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... I spent 4 years in high school quoting these sleep studies. Just like I spent 4 years quoting the Tinker decision, and debating Hazelwood.What do Tinker/Hazelwood have to do with sleep? Or are you suggesting that siding with the Warren court decision was some kind of youthful indiscretion that thankfully the Rehnquist court backed off on? Though I was never a writer for a high school newspaper, I’m damn glad in CA we have some legitimate protection for student journalists and other student speech.
> But the truth is that staying out past curfew and putting my homework off [...] had absolutely NOTHING to do with my "biological clock."
How can you possibly assert this? First, your suggestion that you personally would have been fine if you’d just been less stubborn is counter-factual speculation. But second, your assertion is flat out contradicted by careful scientific research on the subject.
The whole “personal individual willpower is the only causal mechanism in the world” fallacy so pervasive in our society is really distressing to me.
It leads to terrible policy aimed at blaming the suffering rather than trying to help them achieve better outcomes. It’s great that poor diets; low-paying menial jobs; living in physically dangerous gang neighborhoods; getting stiffed out of insurance, pensions, etc. by unscrupulous businesses; deaths from “reckless driving” on poorly planned streets; getting imprisoned for decades for drug possession; getting straight-up scammed by not carefully reading through all the fine print on contracts intentionally designed such that their real implications differ substantially from the signatories’ mutual understanding; becoming pregnant as a teenager; catching a venereal disease; etc. etc. are subject to free will, and can be avoided by the smart and careful. But while that’s good advice for individuals trying to navigate the society – “do your work”, “get enough sleep and exercise”, “eat right”, “read the fine print” – it’s atrocious policy, because it ignores cognitive biases and intuitions and focuses only on narrowly construed technical responsibility. The result is inefficiency, poor health, unnecessary death, &c. &c. And we “teach” people to be “personally responsible” by condemning large numbers of them to bad outcomes, with nearly no evidence that any learning actually occurs as a result.
Most importantly, it eliminates empathy for those in rough situations. After all, if all outcomes are based mostly on personal merit, the down-on-their-luck must just deserve what they get.