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I'll respectfully disagree.

The fact that the data is from 1915 - 1920 does not invalidate it unless you want to suggest that human nature in 1915-1920 is different than it is now - which would seem a strange point to defend. And the sample sizes are quite decent.

I know that the HM userbase had a tendency to dismiss studies that are incorrectly conducted, but I don't think that this is one of those cases.

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The life and the work back then is very different from the life and work that we have now. A big factor is that there is no war to motivate people to work hard. Another is that labour circumstances are very very different now than what they were previously.

Finally almost nobody who reads HN does repetitive manual labour. Manual productivity is very different from mental productivity.

From my own experience, I'm not even productive for 40 hours per week. Let alone working 50 hours consistently every week.

"Human nature". Alternatively: People who think the data is not as pertinent today or in other lines of work believe that human behavior is largely determined by context, not a priori hardwired behavior.

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