetting curve that works is ignored while crap like learning styles comes and goes in fads. Direct instruction works wonderfully but is boring to teach so it isn’t adopted anywhere. School isn’t about learning. Politics isn’t about policy. Healthcare isn’t about health. The purpose of a thing is what it does, not what someone says it’s for.

benlorenzetti 8y ago
Just because organizations have...organization and heirarchy doesn't mean they don't have a goal, or government and politics dont have policies. I agree though about school being at least half to keep the kids locked up and out of the way for most of the day. People care about long term health impacts.
darkerside 8y ago
Can you explain more about forgetting curve and direct instruction?
- kilotaras 8y ago
  Forgetting curve means it's better to learn about independent topics (in lets say philosophy) A B C in the order ABCABCABC, but almost in every school it would be AAABBBCCC.
  - joveian 8y ago
    In a bit more detail, the basic idea is that forgetting is a regular, valuable occurance to have better access to the useful information and the way that useful information is determined is use over time. If you use particular information intensely over a short period of time then stop using it at all, that is a signal that you are done with that information and it will be forgotten fairly quickly. But if you use it again after a while then that is a signal that it might be useful even further into the future. Spaced repetition is another application of this idea. I've always liked B.F. Skinner's ideas about learning, where the forgetting curve is paired with the idea that making mistakes is quite harmful since then we also have the memory of the incorrect answer (that will decay more slowly than random information due to being close to the thing we want to actually use). So it is better to refer to the correct answer until you can recall it correctly, which happens automatically as a standard brain optimization when we do something repeatedly. I don't really know anything about direct instruction, but it sounds like a core idea is heavily scripted teacher student interaction, which sounds even more dystopian to me than the current system (like being raised by an automated call center in human form). But IMO a bit further in that direction would be great. Remove teachers from the normal learning loop and provide a variety of learning materals (books, video, audio). Teachers can then assist students individually and spend more time being social workers or whatever else is needed so that kids are in a place to be able to learn. Currently the whole school experience tends towards performance art by teachers where the presence or absence of students is a secondary concern. If learning was the important part then the experience would be centered around learning with the presence or absence of teachers a secondary concern.