3 ms·

You could just try it. Turn off the electrical stuff before you go to bed but hey everyone has freedom of choice.

jjoonathan 7y ago
Placebos work. If that's what you want, cool. If you want to figure out if RF affects sleep, that's cool too, but you'll need to double blind the experiment. Because placebos work.
- meekstro 7y ago
  Yes but so does human intuition and its a heck of a lot faster. A healthy person can endure a toxic environment. An unhealthy person becomes more unhealthy from increased toxicity. I’m not saying electromagnetic radiation makes a healthy person unwell i’m saying it delays or worsens recovery of some unhealthy people and there are million different subsets of unhealthy people so which subset are you going to run the double blind placebo on before you decide reduce electromagnetic radiation while you sleep. It’s a simple experiment anyone can try. Two weeks of camping is an effective insomnia treatment as per research which eliminates electromagnetic radiation from the equation. I think its a zeitgeber in subsets sick people but there’s no profit in researching that so the only tools you have are existing research, intuition, self observation and logic. People figure out how to sex chickens without a causative mechanism. It isn’t a placebo effect or a double blind trial. Electrochemical gradients as per Michael Levins research affect genetic expression. Much like hedging one’s bet by believing in a creator just in case reducing your exposure to RF at zero cost is the smartest thing someone can do with the available evidence.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    Placebos in truth's clothing are toxins of human society. Please verify placebo vs truth before spreading, k? Thanks. > Two weeks of camping is an effective insomnia treatment Or two weeks away from the grind reduces stress. Or getting away from artificial lights/schedules reduces stress. Or it selects for people+times with less stressed. Or more healthy. Or higher SES. Or you're getting away from pollution. Or you need temperature variation to feel healthy. Or any two of those. Or three! Many plausible explanatory factors compete with RF, and you'd have to control for them in order to point the finger at RF. That's not impossible, and not even particularly difficult, but it does mean that you can't go on a camping trip, get better sleep, and then use that as proof that RF was to blame for your insomnia. > People figure out how to sex chickens without a causative mechanism. It isn’t a placebo effect or a double blind trial. The double blind trial is how you establish whether or not something is a placebo. > Electrochemical gradients as per Michael Levins research affect genetic expression. You need to blind you studies whether or not you have a plausible mechanistic explanation. You don't need a plausible mechanistic explanation to blind your studies. > Much like hedging one’s bet by believing in a creator just in case Which one(s)? > reducing your exposure to RF at zero cost Foregoing the advantages of technology is not zero cost. If you mean that turning your router off at night is zero cost, go ahead! I don't take issue with that. I do take issue with spreading unblinded anecdata, because whether or not RF-induced-insomnia is real, RF-anxiety-induced-insomnia is definitely real, and anecdata like your own definetly spread it. If RF-induced-insomnia is real, that's for the best, but if what you experienced was a placebo (and I'd bet a substantial sum of money that it was), then unblinded anecdata literally are the problem. And that's not cool. In the privacy of your own home: do what works and ignore the haters! In society: please apply good experimental technique before causing anxiety in others. It's only polite.
    - meekstro 7y ago
      I think you are uncomfortable that some phenomena particularly biological don't fit in a scientific experiment neatly and are more comfortable labelling 3% of the population hypochondriacs to alleviate your own anxiety. What I've stated is that I experienced increased fatigue from exposure to ER while I was seriously ill and had elevated serum ferritin. Each ferritin molecule has 4500 iron atoms and serrin ferritin increases with acute or chronic viral infections. A healthy level is less than fifty. So a 1150 times increase in iron atoms in someone's blood could plausibly cause fatigue when it absorbs er. Who does this cause anxiety in exactly? How is turning off electronic devices going to cause anxiety? People can turn them off. If it helps great. If it doesn't don't bother. No anxiety necessary. You might be better educated than me, better connected than me and more intelligent but there's something to be said for original thought. I'd love to take you up on your bet where you impolitely just called me a whinger. I think I'm smarter than you are just sayin there wasn't one insightful thing in your comment as you tried to apply a method that doesn't really fit the situation. How do we do this? Let's bet our hacker News anonymous reputations on it.
      - JshWright 7y ago
        Are you unfamiliar with how powerful the placebo effect is? Totally meaningless "treatments" can have real biological impacts, simply because the person receiving them believes it will. If you truly cared about this topic, I assume you would want to know if the effect is real, or just your mind playing a trick on you.
        stordoff 7y ago
        > simply because the person receiving them believes it will Perhaps somewhat bizarrely, maybe even if they know it's only placebo: > In these four studies patients were randomised to receive open label placebo (pills described as "inert placebos containing no medication") plus usual treatment or usual treatment[...] > The consistency and magnitude of symptomatic relief across these studies—performed in hospitals on two continents—suggest that open label placebo may have a real therapeutic benefit. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889847/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889847/
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > Yes but so does human intuition and its a heck of a lot faster. It's also frequently incorrect.
function_seven 7y ago
Right, but you wouldn't know if your sleep improved because the wi-fi is off, or if it improved because you have greater peace of mind just knowing that the wi-fi is off. These are different things. A blinded test would eliminate the peace of mind component and allow you to determine if there's a physical effect from the wi-fi being on or not.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Furthermore, if your peace of mind is the true reason why you sleep better with RF off, note that by talking of your experience you could actually be creating the problem that you were trying to solve (difficulty sleeping due to worrying about RF). If RF is really to blame as determined by a blinded test, it's worth talking about, but if not, please exercise restraint.
taneq 7y ago
Sure, but you won’t learn much except how susceptible you are to the placebo effect.

Placebos work. If that's what you want, cool. If you want to figure out if RF affects sleep, that's cool too, but you'll need to double blind the experiment. Because placebos work.

meekstro 7y ago
Yes but so does human intuition and its a heck of a lot faster. A healthy person can endure a toxic environment. An unhealthy person becomes more unhealthy from increased toxicity. I’m not saying electromagnetic radiation makes a healthy person unwell i’m saying it delays or worsens recovery of some unhealthy people and there are million different subsets of unhealthy people so which subset are you going to run the double blind placebo on before you decide reduce electromagnetic radiation while you sleep. It’s a simple experiment anyone can try. Two weeks of camping is an effective insomnia treatment as per research which eliminates electromagnetic radiation from the equation. I think its a zeitgeber in subsets sick people but there’s no profit in researching that so the only tools you have are existing research, intuition, self observation and logic. People figure out how to sex chickens without a causative mechanism. It isn’t a placebo effect or a double blind trial. Electrochemical gradients as per Michael Levins research affect genetic expression. Much like hedging one’s bet by believing in a creator just in case reducing your exposure to RF at zero cost is the smartest thing someone can do with the available evidence.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Placebos in truth's clothing are toxins of human society. Please verify placebo vs truth before spreading, k? Thanks. > Two weeks of camping is an effective insomnia treatment Or two weeks away from the grind reduces stress. Or getting away from artificial lights/schedules reduces stress. Or it selects for people+times with less stressed. Or more healthy. Or higher SES. Or you're getting away from pollution. Or you need temperature variation to feel healthy. Or any two of those. Or three! Many plausible explanatory factors compete with RF, and you'd have to control for them in order to point the finger at RF. That's not impossible, and not even particularly difficult, but it does mean that you can't go on a camping trip, get better sleep, and then use that as proof that RF was to blame for your insomnia. > People figure out how to sex chickens without a causative mechanism. It isn’t a placebo effect or a double blind trial. The double blind trial is how you establish whether or not something is a placebo. > Electrochemical gradients as per Michael Levins research affect genetic expression. You need to blind you studies whether or not you have a plausible mechanistic explanation. You don't need a plausible mechanistic explanation to blind your studies. > Much like hedging one’s bet by believing in a creator just in case Which one(s)? > reducing your exposure to RF at zero cost Foregoing the advantages of technology is not zero cost. If you mean that turning your router off at night is zero cost, go ahead! I don't take issue with that. I do take issue with spreading unblinded anecdata, because whether or not RF-induced-insomnia is real, RF-anxiety-induced-insomnia is definitely real, and anecdata like your own definetly spread it. If RF-induced-insomnia is real, that's for the best, but if what you experienced was a placebo (and I'd bet a substantial sum of money that it was), then unblinded anecdata literally are the problem. And that's not cool. In the privacy of your own home: do what works and ignore the haters! In society: please apply good experimental technique before causing anxiety in others. It's only polite.
  - meekstro 7y ago
    I think you are uncomfortable that some phenomena particularly biological don't fit in a scientific experiment neatly and are more comfortable labelling 3% of the population hypochondriacs to alleviate your own anxiety. What I've stated is that I experienced increased fatigue from exposure to ER while I was seriously ill and had elevated serum ferritin. Each ferritin molecule has 4500 iron atoms and serrin ferritin increases with acute or chronic viral infections. A healthy level is less than fifty. So a 1150 times increase in iron atoms in someone's blood could plausibly cause fatigue when it absorbs er. Who does this cause anxiety in exactly? How is turning off electronic devices going to cause anxiety? People can turn them off. If it helps great. If it doesn't don't bother. No anxiety necessary. You might be better educated than me, better connected than me and more intelligent but there's something to be said for original thought. I'd love to take you up on your bet where you impolitely just called me a whinger. I think I'm smarter than you are just sayin there wasn't one insightful thing in your comment as you tried to apply a method that doesn't really fit the situation. How do we do this? Let's bet our hacker News anonymous reputations on it.
    - JshWright 7y ago
      Are you unfamiliar with how powerful the placebo effect is? Totally meaningless "treatments" can have real biological impacts, simply because the person receiving them believes it will. If you truly cared about this topic, I assume you would want to know if the effect is real, or just your mind playing a trick on you.
      - stordoff 7y ago
        > simply because the person receiving them believes it will Perhaps somewhat bizarrely, maybe even if they know it's only placebo: > In these four studies patients were randomised to receive open label placebo (pills described as "inert placebos containing no medication") plus usual treatment or usual treatment[...] > The consistency and magnitude of symptomatic relief across these studies—performed in hospitals on two continents—suggest that open label placebo may have a real therapeutic benefit. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889847/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889847/
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > Yes but so does human intuition and its a heck of a lot faster. It's also frequently incorrect.

function_seven 7y ago

Right, but you wouldn't know if your sleep improved because the wi-fi is off, or if it improved because you have greater peace of mind just knowing that the wi-fi is off. These are different things. A blinded test would eliminate the peace of mind component and allow you to determine if there's a physical effect from the wi-fi being on or not.

jjoonathan 7y ago
Furthermore, if your peace of mind is the true reason why you sleep better with RF off, note that by talking of your experience you could actually be creating the problem that you were trying to solve (difficulty sleeping due to worrying about RF). If RF is really to blame as determined by a blinded test, it's worth talking about, but if not, please exercise restraint.

taneq 7y ago

Sure, but you won’t learn much except how susceptible you are to the placebo effect.