Being a generalist requires more sleep than specialists | Hacker News Reader

Being a generalist requires more sleep than specialists

andymckenzie.blogspot.com

79 pointsruang28 comments

Interesting, but the article actually says hardly anything about sleep, and "generalists" here means "organisms with the ability to change in response to their environment". There's not the slightest suggestion that human beings who are more "generalist" need more sleep than ones who are "specialist" in any normal sense.

Incidentally, sloths and armadillos sleep for about 20 hours a day. Are they generalists?

It says it right here:

"Synaptic pruning and other mechanisms for synaptic plasticity allow for learning and memory, but they are energetically costly. Indeed, one hypothesis holds that sleep is the price we have to pay for plasticity the previous day. (see here)"

"Synaptic pruning and other mechanisms for synaptic plasticity" -- Being a generalist.

"...they are energetically costly. Indeed, one hypothesis holds that sleep is the price we have to pay for plasticity the previous day." -- Requires more sleep.

Here's the wikipedia article on Neuroplasticity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

It is the process of changing your brain. When neurons fire together they wire together, forming a neural pathway. When they fire apart, they wire apart. So if you're doing one thing - programming requiring high amounts of logic, for instance - a certain bunch of neurons fire together. They start forming a pathway. If you then go do something else in the same day, requiring a different bunch of neurons to fire, say play an instrument or write a fiction story, you'll start forming a different neural pathway. If some of the neurons overlap, but not all, you might end up beginning to break down the pathway you were building earlier in the day.

All of these activities require more energy than simply continuing to use the same series of pathways you built earlier in the day.

If A -> B, it's not necessarily true that B -> A. (A = generalist, B = sleeps a lot.)

On the other hand, if B is "sleeps more" (which was, after all, the claim in the subject line here) then A -> B and B -> A are pretty much the same thing, except that the meaning of B -> A is a little unclear.

Not at all. There may be many things that can cause B ("sleeps more"), such as "hunts big game." So A -> B does not imply B -> A.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. The point is that here B is "is a generalist rather than a specialist" and A is "sleeps more than a specialist".

If the claim is "generalists sleep more than specialists" then any instance where a specialist sleeps more is a refutation of the claim if it's made in a very strong form (all generalists sleep more than all specialists) and evidence against the claim if it's made in a weaker form (generalists tend to sleep more than specialists).

(It might in some cases be only very weak evidence. Indeed, I think it is only weak evidence here; armadillos and sloths are just two particular cases. So far as I know, though, there's no particular tendency for more-generalist animals to sleep longer.)

I think the article was talking specifically about humans, and not other species. In that case, there's a baseline of sleep required for a human. Need more than that? You're a generalist. Need less? You're a specialist.

When you go bringing in other species you have to change the baseline. Sloths and armadillos sleep as much as they do for other reasons than being worn out from brain plasticity.

> I think the article was talking specifically about humans, and not other species.

Um. Looks to me as if it's almost all about _neural plasticity_, which is not at all the same thing as being a generalist human rather than a specialist one. And the only thing I can find in it that says anything about one set of humans versus another is a comment about autism. (Whether there's evidence that autistic people have less neural plasticity, I don't know.)

And while I've only skimmed the paper they point to when saying that "one hypothesis holds that sleep is the price we have to pay for plasticity the previous day", I don't see anything in it that says anything about specialist versus generalist humans, or indeed about any group of humans versus any other.

My cat must be the king of generality.

Thanks. I found the article much more interesting than the title suggested.

The whole "tradeoff" series of this blog in general is really good for decision making.

It includes:

Some now vs More later

Random vs Determined

Proximity vs Scale

Training vs Battling

Loyalty vs Universality

Sure Bet vs Shot in the Dark

Switching Costs vs Change Gains

Offense vs Defense

*Efficiency vs Predicatability

His blog is definitely a treasure trove of insights but I fear the principles that he confer in his blog will be lost to the sea of information that I digest daily.

This is something that I am aware for some time now. I have no coherent modeling system and my knowledge are organized very ad hoc. Some economic insight here and there, stories, evidences, etc. It's not very systematic at all.

> I fear the principles that he confer in his blog will be lost to the sea of information that I digest daily. ... I have no coherent modeling system and my knowledge are organized very ad hoc.

You might consider creating a file or note for every major project, campaign, or life goal you have. Then when you see something relevant to that, you copy/paste it in or make a note.

There's ideas I've done that would have been totally gone if I didn't have loose thoughts sketched into a file on them. It takes a bit of work to set up, but it's actually surprisingly easy and natural to update throughout the day.

Edit: I took a screenshot and uploaded it to Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebastmarsh/5028168457/lightbox - that file was built out and iterated over five months, so definitely start smaller and let things expand. Feel free to email me if do something like this and have any questions on getting set up.

I use Gmail to organize information that I encounter on the web. I email myself the link and the content/text. The great advantage of Gmail is that I can assign multiple Labels to each piece of email or content.

Folder systems don't work as well for me because I would have to make multiple copies for something that was relevant to more than one major project.

Links + descriptions + tags = http://del.icio.us/ no?

There's a plugin for Xfce4 called Notes that I use. It's hands-down the best such program I've used, so much so that it's a real barrier to switching away from Xfce.

In the past, I've used text files on the desktop and e-mail drafts. This program (text only, no formatting/embeds/hyperlinks, does have named notes) sits on my top menu bar, and in one click opens up to fill half my screen. If I've used it today, it'll open up where I was last. Another click and it's gone, automatically saved.

I don't know exactly how much I get out of it, but I definitely recommend some form of note-taking for everyone browsing the Internet.

I use a method similar to yours with a personal wiki and the free Evernote. I get lots of ideas while in the car or in bed and it's easy to jot it quickly down in Evernote and then transfer it to my wiki later.

whats the software you used for this?

sorry that was a dumb question, i figured it out now

This is how I am. The way I see it, knowledge will always exist somewhere in your multidimensional conceptual space, so as long as you keep adding more with some degree of diversity, it will eventually start to form clouds, clusters, and networks. My sense is that the problem will tend to solve itself over time.

One of my close friends was a researcher in neuroscience and memory, and I'll tell you - this just simply isn't true for the majority of people. Lots of stuff you input is just lost if you don't make a note or copy it down.

If you come across a really valuable obscure piece of information, you really ought to make a note of it, especially if you're not likely to come across it again.

I've noticed this as well.

However, once I note something down I might as well throw the piece of paper away. When I need the knowledge in a fuzzy way (obscure reference, seed of an idea etc.) it will just be there. If I need it specifically (like on an exam) noting it down or pretty much anything doesn't help, I have to study for the occasion and when I do my notes are too incomplete to be of help, I have to confer a more reliable source.

> it will just be there.

And if you don't remember it, you won't notice yourself being any worse off.

I use Microsoft OneNote to keep track of interesting things I read.

I definitely fall into the generalist category. Just in working on my startup I have to write code in two different languages, write markup, do design (completely different from the code), do marketing/networking type stuff (further different from either the design or the coding) and enter recipes (which means reading and parsing them - further different).

When not working on the startup I get bored if I don't get enough variety from my activities. If I'm doing too much liberal arts type work - such as when I teach, then I crave code. When I was coding all day at my day job, I got home and just wanted to read, cook or garden.

I typically need 9 to 10 hours of sleep a night. I'll take more if I can get it. I can operate on 7 with lots of caffeine. Much less than that and I'm non-functional.

My girlfriend, who only needs 6 hours of sleep a night (sometimes less), often gives me crap for being such a log. Especially when she wakes up a solid 2 hours before I do and spends the morning bored. But now I can give her a reason: I'm a generalist!

Title doesn't really reflect the contents of the article that well...

You need to re-read the article, slowly. The title actually helped me understand the article.

While specialists count sheep to get sleep generalist try to build a framework for selling those sheep, so they have a lot more work to do while sleeping.

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